Page 10 of The App Trap
I went to find the most discreet table possible, away from prying ears and eyes. I didn't want anyone to listen to my overly rehearsed and possibly cheesy opening lines. I needed to be as relaxed as I could be on this date.
I found what seemed to be the tiniest round table in South London. It could barely hold a pint glass, but I had made the choice to sacrifice size for discretion. I sat there quietly, intermittently mopping up the mini spillages I kept making due to circling my glass around the table in anticipation.
I took out my phone so I could pretend that I’d just popped out to play a popular confectionary-based game and have a pint just in case Rob didn't turn up and left me hanging.
It turned out there was no need. The door behind the bar opened and a Rob-esque guy walked in checking his phone, looking around gormlessly, squinting in that way people do when they’re looking for someone they’ve never met in person before.
Clearly this had to be him. I wasn't disappointed either. I mean, the winkle pickers were a bit much for my tastes, but he was, shall we say… quirky. He had a kind of hipster vibe about him.
However, as he got closer, I couldn’t detect the usual ‘I’m wearing this ironically’ vibe that regular hipsters exude. His beard was slightly too unkempt to be a legit hipster, and the ankle swingers were two inches too short to be a fashion statement.
He spotted me, and as he made his way over, he waved and caught his foot on a loose bit of carpet. Absolutely the winkle picker’s fault. This incident attracted the attention of everyone in the pub, the collective head-turning almost making a cinematic ‘whoosh’ sound.
Stumbling in my direction, arms almost in full flail, he followed it up with a very loud and clear,‘Are you Danny? Nice to meet you at last!'that made it impossible for the rest of the clientele in the pub to ignore this nice juicyfirst-date meeting. Smirks crept across the faces around us like cracks splitting in thin ice on a frozen pond. Honestly, these people were about as subtle as a skeleton wanking in a biscuit tin.
I tried to cancel out the last thirty seconds and immediately pulled him in for an,'Oh hi, you, it’s been ages!'double kiss, to fake a bit of familiarity to the surrounding parties.
However, I just received the one kiss back, instead of the standard two-kiss greeting that one is accustomed to in modern times. I crashed the attempted second kiss into a bit of thin air, just to the right of his left cheek as he turned away.
In under a minute, this date was all over the place, and I was stressed out already with these ridiculous thoughts spinning around in my head like a pair of red socks in a whitewash. On top of that, I was wondering howhefelt about his little tumble. Was he worried about it? Was he wondering whether I was still thinking about it? I mean of course I was. Of coursehewas.
It must have been awful for him. Everyone hates falling over. I couldn’t begin to imagine the embarrassment of stacking it at the very beginning of a date––the crucial opening moment. I felt for him and his foot-long winkle pickers, I really did.
“Fancy sitting over by the fire? I’m a bit chilly,” said Rob, settling down after his eventful entrance, unravelling a somewhat musty-smelling scarf and handing it to me.
I was still sweating profusely, so was really against the idea of moving somewhere warmer. I still had my little puffer jacket on to hide the damp patches soaked into my heat-absorbing cotton shower-curtain shirt. Moving towards a fire would not be something that would improve this situation.
From some primary observations about Rob’s somewhat odd demeanour, I had deduced that this was a man whose company I would not enjoy a great deal. First off, I’d noticed an initialled sovereign ring and a gold necklace with the word ‘Cunt’ hanging from it, which I thought was a very strange self-promotion strategy. Also, I noticed that he had not smiled once since our acquaintance, which I found somewhat unsettling.
On top of all this, sweat was now beginning to drip from my nose, turning it into a kind of fleshy stalactite.
Then ‘The Thing’ emerged.
‘The Thing’ was what would categorically put me off of a potential love interest to the point of no return. In this case, it was his decision to tell me about his recent short spell at His Majesty’s service within the first five minutes of our union.
“How. Um… sorry… what?” I spluttered.
I composed myself enough to formulate my enquiry correctly.
“Why-oh-why were you in prison exactly?”
“Tried a pair of shoes on in Shoe Express and legged it out the store,” he said, blowing an accidental bubble of snot out of his nostril as he chuckled.
“It wasn’t that pair, was it?” I quipped, chuckling and tilting my head towards the winkle pickers.
Without missing a beat and more annoyingly not acknowledging my little off-the-cuff remark, he proceeded to tell me that he had also converted to Islam during his seven-day stretch.
“Carry on,” I said, resting my chin on my open palm, making myself comfortable.
I gestured to him to keep talking, now wishing that I’d brought some gourmet ‘poshcorn’ from the bar.
As the story progressed, it turned out he’d heard that the Halal food was of a better quality than the standard gen-pop grub, so he changed his religion in order to scam some of it. The problem was that his first day as a Muslim collided with the first day of Ramadan.
He did the weird snot chuckle thing again as he relayed the story, so I made the executive decision to lie about having to get up early for a round of minigolf with my absolutely fictional niece.
“Shall we go, then?” I said, sharply.
“Yeah, let’s bounce,” he agreed, thankfully without protest.
