Chapter 10 #2
I left the flat at about 10:30, aiming to land in FP by midday.
On the way to the ‘date’, some questions started whizzing around in my brain:
What if I don’t fancy him?
What if he’s a bit unstable?
What if he’s a lot unstable?
Do I still go through with this and have sex with him?
Am I obligated to?
Do we have a drink and a chat first?
Is there any point doing anything else except having sex, when that’s what we are both clearly here for?
Or… are we here purely because he wants to beat me up and steal my money… then make me the subject of a top-ten true-crime documentary on Netf lix?
Pfff… nah! As far as I was concerned, sex pretty much had to happen. I was going to drop a Google Maps pin to Finn anyway.
I then posed a less selfish question:
What if this guy doesn’t fancy me?
As I approached Finsbury Park, I pulled myself together and actually got excited about the possibility of having some potentially decent stranger sex. After all, this was what I had set out to do with my day, despite for some reason suddenly being petrified.
I alighted from the tube train with a combination of jelly legs and dry mouth. I made my way outside the station and nobody was there to meet me. Phew.
I had a brief little moment of euphoria thinking to myself that he may have blown me out. I certainly wasn’t going to chase him up and text him. If he didn’t turn up, I could just write the morning off, go home and fumble through the menu of every streaming service known to man for a few hours.
Then, in the distance, I spied what I could only describe as a ‘Jon_BonPony’.
Good Lord, he was not what I was looking for in a sexual partner at all.
The first reason being that I could actually smell him well before he approached me.
It was the same smell as when you leave your washing in the machine for, well, a month.
He also seemed to be twenty years older than his profile pic and appeared to have way fewer teeth than advertised.
He looked like Worzel Gummidge at the end of an all-night rave.
I was undoubtedly disappointed. Visibly so, there was no way of hiding it. My face fell so far that I very nearly smashed my jaw on the pavement.
I metaphorically scooped the bottom half of my face from the concrete and smiled as politely as possible. He went in for a kiss on the cheek, not getting the message that a handshake would suffice. I’d already decided that I’d be happier keeping this relationship strictly professional.
He was what could only be described as an ‘ultra-geezer’.
He was such a geezer in fact, that I could barely understand anything he was saying.
This was mostly due to his voice being no less than three octaves lower than mine.
Plus, there was the fact that all his words rolled into one.
A whole paragraph of speech sounded like a single syllable.
Along with his smoker’s cough, he sounded like a cross between a clapped-out Ford Fiesta trying to start on a winter’s morning and a didgeridoo.
I’d like to have made small talk to cover my awkwardness, but I couldn’t even do that because I couldn’t understand a word coming out of his mouth. All I could offer was the odd burst of fake laughter, which I could only hope wasn’t improperly placed.
I followed him into a nearby independent off-licence so that he could buy some rolling tobacco.
I was truly trapped. I somehow felt myself having to go along with this, though. It was like one of those dreams where you can’t scream, although I wasn’t waking up from this one anytime soon, due to politeness.
So, I proceeded to do a walk of shame back to his flat.
It was a new experience. I’d never actually done a walk of shame to someone’s house before, a pre -walk of shame, if you will.
All the way, I was trying to think of any possible way I could get out of this, but there was simply nothing I could do.
Even though I found this person deeply unattractive in every single way possible, I still didn’t want to seem rude.
I simply had to see this extraordinary meeting through.
The walk back to his place took about thirty-five minutes in the end.
The journey was made longer than it should have been because of all the pit stops at various off-licences so that Art could purchase bottles of luminous energy drinks to sup enroute.
Eventually, we arrived back at his house, which to my surprise was an utterly charming-looking town house. He charmingly jettisoned an empty bottle into his own front garden. Litterbug.
I sneakily dropped my pin to Finn, and as I entered the abode, I discovered to my surprise that this place was a complete and utter… palace!
The hallway was made up of what appeared to be a black and white chequered marble floor stretched beneath a very expensive-looking and grand chandelier.
The walls were painted in that kind of Farrow and Ball-esque colour that I think is just called ‘expensive grey’.
It was decorated with mirrors, antique maps and frighteningly-expensive-looking frames of modern art.
The stair runner was made of a plush carpet that I just wanted to rub my face over. It reminded me of a soft panda I used to worship as a toddler. I looked at Art, then at my surroundings and could not for the life of me marry these two things to the same existence.
He quite rightly made me take my shoes off, but as a result, I caught my sock on a loose splinter from the parquet flooring in the lounge, gaining a tiny flesh wound.
Adding to the divine nature of the place was the cute little blind cat curled up on a plush armchair called ‘Ray’. It was by far the best name I had ever heard for a blind cat––the only name in fact.
On the walnut coffee table in the lounge, Art seemed to have a small, curious bowl with a couple of chipped tablets in it.
“Do you want some ecstasy?” he snarled like a revving motor.
Ah, right… here we go.
“Er, no thanks. It’s a bit early for me,” I replied.
He didn't seem to be listening, and gave me one anyway, which I put in my pocket when he turned around to stroke Ray. Then he shrugged and threw a pill into his mouth anyway, washed down with some energy drink, of course.
