Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Screw it, then.
I emailed an army of potential love interests and joined a flotilla of different online dating apps.
Harry made a cameo appearance on quite a few of these new apps I was using, so I took that to be the final nail in the coffin with regard to any further reconciliation talks. Damn, he really got under my skin.
Whilst I was trying to initiate a conversation with pretty much every active profile around, I thought I’d try and score another date with Ben to tide me over.
I needed a pick-me- up date. As dangerous as he seemed, it felt to me like there was some unfinished business that I just had to, well…
finish. A date was arranged for Saturday night, due to me not having any solid Friday night plans that would put me out of action for the weekend (I did tend to go a bit Ferris Bueller on Friday nights sometimes).
Luckily, Ben needed to fill his dating diary too.
Presumably he only had two or three dates that day, the poor sod?
Literally minutes after I’d secured the date with Ben, a fresh face that went by the name of Luke, 33 messaged me on one of my new apps. Ooh, he had that ‘new-profile’ smell and everything. I fancied Luke, almost on a par with Ben.
The messaging was rallying superbly, until I mentioned that he was my first match on that particular app.
‘Is there a prize?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, here’s a dick pic!’ I joked, whilst simultaneously sending a picture of Dick Van Dyke through the dating app.
The problem with that was that it arrived in Luke’s inbox heavily pixelated, because in order to be able to send pictures with pixels in a decipherable resolution, one had to pay a subscription.
A message came back: ‘Disappointing.’
After a lot of ‘No, no, no’s’, I’d managed to smooth that little obstacle over, but another problem arose.
We chatted further, and I was treading very carefully.
Eventually, Luke told me that he would quite like to go out on Saturday night.
So, I did the dishonourable thing and blew Ben off for what I saw as a more exciting experience––a date with someone brand new.
I didn’t feel that bad, though, considering I knew that Ben definitely had back-up(s).
As I was chatting to Luke, I texted Ben in tandem to tell him that I was going to have to work late on Saturday night. As predicted, he didn't seem to mind, and like I knew, he had a couple of reserve dates stacked up anyway. A couple. Crumbs.
Fine. However, I still felt a slight shudder of unjustifiable jealousy flush my cheeks.
Luke and I arranged to meet somewhere that was supposed to be equidistant from each other, but when I finger-measured the distance on my Google map, I saw that the chips were stacked considerably in Luke’s favour. Cheeky bastard.
I wasn’t entirely sure what it was I wanted to get out of this date. I seemed to be going through the motions with this one. However, after the exciting initial couple of days, the message chat did actually start getting a bit racy, which kept my attention.
Maybe it was the thrill of the challenge of finding someone new to date? There was no real spark like there had been with Ben and Harry, but the fact that Luke looked like he’d be someone I’d struggle to keep up with sexually made me want to meet him.
My outlook on dating was already shallower than a beetle’s bath. Dating apps seemed to be getting a reputation as sex tools within my circle of friends, so a lot of users were focussing on that aspect, expecting booty calls to be the norm.
I had come from having almost no romantic contact for the best part of a decade, to having the opportunity of going out with a different guy every single night if I so desired.
As I was fairly new to it all, I was understandably getting way too excited and just grabbing dates willy-nilly, like some kind of demented contestant on Supermarket Sweep .
It was inevitable that eventually, I wouldn’t be able to carry everyone in my virtual trolley.
Saturday night.
It had been a quiet week on the dating front, so I was quite excited to meet this fresh face.
The message pace between Luke and I had been stepped up during the week and it had come out that he, like Ben was quite into the fetish scene, so I figured at least we shouldn't run out of conversation too quickly.
True to form, I arrived early. Luke turned up on time and had texted his request for a pint of Peroni beforehand, so there was no awkward bar chat.
I had gone straight to the table, where I practiced my welcome wave (in my head).
For the record, I went for the ‘Luke Skywalker signalling to R2-D2 at the Sarlacc pit’. It seemed fitting.
