First Date Disaster

I definitely should not have gone on that date.

Before we get to the date let me walk you through the red flags I so happily ignored.

Do you ever have those moments where you just sense something’s off? The person you’re talking to isn’t necessarily doing or saying anything wrong but their vibe just isn’t right. I matched with this girl on tinder and we talked for a bit but I didn’t get excited when her name popped up, I wasn’t even sure I fancied her that much but unlike most girls on tinder she actually replied so I went with it. A day or two passed and she asked for my number, I thought sure; she doesn’t seem like a serial killer, why not?

That’s when I started getting that gut feeling that something just wasn’t quite right.

As someone who still had a job during the pandemic (yes that’s right I’m essential) I was often busy at work. This seemed to irritate her. Heaven forbid I took more than two hours to reply. It was a Thursday, I was doing my essential work at my essential job, I wasn’t on my phone as we were short staffed and it was peak pandemic so we were run ragged. I fired her a quick response at lunch, she replied pretty much straight away, I ignored it because no one likes an antisocial sally at lunch. Fast forward four hours and I get sent an “Oi!” message. When I got home I apologised (rather unnecessarily if you ask me) for not replying sooner. She responded with “Oh look who it is” “look what the cat dragged in” “LONG TIME NO SPEAK”. My immediate thought was “this bitch must be drunk” so naturally I replied asking if she was wasted. Piece of advice, don’t ask if they’re drunk, it did not go down well. I was promptly reprimanded for assuming she was drunk. Apparently I was reinforcing the patriarchy by insinuating that her being emotional meant she must be drunk. Her response was completely unwarranted, in my opinion, but then I thought about all the times men had told me I was being “too emotional” and I decided I was being unfair and should give her a chance.

The next incident wasn’t really a red flag as such, more just a bit strange. She messaged to ask if I felt like being spontaneous. It was almost midnight; I still live at home and my parents don’t know I’m a lesbian, so the whole thing would have been hefty suspicious on my part. We had only been speaking about five days at this point and for all I knew she was actually some raging middle aged man trying to catfish me. For this exact reason I obviously said no. The rejection didn’t go down well. I was met with a whole story about how everyone always cancels on her (was slightly confused here because you can’t cancel plans that were never made, but whatever). I felt bad but I also value my life and wasn’t about to go a drive at midnight with some lass I’d never met. The whole night then became her wallowing in self pity about how lonely she was and how upsetting it was that her friends constantly left her out. I hate that feeling and sympathised with her. After this I tried to reply more often because I genuinely felt bad that she was feeling lonely. However, replying when you’re busy isn’t a good idea, I wasn’t focussed on the conversation and my replies slowly got worse and worse. This did not go unnoticed.

I accidently asked the same question twice within a short time frame. A genuine mistake because I was at work and not overly paying attention to the conversation. It should never have been an issue, after all she knew I was working. If it was her that asked me the same question twice I would have made the classic “you going senile already?” joke and we would have laughed it off and moved on quite the thing. But no. She was raging. Queue paragraph number two telling me off. I won’t bore you with the details, the gist of it was that I should focus more on our “relationship”. I’m new to the whole lesbian world and I’m aware of the classic “lesbians move fast” stereotype but guys it had only been a week! ONE WEEK! And there she was throwing the word relationship around, I didn’t even know her last name.

Naturally, I chose to ignore all these red flags because I am in fact a dumb bitch and I agreed to go on a date. We were very limited for date options, thanks lockdown, so we settled on a walk. We chose the worst day, the rain was bouncing off the ground and I was soaked through before I even met her. I was one minute past the time we agreed to meet and this was totally unacceptable, the date began with a telling off and a lesson on punctuality (did you know that on time is late and early is on time?) She honestly was lucky I was only a minute late; I’m that friend that will tell you I’m almost ready when I haven’t even showered yet. We moved past my tardiness and had a laugh about the weather being against us (now I think the horrendous weather may have been a sign from the universe to stay home). She then presented me with two bags of crisps as a first date present; I thought this was cute, we had chatted about our favourite snacks previously and it was sweet she had remembered. I thanked her, told her how thoughtful it was, took the crisps and started walking. Queue the first moment where I thought to myself “this bitch is crazy”. To my genuine shock, she started scolding me for not immediately eating the crisps. I don’t know about you but the thought of eating crisps in the pissing rain isn’t all that appealing, who wants soggy crisps? But apparently saving them for later is rude and clearly I didn’t appreciate that she’d went out her way to get me them. By this point the “what the fuck” expression on my face was clear as day; as a general rule I don’t tolerate bullshit all that well and my face has a habit of letting that be known. She back tracked, saying she was just joking and that I should “lighten up”. Personally, I hate being told to “lighten up” it doesn’t work, if anything it makes me more annoyed. Sure I could lighten up but equally you could stop being an arsehole.

