Past: Playing Doctor

He was short. OK, it's not his fault. But he was still short. However, I'd actually met this one before agreeing to dinner, so I only have myself to blame. We'd hit it off on a Speeddating night- he'd told me he was a heart surgeon and seemed rather jovial and interested in me- and although I was unpleasantly surprised when he stood up, I thought I shouldn't be so narrow-minded as to let that stop me dating him. (Reader, I am 5'11'' tall, so it's not difficult to find men shorter than myself)

He apparently lived in Islington, so suggested we meet near there. I did think it less than chivalrous of him to suggest I travel all the way from South East London to meet him around the corner from his house, but was polite enough to agree, if only to relinquish the responsibility of 'picking a venue'. His suggestion was to meet not at the tube, not outside a large landmark, but 'at the end of his road' so that we could wander up to a French restaurant that he knew. So far so good. Unfortunately he hadn't had the foresight to book, so the restaurant couldn't seat us until 9pm and sent us away to (apparently) drink until then. It was 7.30.

We started to wander back towards where we had met in the first place when, out of the blue, he said 'I only live up there, you know.'
I remarked, with a smile, that that was nice for him.
Silence.
I chuckled and wondered why on earth he had made such a big deal of telling me where his flat was. He couldn't possibly be suggesting.... ? Could he?! He stood and looked (up) at me for an uncomfortable minute.
When he realised that I was not under any circumstances going to 'go back to his', we continued walking down the main road.

We passed a Mexican bar which looked like fun and although that was the sort of place I could imagine my (now not-so-jovial) date absolutely hating, on his suggestion we ended up drinking 2 for 1 Mojitos surrounded by sombreros, loud salsa music and cracked yellow paint. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought 'Wow, here's a guy who is a little mysterious, a little quiet but could be a lot of fun'. Perched on our precariously teeny stools at the bar, he ordered 4 Mojitos. I asked why on earth he had ordered four (Were we expecting company!?) He said 'Well, it's 2 for 1, we may as well have two each.' Now, at the time this gesture seemed like the very definition of pragmatism and generosity. However, looking back, I would conclude now that this was purely a ruse to get me progressively and absolutely drunk. And, I'm afraid to say, it worked.

The problem was- the more drunk I became, the more surly and silent my date became. Now I know that I was drinking Mojitos double-handed on an empty stomach, and I know that I was becoming more and more visibly... 'relaxed' as the evening went on, but I also know that with the right person my aforementioned state could have been far better received than it was. Particularly as it was funded and most definitely mirrored by my date. However, maybe I wasn't the 'type' of drunk he'd hoped I'd become. His plan had backfired. Far from flirting with this relative stranger, I dealt with my inebriation in a kind of 'talking crap but happy to be here' kind of way. As a result, he dealt with his in a 'sit in silence and glare' kind of way. So while I grinned encouragingly, he stared daggers at the older couple also drinking in the bar who had decided to provide a spontaneous floor show of clumsy pseudo-Salsa. While I chattered away answering whatever monosyllabic questions he had thrown at me, he replied to my enquiries with 'But I want to learn more about you' and a look that warned me that if I didn't comply I could look forward to a blood-stained Christmas card containing a picture of an elf tied up in his shed. Still, given that by 8.45 I must have consumed just under three bottles of white rum, I took it all in good spirit and was determined to have a good time in spite of the increasingly closed book I was confronted with.

It was time to return to the French place, so we started to stagger back up the street towards the restaurant. By this time I was ravenous, absolutely ravenous. Of course, again we passed his road. Yet again he stopped, pointed up it and said 'I live right there, you know.' The guy did not give up. Now, I had been able to handle this (rather unsubtle) hint quietly and calmly with a little giggle when sober. But the rum had a voice. And it said, too loudly, 'I think that's irrelevant right now, don't you?'
I don't know whether it would have made any difference at this stage to either of our impressions of each other if I had reacted more... softly. All I know is- it didn't help. Again, he stood in silence and looked at me. Again, I stood and waited for him to realise the futility of his suggestion. Except this time I was indignant. The nerve of the guy! I was starting to conclude that I didn't want to see him again: Not a good precursor to the rest of the evening.

Eventually and without detour, we got to the restaurant. We sat down at our table for two and I began to think that maybe I shouldn't have accepted six Mojitos on an empty stomach. I was in dire need of water. The waitress passed by and I was just about to ask her for some when he interrupted with 'Bottle of house red, please'. I tried to look on the bright side- at least he wasn't a skinflint and he enjoyed a drink. Or rather- he enjoyed filling his date with drink...

After he filled my glass with red, I was desperate to strike up some kind of conversation with this guy- he was just sitting there in silence! He hadn't even taken his coat off. He was literally sitting there, looking like a twelve-year-old on his first day of Big School, all buttoned up with his scarf wound around his neck like it was necessary to support his his head. I half-expected to find a mitten in my wine that had roguishly escaped from the string his mother had sewn to his sleeve. It was only the beginning of the meal- I had to try to salvage it somehow. And pointing to his coat and barking 'You not stopping?' had not done the trick. I decided to relate to him on a more personal level by remarking that it was interesting that he was a heart surgeon as my father had had a heart bypass not so long ago. He took a long look at his menu, raised his eyes to me with a disapproving smirk and replied 'Bad genes.'

