So, a few weeks ago I went on a night out with some friends and, once in the club, we all lost each other and I ended up walking home alone (while, I found out the next day, L was kissing an Australian who looked like Derren Brown). On the way home I got talking to a boy, we’ll call him Ben. We were walking in the same direction, he asked me for the time, conversation ensued…
It soon transpired that Ben lived in the building next to me and so he walked me right to my door, we said goodbye and that was that… or so I thought.
A couple of days later I came downstairs to find a note had been pushed under the door to my building. “To the girl I walked home with on Saturday night…” it said. And there was a phone number. All my friends thought this was the most romantic thing in the world (ok, it is quite sweet, but do you not think it’s also a tiny bit creepy?) and they persuaded me to text him, if only so I didn’t “ruin him for other girls” by making him too disillusioned to ever do anything romantic again.
I wasn’t especially against texting him but I also wasn’t especially excited. I hadn’t been exactly sober the night we met and I really couldn’t remember a lot about him. Tricky. But, eventually, I gave in and texted him. Predicatably, he asked me if I wanted to go for a drink. And (partly because I had, obviously, had some wine to give me the courage to text him in the first place) I agreed. A date was set. All fine. As one friend said, I could just let him buy me some drinks and, if it didn’t work out, I could move house.
But then he started to get a little bit weird. It’s not that he said anything particularly odd but the sheer volume of texts he sent was overwhelming (16 texts one evening while I trying to watch a film, 5 the next day before 10am… it didn’t matter whether I replied or not, they just kept on coming). I started to freak out a little. Already I was feeling smothered and we hadn’t even been on a date! It all got a bit much. And when L asked if I wanted to go to Ikea the night of the date (not knowing it was the night of the date) I decided that yes, I did. I really did.
And so I cancelled the date.
The end.
But it wasn’t. Because last night I went out and, once again, ended up walking home alone (this time because the friends I was with lived in the opposite direction). During the walk I got chatting to a guy. And only when he told me his name, and I told him mine, did I realise it was the same guy. We had totally failed to recognise each other. It was one of the more bizarre moments of my life. In a flustered kind of way I apologised for cancelling the date. I even told him the truth – that he had freaked me out with his incessant texting! He took it quite well.
We got to my door and he kissed me. After I was safely back in my flat he sent me a text (of course) saying that, as he texted too much, he would leave it up to me to get in touch if I wanted to meet for a drink.
So now I’m back where I was two weeks ago. And I don’t really know what to do. Because, once again, I was not exactly sober and don’t really remember a lot about him. Bugger.
Maybe I’ll just wait until the next time we bump into each other in the street in the middle of the night…
- Caroline
