First Date/Last Date

The First Date

I was running late to meet Henry. It was a hot evening in June, and I’d taken far too long getting ready, as usual. I’d had to run for the bus, and could feel beads of sweat forming on my upper lip, threatening to ruin the make up I’d spent so long on. I was stressed. I sat in the front seat of the top deck, silently willing the bus to go faster than its current glacial pace. It was my first date since a disaster of a three-month situationship, and I needed it to go well for my own sanity’s sake. 

I was meeting Henry at a pub in Wood Green, and had tickets for a small stand up gig nearby. I was pleased with myself for organising a date involving an activity other than just drinking – it felt incredibly adult. 

When I arrived, sticky and out of breath, Henry was waiting for me in the beer garden. He’d bought us a pint each, and I noticed a pack of Marlboro Golds on the table in front of him. A smoker, thank God. He was very skinny, with angular features and large hazel eyes behind square glasses. I fancied him immediately. 

“So nice to meet you!” he said as he stood to hug me. He sounded like he truly meant it, which was jarring. Dating in London, I was used to everything being veiled in layers of irony. Henry simply said what he meant. We sat down and raced through ice breaker questions, bouncing off one another. He really was incredibly earnest and didn’t get my sarcasm, but as long as I toned it down (read: changed my entire personality), I didn’t need to let it bother me. He was cute. 

The sun was hot, and as I basked in the warmth I felt grateful for our easy conversation. I’d been on enough stilted, awkward dates to truly appreciate that I was having a good time. We had things in common; we both loved to write, both hated sports. We watched the same TV shows. He was a bit cringe in some ways – he liked improv, and watched cheesy acapella groups on YouTube – but he was kind. That was all I was really after. 

We made our way to the small bookshop where the gig was happening, both of us tipsy and already giggling. The venue was BYOB, and Henry treated us to a bottle of prosecco bought in Tesco on the way. I was feeling decidedly drunk by the time we got there. I was also nervous; any first date activity besides the usual drinks in a pub was nerve wracking to me. I knew where I was with a drink, but there were more variables here, more that could go wrong. What if he didn’t find the same bits funny as me? What if he didn’t find it funny at all, and judged me for my terrible taste in comedians as we sat in silence? Anxiety kicked in and I tensed up, checking my phone too often. 

“If it’s shit we can leave,” I said suddenly.

“What? I don’t want to leave.” Henry seemed perplexed. 

“Oh, no, me neither! I’m just saying, if it’s shit, we can. I don’t care.” I tried to emulate the attitudes of my more confident friends, just like my therapist had taught me. I wasn’t a huge fan of this technique, which required me to essentially pretend I was someone else just for a shot at feeling human, but I was desperate. I flashed Henry a wide smile, hoping I was coming across as a normal person. He just laughed. 

“Don’t worry,” he smiled. “It won’t be shit.” He looked me in the eye as he said this, and I believed him. 

The comedian was funny, and Henry and I laughed in the same places. Our knees edged closer together throughout the set, eventually touching. I couldn’t concentrate on the jokes, my stomach was fluttering and I could only focus on the heat of his knee on mine. I felt like a schoolgirl with a crush. 

The gig finished at 10. It was still early. 

“My friends are having a house party, if you fancy tagging along?” Henry asked me as we walked down the high street together. I was touched that he’d introduce me to his friends after just one date. 

“Are you sure?” I asked, not wanting to be rude. Henry turned to face me, then pushed me up against the wall of a Barclays and kissed me. 

“Yes I’m sure.” 

I was giddy. 

*

I got on well with Henry’s friends. They were like him, sweet and earnest. We sat in an upstairs bedroom, drinking gin and lemonade and smoking rollies. Someone brought out some coke, to my delight, although I tried to act like I was uninterested; Henry didn’t seem the type and I didn’t want to scare him off just yet. We stole opportunities to kiss whenever his friends left the room to top up their drinks, leaving us alone together.

“They like you,” he whispered in my ear. “I can tell.” 

He led me to the garden. It was a hot summer night and someone had filled a small paddling pool.

“Paddling pool!” I said too loudly. I was drunker than I’d thought. Henry laughed. We took off our shoes and joined a few others standing ankle-deep in the pool. 

“This is lovely,” I said to fill the awkward silence as we stood in a small circle. “What a lovely idea.” My feet were freezing, and looking down I wished I’d painted my toenails. No one was talking, and no one seemed to want to be in the pool. The fact that we were standing there regardless made me giggle. I made eye contact with Henry, who got it and laughed too. We were on the same level, and I was relieved. 

Half an hour later and we were ready to leave. Everyone else was drunker than us, and conversations were too slurred to be of much interest. In the Uber back to Henry’s flat, he grabbed my hand, slipping his fingers through mine. 

“I really like you,” he told me. “You’re really different to other girls I’ve dated.” Red flag, but he was flattering me so I ignored it. In fact, I relished it – in that moment, I wanted to be different to all the other girls Henry had dated. I wanted to be the best, to be The One. 

