I always say the worst that can come of a bad date is a cracking anecdote, and boy, did my recent encounter take the cake and top it with faecal icing and a hate-glazed cherry, so buckle in.
I don’t date. I am actively not dating and have as much desire to seek out a relationship as I have desire to seek out cat vomit in the dark with bare feet, so two months ago when a handsome man approached to tell me how utterly captivated he is and please could he take me out, I took one look at his decidedly ugly shoes and firmly shot him down.
Or so I thought…
For two months this undeterred cutie has been wooing and pursuing me as I make my near-daily passing of his shop and, being a vain and nosy bitch, flattery and curiosity eventually got the better of me, and so, after weeks of resolute rebuttal, I succumbed and agreed to go for a drink. What harm etc.
Reader, I knew he was not my type and I knew this would not turn out to be the burning romance the kids would make TikToks about (modern equivalent of poems/great romance novels? I don’t know), I knew I was not about to be dazzled by wit or anything purporting to be a scintillating conversation – I thought this might, at best, result in an ego-boosting flirtation with the option for future fumbling, but most likely I could return to my friends with a laughable dull-date demob. My expectations were about as low as a ferret’s nipples and yet somehow this man managed to plumb depths my estimation had not known possible. If the bar were on the floor, this man went to top up his tan on the Earth’s core.
The love-bombing compliments poured, the drinks also, and first date question-and-answer exchanges commenced like strangers swapping slightly awkward and occasionally inappropriate Christmas gifts, only every ‘gift’ I opened seem to reveal a neat little red flag – nothing so untoward as to warrant a gin and slimline to the face, but questionable views on tax avoidance, driving while unlicensed and a complete failure to even ask me my name (spoiler alert: he still doesn’t know it), that kind of thing. Soon there were enough of these charming little red flags to festoon our corner of the pub with a string of crimson bunting – it was clear that the only “future fumbling” would be for my keys, alone.
Then our unregistered Romeo stepped the flirting up a gear; his questioning became coquettishly inquisitive, charmingly titillating, rivetingly risqué. Nah, just kidding, it turned plain gutter smut.
Among the ribald zingers that I swatted, dodged and pinged back with amusing deflection, he asked me when I last had sex. Incredibly forward for an acquaintance so new, but you’ve paid for two gins, I’ll humour you. And so with characteristic candour and ease I told him. I told him the last person to share my bed was over a year ago and the person had been a woman. Stunned silence. A stunned silence I mistook for a classic ‘straight man caught in bisexual fantasy headlights’ and assumed he was making room in his wank bank for this new saucy material. Silence swiftly turned to pointed questioning and digging for specifics in an aghast, decidedly un-horny way. He was genuinely shocked.
Conversation moved on and I assumed we were done with that particular firework but my unsuitable suitor clearly hasn’t had a childhood traumatised by British public information films because he went right back to that lit rocket and I was the one, it seems, who would be left with the burnt fingers.
He was, to my shock, vocally disgusted and horrified. He told me he felt truly sorry for himself in this moment because he had been looking forward to having a drink with me all day and had been entirely smitten with me to this point, but my revelation had ruined it. I had ruined it – he could no longer think of me the same way and could only feel revulsion when thinking of being with me after I had done something so “wrong”. Never mind that I had been with other men, never mind that he has [number I can only guess] partners and a divorce under his belt – that right there was his sticking point. It caught me completely off guard. There it was; pure, grim, unfiltered homophobia. I didn’t care for this man, didn’t want him to want me, but let me tell you, it stung.
This feeling was entirely new to me. You see, even though I identify as being very much at the heterosexual end of the scale, to him I was still way too far along that filthy flaming rainbow. I was being discriminated against by a homophobe on a heterosexual date. I hadn’t even unleashed the full ‘me’, hadn’t even told him one of the funnier stories involving joggers trots, or unleashed one of the farts I’d held in all through that evening’s yoga class. I wasn’t being rejected for who I am, but for a minority of who I have chosen to enjoy sex with. And it left a taste as bitter as the quinine in my drink.
A grisly silence hung between us, when he quietly suggested we go for a walk. Our drinks not even half finished, he suddenly wanted to take me somewhere else. My stomach sent an electric wave up toward my throat and I saw, not a cute bunting-size flag, but the red velvet drape from a West End theatre unfurl from a flagpole whittled from a tree trunk and my senses pricked like a fox catching a whiff of horse-mounted Tory on the wind. I would rather staple my labia to a rabid feral hog than comply with whatever ‘romantic stroll’ this was implied to be.
I allowed him to manoeuvre us out of the pub and begin the short walk in the general homeward direction, exclaiming how tired, how early I must rise etc, waiting for the optimal moment to ditch him and disappear into the shadows, leaving no trace. That’s when we came upon his shop.
He said he needed to go in to get something and, as he raised the shutters to halfway, ducking in through the hastily unlocked door, staring out from the pitch black, solemnly insisted I join him for a glass of wine. Just one. Please. Just come in. It’s just a drink!
That deafening thudding noise you hear is the red velvet drape from every stage in London and New York’s theatre districts unfurling from redwood flag poles. My senses didn’t just prick, they pierced and screamed shrill icy cries of silent magnified alertness. I firmly told him no, that I did not wish to continue the evening, that I did not feel safe going into a dark empty shop with a man I hardly knew and that he had been acting weird ever since that revelation. He took my response like a mature human. [looks to camera]
He wailed in ‘entitled narcissist’ how disappointed he was that he watched me go by every day, looking longingly from my ‘toes to my curls’, fixated on my every intoxicating move, imagining I would be his girlfriend and fantasising the wonderful things we would do together and, to spare you some blushes, how I had frequently featured in his moments of… personal contemplation. But I had RUINED IT! I had ruined all that for him and WHY?! Why had I told him that?! I was supposed to be his but… WHY had I felt the need to say thaaaat?!
I disappeared into the shadows, leaving no trace.
I came away from that night with three invaluable learnings. Firstly, that I have reached a level of assuredness whereby I prioritise my safety and my instincts over the ingrained female urge to be polite and appease men in times of confrontation. I don’t believe he planned on luring me into his darkened shop to educate him on LGBTQ+ matters or to offer me puffy kittens and sugary lollipops, so this ‘worst’ date tale could have had a much more sinister plot.
Secondly, I awoke in the morning, not with the pang of sadness and ache of anger that I had gone to bed with, but a rump-shaking pep in my step and an unstoppable urge to listen to Gloria Gaynor’s I Am Who I Am on a loop. My past is flawed and that’s beautiful, my lifestyle is broad and I am richer for it, I am too much for some people and I refuse to be any less. Possibly for the first time, I realise I am comfortable in who I am and the life I live and I am proud that I no longer feel the need to apologise for that.
Thirdly, I am truly humbled. I have always been a staunch ally and empathiser of LGBTQ+ people and all that time I had no idea. I had no idea what that callous, wilting othering actually felt like until it was done to me. This doesn’t mean I suddenly support LGBTQ+ rights more passionately or feel compelled to change, well, anything about myself really, but I have a new respect and saddened understanding that I didn’t before. EDIT: Writing this piece has made me realise I may actually be deserving of space in the LGBTQ+ community, that I’m not just an “empathiser” and have things to mull.
Oh, and if you get the ick from decidedly ugly shoes, you were right first time.
Pretty Feet, Pop Toe 