A bottle of Red wine and four cans of beer is no way to prepare for a big date but Frank never lived by the rules. His life was true tragedy or true ecstasy and there was no room for passengers in between.
It was Sunday. He'd given up on God years ago after realising that for all the time he believed in God, God didn't actually believe in him. So the day would be long. Time to think, time to dream, time to talk yourself into being maniacally depressed. He left two hours before the date. Was this keenness on the boy’s part or a desire to work up Dutch courage in the local pub?
One advantage of working for an International Bank was the number of international women who also worked there. The Celtic Tiger was booming and Europeans flocked to Dublin like shoppers on the first day of January sales. Frank found himself working beside a gorgeous German girl called Yvonne and at Friday night drinks he had worked up the courage to ask her out on a date.
He made it to the pub ten minutes early. A long bar draped on one side to hide it’s narrowness. Single men hogged the high stools, gazing into their bottles of Heineken to avoid eye contact. Were they like him, awaiting the unknown? Or had they darker reasons for seeking the company of the old hoary bastard called beer?
She turned up fashionably late and they sat at the bar. She drank red wine, the music was 1930’s European Jazz, the art deco was French and his beer (trying desperately to impress) was German. But his charm and confidence were definitely Mullingar, circa 1982. You can take the man out of the bog, but you can’t take the whimpering stupidity out of the man.
They talked freely for two hours, even managing to have a conversation about “people who fucked us up emotionally” without Frank having to mention the person who did fuck him up emotionally. He knew he was talking too much though. Knew he wasn’t making her laugh enough. Knew that beer and football are probably not top of women’s conversation topics, but his nervousness led him to ramble on anyway. “Oh wait till I tell you about the time I got pissed in Munich and puked all over a Policeman’s shoes” is probably not the best chat up line in history but there are some nights when it has to do.
The wine flowed and the conversation mellowed. Yvonne mentioned Colin; a friend of Frank’s that she had met the night before. Frank sensed competition and like a coiled animal he accessed all the possibilities. So he alluded to Colin being a closet Homosexual. Straight away he knew this wasn’t a smart move. Not only is Colin a good mate but an old theory of Frank’s was quickly proven. Women are actually attracted to Homosexuals.
Yvonne kept looking at Frank’s watch, which either meant she greatly admired the garishly yellow timepiece he had recently picked up in Duty Free, or she wanted to go home. He wasn’t taking any chances, so he offered to share a taxi back to her place and then he would walk home from there. Cunning plan apart from the fact that he lived about two miles away and it was actually shorter for him to walk straight home from the pub. But if he was going to endure the disadvantage of facing a German sense of humour, he was at least going to enjoy her lack of knowledge of Dublin geography. On the way there he posed the big question, “would you like to go for dinner some evening?”
Now this was a dangerous question for many reasons. Women don’t like eating in front of strange men. If they do, they order a salad and then nag you into ordering a desert before saying “can I just try a spoonful?” before cleaning it off like a tramp in a soup kitchen. And it was late on Sunday and he was quickly realising that he had picked the worst night of the week for a date and was now compounding it by asking for the worst sort of follow up date.
He figured he would count the seconds between the question and the response and take it from there. 1, she’s thinking about it. 2, maybe she didn’t understand it. 3, the excitement is obviously too much for her. 4, if she doesn’t answer soon I’ll pretend it was all a joke. She answered on 5. “That would be nice” which was probably the best he could hope for in the circumstances. But he felt that there was something in that pause. Words unsaid, uncertainty. They were two players now, reading nuances into each other’s speech.
Back at her place, they climbed the four flights of stairs to her flat. Frank tried to look cool while fighting off a heart attack. Dan the flatmate was up and in no mood to vacate the living room. Frank and Dan had worked together previously and he was anxious to catch up on old times. They drank their coffee and watched Dan do his ironing. Sometimes big first dates come to this.
Frank figured he’d cut his losses at this stage. The scene was getting a little suffocating and anyway he had a two-mile hike to look forward to. At the front door they hugged (not Dan, thankfully he stayed in the living room). But Frank’s mind was working overtime at this stage. What sort of hug was it? See, couples are well matched if when they hug each other, they instinctively move to the correct side of the head and their ears interlock. And this wasn’t that sort of hug. But he left not knowing if he was the one who put in no energy. If he was the one who couldn’t wait to get out the door.
He walked home in the late evening drizzle. The streets seemed filled with couples. He seemed filled with doubt. Something had gone wrong at the end of the night and he couldn’t figure out if it was him that threw in the negative vibe.
But maybe he’ll ring her anyway. I mean all that can happen is that he will be humiliated. The alternative is never knowing if this beautiful, interesting girl really wants you. Humiliation or never knowing? What delicious questions stem from love and life and time?
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