Dream Date gone Rogue

Yukiko, dazzling, smart, successful. We had been friends since art school. She had eschewed the career in films, that I so ardently pursued, for a position at Mizuho Bank in London’s financial district. Rapidly promoted, she was soon ‘playing hardball with the big boys’ as she liked to put it, her expression reminiscent of a cute but stealthy Ninja.

Yukiko would always know when I needed to be extracted from my intensely crazy job and would jump to the rescue with her work freebies, like entry into various chichi London clubs, or as guests at some fancy schmancy restaurant opening.

After one such party, she’d called me up, excited because a colleague had begged her for my number. She described him. I didn’t remember him.

‘He’s really nice’, she said, ‘go out with him’.

He had a quiet agreeable voice when he called, quoting snippets of our party conversation and being superbly complimentary. We arranged a date.

On the day, I think Yukiko was more excited than me. She told me to expect a present. He wouldn’t tell her what he’d got, but she made me promise to spill all the gories as soon as I got home.

‘I won’t worry if I don’t hear from you until tomorrow’, she laughed.

He arrived at our meeting spot a few moments after me, luckily recognising me as I still didn’t remember him. He was just above average height, fair hair, blue-grey eyes, he wore a suit, and carried a heavy-ish backpack.

We performed the obligatory greetings, lurching awkwardly between handshaking and cheek kissing.

‘You’re just as I remember you’, he said, as he looked me over, ‘You look nice’, he added.

‘Thanks. So do you’.

‘Thanks’, he said. ‘So, drink first, then dinner. Sound cool?’

‘Cool. Where for drinks?’

‘Don’t know’, he said, ‘I thought you might know, as you live locally’

Disconcerted, I wondered what Yukiko had told him exactly.

‘You’re the one who works around here’, I said, ‘where do you normally go?’

‘I don’t hang with people from work. Let’s just walk, I’m sure we’ll find somewhere.’

We walked slowly along the unlovely north bank of the Thames, me disappointed that the stone walkway flowed better than our conversation.

We found this concrete and glass hexagonal bar squatting low in an ugly square. There was a sea of cigarette butts outside the door, some of which stuck to the bottom of my thin-soled shoes. I scuffed them off on some wonky paving whilst he opened the door, letting out a blast of city boy noise and the stench of spilled drinks.

It was as just dully brutalist inside, the only splashes of colour being the fluorescent alcopops in the lit-up fridge behind the bar. Screeching voices and masculine laughter jarred with the music blasting indiscernibly from surround sound speakers.

‘Drink?’, he bellowed in my ear.

‘Merlot, please.’

He gave me an exaggerated thumbs up and wrestled his way to the bar.

They weren’t big on seating here so I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room watching the Friday night DJ, straining giant headphones to one ear, nodding along to music I was convinced he couldn’t hear.

My date returned with two pints of lager ‘SORRY, NO WINE!’

He thrust the sticky, brimming glass at me, spilling it over my hand and, glancing at the DJ, waggled his head to the music too. Were they hearing a tune I couldn’t?

I looked, but there was nowhere to put the glass down. Inside, I felt a blip of irritation. If someone asks you out, why can’t they just be grown up and arrange something proper?

Loyally, a red wine girl, I sipped the lager just enough to take the glass from brimming to full.

Eventually dragging his attention away from the DJ, my date said something I didn’t catch.

‘WHAT?’

He made a walking gesture with his fingers. I tucked my glass out of the way, by a pillar, totally ready to leave.

‘d uaf wafr theis?’ he yelled.

‘I can’t hear you!’

‘DO. YOU. WANT. THIS?’ pointing at my glass on the floor.

‘NO!’ I shouted back.

‘zdljach oiu WASTE!’

He picked it up and necked the whole thing, throwing his head back, sucking at the rim.

He put the drained glass down in a spot primed for it to be added to the slew of smashed shards of glass already strewn everywhere and followed me out of the bar.

You know when you ignore a gut feeling that a situation is going bad, yet you stay in it despite all the red flags slapping you in the face? Well, that was me going to dinner with this guy.

‘This way’, he steered me towards Southwark Bridge, the closest in proximity to my flat from London’s financial square mile. I had the uncomfortable thought that this was deliberate. What restaurant could he be thinking of? There weren’t any decent ones near me.

I hoped we’d turn left on the south side of the bridge, away from where I lived.

When we got there, he shepherded me right. I stopped, as he strode ahead.

‘Where are we going again?’

He looked back, ‘to a place just down here’, he said, ‘why?’

‘There aren’t any restaurants down here’

‘Yes, there are.’

‘Where?’

‘Right here.’ He indicated a nondescript double door recessed into the wall.

Then I remembered it was tourist stop where coachloads of international students on strict sightseeing itineraries got fed crap food. No local person would be caught dead going there.

‘Really? Here?’

‘Yeah’, he said, entering first, almost letting the door slam in my face.

I sighed and followed him inside. We went down tiled steps into subterranean Tex Mex hell. The windowless room was cavernous. Everything that wasn’t terracotta was primary coloured. It was only marginally quieter than the bar.

Long benched trestle tables everywhere, meant that, if one person wanted to get out, everyone had to stand up. The place was crammed and the sound of benches scraping over the floor set my teeth on edge.

