Blanket Dating: Date Three

Posted by Katy Regan at 09:51 on 26 Jul 2010

• Print
• Share
• Comment

In terms of my Blanket Dating experiment, I had come off rather lightly so far. Date one had talked incessantly about his ex-wife and I had so little in common with date two, that I was forced to instigate a discussion about London's bridges, but nothing had shocked me yet. It was pretty common or garden stuff – didn't fancy him, not over ex, nothing in common (it was so clear with date two - Mr Ulysses – that we had zero in common, neither of us even bothered to email or text to say 'thanks but no thanks' the next day, it was just understood..)

But anyway, my dating experiment was about to change. I was about to meet a character who would make Mr Focker in Meet the Fockers look fairly passable in terms of social acceptability. Ok, maybe that's a bit strong, this guy behaved in a socially acceptable way IF bodily functions are your thing. If, in short, you find talk of poo alluring. Which um, I do not. Funny maybe, oh yeah. Pooh  and flatulence are funny. End of. Always have been, always will be. But on a first date?  Seriously?! If you were trying to woo someone, wouldn't you do be mortified at the mere mention, the mere allusion to the idea that you ever, EVER broke wind?  Or worse, your date did too?

Not my date three. Oh no. My date three seemed to think that one's bowels were the perfect theme for over dinner conversation on a night of potential romance and passion (any chances of that were eliminated very quickly for reasons outlined in this bog, I mean blog.)

I very quickly realised, however, that I had it coming to me. I had seen the signs, friends, and I had chosen to ignore them. As I ate and he told me about his ex's colostomy bag (we'll get onto that in a sec) I mentally scanned through our email interaction so far and realised this was all my fault. The fact I was here at all was all my fault. This is where the holes started to show in my BD experiment, where it became clear that dating everyone and anyone is not always a great idea:

Still, I was here, and for that I could blame nobody else for the following reasons:
a) I was the first to bring up colostomy bags when, in my initial email that I sent out looking for a date, I had made a joke about how I had a very short checklist “he just needs to be tall and no surprise colostomy bags. Ones you know about aren't that great either.” I was laughing on the other side of my face now, wasn't?

b) He had specifically said in his first ever email that he had been out on a date with a girl who had a colostomy bag and that he nick-named her 'poo bag'. Fact. I took no notice.

c) He said he had a very puerile sense of humour. That much was clear! And yet, I didn't take that in. I jumped that bit.

d) He said he would tell me about the colostomy bag if I decided I would go on a date with him.

AND I DECIDED TO GO. SO, who else did I have to blame but myself?

Still, tell me readers, when you go to the loo on a first date, or indeed, when you go to the loo in your home which you share with your husband who you have been married to for several years, would you expect to be asked. “Number one or number two?”

Because this is what he asked me.

Then, I made the grave mistake of laughing my head off – out of shock – but he clearly took it to mean that I loved his unfortunate line in over-familiar toilet humour, that we obviously felt so comfortable together that that was ok?!!

He then started to tell me about his ex with the colostomy bag, which, I have to admit, if I hadn't been on a first date with this guy I would have found fascinating: (How did he cope? How long into the relationship did he discover this or did she tell him? Could they have sex? My Real Life Story journalist head was going mad. My loins, were not..)

He leaned across the candle-lit table: “Do you know what?” he said, eyes shining. “I heard her colostomy bag before she told me about it. (I nearly spat out my honey-glazed sausage.) You know when you've eaten a big curry” he continued (I was nodding and sort of choking and snorting with laughter at the same time now) “and your tummy starts to make that gurgling sound and your bowels start churning over?” (I was no longer laughing now, just nodding and wondering if there was anything less sexy than a man who uses the word 'tummy'. Or refers to your bowels in date one.  I was aware that my face had fallen too and that he was rubbing his 'tummy' and making a face like he'd eaten a dodgy curry for dramatic effect.)

“Well” he continued. “That was what her colostomy bag sounded like. Kind of gurgled. I touched it too. And it was warm.”

I was nearly sick into my pint glass. He was laughing and laughing.

Then he went onto a spiel about him as a baby and how his mum told him how he was very hard to wean and yet his sister – oh his sister – was a breeze (I then decided that there is only one thing less sexy than a man talking about their 'tummy' and that is one who talks about himself when he was a baby.)

I got drunker and drunker – I was actually having a lot of fun by the end since I was shit-faced and he was hilarious but just in a very, very unsexual and a very wrong way. How he thought asking me whether I had had a number one or two was ever going to get me him another date, I could not fathom, and could only draw the conclusion that he didn't like me, or he really did and had skipped dating, courtship, marriage in his head and just catapulted headlong mentally to that point in a relationship where you don't mind if one another hears you dropping off the kids and you can fart quite happily in one another's presence (I appreciate for some, this never comes and quite right too.)

But then, eventually we got to the tube and he leaned in for a snog!  So, he did like me? He was trying to impress me?! This was his way of impressing me?!  Readers, I did a terrible thing, I gave him a sympathy kiss back just so I could get the hell out of there ASAP.

His farting, sorry parting line was: “I can't wait to get back to my parents house (yes, he lived with the folks) as nobody's there so I can get in, sit down and just do a really big fart."

All the way home, and for days afterwards, I couldn't get that image out of my head. Some suburban semi, floral curtains the sound of a key in the door followed by the  reverberations as he let off, very loudly, into the darkness.

Could this have been the final straw in my search for love?

• Next entry
• Previous entry