Waspman, the First Date & a 15-minute love story

It all started while I was en route to Edinburgh by train, always my preference I don’t fly well. Every minute spent talking to him.

 

From the friendly “How are you?” to inside jokes like when I was stung by a wasp and called myself ‘Waspman,’ which led to a barrage of wasp images with my face attached to the head. The superhero no one wanted or needed. But he seemed to enjoy my ridiculous, messy, human self. I always took offense when the term ‘extra’ was used to describe me as it was never used in endearment. But he didn’t make me feel ‘extra’; he simply laughed, a genuine laugh, and followed my mind along to whatever random stop it was headed to next.

 

I remember questioning myself the entire time did this dashing, intelligent, and sane guy really like me?

 

Alexander was just some random guy I said ‘hello’ to one morning on Plenty Of Fish, of all things (rolls eyes). Couldn’t have possibly just been sat opposite this human on the train that wild have been far too perfect a meet cute, or gone to a bar, like the two I worked in, to find someone… nope, I had to choose the guy who lived 100 miles away in Buckinghamshire (I had no car, of course 9/10ths).

 

But throughout the long train journey to and from Edinburgh and over the course of those eight days, he quickly became a constant, and it wasn’t long before typing on a dating app became a phonebook entry, from ‘guy from POF’ to ‘Alexander.’

 

He chose me back.

 

Edinburgh, of course, ended as all breaks do, and I sadly returned to my reality back to the bar job, the family home, and Kent.

 

But one notable difference one ‘glimmer’ was added to what then felt like a dark period in my life. In hindsight, of course, it’s not comparable to being sat on the kitchen floor halfway through another bottle of red. Perspective really is a wonderful thing. That ‘glimmer’ of blond-haired sunshine. Alex still seemed rather keen to talk to me, and I had a win. Not only was Alex still keen on talking to me, but he also wanted to meet me in person because by this point, I’d conjured up an entire love affair with a man I’d never even met in the flesh.

 

Still sat there on that kitchen floor, still analysing every part of the relationship between Alexander and me. Did I want to pinpoint where it had gone wrong? Would I be the person best placed to do so in any case? And would that sixth glass really help with clarity on anything? But that first date the first time I laid eyes on Alexander the first time I’d fallen in love, and before I even knew I had.

 

September 2010, at the back of our eight-day ‘modern courtship’ on POF. I was incredibly hungover at work (standard practice back then). Thankfully, by that time, I’d managed to find a new job still a bar job, but back in London, back where I needed to be. Glass collecting was my friend that day. It limited my human and customer interactions and had the added benefit of, for the most part, being outside and including a cool breeze on my face. I knew Alex would be popping in to say ‘hey,’ as we’d chatted about it. The issue being that the hangover had very much taken control of my mind, and its only real focus that hideous Friday was not vomiting. Quelle surprise, when tapped on the shoulder, and I had hoped it was death and his sweet embrace to carry me away into delicate darkness. It was not. It was instead Oscar, a fellow bartender. He had come to collect me: it would seem a male suitor had arrived to see me. As I walked down the bar, there he was Alexander. Suited and so ridiculously debonair, I was already in a state of awe. He had an umbrella (I don’t know why I remember that, I just remember he had a real umbrella, an ‘adult’ umbrella), and I found that so terribly ‘cool.’ He was like one of those guys from the old Hollywood movies, something straight off the pages of Fitzgerald. Who knew such men existed in real life, and how did one of them want to meet me of all people?

 

Having never fallen in love before, and not realizing that I was, in fact, falling in love in that very moment, I found myself hyper-fixating on every detail of Alex. Every part of his face, his features, his presence. There he was blue-eyed, impossibly blue-eyed. Seriously, how could anyone’s eyes be so magnetically blue? His crooked, left-tilting smile, which, despite its playfulness, was reassuring. The guy I’d spent eight days talking to was standing right there. Really there. And yet, I wasn’t nervous. The calm I felt in that moment pure, unshakable hasn’t been matched in any other part of my decade of “adulting.” That calm, the assurance of safety I felt with him, turned what I once feared an ordinary, “boring” relationship into something I longed for. A safety I had never known before. In hindsight: love.

