A Date in Two Parts

Henry.

Henry arrived an hour and half early, as was his right as an obsessive neurotic. He had been ready for the date for several hours, but had elected to spend the best part of the remaining three ruminating over his journey. He was familiar with it, but still found it worthy of concern on account of having never made it in the dark before. This made Henry, in many respects, much closer to the age of 65 than to 25.

He never did understand social events that occurred so late, so close to a time in which people were expected to wind down and not, as he saw it, wind up. Due to this, he considered a date at 8 p.m. to be not only alien but riddled with mixed signals. And like most things in his life, he found that the more he thought about such things, the more confused he became, not less.

As he thought it over and over, he found that there appeared to be two problems plaguing a date so late. The first being the genuine threat that sleepiness posed, he was very concerned about being tired, and the second, the fact that late hours always seemed so steeped in innuendo.

He could not fathom a date purposely located so close to a bed time unless, of course, there was an expectation of company. A date at 8 p.m. had few opportunity for any actual conversation to take place, and so, Henry had deduced that Chloe was more interested in him for sex than conversation, and this inexplicitly explicit frontal assault on a first date made him terribly nervous. The prospect that someone might simply be a night owl, or just fancy a quick late night chat, had never occurred to Henry as he purchased condoms earlier that day.

This, however, was by no means to suggest that Henry actually wanted the sexual encounter he anticipated. Henry was, in fact, a terribly fearful prude. Sat on the edge of wooden chair in his mother’s dining room, he spent most of that day fiddling with the Velcro of his motorbike gloves as he thought over and over about what was sure to happen that evening. He felt trapped. He did not want sex, but he also did not want her to find him disagreeable. After much consideration he had decided to oblige politely if she did want sex.

Arriving at the pub she had selected, Henry moved through its entrance, an oddly narrow passage, with his rucksack and helmet clashing rather clumsily against everyone and everything. Aware of his difficulty moving, and the general nuisance that he was making of himself, he felt, with unwavering conviction, that those around him found his presence to be as irritating as he felt it to be. He had only just arrived and had already wanted to disappear. This was the story of Henry’s life.

Consumed, he began to frantically look around for places to hide, but it seemed as though she had managed to not only select the smallest venue imaginable but the only one devoid of safe partitions or divisions. It was only one medium sized room attached to the entrance and toilets via suffocatingly narrow halls he could not endure. He could not for the life of him understand why anyone would choose such a clustered venue for something as intimate as a date. It seemed like anyone would be able to overhear them talk. With this concern fixed centrally in his mind, he had decided that he would have to talk very quietly.

There was only one direct exit he could see, and the toilets existed down some strange tunnel he had no hope of navigating with his rucksack, helmet and coat in tow. He briefly considered the prospect of leaving his belongings with his date later on, should he need to pee, but felt so uncomfortable with the prospect of surrendering that part of himself to her that he decided should the need for the toilet arise, then he would just thank her for the evening and hurry home, agreeability be damned. If he could not trust her with his rucksack then how could possibly he trust her with his naked body?

The table he chose, the only available one, was situated directly in the middle of the room, and no matter where he positioned his chair, he found he could not avoid exposure. Unable to sit, he decided to place an order for a coffee, and then another, and then another. Eventually, like a disgruntled pet, he settled on chair with a straight view to the passage that yielded the entrance. This was the one advantage to being so early, he thought to himself. There was absolutely no chance she would catch him off guard.

He waited until the hour quite calmly, but then began, for every minute that followed, to frantically consult his watch. When he did at last see her, she was 8 minutes late, but he had ceased to care. He was just thankful she hadn't stood him up.

The first thing he thought when he saw her, was not anything regarding her beauty, which he simply glossed over, but the way in which she wore the same shroud of doubt and uncertainty as he, and these he found to be the most wonderfully endearing qualities. She felt like a perfect match, though she did wear a dress, and this concerned him terribly on account of it being so cold. Finding himself mentally fixated on her decision to wear a dress, he began to panic that she was perhaps a very impractical person. He did not have a good track record of talking to such people. They found him to be terribly boring.

Reaching the table, she asked, “Have you been here long?”

To which he lied and replied, “No, not at all!”