Luke was sleight in build. He had a close-shaved head and neatly-trimmed stubble to match, his arms covered in a gallery of bright, fresh-looking tattoos.
He had piercings in painful looking places such as through the stringy bit behind his top lip and even through the web between two of his fingers.
He was sporting a flesh tunnel in each ear as well, with some home-made looking jewellery filling them up.
It did make me wonder what else he had pierced
With that amount of body modification, I would have thought that he’d ooze confidence.
That couldn't have been further from the truth.
Luke was achingly shy and didn't really say much at all.
In fact, the most noise that I got out of him was when he received a phone text and let out a short snigger without even bothering to explain why.
There was a bit of polite chat after a couple of drinks, but his mind seemed to be on something else, so consequently there was zero connection happening.
I was in the middle of ripping the remains of the label from my beer bottle due to sheer boredom, when I felt the unmistakable vibrate of a text against my thigh.
I didn't want to check it at the table just in case it was a stray number from a previous or future date, so I faked going to the toilet. It was from Ben.
‘What time are you finishing work? My date’s shite and I made him cry. I keep making people cry. What is up with that? Fancy a nightcap and maybe more? ;)’
Oh, I fancied a nightcap and definitely more, all right, not to mention some unpredictable and possibly dicey sex. There was absolutely no chemistry going on here. The chemistry I was looking for was Breaking Bad , not Malcolm in the Middle .
No, I didn’t really know what that meant either, but it sounded sort of clever and niche, didn’t it? No? Okay then.
‘Not sure. Reckon I may be able to get out in an hour or so as it goes. Could meet you East somewhere if that’s good for you? ’ I replied.
I was in Ben’s manor (East London) anyway, so was probably about five minutes away from his house. Now all I had to do was invent an excuse so that I could end my time here with Luke.
I waited for a reply from Ben, but it didn't come. I had to get back out to re-join Luke or it’d look like I had some number two-related issues, a bad coke habit, or possibly both.
I returned to the table, sat back down, and smiled awkwardly at Luke, who mirrored me.
A message alert went off in my pocket. Typical.
I was desperate to check it––so much so that I faked yet another toilet visit.
I’d lost all investment in this date so actually wanted Luke to think I had the squits, or better still, a penchant for the old ‘recreationals’ .
‘Ok x.’ read the text from Ben. Well, that was totally not worth the journey to the toilet.
I sent back a lazy ‘thumbs up’ emoji to seal the deal.
Back at the table again, I had a brainwave. I could use my fake toilet breaks to my advantage. I was just about to tell him that I was suffering from a huge bout of diarrhoea when Luke dropped a very unexpected bombshell.
“Do you fancy coming back to mine?”
I didn’t before, but now that he mentioned it with a seductive eye-waggle, I sort of did.
The thrill of kissing someone new seemed to override the possibility of being hung, drawn and quartered by Ben.
I’d virtually promised to see him later and now I had to make up a far-fetched lie about why I suddenly had to blow him off again.
A few months ago, I would have chuckled if you’d have told me that my biggest problem would be having to decide who to have the sex with on the same night.
“I would love to. Hey, I’m just going to go to the toilet. Again. Do you live close, or…?”
“Ten minutes away. Um, are you okay?”
“Weak bladder. Once you pop, you can't stop! This is definitely the last one. And it’s definitely bladder for the record… not y’know…” I said, pointing to my behind with a squiggly-mouthed expression.
He stared at me, blankly.
I went into the toilet and texted Ben enough information for him to think that I possibly had the shits, but not enough to think that I definitely had them.
I still wanted to keep Ben on the back-burner, so didn't want to conjure up any sort of negative imagery that could harm any future scenario between us.
No text came back for a few minutes, so I bit the bullet and went back to see Luke.
He had pulled his nice Belstaff jacket on and was ready to leave.
We walked back to his, which turned out to be a residence comprised of two converted warehouse flats.
Luke apparently owned both of them. He lived in one of them, but how the other property was put to use surprised me a tad: he rented it out to a fetish film company as a filming studio/sex dungeon.