This situation was not going to get any better and I needed an exit plan. Fast.
He offered me a drink, which meant he had to leave the room, giving me time to think. Who knows what he was going to come back with? After a couple of minutes, he kicked open the door of the lounge, returning with a bottle of… something?
“I’ve only got bottles,” he barked.
“Ah, Tesco Value. Excellent,” I said, as he handed me a bottle of balsamic vinegar with a glass to decant it in. I managed to dribble about a shot’s worth into my glass to play along with him, as I became increasingly terrified.
He talked at me for a bit, and I just nodded, now with the absence of a fake smile.
I wasn’t even sure whether or not he knew I was even there at this point, as he now seemed to be having a conversation with the wall to my left, rolling his eyes intermittently in that unmistakable ‘I’ve just come up on ecstasy’ kind of way.
He was just nodding, laughing and gurning in-between various incomprehensible mumbles and clearly starting to trip balls on some serious class ‘A’s.
I was morbidly fascinated by Art, trying to figure out how on earth he came to live in such an exquisite palace like this, whilst frittering away his days on sex sites and pharmaceuticals. However, my main focus at this time was to scope out escape routes through the windows and back doors.
After downing the remainder of what was possibly his fifteenth energy drink, he decided to go to the toilet before we, ‘had some real fun’ (his words). It was clear by his expression and limp finger guns that when he got back, he intended to initiate some kind of sexual contact.
Before he left for the toilet, he cupped my face in his hands and muttered something unintelligible. His hands were so rough that they felt like cat’s tongues, or those of an incredibly experienced shopkeeper. Then he tried to kiss me, but I remained tight-lipped, like a dangerously uncooked clam.
The chances were extremely high that he was going to come out of that toilet naked and as leathery as an overcooked sirloin steak.
At this point, I considered running for it.
I bottled it, re-considered, then bottled it again.
This thought process circled over and over again for about a minute until I decided to just go for it.
I grabbed my trainers, which seemed to take forever to get on.
As I panicked, the tongue got wedged down the front of my trainer, like it did when you take the bins out and couldn’t be bothered to put your shoes on properly. This induced further panic. I decided to cut my losses and treat them like a pair of makeshift clogs.
I wedged my remaining trainer on and heard the toilet door open.
I shrieked. There was no way that I could run properly like this, so I had to snatch off my shoes and I ran with them in my hands like a girl that had won an argument with her boyfriend outside a nightclub in a town centre on a weekend night.
As one might expect, Art was absolutely furious at my attempted escape, and immediately chased me out of his house.
He bolted through the door after me, picking up a nearby crash helmet from the porch, and throwing it at me.
Not exactly ‘chill’ for someone that had probably just wolfed down a disco biscuit.
The helmet split clean in two behind me like some kind of fibreglass Easter Egg. I shrieked once more.
I ran past an old couple that looked on in bemusement.
My heartbeat was frantic. As I looked over my shoulder, I saw that the old man had taken out his mobile phone.
He definitely must have thought this was some kind of mugging or something, due to me having my hoodie on.
Still, I kept running and Art stepped up the chase, screaming erratically and attracting even more attention.
I made it back to the Underground station, then turned my phone off, as if that'd give me further protection against him. He still hadn’t given up on the chase, though. He was like some kind of Terminator.
I ran down the escalator and ducked to the far end of the platform as the next tube train was forecast in three minutes, which would give Art more than enough time to find me.
Three minutes! That was a completely unacceptable time for a Londoner to be waiting for public transport.
That was the same amount of time as a speed-date as well.
For those reasons alone, it was actually my least favourite amount of time.
My eyes were fixed on the platform entrance, expecting that angry, weathered face to peer around the corner any second. And it did, but fortunately, two police officers also appeared on the platform. I ran up to them.
“Ah thank God. He’s trying to have sex with me and I really don’t want him to,” I spluttered.
Before I knew it, one of the officers grabbed my bicep. From what I gathered, I was being detained for suspicion of robbery.
“We’ve had reports of a mugging in the area involving a man in a hooded top. Under Section 60 of the criminal public order act, I have the right to search you. Lift up your arms please,” said the female officer.
“Wha…” I bumbled.
“Oh, what’s this?” said the male officer, removing a crumbled ecstasy pill from my hoodie pocket.
“No, no, no…. it’s his! He chased me out of his house after trying to give me drugs and I had to take it from him bec…”
The male copper interrupted. “Who?”
Art had disappeared. I was taken outside the station, and on the way, I explained candidly the events of the morning, topping off the tale by informing them that my brother was a copper and would totally vouch for me never using drugs.
What’s more, I offered to take them round to Art’s flat on the promise of a bigger bust. There were at least three other pills in there, crumbling away in that bowl.
I mean, he was no Mr. Nice, but still, it’d certainly take the heat off me.
My breathlessness seemed to add a certain credibility to my story, and my face was way too cheeky-looking to be a mugger.
Also, the pill had turned into nothing more than a bunch of crumbs, so would it really be worth arresting me?
Well, it was in the hands of the Gods now. I was certainly hoping someone, somewhere was listening to my prayers.