Humbert
I’m a mature student, but a Scarfie at heart. I’m even flatting, so I should’ve seen it coming when I got signed up for the Critic blind date. My flatmates are jokers – shout out to Ryan for this one. I was worried (for her sake) that I was too old, but once there’s a bit of alcohol in us we all act like kids anyway. She actually seemed older than me: the granny doesn’t even have a cellphone!I don’t drink very much, but we managed to drain both of the bottles we were given (cheers, Critic). The last time I’d been at a BYO was with my ex-wife, so conversation steered pretty heavily that way. It was the first time I’d really opened up in a while and I was amazed at how accepting the lovely lady across the table was. She was definitely a 10/10 in the conversation department, and maybe a little more in others.
We’re both fast eaters so we left the restaurant pretty quickly. I offered to pay for a film but we opted for just walking around. We’d been talking a lot about me so I asked her about her own life experiences and how she’d become a vegetarian. She was quite funny about the whole thing, but that might have just been the bottle and a half of wine.
I must have lost track of where we were, because we ended up by my daughter’s old school. I have to admit that I felt a bit uncomfortable, and silly old me decided to just let out a bunch of the ol’ feelings. We found a bow on the tennis court and I pinned it into her gorgeous brown hair, maintaining eye contact the entire time. If it hadn’t been the first date I’d have been tempted to make a move.
Things wrapped up pretty soon after that, and I helped walk her home as she’d broken the heel of her show. As it turned out we were far closer to my place than hers, but as we got back to mine we bumped in to some Campus Watch officers who offered to escort the young lady home safely.
"Lola"
I got to Critic early, for wine access reasons: they give us two bottles now and I’d brought my flask, so I added some wine to that while I waited for him. “He’s a silver fox,” the editor had told me, leading me to expect Anderson Cooper to walk through the door. He didn’t even have grey hair, you lying fucks! I took the Steve Carrell lookalike’s arm in mine, and with #yoloswag walked defiantly out of the office and to our “secret” location.It was one of the ten Thai places on George Street – he was “branching out” culturally, he told me, and winked at my Maori skin. He then reminisced enough about his saint of an ex-wife for me to empty my flask without him noticing.
He offered to take me to a movie, but I’d once heard a story about someone doing anal in Hoyts, so I counter-offered with “walking the streets” where my butt was a moving target and therefore less difficult to hit.
We ended up at some primary school and stood in the middle of a playground while he muttered about someone being “so small” and began to shudder violently. Once I found out his daughter had died I was really sorry for laughing at him – I swear it was because of nervous hysteria and not actual hilarity. At the time, I just worked with the childhood angle and stood at the top of a slide howling, “I’ll make a man out of you.”
When I saw a tear on his face glint in the moonlight I slid to him, and he softly pinned some hairclip to my face. I maintained eye contact for like five minutes, because I was afraid that if I looked away he might lunge or cry again or something. My shoe heel broke when I lost leg control and fell into the sandpit. He began to walk me somewhere – a graveyard? His house? – so thank fuck for Campus Watch, who intervened and took me home.