Memory Lane II
Part deux
Sorry for the delay on part two of the series (but not that sorry, because I was getting shitfaced on a beach in Tunisia). Why didn’t you write it before you went on holiday, I hear you ask? Good question. Answer: because I caught (contracted? Manifested? Am being punished for a past sin by?) shingles.
If you’re not familiar with shingles (and I don’t recommend you google it if you ever want to sleep again), it basically consists of getting little bitchy blisters all over one side of your stomach, accompanied by pain that feels like two people are punching you from the back and the front. Later symptoms include all the lymph nodes on one side of your body swelling up, so you get this ridge of lumps down your side, like a little stegosaurus. In the immortal words of Miranda Hobbes:
So what better time to dive back in to my dating app exploits?
Bliam
Not to be confused with the Bliam of part one, this Bliam is Glaswegian and I met him at the end of my year in Edinburgh. On our first date we got wine from a pop-up bar next to a graveyard and he ran off to drink his among the tombs, despite the bar staff’s entreaties not to. Unwilling to break this reasonable rule, I enjoyed my wine alone at the bar until he came back, begrudgingly.
Highlight: he had a stress ball shaped like a brain (because neuroscientist) that we would occasionally play catch with in his room.
Lowlight: after we ended things he wrote me a letter about how he was in love with me and then got hit by a car on his way to post it. In the second version of the letter (redrafted to include the account of the accident) he said the paramedics told him the cushioning of the letter in his bag was what prevented his liver from exploding on impact. Must have been a long letter.*
*Obviously, he’s fine and was uninjured. Even I wouldn’t make a joke out of it if he had been hurt. At least not without his permission.
Blalex
After two dating-app-less years on my return to London (I must have been otherwise occupied. Working, or something), I re-entered the dating scene in a blaze of glory in New York, with Blalex. We went on two dates, the second of which was to see Ad Astra at the movies, which is a very, very, very, very, very, very long film about space and Brad Pitt’s daddy issues.
Highlight: he’s the only other person I’ve ever met who has food anxiety (although his was because if he ate a peanut he would die instantly, rather than being baselessly afraid of vomiting) which was validating.
Lowlight: at the end of our first date, unaccustomed to normal human rituals of saying goodbye, instead of leaning in for a kiss I gave him a fist bump and slapped his ass.
Blake
Blake was the last guy I dated in New York before I went on hiatus because I hated dating in New York so much (a hiatus that was rudely interrupted by the pandemic and its subsequent boredom) which should tell you everything you need to know about him. I had stopped telling my friends the names of my various conquests by this point in the interests of not having them ask after someone who had ghosted me by name, so Blake went by several other monikers: Thigh Tattoo, Gothamist and Thursday Guy, to name but a few.
Highlight: he became briefly Twitter famous after getting in fights with cops at BLM protests in June 2020.
Lowlight: literally everything else.
Blandy
Due to the aforementioned pandemic boredom, I jumped back on Hinge after a measly three week break and right into the metaphorical arms of Blandy, who unfortunately turned out to live precisely three blocks from my apartment, in a building that in my former life I had walked by every morning on the way to the subway. Back when the CDC was banning absolutely any form of human contact, we couldn’t meet in person, so we went up to our respective rooftops and blinked flashlights at each other to see if we could see them from our buildings. We could. It was cute.
Highlight: once we did eventually meet in person, the subsequent sex-filled evenings (tHeRe WaS nOtHiNg To Do) killed the first few months of the pandemic.
Lowlight: we went on a bike ride once and had to stop to get his puncture fixed. The guy in the bike shop asked him if it was a fixed gear bike which he said yes to because he was scared of looking like an idiot for not knowing what a fixed gear bike was. It was not a fixed gear bike. Idiot.
Blomas
Blomas has been well-documented in this newsletter, although not by name (not that Blomas is his actual name), so I won’t rehash our particular tragedy here. In summary:
Highlight: love of my life.
Lowlight: technically still married to him. Lol.
There were, of course, others, but I either can’t remember enough about them to make a joke (see: boring guy watched football behind his head) or they happened since I started this newsletter so they have already been documented (see: the man who couldn’t tell truth from fiction and the jackhammer), so I’ll leave us on this happy Blomas-themed note. I hope this miniseries served to make you feel better about your own life, if nothing else. If you have a partner, hug them extra tight today. Or you too could end up with a Bloyfriend.
One good thing:
I bought an expensive handmade Tunisian rug on holiday whose main purpose will be to remind me that I cannot afford it and that I need to learn to live within my means. It’s pretty though.
One bad thing:
The Tesco in my new neighbourhood doesn’t sell feta. As in it’s not like it’s run out of feta, they don’t stock it at all. I’m pretty sure this is not legal, but I’m also pretty sure I only think that because I’m unbearably middle class.
No con-texts
On astrology:
