The Three Day Date

It starts so innocently. With dinner, and an early one at that! 6pm we arranged to meet in Richmond for some hipster American BBQ for what was our 3rd official date. I had already spent most of the morning snoozing beside P - accidentally (I had come over to drop off a haul of new pillows and promptly fell asleep on them. Only waking up when I hit myself in the face in my sleep.)

I wore white jeans, a grey t-shirt, and beige cardi. I was not dressed up. I was not making an effort. This was an easygoing casual dinner date. He rocked up in a pressed white shirt and nice jeans. He’d made a little bit of an effort. More than I had at least. But still, he told me I looked fabulous.

I told him not to bother driving as I was going to drink so he should drink. It took them a long time to make our drink order but once the margaritas started coming they didn’t stop. It didn’t occur to me in the moment that maybe brown liquor wasn’t the best idea.

Our conversation was drowned out by a raucous group of men on the far end of the upper dining room. They were so loud. Inappropriately loud. The were all at various stages of 30-something-or-other and I spent a lot of time speculating just what they were. There were in excess of a dozen of them and they didn’t look like a football team or have the shoulders to be a rowing team. “What are they?” I asked a harried waitress.
She rolled her eyes. “Bucks party. And I wish they would just leave.” Of course they were, but it just seemed too obvious. How disappointing. I was secretly hoping for chess club or lacrosse team.

After our dinner of flank steak, short ribs, mac & cheese, burnt ends, and chipotle slaw we went across the road to continue drinking. I switched to champagne. Finally we could hear what the other was saying. We talked. We talked and talked. Mostly about his work, about random things that happened in our late twenties, about ex boyfriends, girlfriends. Then it was time to go home.

Sometimes I drink too much and I lose all sense of time and place.

The next thing I knew I was in his spartan apartment, surprised it was only 11:30pm, feeling extremely sleepy. God what a party pooper I am, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep next to him. (He loaned me a pair of pyjamas - cotton striped, Calvin Klein - so I didn’t have to sleep in my clothes.)

“Did I snore?” I asked him in the morning.
“Only a tiny bit, but it was cute.”
“Uh huh, sure.”
“Do you feel like breakfast?”
“Of course. I always feel like breakfast. Carlisle Street?”

We got ourselves ready and headed out to read the Sunday papers over smashed avocado, toast, eggs, fried mushrooms, and multiple lattes. I ordered a kale smoothie to counteract last night’s damage. The only green thing I recall eating was a few green beans. It came in a ball glass jar and I instantly regretted my decision.

“What should we do next?” He asked.
“Shouldn’t I go home?”
“Do you have to?”
“I guess not … We could go for a walk?”

Our walk took us around Balaclava, St Kilda, Windsor and up to Chapel Street. We stopped in Bromley & Co. where I contemplated buying a pottery platter then realised I’d have to carry it around all day, we gawped at the art, and subtly checked out the pricetag on a Charles Blackman sculpture.

“Lucky for you it’s a Sunday and the banks aren’t open …” he said when I told him I really, really wanted it.

Then we went into Chapel Street Bazaar. Sometimes my favorite thing to do on these excursions is listen to other people’s conversations.

“Do we need another pot, Malcolm?”
“You can never have too many pots, Sue.”

“You really can’t have too much pot,” says G, “there’s no such thing.”
“They’re not even trying to be funny,” I say, “they’re saying it in all seriousness.”

Before we leave I rummaged through the stack of vintage Playboys. “I really am just interested in the articles. They’re very good. Oh. Remind me to come back and pick up some doilies.”
“You can never have too many doilies,” he says.

At Zucca Rossa I order the first of four bloody mary’s for the day.
When we start to get hungry we go to Ladro and order a pizza, a salad and some olives to share between us. I order another bloody mary.

