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I just had the queerest thing happen to me. The chain of causality runs long, serpentine but taut, and sometimes arcs towards serendipity.
A long time ago, my best friend at the time had/didn't have a thing with this girl in law school. He says they were dating, she says they were just friends. I don't care either way.
After they fell out, the last conversation I had with her was her asking me how many modafinil tablets it took to get high. I cursed myself for mentioning it, and quite truthfully said she could have the entire pack if she wanted. She wouldn't get high, except from the ensuing insomnia and sleep deprivation. It's a funny drug, it'll give you euphoria the very first time you try it and never again. She'd already sampled it once and felt the rush. She wouldn't take me at my word, argued about it and called me a kill-joy, and we fell out of touch.
Fast forward half a dozen years. This was about a year back, when I'd just found out I had matched into psych in the UK, and was suitably psyched out. I was on a dating app, when I see this very familiar looking chick. Right swipe, match. Same lady, but she made it clear she wasn't looking to date but was down to hangout, and lived just down the road from me.
While slightly disappointed, I think it's entirely possible to have platonic relationships with the other sex, and we began catching up for tea and other calming substances after work. We got pretty close, which was the excuse I needed to try and beat some sense into her, or at least the desire to see a legitimate shrink ASAP. Girl had issues, and some pretty bad trauma.
Eventually, she invited me to her birthday, which was an unusual event. I'd never seen a burning joint substituting for a candle on the cake, though that makes age easier to hide I guess?
While I was pleasantly inebriated, I was taken aside by our hostess and informed that my medical talents were needed. Her best friend, who made excellent THC cup cakes, was somewhere in the overlapping region of the Venn diagram between fucking drunk, fucking high, and emotionally screwed up. She was worried, and wanted me to keep watch.
Well, I was a bit miffed at being kicked out of the life of the party, but I did my duty. Poor girl took the opportunity to vent, she had a lot on her mind, and it persisted despite everything trying to clear it. I did a pretty decent job of consoling her, and ensuring her airway wasn't at risk during the dips. (I'm very good at being there for people, the same skills transfer between drunk-sitting and dementia patients) Eventually, I was relieved, and thought no more about it.
Cue another year passing in a flash. I'd bungled an initial attempt to migrate my old WhatsApp account and number, and had given up and just made a new one. The old one languished on an even older phone. I got back home, my brother, always a tech nerd, wanted to appropriate said phone. I talked him down into just putting it on charge, after ages.
When I checked back, I saw a message form lawyer chick that had languished on a single tick for months. It sounded urgent.
I called her up, and to my surprise, the reason behind the phone call was as follows:
Her best friend, from the party, had been hanging out with a close friend of her own. Circumstances unknown prompted Best Friend to, of all things, open up my insta account or other social media, and show her my account. She said she liked me, and asked her to acquire my number.
My Lawyer Friend, well, she was a good winglady. She explained that I was working in the UK, and might have a girlfriend. She heard a quick discussion on the other end, and heard from Best Friend that this wasn't an issue. She went on to do her due diligence, and asked if the girl was pretty. Pretty pretty!
That's when she'd texted me, but had gone unread for ages. She asked me if I was single rn, and still interested? Turns out I was single, having just had a pretty amicable breakup, and fuck it, I'm on vacation with little to do.
I had very little in the way of actual aspirations here. Women are notoriously unreliable when it comes to
gaugingreporting the attractiveness of their friends or sex. If I had a dollar for every mid girl getting gassed up on Instagram, I'd own it. This was just after I went on a spirited defense of my intent to get plastic surgery done, so one can imagine my suspicions.With my assent, and instructions to hand out my number to future callers (who were cute girls) without question, I laid back and waited. Sure enough, a few hours later, I got a text from an unknown number. It was her. She went ahead and introduced herself, revealing that she had an unusual name. While initial introductions and my initiation of flirtation commenced, I began surreptitiously scoping her out on Instagram. Only fair, after what she and her buddy had done. Turns out I only knew her first name, and that narrowed it down to about 15 women.
12/15 of them were pretty, which piqued my interest. That's an insane hit rate, I began to slightly get my hopes up.
She asked me about my whereabouts. I quite truthfully explained I was only back in India for 2 weeks, of which one had mostly elapsed. This was met by an oh. And a few minutes of silence. I was entirely expecting it to be a deal breaker.
To my surprise, she went ahead with the conversation. It got pretty late, we texted past midnight, and I decided that I'd done enough of what the kids call "rizzing" and asked her out for coffee. She exclaimed at my forwardness, but said yes.
I had a long day, with a lot of traveling, but I made it back home in time to have a quick shower, and change into decent clothes. We'd planned a café in advance, and I got there bang on time.
And waited.
She texted me saying that she would be 10 minutes late. Never one to let an opportunity go, I told her that I'd let 10 minutes pass, and then assume the prettiest girl around was her and go ahead and join them.
She was twenty minutes late, rushing in, and I'm glad that I had hadn't taken that literally, because she was gorgeous.
I'd seen a few pretty women walk in, and got my hopes up each time it was her, only to be disappointed. She kicked them all to the curb.
It was a fun date. She turned out to be a lawyer, I explained that I was a very well-behaved guy who had had no run-ins with the law. We spoke, went out for a smoke, and spoke some more till the staff politely informed us that it was closing time at around 10.30 pm.
I had to ask what piqued her interest in the first place. I've had my share of luck with the ladies, a handful had slid into DMs, but this was all new. She told me that she'd had a breakup a while back, and had been disappointed with the men around. She'd vented to her best friend, and said best friend had decided to dig up my insta while exclaiming that I was a gentleman who'd been nothing but kind to her when she was in a bad place. This, plus a flattering assortment of photos, made her bite the bullet and ask for my contact details.
I was a tad bit disappointed when she told me, pretty quickly into the date, that she wasn't looking for anything serious or long-term. She wasn't a big fan of the institution of holy matrimony, but then again she's a lawyer. She looked at me expectantly for a reply, and I quite truthfully told her I'd come here with few expectations and an open mind. This was the right answer, but I had to suppress a wave of sadness. She's just my type. She's fun to talk to, when all I knew of her was just a blank profile picture and a name. She's pretty, and laid-back, and..
She told me I was handsome, and asked me if I worked out. I said I'd just restarted after ages, that shirt must have been flattering. She called me a gentleman, because I'd held doors open for her, showed up on time, and picked out a spot for our date. I told her that I was very grateful for the really low quality of the male species in these parts, because it took me just the bare minimum of courtesy to stand out. She laughed, and smiled at me in a way that made my heart ache.
I told her I was a hopeless romantic, only somewhat beaten straight by the baseball bat of life. She told me the same. She asked me when I'd be back in town again. I told her that my allotment of annual leave would refresh in August (why is it called annual if it works on a semi-annual basis?), and that I was thinking about coming back pretty soon right after. This was half a lie. I was actually planning on November or December, when my homesickness reached zenith and Scotland's human habitability reached its nadir. Looking at her, I felt like I need to be back earlier.
I'm eliding a lot of detail here, which is omitted to avoid boring you, the reader. Imagine a lot of shameless flattery, terrible puns, and debates about AI. At one point, she claimed that everyone must have heard of ElevenLabs when I'd told her I was impressed by the fact she knew of it. To prove my point, I asked the dude at the table next to me if he had, to frank confusion. 1-0. Maybe I'll write a version of this essay for myself, and posterity's sake. This will likely end in heartbreak, life has just taken us different places. Yet life is short, and there's a breeze about this summer evening.
We'd left planning a second date tomorrow. I just confirmed it. Wish me luck.
Good luck, man. Hopefully it goes well!
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