Old Fashioned Dating

It's been a peculiar week in my life. The prospect of a real, actual, old fashioned, semi-blind date has arisen. I realised just how typical it is in my lifestlye to use gay dating and profile websites to meet likeminded men. More often than not the internet trawl merely leads to meanlingless sex, or worse still, meaningless conversation.

So the situation that has arisen is as follows:
An old colleague and friend of mine lets on that his housemate has an interest in me. Which, I must say is pretty good for the ego, and a pleasant boost to my previously flagging confidence. I express an interest back even though we haven't really met before.

This friends of friends thing seems much more real, mysterious and romantic. The waiting game adds excitement, and actually, I get a little nervous about the actual day. okay, so I admit I didn't toally remove the cyber element of this dating situation. The mutual friend sent us both cheeky friend suggestions via Facebook.

So used to treating internet dating sites in the same way that I order take away: consume and throw out the packing. Having to wait a week for the date to occur is wonderfully frustrating and exciting. Perhaps this is only enhanced by the exchanges the mystery man and I have with each other through Facebook and text message. These interactions portray him as intelligent, witty, and endearing - I can figure that he likes silly and lame very detailed wordplay humour, and, luckily, so do I.

Right so the mysteriousness of the situation did possibly turn me into a crazed facebook stalker, trawling through photos and figuring out his social network and such, but I see no problem in this. Perhaps this anticipation has led me to imagine this man in too much a positive fashion? Perhaps I've set myself up for disappoint as all that I know of him currently I quite like. The anticiaption is bizarre. I quite like it.

a (bone) cracking weekend.

Its 10.30am and I’m walking the wrong way down a main road somewhere in East London. Me and two friends have just stumbled out of a pretty good anarchist squat party, which by the way, we were only going to stay for a little while at as my friends dubious political folk duo were playing at 7.30pm the night before. However one drink led to another, which led to another, which led to some other stuff. Also, the music was a wonderful mix of punk, ska, techno and electro. It was a cool venue too, a vast warehouse, so we were still there over twelve hours later. So we got dancing, or rather I got involved in my own dancing on a somewhat slippery dance-floor in the dance room, and to no ones surprise fell over directly onto my elbow. Fine I thought, I’ve been having a lot of fun, I probably deserve a little pain. So any way we decide that it is probably time to leave, as its really light outside, the birds have been scared of by the midmorning traffic and the prospect of a relatively pleasant walk back to hackney lies before us.

Naturally, in this somewhat confused and bleary-eyed state I don’t realise that I happen to be taking my friends further and further away from where we are supposed to be going. The distance in wrong direction at this point seems to be directly correlated to the increase in elbow pain. So we stop a short while where the rather creative Maggie insists on conjuring up an impromptu sling from a multi-coloured scarf that is, if I say so myself, quite fetching. We’re still relatively wasted and quite jovial at this point, thank heavens. So we find a bus stop and sit at it for a while, then realise its not the right bus stop so stomp of laughing at our own misfortune to find the correct one, which luckily is only a little way down the road. So we’re sat at this new bus stop and about three thousand buses to Stratford glide past us but non to Hackney. Just as we are about to cut our losses and begin walking round again the bus finally pulls up. Luckily it goes direct to Homerton hospital.
Quite a bizarre transition it is to go from anarchist squat into an institution of medicine. From chaos to order and my principals feel entirely at odds with each other. For about half an hour we find it relatively hilarious and thank fully I get seen to pretty quickly and efficiently. Whisked in to an X-Ray room where the radiographer performs some sort of Chinese burn and Shiatsu massage combination on my pain ridden arm, my reaction to this is to scream, loudly and like a girl. Two X-Rays later and the radiographer tells me to get outside as a baby that is nearly dying and desperately needs an X-ray is waiting and takes priority. At this point my chemically altered brain begins to freak out. Understandably. So I wait patiently utside, heart racing, pseudo-preying for the poor little baby that overtook me, checking my heart rate, counting the light fittings, making small talk with a weird man with a weird knee ailment, trying to see how big my elbow has gotten. Finally I get summoned to the X-ray machine again, further impossible shapes are made with my defective arm and then I stand up, bashing my head on the X-Ray machine. After a small debrief from the doctor and the discover that have torn a ligament and fractured my elbow in my right arm I am reunited with Maggie and Dan. Dan by this point is getting a little spun out so we make a speedy exit and head back to my pad for a cuppa, a wash and a relax.

Maggie reveals that she has a ticket to the Walking in My Mind exhibition on the Southbank; after paying nine pound sterling for it she doesn’t particularly want to miss it. I agree to accompany her to the gallery, as does Dan. Quite bizzare is the transition from hospital to art gallery, after staying up all night, patying extremely hard and smashing your elbow. We get there and get persuaded to come into the gallery too, which I’m quite pleased about as it looks to be a cool exhibition and there are Keith Tyson and Nara exhibits within it. So the three of us in a somewhat fatigues state meander through an inspired collection of art and eventually find ourselves in a dark room.

Illuminated by a disco ball and a projection of some lips going over the floor, my face, then up the wall we apprehensively stand in the installation. Then the next projection to travel through the space is a penis, then a vagina. I think the visuals are pretty cool, quite trippy and a bit weird but in a pleasantly arty way. Then I notice the voice aspect as a recording of a swiss voice states that “You are a mouse”, “you are a lady mouse” and also that “you are a molecule”. At this point I look for Dan in the darkness of the installation and can seem him pacing, with some speed towards the exit, Maggie in tow, so from squat to hospital to trippy art exhibition without any sleep and an impending come down our merry little trio re-emerge on the south bank.
There is only one way to get over this peculiar experience. It comes in a 500ml can and has a percentage emblazoned on the side. Sat looking at the London in a little park, laughing at our ridiculous states. Fractured elbow and all we all manage a smile, and then doze lazily into the afternoon.