“I had an accident in the bathroom,” he says returning to the table.
“Uh oh. You smell amazing.”
“The bottle of Aesop handwash kind of just exploded all over the bottom of my t-shirt. Look.”
“First world problems. At least your crotch area will smell fantastic.”
“I hope it doesn’t stain,” he inspects his t-shirt closely making a face.

Our day has been long and lazy. We’ve had far too much food already. We decide to walk all the way back to his apartment.
“What do you think of that flower?” I ask. “And that tree? It’s a …” I start naming all the trees, plants, flowers I can identify.
“How do you even know what most of these are?”
“I’ve been researching what to put in my garden.”

It’s 6pm when we get back to his apartment. He offers me a soda water (with fresh lemon - he emphasises fresh) and we turn on the TV. There’s nothing to watch and he’s not much of a TV watcher anyway. I watch Shark Tank and John McGrath inspires a conversation about Sydney guys. How when you first meet them you think “are they gay?” and then you realise “oh no, they’re just from Sydney. Of course.” Afterwards we turn it off and start listening to music.

“You’re the DJ. Play anything you want. I want to get to know you better. What are you in the mood for?”
Since we’re in St Kilda I feel it’s only appropriate to play Hunters & Collectors sprinkled with some INXS and Depeche Mode then various other songs that pop into my head.

“Are you hungry?” He asks.
I’m not but I say I am anyway.
We order Thai.

It occurs to me that i’m still wearing the white jeans I was wearing yesterday and I make the executive decision to wash my clothes. He’s thrilled because it means I’ll be sleeping over another night.
“This is turning into some AirBnB type situation,” I say.
“I don’t mind. It’s fun hanging out with you.”
He gives me pyjamas to wear and a clean tshirt.

It feels like we’ve been married for a million years.

We go to bed early because he has work the next day. I take my sleeping pills. In morning he lets me sleep in then makes me a coffee while i’m in the shower.
“I feel so bad I can’t drop you home.”
“Oh my goodness, don’t be silly!”
“What are you going to do today?”
“Probably catch the tram into the city the city, meander around.”

I pull my cardigan off the hanger he hung it on the night before, amused, and we head out the door. He drops me off on Carlisle Street. I grab a coffee and croissant before meeting up with a friend to console her on her latest break up - she left her most recent partner because he cut off use of his credit card. “Good,” I say, “Now you can start dating again. And there’s always tinder.”

The Gift

I’ve been seeing P for six months now. It was only supposed to be a once off dinner because I told someone I was lonely and they tried to fix me up. A dinner i then tried to get out of for two weeks running. Finally, when I agreed to a time and place, I’d managed to downgrade it to a 3pm late lunch. It didn’t occur to me I’d actually enjoy it and he’d blow my socks off in a massive way.

This strange little arrangement of ours which stops short of becoming a real committed and scary relationship but with many of the benefits of. Together we’ve agreed on the term “friends with benefits” (for lack of a better one) with possibly an overemphasis on friendship than benefits. Although I would say that getting to be little spoon is definitely a lovely benefit along with the odd spontaneous rendezvous and fits of midnight passion. We pledge our adoration of one another frequently like two grade six girls in the school yard. “Our friendship is the most important thing. I would do anything for you. I’ll always have your back. Etc.”

It was after a recent tinder date this was actually put to the test.

One afternoon, out of boredom, I reactivated my tinder account. Mostly I did this for my friend Hailey who finds the concept amusing but doesn’t want to be personally associated with it. Tinder appeals to me. I tried to describe it to an aunt, a baby boomer, that it’s like looking through a catalogue of men who could potentially be your future husband without having to leave your house. This appeals to me. I am a big fan of anything you can do while still watching TV.

Generally it leads nowhere. If I find anything of interest I screencap and send it to Hailey, we have a laugh, wash, repeat. Somehow I got to chatting with a guy called G about food. I feel like all my conversations on tinder are either about food or travel. Never sex. Maybe because sex is already implied as a distant possibility so it seems pretty redundant to talk about it. Let’s just say, I still haven’t reached the milestones of “first dick pic”, “first facebook stalker”, “first abusive misogynist rant” etc. And I won’t say “yet” because I’ve already de-activated my account.

