Date #5 Zoo Times with another Londoner

After Date #4 it was becoming harder and harder to maintain enthusiasm and energy to meet these randoms. Why would I put aside time for those I don’t know when I was barely putting time aside for people I do know? The thing about friendship is that you talk about things you can relate to the other person with and you actually care somewhat about their life – depending on their ranking of friendship. With Tinder dates you have to introduce yourself, stick your chest out and maintain attractiveness for at least an hour. It’s tedious. Regardless, I’m the type of person who will do something to completion no matter how tired or annoyed I am with the situation (All my exes would agree). Since I refuse to give up, I was going to persistently continue to date no matter how tired, annoyed, or bored I was at the prospect.

Enter, Date #5. He messaged me with a relatively good opening line and excellent grammar.

Date #5: “Hi Melissa, I like your profile picture. You look dangerous – like ‘Don’t look at me! I will drink you under the table’. But you would lose.”

Melissa: “Most likely. I would go out trying. And collapse and vomit. But I mostly keep it together”

Date #5:  “Very chivalrous of you. Think I ‘d pop you in a taxi at that point. your dog in your second picture is cute! I love dogs. I used to have an Airedale terrier that looked kind of like yours called rustic… he was naughty but adorable.”

The conversation continued with a little bit of dog banter, after which he revealed that he worked in sales, was originally from London, and came here a couple of years ago. The tinder conversation peaked with the brilliant line of “Mystic Melissa you are a lady of mystery…” and  he ended the conversation that night with “Just got into my amazing bed need my beauty sleep lol drop me a line 02********.”

Wait, why was there even a lol in there?

Date #5’s photos consisted of a range of images with two shirtless self portraits, (not of his rock hard abs – he had more of a two back), one selfie, two photos of him with girls in them and one photo of him in suit and tie with his mouth wide open.

I wasn’t put-off by this point. Shirtless pictures are always a concern when you’re not a body-builder, a personal trainer or a model but hey, this is a 30 Day challenge and I’m open minded. Let’s hope his weight hasn’t changed too much, and that the shirtless selfie isn’t outdated – this is always a concern with guys who upload their Facebook profile picture from 2012 as their Tinder profile picture because “they haven’t got around to changing it” or “I don’t use facebook/take photos much”. Metabolisms slow down and being a single guy means more beer nights with the boys. Let me just leave it at that without directing this at anyone in particular.

Date #5 and I continued to converse over text and share pictures of dogs. At least I wasn’t going to have a repeat of #4 as he had photographic evidence of his dogs/friends dogs, and seemed entertained by my dog stories. He even suggested that we go to the zoo, knowing that I was a dog lover, and that he would pick me up at 1pm the following day. He sent through a picture of the weather forecast to assure me of what the weather would be like for extra brownie points.

On the day, I received a call from a random number and answered it relatively hastily. To my surprise, it was date #5 simply wanted to confirm the details and to push the time to 2.30. He recognized that I was yet to save his number (Do you know how hard it is to juggle Tinder boys?!) which he called me out on and I brushed it off as though I wasn’t even phased by his slight dig. There was also some persistence that he wanted to pick me up from my house to meet the ‘little fella’.

My being late to dates was finally coming to bite me in the ass, as Date #5 was running even later than he had predicted. Thankfully I was at home and able to resume life in the interim instead of waiting like a loser at a Café. His excuse for his tardiness was brilliant, and one that I definitely needed to utilize myself at least once throughout this 30 Day Challenge.

“I had a little bit of a dilemma what to wear and just found quite possibly the worst or best odd sock combo in the world” [Editor’s note: extremely disappointing sock combo upon inspection]

When he finally arrived, he knocked on my door and had this adorable British accent. He was much shorter than I had anticipated – crafty photo angles had worked in his favour and I’m sure he was stoked that he was taller than me. As we walked up to his car, it made so much more sense that he wanted to pick me up. He had a really nice car. This was the part where I was supposed to be gushing over his car and soothing his ego. I adhered to this to appease him and said “Omgah, kewl car!” when really, I was a lot less impressed and more focused on how well he had done portraying himself taller than he was.

Date #5 was relatively new to Wellington and it was agreed upon getting into the car that I would give him directions to the zoo from my house. For those who are close to me, I have a terrible sense of direction and can’t function as a human being very well if I’m the front passenger in a car (which isn’t very often these days). I prefer to treat it like an Uber ride and be silent on my phone the entire time, much to my ex’s anger “You don’t even talk to me, you just text on your phone!”.  I’m totally aware of this massive personality flaw, as many arguments over two years stemmed from this behavioural trait. Anyway, just to clarify – THIS WASN’T ONE OF THOSE TIMES. I was the most perfect travel companion as I had my good-Tinder-date-future-girlfriend game on. Within 90 seconds though, Date #5 was digging into me and gently mocking me for my shit direction-giving which had nothing to do with his lack of comprehension ( he could barely see over the drivers seat in his sports car). This was fine though, I could handle being blamed indirectly for him not seeing of the dashboard, especially since following the gentle mocking of my shit direction-giving he said that he hated it when girls took him too seriously.

When we got to the zoo we had to park a little further down the drive since Date #5 didn’t want birds to poop on his car as he had just polished his baby that morning. I was okay with that, I can walk 300 metres without crying.

Kudos points went to Date #5 when I got my wallet to pay for the zoo and he pushed in front to foot the bill. Because I like to keep things relatively fair, I offered to get the coffees but once again Date #5 insisted on paying. We ended up having to look at the pygmy monkeys for like 15 minutes since the barista at the zoo couldn’t quite grasp the concept of making coffees within five minutes. When we finally did get our coffees, Date #5 was pissed and short with the barista that his flat white wasn’t a large.

As we started our tour of the zoo, I became super excited that I got to show this guy a kiwi within the first 30 seconds of being in the enclosure. We only had two hours or so of time at the zoo due to his odd sock debacle making him late.

During the time that we were looking at the leopard, Date #5 did a cringy impression of Borat “You’ll never get this”, which up until drafting up this blog I had assumed was a quote from King Julien in the Madagascar movie. Regardless of this minor detail, I had a brainwave of who this guy reminded me of. He was just King Julien!

Without boring my beloved readers of the relatively smooth sailing transaction of this date (which ended with a ride home, a walk to my door and a kiss on the cheek) the actions following the date and the arrangement for a second date were simply too good to miss out.

The night after our date, I received a call from Date #5 who proceeded to tell me about his day. I didn’t think we were at the stage of sharing how our day were details but I was glad he felt comfortable enough to do so. He was bitching about his flatmates and after 15 minutes of hearing about it, I was too tired after a day at work to care and made up the pathetic excuse that “I have to go… and have a shower before my flatmate does”

During and following this phone call, we agreed to hang out on the Friday for Tapas (and a giggle according to his txt?). Organising second dates this early in the game was a risky choice as I still 25 dates to plough through and ended up double booking myself on the Friday night with Date#3. For some bizarre reason, I chose to ditch Date#5 because of the whiny phone call where he bitched about his flatmate and hung out with Date #3 instead only to get my crotch grabbed. Karma.

Conversations with Date #5 started to desist since he was a little pissed that I had ditched him on the day of the day ( I gave him eight hours notice!) but by this stage we were FB friends and he even added me on LinkedIn. Whilst I was doing the write up for this blog entry, I checked his Facebook to see what he had been up to only to find that he had blocked me! Possibly he was a little offended by the whole 30 Dates in 30 days thing even though I had notified most of these guys prior. To ensure there was no hard feelings, I thought I’d txt him.

Nope, no hard feelings!