Fill up the kettle, bust open the chocolate Hob Nobs and take a load off, you may want to get comfortable for this.Blind Dating.
That is: leaving the house to meet up with someone you don't know and agreeing to spend at least the length of a glass of Pinot with, in order to find out whether or not it was worth the time and effort it took to put on a layer make-up .
This is opposed to dating the blind for which, it would seem to me, would require less time in the initial preparation due to the whole not being able to see thing.
As I get older and my make-up routine gets more complex and I am increasingly aware that the moments spent trowelling over the cracks and repainting the walls is time I shall never get back. Thus I am learning to resent what I see as a waste of perfectly good products on a man- sighted or otherwise- who turns out to be not only not 'sponge worthy' but not even worthy of a bit of spack filler and lippy.
Virgin Ewe Placenta doesn't come cheap y'know, and there are plenty of men with two perfectly good working eyes who are totally and irreparably blind to everything other than themselves and their own greatness.
But my target today is not male stupidity.
Well, not mostly.
It's Blind Dating.
I've done this before.
I am single, I date.
I have left the house covered in a paintbox and returned home with the paintbox kissed clean off.
I have even- after an initial blind date set up- spent some fairly decent time and energy on a delightfully intelligent man whose only flaw was his tendency to share his nether regions with every passing female with a pulse.
Meh.
For the record, I'm not cool with that, but whatever.
( To be fair, lest you think I'm being picky, he did have the MOST excruciatingly off putting cum face, so it wasn't JUST his philandering)
But tonight, I went on a blind date- with a sighted- but insight less man.
Lets call him ' M.V' which is not his name, but are the initials of someone I truly detest and so, as a writer, can use at will as a kind of written word cathartic revenge.
Ah.
Sometimes I love being me :)
But back to this.
MV touted himself as a forward thinking, well travelled, mature, creative, educated man.
I'm 'thing' with creativity and intellect.
It simply has to be there.
End of story.
What I prefer less of, and this is why we are talking, is the creepy " Hi I'm MV, I have no personal hygiene, and a few major issues surrounding my ex girlfriend, plus I'd like to sleep with you as soon as you have finished your drink because I am desperate and horny and this bar's Happy Hour is drawing to a close".
He was mature, I'll give him that, like an over ripened Pont l’Eveque or rancid Roquefort.
I am not kidding when I tell you I HONESTLY thought it was the cheese platter on the table beside us, but then I began to realise that cheese doesn't smell like crusted sweat.
However, this issue aside- bleugh- what really scuppered the evening was the constant and repeated use of what felt and sounded like of a set of 'how to's' in the 'losers guide to making a girl get naked' booklet for losers- as such-......which I have deliberately repeated.
MV " Blah Blah Blah, me, me, me, my amazing work etc......You look nice, by the way"
WH"Why, thank you" ( You smell dead, are we sure I am in the right bar?)
MV" I like a woman who knows what she wants" touches arm for one...two....three...seconds ( Mental note- dry clean jacket).
WH" Well, I guess at my stage of life I know a few more things about myself" ( Like how to wash, and where to buy deodorant)
MV "My ex-girlfriends a bitch, you are so lovely"
WH ( Your ex-girlfriends a saint, I can only imagine she had lost 2 of her senses in an horrific accident)
MV" Lets me buy you dinner and then head back to my place, I want to kiss you from your ankles to your forehead"
WH " Here's a hundred bucks for my wine, I need to go and get a tetanus shot" ( OK, I didn't say that last part out loud)
MV " Don't go, you are the only person who truly understands me, plus, I want to lick your pussy'- he ACTUALLY said this......
WH" I'm really sorry, my producer has just send me a text and has called an unexpected and urgent meeting at 9:30pm on a Wednesday night, and I REALLY need to attend it or I will never work again"- I ACTUALLY said this too.
Never mind that I currently have nothing underway that requires anything more than a diary meeting and a gossip over coffee, but mentioning an 'anxious producer' and simultaneously rolling ones eyes has a certain wiki magic.
Baffling the less initiated with bullshit is one of the true joys of my profession.
How can they see with sequins in their eyes? As they say.
I escaped, but not before he tried to stick his tongue down my throat- thank God for resistance training at the gym- and sent me off with a winking, lip licking, eye rolling attempt at what one assumes was a 'come hither' parting look.
Given my previous experience with sexual facial contortionism that bore an uncanny resemblance to a stroke victims final breath, this I understood to be designed to entice me into his lair.
It didn't.
I know there are no books out there on this one, but guys, if you want your ladies to think of you as 'hot' try not to pull faces that say 'aneurysm' when what you mean to say is ' thank you'.
I ran away, and caught up with a couple of friends with lives marginally weirder than my own, and when Rancid Man- for that shall be his other name- sent half a dozen follow up texts suggesting other ways he would like to give me septicemia or possibly golden staf, or that flesh eating bug, I sent a polite 'no thank you' message back which he promptly dismissed as ' banal and lacking it creativity'.
Yup, guilty as charged, if that means I can keep all my limbs.
Next blind date I am going on, I want it to be with someone who has at least a sense of smell.
For that I am willing to sacrifice sight, or even sound.
And why not ?
Both the deaf and the blind are good with their hands.
And nothing means more to a woman than a man with the ability to listen, to be in touch, to have insight and that rarest and most valued of qualities, common sense.
