Awkward with a Capital A

So Christmas is over and it’s been good seeing family and having a break from dating. I say break but I’m still chatting to a number of potential suitors. Important to line them up for my return. It’s interesting to observe who is remaining in contact and whose laying low waiting for my return, or of course those who can’t be bothered to wait.

There is The Investigating Solicitor. I text him, no reply. The Helicopter Pilot, he replied however doesn’t live in Auckland so a bit annoying. Then there’s The Spiritual Composer… I like this one. We had a great text conversation this morning about spiritual alchemy and sexual magic. Hmm who else is still in the running for my return? The Adventurer, who when asked what he was doing for New Year’s Eve, said that he was hiking up a mountain. At midnight. In the dark! Then there’s The Empath. Interesting to text. Oh and there’s The Millionaire… I’m not sure about this one but might get some exciting dates.

I’m actually doing well with my connections because of this Hinge app. Unlike Tinder and Bumble you can set your location to wherever you want and then you get matches from that place. My Bumble went mad when I arrived at my family’s home. “You have over 125 matches”. I was pretty impressed with this score and then realised that Bumble had been matching me as I was in the sky with Californians, Canadians, Londoners and then the people closer to where I was staying.

I decided to have a scroll through to compare and I can honestly say there were no Americans I was interested in but a few close to where my family live. I got chatting to one down the road but as soon as I said I lived in New Zealand he was unsurprisingly uninterested. Probably thinking ‘time-waster’ as I do when I match with people on holiday in Auckland looking for a tour guide.

So back to my last date. What a disaster. I liked the guy’s profile and photos. He was good looking, only young, 27, however age is but a number. He is a racing car mechanic and had been living in Sydney for 7 years.

He suggested a coffee at a cafe in Titirangi and a walk on the beach. As I got in the car I saw that the cafe wasn’t even open. Lucky I checked. Perhaps he should have. I text him on the app and suggested an alternative close by.

We arrived at the same time and he was nice looking, like his photos. Yay. He bought me a coffee and we started to chat but it was awkward. He asked no questions, he wasn’t really saying much and it just made me nervous. I’m not sure why, as I don’t normally get nervous on dates anymore. It may have been down to the fact that he was quite nice looking and my face had decided to turn into a shredding reptile. A few days in the sun had made my skin dry. I only realised when I got in the car that my skin was shedding off my face but there was really nothing I could do about it at this time. So the quieter this man was (possibly due to having to face a giant reptile) the louder and more inappropriate with my stories I got. Maybe I was just after a reaction. I have no idea what was going through my head. He looked around the cafe, anxious that someone may be hearing my stories.

We got onto the topic of horror dates. Well this was turning into one but his story amused me.

He went to meet a girl he’d been chatting to for a couple of weeks and it was one of those situations where the woman looked nothing like her photos. What made this story interesting was that she had turned up with an overnight bag. This intrigued me. Surely she must have been expecting to stay over. The Racing Car Mechanic explained that he may have mentioned it as a joke. People need to be more careful about the jokes they make via text.

He didn’t know how to let her down so decided to take her to McDonalds to put her off. How awful. I couldn’t think of anything worse than arriving on a date and being taken to McDonalds (apart from maybe what was about to come) I guess that was the point. I’m not sure how the date ended but I assume she went home.

This story actually reminded me of a story my friend told me. However I’m sure at the end of her McDonald’s date she decided to perform fellatio on him to see if that would win him over. I’m not sure of the facts but I’m seeing said friend tomorrow so I’m sure she can fill me in on the gory details so I can tell the story properly. I remember it was as equally shocking as it was funny.

So back to the date in question. Conversation had dried up, rather like my skin, so he suggested taking our coffees away to the beach. Now due to it being a bit rainy I had assumed we would no longer be going for a beach stroll. I had dressed in dressy sandals and white jeans. However I didn’t let this stop me from beach walking. He asked me if I wanted to take my car and join him there. I agreed however had no idea where I was going and ended up driving in circles for 20 minutes. The beach was only 5 minutes away. In the end I resorted to using Google Maps, should have done that in the first place.

He laughed when I arrived but I was all flustered. He was fine with having to wait but what wasn’t fine was the beach. There was nobody on it and for good reason. It stank like the sewers and the sand was just sludgy mud. However we decided to attempt to walk it nonetheless. I was slipping and sliding everywhere with my sandals squelching and getting stuck in the disgusting mud pools. Conversation wasn’t going anywhere apart from moaning about the beach. Why we didn’t turn around and find another one I’m not sure.

Then the embarrassment of all embarrassments. I slipped and fell over in a mud pool. Browny green mud splattered all over the arse of my brand new white jeans. I didn’t hurt myself but I felt like crying because I’d ruined my clothes and now just looked even more like a reptile that had stepped out of a swamp.

He offered me a hand and checked I was ok but didn’t use any humour or make me feel better.

We decided to walk back to cars and during that time he talked about how amazing Australia is and how I should move there. Not really something you say to someone you want to see again. He had also told me he was staying with his parents while looking for a place of his own in Auckland. I asked him how that was and he said it was annoying because he couldn’t bring ‘all’ the girls back to his anymore. Maybe this was a fact. Maybe this man was just trying to put me off. Maybe taking me to this terrible beach was just a ploy to make me not interested him like the McDonalds date.

We got to the cars and he suddenly had a job interview he needed to get to. God I’m getting sick of leaving date excuses. Just say you have to head off. So we hugged goodbye and he said he’d be in touch.

As I drove away I was almost in tears. It really hadn’t turned out how I’d hoped at all. To make matters worse, I ran over a little bird on my way home. Well there’s a sign if ever I saw one.

As I got home I went onto Hinge to relook at our messages and his profile to see if they matched the man I had just met. But alas, gone! I’d been unmatched already. Had the date been that bad? Probably. This was the same man who had booked me in for two dates, that one and Saturday night for drinks. I had told him not to be too hasty and I was right to say that sadly.

So that was the end of the Racing Car Mechanic.