The waitress prevented me from leaning over and decking him by asking if we were ready to order. Now at this stage, he was pissing me off. I was drunk. I didn't care any more. I knew that I would not want to see this guy again. I knew that I was in desperate need of comfort food. I grinned up at the waitress: 'I'll have the rump steak please. Rare.' I didn't expect the reaction I got. While she smiled and jotted it down on her little pad with her little pen, my date looked at me like I'd shat on his shoe. From my point of view, I had ordered the one and only thing that could have cheered me up at this point in the evening. From his point of view, it was an insult. He, in some sort of strange attempt at making me feel like a philistine, then looked up at the waitress and said 'Fish pie'.

The conversation was most certainly not flowing when the food arrived. Like I say, I didn't care any more, so I was perfectly happy to sit in silence and listen to the couple next to us discuss the film they had just seen. I think he was mentally listing the ways in which he'd like to dismember me at this point. I started to wonder if he was indeed a heart surgeon: Although he did have little hands (I imagined that would be useful for the fiddly stuff), he didn't seem to want to talk about his job and I didn't even want to think about his bedside manner. When my order arrived, all became clear.

He couldn't stand the sight of blood. The 'doctor' couldn't stand the sight of blood. There I was, tucking into a giant, bloody slab of cow, mopping up the red puddles with my chips and making ecstasy noises, while he grimaced and nibbled his fishy mash with eyes fixed to the ceiling. I thought it was rather odd that he was so disapproving. After all, wasn't red meat supposed to be good for you in small quantities? Through a mouthful of heaven, I asked him about this. He couldn't bear to look at me. It was the crimson swimming around my plate. He couldn't look at anything that was directly in front of him for fear of being reminded of sinew and flesh. His annoyance grew. But I was enjoying my meal so much that I wouldn't have noticed if he'd suddenly decided to take his coat off and swing it round his head to 'Agadoo'. (Yes, he still had his coat and scarf on) I talked him through every melting mouthful of my meal, every blood-stained minute of it. This was not actually in an attempt to rile him; I was honestly trying to illustrate that I had started to enjoy the evening. My mood had brightened. I decided to tackle a conversation one last time. I asked him about his hobbies. I got, 'I don't have any'. I was at the end of my tether. I decided to appease him. I replied 'Oh come on. I know you're not boring because of the job you do.'

To be fair, that sentence had sounded better in my head. But in retrospect, given the fact that all the evidence pointed to him not being a heart surgeon, I had just told my date that he was boring. He immediately left the table to go to the bathroom. I paused for a split-second to reflect on my faux-pas, before shrugging and finishing my plateful with relish.

When he came back, the waitress asked if we'd like dessert. I had barely opened my mouth to suggest a coffee, when Doctor Death barked 'NO'. Narked by being deprived of caffeine, I immediately stood up and yelled 'Fine. Now I'm going to the loo,' and flounced down the stairs.

I had a brief chance to reflect on the evening's events in the bathroom. The suggestion of going back to his place before we'd even had dinner... or drinks, the fact that he had flatly refused to take his coat and scarf off all night, the fact that he claimed to be a doctor but couldn't cope with a rare steak, and the fact that he had not told me one single thing about himself all evening, no matter how much I had tried to hold a conversation with the guy. I began to feel a little sorry for him and sorry about how I had handled the situation. Perhaps I could have avoided confrontation- I should have been a bit more 'fluffy' to begin with. I should have reacted less indignantly to the premature advances. I shouldn't have got totally bladdered on Mojitos. Either way, I made a decision to end the evening as politely as possible. I composed myself, walked carefully back up the stairs and looked towards the table.

He was gone. The table had been cleared. I walked up to the maitre d' and asked where my date was. It was so sweet of him to say 'Oh madam, I'm sure he's waiting outside for you' when it was perfectly obvious that I had been left there. I asked if he had settled the bill. He had: That was something, but I still felt totally and utterly lost. It was a slap in the face. Yes, the evening had gone badly. Yes, we hadn't got along famously. No, I didn't want to see him again. But to ditch me there? When we were ten minutes away from the end of the evening? I was dumbstruck.
I walked outside in a daze and decided to send him a text message: 'Did you just leave?'
I got a reply immediately: 'Yes. I think it's safe to say we don't like each other. I paid the bill.'

I rang my best friend, and listened to her rant about what a bastard he was through uncontrollable tears on the way to Angel tube. It was a strange sensation to have been crudely pursued at the beginning of an evening, then rejected so needlessly at the very end of it. He had been so oddly rude throughout, so churlish and quiet. It was safe to say that we most certainly were not mutually compatible. And yet he had still managed, in a brief moment, to made me feel like I had not been good enough for him. I am a sensitive soul, and I think it was during that train journey home, after having calmed down from the small shock, that I decided never to blame myself for bad dates again.