Once we were back at his, Henry showed me straight to his bedroom, a small square room dominated by piles of books. On his wall was what looked like homemade art; a blank canvas with a packet of cigarettes fixed to the middle, painted over with a large red ‘no’ cross. If this was a piss take, an ironically bad “Smoking Is Bad For You” thing, it was pretty funny. If it was sincere, it was worryingly bad art. I needed to know. 

“I like this,” I laughed, gesturing at the canvas.

“Oh yeah, I made that, actually. It’s about how, like, smoking is so bad for you?” He didn’t crack a smile. Bollocks, I was clearly on a date with an A Level artist. I changed the subject. 

“So many books!” 

He smirked. “Yeah, I’m a bit of a nerd, it’s embarrassing really.” He didn’t seem embarrassed. 

I told him I wanted a cigarette – the artwork unfortunately not dissuading me – and he led me outside to a large overgrown garden with cheap white plastic furniture. We sat chain smoking at the table, me rolling him cigarettes, him telling me about his job and his life in detail. We stayed like that for hours. He brought out some gin and a large bottle of tonic. I was slurring my words now. I remember telling him how impressed I was by his job; he was a part-time ghostwriter, while completing his masters. 

“You could definitely do something like that one day,” he told me, smiling with his head cocked to one side. 

“I will,” I replied, drunk and confident. 

The sun was coming up. We were well into hour ten of the date, and we still hadn’t run out of things to talk about. Sure, Henry had his faults. There was the sarcasm thing, the cringe artwork, the fact that he was a little condescending despite being one (1) year older than me. But he was kind, intelligent, sometimes even funny. Whoever heard of a first date going this well and not leading to something special? I was in a fairytale, the dawn light and chirping birds only fuelling my daydreaming. 

The Last Date

“Crisps?” Henry asked, offering me the bag. 

“Mmm?” I replied, my mouth full of brownie. We sat on my double bed, surrounded by snacks we’d picked up from Tesco, watching YouTube videos on my laptop. An empty bottle of wine lay on my duvet. I had another stashed under my bed for later. 

I needed wine to get through these evenings. I wasn’t really into Henry. I was sick of him not getting my sarcasm, sick of having to fundamentally change myself to be around him. The condescension was grating on me now. Sure, my life was a shambles. My bedroom looked like a bomb had gone off, the floordrobe having evolved into a singular mass of everything I owned. I’d scraped a pathway between the door and my bed, for access. But that didn’t mean I needed Henry at my side to pity me. 

However, I didn’t want to lose him from my side altogether. I needed the validation, sought comfort in our weekly hook ups. I was full of self-loathing, and Henry helped me take my mind off that for a while. I couldn’t let this end, not just yet. 

“I was just asking if you wanted some crisps?” 

“Crisps. Right. No, thank you. More wine?” I retrieved the stashed bottle from under my bed. 

“I’ve got work tomorrow…” he said apologetically. For fuck’s sake just have some wine, I thought to myself, annoyed. Read the room, Henry. We’d run out of things to talk about. We needed the wine. 

“Fair enough. I hope you don’t mind if I…” I’d already started unscrewing the bottle. I poured myself a large, large glass. 

“Oh, fuck it,” Henry sighed as he took the bottle from me and poured out a similar amount into his own glass. He pressed play on another YouTube video, some acapella group he loved performing another earnest cover of a pop song. “I love this one,” he smiled to himself. 

This was all we ever did now; we sat on my bed next to each other, indulging our guiltiest pleasures side by side. For me, that meant getting inappropriately drunk for a weeknight, and sometimes doing lines of cocaine off of old A Level textbooks, just to spice things up a bit. I supposed Henry’s guilty pleasures were (a) dating the biggest mess in North London, and (b) acapella videos. I couldn’t work out whose were worse. 

I knew that I was just a means to an end for Henry. And yet part of me still clung onto our first, magical date, and wondered if we could make this work. I was deluding myself, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted a boyfriend, needed a boyfriend. My life was falling apart, but Henry was my anchor. I’d missed countless days of work thanks to excessive partying. He’d been published in the Guardian. I was taking a year out from university and close to dropping out altogether. He’d nearly finished his masters. Whatever his flaws, I couldn’t deny that Henry had his life together. If I could just get him to keep dating me, maybe some of that togetherness would rub off on me. 

I suspected that for Henry, it was the opposite. He was vanilla, and I was a chance for him to let loose a little. I was the fun girl, the girl you could fuck without feelings, the girl who always had a small baggy of coke in the bottom of her handbag just in case. I knew he was using me, but it didn’t really matter. I was using him too. 

“I’m getting tired,” he yawned, signalling that it was time for sex. The sex was distinctly average, those sparks from our first date long gone. I remembered when he’d pushed me against the wall to kiss me, and wished we could get that back. Instead, we’d regressed to formulaic sex, his skinny body on top of mine for five minutes before he’d roll over and fall asleep. I longed for him to hold me, stroke my hair and kiss my head. That never happened. We were devoid of affection. I had to make do with just knowing there was a warm presence next to me. It was better than the alternative; crippling loneliness. 

