After Date #3, #4 and #5 some of you must be wondering whether I was intentionally swiping on douchebags to get a better story for my blog. To clarify, this was absolutely not the case! My standard was to maintain true to myself and I made a rule before I started this challenge that I could only date guys during these 30 days who I genuinely found attractive and wanted to meet – otherwise I would purposely date bogans and relish the awkward moments that comes with dating socially awkward guys. Like this guy, who deletes and resets his Tinder every couple of days.
Upon a first glance, Date #6 seemed like a genuinely nice guy and looked like a massive babe. His selection of photos showed him surfing and snowboarding. The one up close photo depicted a great looking guy with amazing eyes, a genuinely nice smile and a strong jawline ( *swoon* “That Jaw though” said no one ever). The quality of the face shot didn’t seem to have originated from a camera phone with many MP’s – maybe he was yet to upgrade from his iPhone 3G or his first camera phone ever. I don’t know, I wasn’t going to invest much thought into it.
We had one mutual friend who was a guy that I had pashed in Madame Peacocks only a few weeks prior to the 30 Day challenge in town, after going to a work function wearing something that Britney Spears would wear in a music video (after the bald head days of hot mess Britney).
My drunk, blurry memory of that particular night consisted of losing BD in town and deciding that I was drunkenly content being a lone wolf in town before meeting said guy I pashed and bonding over girls who walked by us and rating them out of 10. He insisted he wasn’t into girls that he met in town. Then we started kissing and I drunkenly instructed him to use less tongue during our pash rendezvous.
I originally invited him back to my house guaranteeing him that there would be no action further than a pashfest (with minimal tongue) before Ubering home alone when I realised that I didn’t feel like sharing my bed with anyone. Probably a good thing since when I had arrived home, Richie had taken a dump by my door in my absence which I drunkenly had to clean up. Awesome.
Regardless of that mutual friend, Date #6 and I seemed to get along pretty well through Tinder chat and I decided not to bring up Richie’s bowels or how I had pashed our one mutual friend when we would finally meet. When he asked for my number because “his Tinder kept crashing”, I happily obliged due to my motives and that he was genuinely a massive babe.
Over a few messages, we established each others last names as he didn’t want to save my number as “Melissa Tinder”. When he made the comment that we both had unusual names I made the natural progression to how the conversation was clearly going by the third or fourth text in.
Date#6: “Both unusual last names”
Melissa:” If we get married we should make our kids have hyphenated names”
Date#6: “Pump. The.Breaks. Sounds good.
Melissa: “What? You aren’t in this for the long hall?
Melissa: “Hahaha haul* I’m exhausted”
Date #6: “We will need a long hall to fit all the bedrooms at this rate. Kids bedrooms that is.”
Melissa: “Haha Are you short?” [German subtly is one of the less fortunate traits I inherited]
Date #6: “Mid level, 5ft 11 or so…
Melissa: “Great, I can work with this”
This slightly above average text banter continued over the next few days. Our conversation had sparked on the Wednesday and had allegedly agreed to meet on the Saturday. Problem was, I was bed shopping with Date#2 by the time he texted me at 3.47pm and I made up terrible excuses and pretended like I was too busy for him ( Busy dating other guys muahaha). Date#6 suggested that we go to the City Gallery on the Monday and by the time I responded (because I was in the middle of dating Date#4!) he was off surfing for the rest of the day but that he “was easy” and to “let him know when I’m free next”.
I texted him the next day. Meat only stays good to eat once its defrosted for a few days. (Worst analogy ever, but you get the picture.) We had agreed to meet for coffee that day, then life/work got in the way for the both of us and it ended up becoming a drink at 8pm, at Library. I then pushed it to 8.30pm since I had to drop Richie home after doggy daycare. God, I hate myself and feel sorry for anyone crazy enough to hang out with me for leisurely purposes. Thankfully I was only running four nine minutes for Date #6. As it was rainy, I decided to wear my work clothes even though I had enough time to change. I covered myself in more perfume to hide any potential wet dog smell (from Richie, not me!)
When I got to the bar, I saw him sitting at a table by the window. He got off his seat and we did this incredibly uncordiniated meet and greet gesture, I can’t put words to describe it… was it an awkward hug, or an arm grip? To top it off, the first I said to him was “Let’s hope you’re not a serial killer!”. Smooth Melissa. He was so confused by my upfront accusation and didn’t know how to respond and followed the awkward arm grip hug with a “Huh? Oh, um, yeah… haha”.
Our banter warmed slightly after that rocky start. He was a farm boy from the Naki and had just come back to New Zealand from travelling overseas for a few years. He was starting a business in Wellington and didn’t know many people, hence why he was on Tinder. He seemed clever and grounded although we didn’t have much in common past the travel banter. It was going smoothly enough to get two desserts to share as it was 2 for 1 on Wednesdays. He got the Peanut, Caramel & Popped Corn Ice Cream Sundae and I got the Organic Raspberry & Pineapple Sorbet. His was clearly better and I was shamelessly just eating his as well as mine because he was just picking at it. It got to the stage where they just ended up melting, to my horror. I couldn’t do anything about it without being incredibly hungus.
Before I excused myself to go to the bathroom, I dropped another terrible Melissa joke ” Don’t spike my drink when I’m gone” which fell flat yet again. Seriously, why do I do this to myself?
When I came back, the date was wrapping up since our melted uneaten desserts had already been taken away and we were starting to outstay our welcome. I hate lingering. I started to put my coat on and got my wallet out prepared to pay except Date #6 was already four steps physically in front of me and had his wallet out even though I gave the bar my credit card when we arrived and ordered the first round. It was even more awkward that my card was then returned to me and I struggled to engage in conversation further than “thank you” and “this was great”.
Date #6 and I walked down the stairs out onto the footpath where we engaged in yet another awkward arm grip hug thing. He was a near perfect gentleman albeit, a shy one and I guess I overestimated him to be as funny as his texts. Perhaps I had built him up in my head that he was even better looking than his pixelated photos. Although he didn’t walk me to my car around the corner, I did offer him a ride home as it was rainy which he politely declined.
A few minutes after our final awkward arm grip hug, he imessaged me a pin to his current location which was somewhere near KFC was on Cambridge Terrace. For fear of having to find another Beyonce embarassed gif to describe what I could have said in response to this bizarre out of the blue notification of his location, I took a leaf out of Ronan Keatings CD and said nothing at all.
He followed up after the location whereabouts text.
Date #6: “Did I send that”
Melissa: “Yep”
Date #6: “I’m not even sure how? My phone was in my pocket… I don’t even know how to send that. Haha.”
Melissa: “I bet that’s what guys who send dick pics say”
Date #6: “Hmmm, FYI don’t follow that, you’ll go to the wrong house. Haha, yeah I think I probably would know how to send a dick pick but I’m sorry to say – ones not coming.”
Date #6: “But seriously, how does it send a location?”
Melissa: ” I’m not sure sorry! Was nice to meet you.”
Date #6: “Seriously I’m not sure how that happened – I’m not that bold. Anyway, yeah it was nice to meet you too. If you would like to do something again, let me know.
Following this nice touch to the end of the night and the satisfaction I received that he wanted another date even though I had dropped two awkward jokes, the conversation went on for a few weeks of plans and never quite cemented a second date. But I still maintained at that stage a 100% success rate asking for a second date and even got a free dessert!
