It is Sunday afternoon when I realise that I need to get my third date in for the day whilst I’m out in Silverstream taking some photos of a campaign for work. I’m already exhausted having to make an effort with these random guys to sort out and arrange these dates. Brunch was off the cards with any Tinder potential that morning since I had already arranged to have brunch with the BF who was down for the weekend.
Date #3 depicts himself on his Tinder profile as “Just an average bloke really”. Ooh, captivating! His first photo shows him on Oriental Parade looking like he’s playing table tennis with a backwards cap and is not facing towards the camera. Ooh mysterious and average. His second photo shows him with a bourbon and coke in his hand, shirtless, in tight, white short shorts displaying a tiny amount of pubic hair and is clearly intoxicated in the shot. The third photo shows him (one would assume) and four other friends butt naked with their backs facing the camera on a mountain somewhere holding what could be interpreted as their ‘average blokes’. The fourth photo is a face shot with once again a backwards cap and between two girls, neither of which looked like his Mother.
The conversation starts with him offering me a compliment.
Date #3: “You have great assets”
Melissa: “You have a nice butt”
Date #3: “Thank you, do you know which butt it is?
Melissa: “Nope, Not the black one?”
Conversation with Date #3 sped up pretty quickly as by the fifth message, he asked me out for coffee/nibbles over the weekend. On the Saturday, he texts me to remind me whether we were still on for Sunday to which I replied “Sounds good”. He then reminds me on the Sunday again and said “Heya, will I get the pleasure for a quick drink or you got cold feet?
.”
I texted him upon remembering that I had to get a date sorted at 5pm (I pre-arranged a lot of dates that never actually eventuated and constantly only replied to the top of my Tinder feed. Tough love!) We arranged to meet at Vinyl bar on Courteney Place at 6pm. I was somewhat ill-prepared driving back from Silverstream and was wearing the same outfit from Friday night with very minimal make up. Date #3 got extra brownie points when he said that my dog would be able to get into Vinyl and that “Richie McPaw is a legend, he’ll get let in anywhere.”
Once again I was actually running early since I didn’t run home to get changed or ready. I had half an hour to kill at 5.30pm so I visited a friend’s house close to Taranaki St with Richie where I lay down on my friend’s couch (yet another ex-Tinder luver) and got my head patted for forty-five minutes before deciding that 20 minutes was enough time for Date#3 to wait and tottled down to Vinyl Bar.
When I got there, I was extremely apologetic to Date #3 for being late (Soz, was getting my head patted!) and insisted we sat in the outside area to avoid any other Tinder dates seeing me on the street view. I carried Richie through the bar and more or less declared that I wanted a gin and tonic before going outside, leaving my poor date to fund my lifestyle. Not very Beyoncé of me to assume he would pay and when he got outside, drinks in hand I profusely apologised and insisted I would get the next round.
Once we sat down, I got a good look and began my judgement. Date #3 was dressed somewhat in between a bogan and a used car salesman with slightly greasy hair and a receding hairline. Perhaps it was just the leather jacket and the fact that he possibly hadn’t washed his hair that day but I felt somewhat more enthused about him when the mystery offered just his ass facing the camera. He had lived overseas in the last year before returning back home to Auckland, coming down to Wellington for a job in marketing.
The chat was good and relatively free-flowing. We bonded over our love for Vietnamese food and he told he about a business idea was going to launch. To throw him off a little, I decided to add in exciting weird topics to test him. I told him about how I’ve gotten Colonics in the past and that I highly recommended them.
Me: “I highly recommend getting a Colonic, it is the best thing ever. Kim K gets them!”
I told him how I had investigated the cost of a vasectomy as a present for my Daddy’s 50th birthday five years ago after my Dad joked too many times about having another kid and that I was surprised that it wasn’t offered in the form of a gift voucher: This Gift Voucher entitles 1x individual to a vasectomy. Must be used within 1 year of the voucher date. Date #3 was seemingly unphased when I was just dropping these bizarre but truthful stories into the conversation. Richie seemed to be a fan of Date#3 and sat on his lap throughout the entire date, a seemingly good sign of things to come. We ended up having a second round after I basically sculled the first one to speed up the process and enhance my opinion of him and he said he felt a little emasculated that I had finished mine before him. (Wait, what?)
After two drinks, that he funded once again (I finished the second one before him aswell) Date #3 walked Richie and I to my car (no explosive diarrhea this time!). We hugged and lied to each other that it was good to meet one another and he kissed me on the cheek. He texted me once he got home
Date #3: “Awesome to meet you and Richie, you’re good fun. Have a good night x”
Melissa: “You’re great fun. [Edit: Lie] Hope the Vietnamese was amazing
Date #3: “It was really good. Somehow still had an appetite after our conversation…
Melissa: “Surprising”
Bonus story about Date#3 is that we actually ended up catching up again the following Friday, since I couldn’t quite figure out whether he was a good guy or not and he offered me tickets to the FIFA final, which I bailed when I remembered that I hated football and couldn’t be bothered to go out. Instead he came over to my flat with a bottle of red and Vietnamese takeaway and we watched an average movie with Vince Vaughn. I immediately fell asleep in an awkward spoon position and Richie once again, took a unjustified liking to him. It was during this night when we discussed Tinder after I had opened up about my 30 Day challenge when he admitted to having two different approaches to girls on Tinder. There were the girls who he thought were good enough to have random sex with and would approach them with crass remarks like “Hey, want to fuck?” and “DTF?” whereas “girls like me” got the drink and date approach. He couldn’t explain in a non-douchebag way about what gave him the right to choose what type of girl gets which treatment and the night ended on a weird note reinforced by our grandma kiss after I made it pretty clear that he wasn’t staying over and he grabbed my crotch as he said good-bye.