*

When I woke up, Henry was already dressed, sitting on the side of my bed. He was leaning forward, rifling through the layer of crap on my floor. He sat up and looked at me. 

“I’ve lost my watch,” he snapped, by way of explanation. 

“I’ll help you,” I offered, moving towards him. 

“No, it’s fine,” he replied. He picked up objects at random. A bra, an empty pack of cigarettes, a wine bottle. I knew worse lay beneath. I wasn’t sure what else he’d find. Dirty underwear? A used condom? I dreaded to think. I sometimes thought I heard scratching at night, coming from beneath the piles of filth. Was I dirty enough to attract mice? I knew logically, rationally, that it was unlikely – the house below my attic bedroom was spotless thanks to my tidy mother – but as I lay in bed at night, I would imagine them crawling up my bedposts and onto my bed, working myself up into such an anxious frenzy that I taped up any and every gap I could find in the skirting boards, just in case. But it still wasn’t enough to motivate me to tidy my room. I didn’t like myself enough to care how I lived. All I wanted were quick bursts of pleasure here and there to get me through. That was all I was asking for. 

But right now, I was getting exactly zero pleasure from watching Henry rummage through my stuff in disgust. I cringed. Eventually, he found the watch, raising it triumphantly in the air. 

“Oh well done,” I smiled. “Sorry about the mess, I just –”

“I just wanted to have a quick chat before I go,” he smiled, seemingly forgetting all about watch-gate. 

“Yeah of course,” I grinned. I wasn’t grinning on the inside. I knew where this was heading – I’d been on the receiving end of this ‘chat’ too many times not to – but it was like a car crash in slow motion that I was powerless to stop. I just had to let it happen. 

“I just wanted to check we’re on the same page, ‘cause like, I’ve been seeing other girls.” My heart sank. I was expecting a dumping, but not this. I felt stupid. I also marvelled at how he had the time, seeing as he spent a couple of nights a week in my bed and the majority of his time texting me. “Just want to check that’s okay,” he continued, “but if it’s not please just let me know.” What, let you know so you can dump me? Never. 

“That’s fine!” I said, too high pitched. “Of course that’s fine!” It obviously was not fine. I wasn’t seeing anyone else. I suddenly felt like I should be. But when? Again, I was in awe of Henry’s time management skills. 

“Okay, great!” he smiled. I could tell he was relieved. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.” 

“Definitely.” It took all my energy to force the words out. “Definitely on the same page.” 

Henry got up to leave. “So I’ll see you sometime next week?” 

“Definitely,” I repeated. He left the room, closing the door softly behind him. I waited until I heard the front door slam before I burst into tears. 

I was completely deflated. I could just about handle being dumped – this thing with Henry was hardly going to set the world on fire. But the idea of him being with other girls, girls who probably had their shit together… It filled me with jealousy. I bet he didn’t lose his stuff in their rooms. They were probably organised, could probably see their own bedroom floors. They probably didn’t do coke on weeknights, didn’t need a whole bottle of wine just to fall asleep. I felt sick. If he was seeing more than one girl then he was definitely comparing us, and the idea of Henry weighing up my pros and cons in his head was too much to handle. I wondered what that list would look like. Pros: up for a laugh, never says no to sex, good taste in music (at least I hoped that would be on the list – I’d expanded Henry’s music knowledge beyond the Glee soundtracks). Cons: still lives with her parents, house is a faff to get to, is a general mess of a human being with a raging alcohol problem. I shuddered. Why couldn’t I just sort my life out? I’d started out alright as a kid, albeit an anxious overachiever. When was the last time I’d achieved anything? When had it all gone so wrong?

*

Unsurprisingly, Henry ended things soon afterwards. I’d wanted to do it myself, to save face, but the fear of being alone had gripped me too hard. I didn’t feel anything when I got his message asking that we ‘just be friends.’ I didn’t know what to feel about the two and a half months we’d dated. For me, he’d been everything. Despite his flaws and our boring nights together, he filled the void and I spent most of my time thinking about him, texting him. To him, I’d been one of many, and yet I still wasn’t enough. 

I later learned that Henry had in fact had a real, exclusive girlfriend for the last few weeks he was seeing me. I wasn’t hurt by this until, naturally, I stalked her on Facebook. My worst fears were confirmed; she was everything I wasn’t. She was naturally beautiful and put together, whereas I slept in my make up and threw outfits together from piles of clothes on the floor. Their dates looked wholesome, and I cringed as I remembered our coke-fuelled nights together. I’d never been what he’d wanted. I guess I’d always known, but it stung to see it so clearly in front of me. 

Ultimately, my situationship with Henry was fairly harmless. He was harmless. There was no huge drama, no screaming fights, no blocking each other on WhatsApp. But in the end, all the great potential of that first date had fizzled out into nothing. Months of making myself smaller, less intelligent, less funny, to suit Henry – that had worn me down. The new personality I had donned around him wasn’t me, and I was tired. I needed a break. I needed to look after myself, put myself first. And yet. 

I had a date lined up with Hector. Hector would be the one. He’d fix everything, I was sure of it. I was so sure.