Columns

Critic sets up two lucky students on a blind date (courtesy of the lovely people at Toast), complete with a bar tab and positive vibez, in an attempt to prove that Dunedinites can date. The only catch: the love birds each divulge all the salacious details of their date in a short snappy article after the fact.

Ann
 
Dear best friend.

Went on a blind date last night. A bit random; I get a call at 4.30pm from a friend of Critic saying someone had pulled out and they needed a replacement. Poor guy had already been rejected before she’d even seen him!
 

So I psyched myself up and my flatmates gave me three pieces of advice: don’t talk too much (LOL), ask lots of questions and for God’s sake don’t be weird! Totally crapping myself when I walked into Toast fashionably late and looking quite fashionable (of course). So the only single guy in the place was who I had pictured in my worst case scenario image! Wtf! This is so typically something that would happen to me!! If a big fish is a good fish, then this guy would be a great catch! Thanks Critic!

 
But you know me, always down for a laugh so I figured I’d give him a chance. I introduced myself and started to talk to him. I decided to talk heaps to avoid any awkward silences. So I was raving away and then realised the guy hadn’t even offered to buy me a drink. Here I am trying to be polite and he’s hogging all the bar tab! I was hardly going to tell daddy barman to make him share so I figured I’d just buy my own drinks. Speaking of the barman what a cool guy - wish he was my date! I ran out of steam and let the guy talk a bit about this and that. I wasn’t really listening, whoops can’t even remember his name. How much of a room is it okay to memorise without making it obvious that’s what you’re doing?

 
I memorised a hot looking couple in one of the booths. There was a gentleman! Buying his lady heaps of drinks, maybe he was trying to liquor her up! Why wasn’t my guy trying to liquor me up? Maybe he wasn’t into me! Rude! I got over the whole thing pretty quickly and decided to play the “lots of study tomorrow card” He seemed pretty keen to walk me home but COME ON!  you have to buy a lady at least one drink before you can expect that! All in all, average intro to blind dating, maybe speed dating would be cooler. We should totally go speed dating! Oh weird as; Speedy came into the bar at one point, not sure what he was up to but I’m sure he would’ve been a more interesting date.
 

Xxx
 

King Kong
 
I got to Toast six minutes early to at least give the appearance of being gentlemanly. Unfortunately the gentlemanly-ness was completely lost when I saw that my date was already there. But when I laid my beady eyes on her, I couldn’t have been happier. She was perched on her bar stool like a porcelain angel atop an Exclusive Brethren Christmas tree. She was easily in the 98th percentile for hot girls in Dunedin. For those of you who are not familiar with Dunedin, this translates to around a 7.2 out of 10 on a national scale.

 
I introduced myself and she looked puzzled at first, but this bemusement soon turned (strangely) to gratitude when I got our first drink with our bar tab.
 

We started talking and she was lapping my chat up like a prematurely weaned kitten getting their first taste of milk in six cat-days. But who could blame her when I brought out the big guns like having worked in an Indonesian orphanage for three months over summer? The pay wasn’t great, but the sex was. [Sub-editor disclaimer: I assume he is not implying he was having sex with the Indonesian orphans?]

 
We were getting on so well that I didn’t immediately notice another couple who must have sneaked in unnoticed minutes earlier. They were an incredibly odd couple. For a start, they looked completely different and the girl (who was a wee cutie) had obviously lost some sort of bet as she was buying all the drinks and had a facial expression that reminded me of an adolescent North African wombat frustrated at his lack of sexual prowess. Or, in short, she didn’t look totally happy.
 

But enough about them. The night continued to go swimmingly for the goddess and I until Speedy turned up to Toast and started to dart around like he does. We all know Speedy is a harmless fella, but unfortunately my date suffers from a debilitating case of hobophobia, a fear of homeless people. Thus we had to leave the bar immediately with a whole $10 left on the tab. I was moderately annoyed by this but this annoyance promptly turned to joy when we got into Fever Club and the goddess got on the pole. She worked it like a second year law student, swinging and grinding away. This was enough for me to want to take her home in the naive thought that I’d get a bit of action.

 
Or was I so naive? We got back to her place and things started getting a little hot. Then, just as she was unbuckling my belt, I remembered I hadn’t trimmed down below in three months and it was like Fangorn Forest down there and there wasn’t a weed-eater in sight. I was so embarrassed I raced out the door screaming, “I’m sorry, I’ve got a girlfriend who loves me” and ran all the way home with my pubes flowing in the wind.