The moment she spoke his heart fluttered. He found, contained in her first words, genuine care and concern. It was then, staring into her eyes, that he decided he would, if need be, leave his belongings with her in order to use the toilet. He then caught sight of her arms quivering, and once again, began to worry about her decision to wear a dress. He did not want her to be cold. Aware of the silence and eager for things to progress, he asked her if he could buy her a drink and she had responded ever so politely with, “Merlot, please.”

Chloe.

Chloe arrived at the pub slightly late, but only felt alarmed when she caught Henry sat at the table inspecting his watch whilst toying with a cold cup of coffee. She had selected a date for 8 p.m. for two reasons. The first being, she had worked all day, and the second, so that if she date went awfully then she would only have to entertain his company for a couple at hours at most. That was the genius of a date at 8 p.m. as she considered it. It had a built in escape clause. She would always have work the next day.

Her choices were, now that she considered them, entirely pragmatic. She could not recall falling into such pragmatism about love and dating, so reasoned that it must have been a gradual acclimatisation. Dating had begun to feel quite like work in many respects, and she had begun to resent it. But Henry had made it feel different in a number of respects. He was grateful for what little attention she gave him, to which she felt rather guilty, but he also been oddly naïve about relationships and dating in general, and this made her hopeful in many ways because she wanted nothing more than to share in his naïveté.

However, it wasn’t long until the pitfalls to dating someone like Henry became apparent. He was so utterly passive that it remained almost impossible to discern where politeness ended and genuine interest began. She had tried to engage him many times, but this infuriating, almost pathological trait in him had meant that, despite her best efforts, she had learnt very little about his preferences for, well anything, let alone a date.

Finding herself confronted with having to make all of the decisions herself, she had decided to act with her best interests at heart, and had arranged a meet much closer to her than to him. She knew the distance he would have to travel. It was made consciously. She was, she thought, like a scientist, trying to gauge his interest by selecting a place that she knew would require actual effort on his behalf to get to. It was a game in many respects, and she knew this, but she had found herself feeling oddly combative once confronted with someone with such a poor sense of commitment.

As she walked around the corner to the entrance of the pub, she could hear that it was busy, and this soothed her as she felt it provided her with a degree of anonymity. After all, everyone would be far too engaged in their own lives as to lend any consideration to hers. As she entered the narrow passage that lead to the main room, she felt then, as she often did, as though she were Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, and this filled her with joy.

There were bits and bobs on the walls, and tucked into small alcoves on either side were tiny tables with tiny chairs, for quite often hilariously large people. She would, on her way past, inevitably catch their glare. It was a sort of built in expectation to sitting in one of the alcoves that you would be frequently intruded upon. This was, as she considered it, the raison d’etre to this quaint little place: it forced everyone into civilisation, whether they liked it or not.

Stepping into the main room was where she first caught sight of Henry inspecting his watch. He was a somewhat handsome man, though the first thing that came to mind was how closely he resembled a deer caught in headlights. He was sat rather awkwardly on the edge of his chair, holding bundled in his arms his rucksack.

As she neared the table she identified the coffee and queried with silent alarm, “Have you been here long?”

To which he replied very enthusiastically with, “no not at all!”

Chloe was immediately taken back by what appeared to be the duality before her. There existed the coffee on the table, along with the watch checks she had observed. These she felt to be passive aggressive in nature. And then there was the overly polite response. She needed to reconcile the two images, but could only come up with one answer. To her, there simply was no alternative as to why anyone would be drinking coffee at 8 p.m. unless they were, of course, making an inadvertent statement about how how long they had been kept waiting, and his response had been a cowards way out.

Looking at Henry, she could only see her father, a passive aggressive man who had suffocated his marriage with such tactics. In that moment, distrust came much easier to her than trust.

Chloe, who learnt from the mistakes of her father, had always been more practical and direct with her anger, but on a first date felt compelled to hold back. And so, she took a deep breathe, and shook her arms and shoulders in an attempt to disperse as much of the frustration as she could. It was a tactic that had served her well in the past, but standing there was proving to be an altogether irritating experience for her.

He offered to buy her a drink, and she had responded quite naturally with, “Merlot,” before adding, “please.”