Love Is Blind | Issue 26

Love Is Blind | Issue 26

Brandon

I went into the date expecting very little – the selection pool of openly gay people in Dunedin who would sign up for this date must be tiny, so to be honest I thought my man would be a disappointment. To make things worse, I was also half expecting my date to be someone I already knew. Fortunately for me, neither of these fears came true. And to cut to the chase – spoiler alert – we got together at the end of the night.

Good looking, but shy and reserved at first, my date turned out to be a really interesting and creative guy, which was hugely attractive to me from the outset. I got worried that I was being too bashful and visibly excited so I tried to tone it down a notch every now and then, but overall I basically just had the best night.

Over the course of dinner we discussed various creative pursuits and our degrees (he was a Media student), and I popped out to get two more bottles of wine halfway through as we had finished the Critic-supplied ones. To be fair, I might even say it was the best date I’ve been on. I can’t think of a better one, and the fact that none of my other dates have been as memorable probably indicates that they weren’t as good.

We decided to semi-drunkenly make our way to a bar to continue the fun and I decided, heck, I’ll start dropping some hints. I was in the mood. At first I didn’t think it was working – his shyness had come back slightly which was a real down buzz. So I backed off once again and continued just having our conversation. Much to my surprise, he reciprocated on what I promised myself would be the last attempt at taking the night further. Even more surprising was that my date was the one to ask me back to his place. No crap about it being for a drink, just a simple “wanna come back to mine tonight?” How refreshing.

Thanks Critic for a great date. It polished the year off nicely.

Brandon

I’m not going to hide behind any pretense of “my flatmates signed me up for this date.” In absolute honesty, I’ve had a romantically dry year and it seemed like a really good idea considering the heteronormativity of fucking Tinder. I was hoping to meet someone special and this made me quite nervous as I headed to the Critic office to meet my date and pick up the wine.

Being gay and all, this comment may seem strange to a large percentage of Critic readers – but my date was so gay! I normally struggle with the dramatic, over-the-top “LOOK I’M GAY!” sorta guys so I knew this would be an interesting date.

I strolled to the restaurant; he skipped. I ate my meal; he gestured and moaned. I went for a mid-dinner piss; he “excused” himself to “freshen up.” However, I actually found it quite fun after the first few wines kicked in.

Needless to say, the food was delicious and the wine was dreadful – it also turned out that my date was a bit of a wine snob and talked about that for a while. Surprisingly, he had a way of carrying conversation that meant I didn’t find this even remotely boring – in fact, I became quite interested and promised myself that I’d improve my wine knowledge in the future.

As the night progressed, I found my date more and more attractive. We basically never stopped talking and, although it gets hazy, I’m pretty sure we were starting to make plans for various adventures and projects we may embark on together with summer just around the corner.

As seems to have happened quite a lot on these dates recently, we headed out for a drink after dinner to continue conversation. Initially, I was unsure whether we were heading in the direction of “relationship potential” or just “good friendship.” Cuddling up to me, my date made the answer to this rather obvious – at least for the night. My flat was the residence of choice, and although I won’t go into details, I got exactly what I had hoped for.
This article first appeared in Issue 26, 2013.
Posted 4:26pm Sunday 6th October 2013 by Lovebirds.