*Disclaimer: this next one is petty (and lowkey a joke). Don’t come for me.

Cooncil juice. Perhaps the finest water you will ever taste in your life. For those of you not from Scotland, cooncil (pronounced council without the accent) juice is tap water. But it’s not just any tap water, it’s elite tap water. It’s free and quite frankly damn delicious which makes it completely unrivalled by any other water in the world. If you think I’m being ridiculous then you clearly have never experienced the wonder that is Scottish water. For whatever reason, I had been talking about my love for cooncil juice and was truly shook when she didn’t know what I was talking about. She was born and bred in Scotland and had never heard of cooncil juice. When I explained what it was she crinkled up her face at me and told me she preferred bottled water. BOTTLED WATER. I was appalled. You just can’t trust someone who doesn’t love a bit of tap water. Only Tories pay for water out a bottle when it’s readily available for free, straight out the tap (Tories for my non UK readers are the UK’s conservative party, they’re generally privately educated, rich wankers who hate the poor *this is just my opinion feel free to disagree). I think at this point she was trying to have banter by joking that only “scheme weans” (children from council estates) drank tap water. Apparently she was a sophisticated lady, unlike me. I won’t lie I took issue with “scheme weans” it showed me that she believed she was better than others and this irked me.

We had been walking and talking for a while now, she gradually became more at ease and I began to think maybe I had judged her too soon. She was probably just nervous. Then she asked about my dating history; I explained I was recently out a relationship with a man and had only just discovered I liked women. She stopped dead and blurted out “you’re straight then?” At this point I honestly can’t describe to you the pure aggravation that boiled inside me. The idea that you can’t possibly be gay if you’ve never been with someone of the same sex is ridiculous. No one applies the same theory to being straight, thereby reinforcing the idea that “straight” is the default. Now I’m generally a pretty reasonable person but if you push the right buttons you will be met with a whole lot of attitude. I looked her up and down and told her if she had an issue with it then I was happy to end the date. She was a bit taken aback and quickly apologised, once again stating it was “just a joke”. At this point I started to feel a sense of familiarity. There was this feeling in my stomach that made me recognise her behaviour as negative. I suddenly saw it for what it was; gaslighting. Every time I got offended or annoyed she would pass it off as a joke and make it seem as if I was being unreasonable, she was gaslighting me. At this point all I could think about was ending the date.

I think she sensed that it wasn’t going well and decided to go for the sob story tactic. She described how no one ever stuck around in her life. She had a terrible time in school where she was badly bullied, her only school friends were teachers and she’d spend lunches with the library assistant. Then she left school and went to university, full of hope of making new friends but the same occurred and she felt ostracised from the class, her flat mates hated her, the LGBTQ group she joined didn’t like her (she had no evidence of this, apparently she could just sense it), then she started a new job and made a few friends there. I thought well that’s nice, it must be horrible to go through life thinking everyone hates you. But no, that fell apart too, they stopped talking to her for “no reason at all”. I heavily suspect there was a reason, most likely her bad attitude and general rudeness. By now any pity or sympathy I previously felt vanished. I refuse to believe that everywhere you go in life, everyone just instinctively dislikes you. Eventually you have to look at the common denominator (look at me using maths in real life) and think to yourself “hmm maybe I’m the problem and should work on myself”.

The date had not felt one bit like a date, it was more like when your parents force you to spend time with that one miserable relative that no one ever wants to be around. I couldn’t wait for it to end. We returned to the start point and were saying our goodbyes, she was lingering awkwardly and I could tell she wanted a kiss or at least a hug goodbye. In my wisdom, I decided the best course of action was just to yell “TWO METRES!” laugh hysterically about the threat of catching covid, give her an awkward wave and then walk away with my now soggy bag of crisps in tow.

So there you have it, my first date with a girl. So what do you think? Would you have ignored the red flags and went on the date? Do you think I was too harsh in my opinion of her? Or would you have been like me and thought, get me the hell out of here!