Last Monday, I went on a date. I told you guys all about my hopes and expectations, fears and possible outcomes (don’t you just love creative writing: I just wrote about how I hoped he wouldn’t think I was a complete twat, ‘hopes and expectations’, L O fucking L). Let me relate to you the story called Laurien’s first date in over a year. Spoiler alert: I haven’t eloped to go and marry in Vegas.

I met my guy on Bumble two weeks ago. We had a nice, funny conversation and no pictures of whatsoever body part were exchanged. He asked me to meet up with him in a bar where he was hanging out with his friends. Obviously, I said no. My friends already had plans and I was not going to go meet the fam on the first date. He asked me out again and I had to cancel on him for the second time. I was legit surprised he still wanted to see me after all that cancelling. We finally met up at Newtown on Monday and the sight of him didn’t immediately make me want to cry. You always see people in photos of course, but Photoshop is a very powerful tool. He was pretty cute and I was glad Brave Me had convinced Chicken Shit Me to not cancel again.

He took me for a walk through Newtown to a very cool, hipstery bar. It wasn’t hard to talk to this guy – he was actually smart? I had lost faith that still existed – but I sometimes felt I wasn’t good enough for him. He was a sort of banker dude, went to private school and played football with accountants and dentists whereas I’m just a small-town farm girl who used to drive an ice cream truck. It’s not fair and very unnecessary that I would sell myself short like this; after all, I’m a 22-year old who speaks three (and a half) languages, who’s got a Master’s degree in her pocket and who is ambitious and courageous enough to move continents to pursue her dream career. However, when I said I thought the Kardashians were kind of cool and that I admired their business skills, he said to me he felt like I was a girl who would watch KUWTK. What does that even mean? Following Kylie Jenner on Instagram does not diminish the fact that I also read Dickens and wrote a dissertation on Stendhal. Thanks, but no thanks for the condescending attitude. I got enough of that myself.

Still, the conversation kept flowing and I was having a great time – until suddenly, he takes his phone to go to the bathroom. I get that, you want to let your mates know your date is going well/poorly and that she is hot/not. Meanwhile, I thought it’d only be nice if I bought us a new round of drinks. Two guys who were sitting at the bar immediately started talking to me, laughing and flirting and I thought that was a great sign as to how I was looking. He came back, we finished our drinks and he asked me if I wanted to walk some more. I thought he was going to take me somewhere else, until all of a sudden we found ourselves standing in front of the train station and he just said: ‘Well, this is me’. In my head I was like hmmm, this is me too, since I came here with the train as well, remember??? I’ve got to hand it to him though, this is probably the smoothest way somebody has ever finished a date. He could have at least made up some excuse – my personal favourite is ‘Sorry, I have to go water my plants.’

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Friends (you better), but if you do, you know Chandler Bing cannot walk away from a date without saying he’ll call. My guy said: ‘I’ll be in touch’, the banker that he is. I got on the train thinking bye dude, you ain’t gonna be in touch. I was right. Writing this post, I just found out I was even more right: he unmatched me on Bumble. That’s a bit harsh (though hilarious, are you fucking serious?) and in a way too grossly efficient. Are you cleaning out your database of dateable girls and did you just remove me from it? Thank god my database of dateable guys is still nicely filled.

I’ll be in touch.