I thought it was over. By far one of the most excruciating beginnings to a night out and almost a week later, I thought the I could tuck it in a drawer and chalk it up to experience. Sitting on the couch last night the innocuous message tone on my iPhone chimes. Normally a reason for excitement and rushing for the eager communication from friends and family. Since speed dating last week, it’s become a sound of nervousness and even dread.
After a week I’d resigned myself to the fact that the men of Brisbane Speed Dating were not going to call. The other girls had emails but by Sunday I’d had nothing. I’d refused to believe that not one out of the twenty men that I had met didn’t even want to be my friend. I wanted a report. I wanted a match-up list. I rang the other ladies and all of them had news of their matches. Slightly dejected, thinking I must have had no matches, I faked enthusiasm and good fortune for my four friends and their plethora of new friends and potential dates.
I swanned around the house debating my own fleshy existence and lying around pitying myself and loathing my appearance. It couldn’t possibly be my personality, on wine or off, that they didn’t like, I am a rockstar. People have said so! So with a little self loathing and battering, I quickly decided that speed dating was stupid anyway. Five minutes with one man and I am supposed to decide if they’re ok to hang out with? I spend more time debating which pair of shoes of a morning or one scoop of yoghurt or two.
I rang the other B in my life looking for deserved sympathy only to be met with a ‘what are you talking about? Your matches are in my email. It’s the table below mine.’ With a what the? and suitable other confused tones and words, I demand she forward it immediately. Thirteen yeses, ten matches and a date match. Thirteen men said they would be my friend or date me, seven ticked no (or I ticked no to them – that was only three and they were all weird) and one had a date match. Disappointed as I was that people actively told me no and that I only had one date match, B did remind me that to get a D, I had to give one. I only gave out three. And the two that didn’t match, friend matched me anyway.
Scrolling down the list, I notice that my email address is missing two numbers. Not a big change but probably instrumental in the fact that not only had I not received the match list but a single man had not emailed me either. Feeling sightly more self confident and less like a wrinkled, middle-aged spinster, I sighed with relief. It’s not that I didn’t get an email, they just never came through! Surely that was the real case. It was only then that B pointed out that I had put my phone number on the form, and that, was number by number, correct.
It wasn’t till Sunday night that I had moved on. Three nights, three bottles of wine and some shopping distractions and I had put the speed dating disaster behind me. On the couch watching trash television and sorting through Mexican souvenirs, the phone chimed. Expecting one of the girls or a family member, I plunged after it – hoping to distract me from the chores ahead. An unrecognisable number stares at me in the white font. Strange. I slide it open to find a message from Date number 6. It’s fun, friendly and to the point. He liked meeting me, said I seemed like fun and he was glad I’d had a wine. I had liked number 6 but I had only given him an F. He wasn’t something I would normally pick but out of all the people I met that night, he is the only one I’d drink with.
A little friendly banter and I steeled myself to at least maybe making a new friend. By monday night I’d missed two calls from a random number. No message. By Tuesday night I’d received a new message from a new mysterious number and I was starting to get nervous. Who were these people calling and texting me at night time? After a week, I’d put speed dating on the back burner and had neglected to make the links. The latest one continued to tell me about how tired he was, and that he needed a massage all the while I asked him his name. Without responding to my repetitive question, I got the run down of his day. Thinking he was a little ‘un-smart’ I phrased the question differently. ‘Check your speed dating card ;-)’ was the only reply.
Apart from the fact that he’d used emoticons, I persisted in my research and saw he was date number 13. These boys had not even bothered with the suggested email first and had gone straight to the text, they might have emailed first… I wouldn’t know, and wanted massages. I was scared. The night had started badly. I’d never been so nervous. My palms held a constant sheen of sweat and the conversations of my friends around me seemed trite, unending and strung together like teenage babble.
It had been the topic of conversation for short bursts at various points of the day. What are you wearing? Have you got questions sorted? What if they’re awful? It was like I was heading to a job interview. I’d managed to not think about it most of the day. But then I had to get dressed. The consensus was jeans. Jeans. All of mine are too big apart from one pair and they were dirty. They aren’t really my most flattering item of clothing even if they are the most practical. I decided on a black dress and a cardigan. It was a wednesday night, who on earth tries to look ‘dressed’ on a Wednesday. I walk down the stairs in my black dress and a pink cardigan. “That cardigan makes you look like a little girl,” says A. I immediately turned back up the stairs and put on the red one.
When I walked through the door of Jade Buddha, it was not a fancy cocktail bar and restaurant that I saw in front of me. I could still see the flashing bar lights and the sticky floor of City Rowers in my teens and early twenties. I could still see myself leaning over the half wall of the dance floor and leaning head first into the same toilet bowl I knew was over to left of the side door. We moved to the sticky tables all laid out in rows and with trepidation, nervousness and a little excitement, I waited for the boys to appear. And like a bottle cap production, arrive they did. While the first one was three and a half minutes late to a five minute date, the progression could only move upward. The wine went down and as the glass pyramid began to build, so did my confidence. I laughed, groaned and guffawed my way through twenty dates and six glasses of wine. By the end of it, I’d forgotten to right down names let alone identifying features.
While it was fun and I awoke thursday morning with a slight hangover, I don’t think the emotional hangover for the first three days was worth it. While it was largely a self created emotional hangover, I have to ask why I would do that to myself in the first place. I know I am not out there meeting men on every street corner, but finding Prince Charming after six glasses of wine on the dance floor of my youth is probably not it either. But ‘fuck it.’ If someone said there’d be wine, I’d probably go again. Until then, if I don’t answer your text, it’s probably because I was scared that you were a random boy texting me from his mum’s basement without taking his COD headset off.
life in big frilly knickers 