We were shown to a table for two. Our waitress gave us gigantic, laminated menus and rushed off to deal with a table who were flipping food at each other.

I thought about leaving, but now, very hungry, figured I could eat something and get out within an hour. Home was a tantalising sixty metres away. The waitress came back to take our order.

My date pulled out a sheet of paper.

‘I’ve got this’, he said.

‘What this?’ she asked taking it.

‘It’s a meal deal voucher.’

The waitress studied it then put it down. ‘You’ve got the wrong menus’, she said sliding the giant menus out of our hands, ‘I’ll bring you the meal deal ones’.

I picked up the paper. It was a printout from a popular discount app offering a deal on a two-course meal for two people, retrievable at participating restaurants. There was an ‘only valid between’ timeframe listed too. Hence drinks elsewhere first then.

Before I could say anything, the waitress came back with two small picture menus. We had a choice of two starters, mains or desserts out of which to pick our allowable courses. No combination looked to be worth the £9.50 ‘deal’ on offer.

‘How big is the cheese stick? I asked the waitress, eschewing the alternative starter, Albanian olives. She opened her thumb and forefinger about two inches.

‘Oh’, I said, ‘does the patty come in a bun?’ I asked, deciding that the Elvis omelette sounded dodgy.

‘No.’

‘Fries?’

‘Fries are extra.’

‘OK, then how big is the salad that comes with it?’

‘It’s not salad, it’s garnish.’

‘And what does that consist of’

‘Usually it’s a half slice of tomato, a bit of lettuce, and some vinaigrette drizzle.’ The waitress replied, pen and pad poised.

‘Well, I know what I’m having’, said my date.

She wrote his order down and looked at me.

‘I’ll be having the proper menu back, please, and a glass of Merlot.’

‘The deal doesn’t work unless we both choose from this menu’, my date whined.

‘I don’t care’, I said, ‘I don’t want anything from this menu’.

‘But then I’ll have to pay full price for mine’, my date said moaning about the couple of pounds surcharge if only one person took up the offer.

I held up my hand. ‘I tell you what, I’ll pay whatever the extra cost is, you can pay £9.50.

He looked up at the waitress. ‘In that case, I’ll have the original menu back too.’

‘No, no you won’t’, I said. ‘You can have your cheapie meal, I’m not offering to pay the balance on a full meal’ I glared at him astounded at his meanness.

‘Fine, fine’, he waved his hand at the waitress. ‘I’ll stick with my order.’

The waitress winked at me when she took my ‘proper menu’ order. Camaraderie.

My date, talked at me during the entire meal, without asking a single question. He was particularly resistant to his adolescent daughter going on dates because ‘I know what men are like’. He was a bundle of piffle and pontificating man-child.

I couldn’t wait to get away from this toxic troll. What was Yukiko thinking, setting me up with him?

He rummaged in his backpack. ‘I bought you a present.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Yukiko told me that you were an inveterate present giver’

It was true, I did buy little things I thought my girlfriends would like. No big deal.

‘I got you these’. He put a large bottle of vodka plus a small brown paper bag on the table.

‘I don’t want any presents, save them for your next date.’

‘I bought them ‘specially for you.’

‘Thanks, but I don’t need anything’

‘You could at least open them.’

I shook the contents of the paper bag onto the table. Then pressed my hand to my mouth, surprised. So did the waitress, who’d come by just then with the bill.

I looked at her, carefully modulating my voice. ‘Can you give us a moment?’

‘Sure, sure’, she said and backed away.

‘Why. Have. You. Given. Me. Condoms?’ I flicked the two vending machine packets across the table. ‘In what dimension is that a suitable present?’

He looked confused.

‘I asked Yukiko where you lived and she said over here somewhere and you seemed fun at the party, you didn’t remember me, but you were still willing to go on a date, so I thought…..’

‘You thought WHAT exactly?’

‘I thought that you’d be game. I thought we’d grab a quick bite, go back to yours, get squiffy and indulge in a little jiggy jiggy.’

He made a sex gesture, jabbing his forefinger into a hole fashioned by pressing the fingertips of his other forefinger and thumb together.

I leaned in, ‘You’ve a teenage daughter interested in boys! As a father, what would you say if a boy gave her these kinds of presents? Because I know for a fact, that my Dad would kill you!’

He had the gall to say, ‘They wouldn’t dare!’

‘They wouldn’t dare?! Then why would you?!’

I stood up, grabbing my things. My coat caught the vodka bottle and it rolled off the table shattering, full decibel, on the terracotta tile throwing up its chemical smell and a gazillion stars of glass. Isolated cheers and muted applause smattered across the room as it always happens when something gets smashed.

‘What the….?’ He swivelled round in his chair as I stomped past.

I mouthed ‘sorry’ to the waitress and swanned out, taking a circuitous route to my flat just in case.

Back home.

Act one, kick off uncomfortable shoes.

Act two, open a bottle of my favourite little blackbird grape juice.

Act three, call Yukiko.

‘Tell me! Tell me! How was it?’

‘That’, I said, sipping my Merlot, ‘was the worst date of my life!’