Olive
I actually finished my degree last semester but still figured I should get on one of these blind dates while I messed around for half a year preparing for professional examinations.My date sure was a cocky bastard and, spoiler alert, I knew instantly it wasn’t going anywhere. But channelling the best ever contender from The Amazing Race – “Suck it up, hoorah!” – I gritted my teeth and made do with the situation.
Dinner was really good and I happily downed my bottle of wine as I had texted my friends from the bathroom very early on to make sure they were ready to party afterwards. I know it’s a cliché but although I didn’t enjoy my date’s company, I didn’t want to be mean by texting in front of him.
Speaking of said date – he never really stopped talking about himself and how much he was doing and achieving. For sure, it’s great to be ambitious if you’re at Uni – I never understood why people who weren’t ambitious were here at all – but there’s a fine line between that and sounding like a Republican Presidential hopeful.
We did bond briefly over a shared nerdiness/ appreciation of Bond films and to be fair I enjoyed that part of the conversation quite a lot, but overall I was still stinging from the foul hand of fate that Critic had dealt me.
So as the date came to an end I batted away his attempts to go out for another drink, apologising that the night had clashed with something else important and I’d already missed half of it. He challenged the point, which came as no surprise, but I just laughed in that way which makes you seem like you think someone’s taking the piss, gave him the one-second hold-and-drop hug treatment, and made my way back to the flat where my friends had set up an Easy A party. Oh the joys.
Regardless of the date, I had a great night with friends afterwards and feel compelled to thank Critic for the free booze.
Brandon
As far as I’m aware, no one at Selwyn had gone on one of these dates yet, so one night with my mates we decided to put my name forward and find something to talk about over dinner.The only flaw in our beautiful plan was that my date was like a “pull this tab to hear me talk” doll with the batteries removed – I couldn’t really work out whether she was tired, boring, or shy, but I figured it was probably an utterly crippling shyness as she perked up ever-so-briefly when we realised we had mutual friends that she wanted to talk about.
Aside from this, I spent most of the night trying to fill the void and, to make matters worse, the food was significantly delayed. I must confess that I was astounded she downed her bottle of wine so fast – so fast I thought of offering her some of mine but luckily decided not to as I needed the liquid courage to keep the night from descending into silence. And on the bright side, at least she was hot.
When the food eventually did arrive it was a good excuse for me to take a break, and just when I thought nothing – even a fast bottle of wine – would perk this girl up, she launched into an epic monologue on David Bain’s guilt that left her food too cold to eat. She had even developed the courage to ask a waiter to reheat it. I was astounded by the turnaround but for the life of me I still can’t think of what inspired such a strange fucking tirade.
But as dinner came to a close, another sure sign of her shyness shone through in her desire to leave immediately after the date – she didn’t really have a good reason to, but I could see her heart was set on it, so I decided to move on with my own night. Heading just a bit down the road I met some friends at The Bog and proceeded to have a relatively good night.