So after chatting with G for about a week about food, books, our work, MKR, our backgrounds, and all the other essentials we decided to meet up for a burger and low-key drink in Brighton. I was pleasantly surprised. Both with G and the burger. And afterwards we headed someplace else for a drink and talked like we’d known each other our whole lives about everything and anything. 6+ (I lost count) drinks later with the bar about to shut I decided it was probably time for me to go home. I wished G farewell, thanked him for a lovely evening, and hopped in a cab.

$10 into my trip at 1am I realised I only had $20 on me and couldn’t find my credit card ANYWHERE. Fuck. Fuuuuuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I explained the situation to the driver and told him I was just going to phone a friend who lived nearby and maybe he could drop me off there. I called P. He wasn’t at home.

P: Get out of the cab. Wherever you are, i’ll come get you!
Me: Are you serious? You can’t do that. I’ll just come to where you are!

The driver ended up dropping me off on Carlisle Street where he said i’d probably be fine. Less than 5 minutes later P arrived - my knight in shining armour - to rescue me. He had left his night out with “the boys” to come get me. He had definitely put his money where his mouth is. Like the friend he is he took care of me for the rest of the night even though it meant stopping at a random park in Port Melbourne to admire the stars on a cloudless night which resulted in me breaking out in a rash from laying on the grass.

A week later. I was out shopping in the city and wanted to get P a small token of appreciation to thank him for getting me out of an uncomfortable situation (the thought of travelling all the way home and realising my card was actually lost-lost still makes me ill.)


P credits the film American Psycho for turning him onto facials and men’s beauty treatments and says he’s never had such good skin or enviable physique since Patrick Bateman became the posterboy for men of his generation. (Of course he seems to have overlooked the fact Ellis wrote American Psycho as a takedown of white male corporate yuppie culture, and instead he uses the damn thing as a guidebook to life - especially the GQ passages and the business card scene as inspiration for his own.) So I thought it would be right up his alley to buy him a giftbox of indulgent body treatment products. Massage oil, body lotion, and whatever else the male sales assistant upsold me.

But here’s where things get awkward. I am actually embarrassingly head over heels in love with P. Thankfully I don’t think he is 100% aware of this. I do my very best not to come across as “That Girl”. That crazy, obsessed, clingy, already-scrapbooking-our-future-wedding-girl. That said, I have my moments, I’m human after all, but I like to think I do a good job of not declaring my undying love for him every time I see him and coming off like a crazypants so well done me.

I had some time to myself one afternoon to drop off the gift personally. Somehow I always manage to forget which townhouse P lives in because one looks identical to the other. All I was meant to do was slip behind the gate and leave the plain cardboard box spritzed with some masculine scent (birch, moss, alpine mist, essence of stag etc) with its accompanying card at the front door and go as I knew P wouldn’t be getting home from the office until about 2 in the morning.

As I bent down to leave the box I saw what was, basically, a bird that’d had its wing and head ripped off lying on the doormat. Just my fucking luck, I thought. What the hell am I going to do now? He can’t come home and find a cardboard box with a dead bird in pieces next to it. What will he think?! I actually contemplated picking up the pieces of dead bird with my bare hands and flinging them over the fence just so my surprise token of gratitude wasn’t ruined. I thought about this for a bit, weighed up my options, turned around got momentarily distracted by the lovely potted plants that were at the entrance in some very nice oversized pots. Then I realised … wait. P doesn’t have pot plants …

I was at the wrong house!

Ohhh. Thank. God.

I left the bits of dead bird on the doormat where I found them, went next door, dropped off the stupid bloody gift box, and left quick sticks.

Turns out his housemate was working at home that day and saw the whole calamity. So much for not appearing crazy.