Monday, January 10, 2005

Dating and relativity

I have always been rubbish at second dates with people I like. If it's just shagging, then fine, but I get Seriously Smitten about once a year, and The Annual Smiting is a weird combination of euphoria and despair that is, frankly, irritating.

I like to think I'm fairly intelligent, rational and functional. So it's appalling to discover that, at the age of 30, meeting a nice man reduces me to the mental equivalent of doodling the names of our kids on my Maths folder.

Not happy about a second date with A-Gay Adam. Spent the entire day in gibbering panic. Last time this happened was in Manchester station, waiting for a boy to get off the train, convinced his "sorry, a bit late" text message meant "fuck off, fatty". See? Mad.

My madness wasn't helped by Adam texting to rearrange at the last minute. With a perfectly good excuse... but still. My mood wasn't helped by going round to dinner with friends who nodded and smiled and made a show of pretending to believe Adam's excuse.

Guy took me outside for a forbidden cigarette. "Look, mate. You've got to pretend to be calm. When I was single and dating girls, I'd never let on how I felt. It was a smile, a cheery wink, and every indication that I didn't give a shit. Then I'd go home and cry."

I left, feeling somewhat perkier, and ended up watching Dave Lynn return to the Black Cap (he took the piss out of the appalling Kiss FM DJ blunder by dedicating Bridge Over Troubled Water to "those poor folk in Tsunami").

Idly, I started chatting to the prettiest man there. He was called Tony, he did make up for fashion shoots (would he name names? no), and he had the most amazing arms.

Within ten minutes, he was explaining how he never had one night stands, that he rather liked me, and all about the difference between a special and a unified theory of relativity.

I can't remember many details, as his hand was down my pants, but it was something to do with whether a spot of light is moving away from or towards you when you're travelling at the speed of light. Fascinating stuff, I'd imagine.

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