 

I spoke. He spoke. A real conversation (I couldn’t understand, at the time, why I was so giddy just thinking about it). I laughed. He laughed. And it wasn’t at me. It was with me. It all felt so natural, so easy as though I’d always known him.

 

But the interaction with Alex was brief. So terribly brief. I was working and wouldn’t finish my shift until late around 11 pm. The last thing I wanted, in my hungover state. I think it was no more than a 15-minute chat. Sadly, I think that might have been the last time anyone met the real me. A collection of characters had since clouded the person I was Theo. Meeting Alex was the last time I felt like my honest, unguarded self, with no pretence, no agenda, no defence mechanisms. Just Theodore, warts and all. It was only for those 15 minutes, but it was enough for me to lose myself for the first time in my life I lost myself, gave myself completely, without him even knowing. And to a stranger, no less. But there was something about his way of speaking his vernacular. It was charming, comforting, making me feel at ease and, for once, like I was worth something.

 

He was supposed to meet a friend, or so I thought. I believed that for a long time. But of course, he wasn’t. He stayed around, waiting for me. For the better part of four hours, he waited. He chose me.

 

He waited outside Jamaica Winehouse, leaning against the wall of the barber shop opposite, an “adult” umbrella in hand, a black overcoat draped across his broad shoulders. His crooked smile still there, waiting for me to exit the staff door. We walked to Bank station in a comforting silence, toward his car. Parked curbside in The City was a purple BMW. I was taken aback by everything this man did. On paper, he hadn’t done much, but it felt as if we were in a golden-age Hollywood movie. Our story leaping off the pages, whispered opulence in every moment too calm and natural to ever scream. I didn’t question where we were going. Looking back, I’m not sure there was anywhere I wouldn’t have followed him. I know the bar should’ve been set higher, but I was young, and this was my first dating experience. The simple gesture of him opening the passenger door for me made me melt. He was taking me back to his house in “North London,” as he put it. Of course, Chesham is not North London. It’s very much in Buckinghamshire. But again, I was young.

 

I rambled the entire 90-minute drive back to his house. The downfall of feeling so comfortable around someone you’ve just met, I guess, is that I spilled every single morsel of my life story to this poor guy. He just listened, responding as though he was hanging on my every word. He looked at me like so many men had (and this was all before the ‘good’ teeth), but unlike the others, Alex made me feel seen. He actually saw me the unfiltered, not always pretty version of me. And he seemed enchanted, even by the things I hated about myself.

 

Anywhere he went, I would have followed; every word he spoke felt like a sonnet meant only for my ears. I breathed the man I had only known for a 15-minute chat and a 90-minute car ride.

 

I didn’t think I could fall that fast. How did I fall that fast? And how had it ended with me sitting on that kitchen floor, reminiscing about the relationship instead of being in it? Will I fall again? Or was Alex the one?

 

But that was it, anyway that was the first date. It’s a shame I can’t say it was the final first date. Was I supposed to grieve and move on now, finish the next bottle of wine, pass out, and wake up as a new, grown individual? Were the kitchen contemplations helping anything at all?

 

That first morning, waking up in his house, he went to McDonald’s and got me breakfast. I never did teach him to cook; why didn’t I teach Alex how to cook? He asked me so many times. The man honestly just wanted to spend more time with me. What was my reasoning not to? I mean, I would’ve been a horrific teacher anyway (no patience, as usual). Alex kind of had me in basically all situations he had me. I guess cooking was the one place where I felt needed by him. If I lost that, would I have lost him? In hindsight, the fear of losing him over cooking lessons seems slightly irrelevant.