Second Date (new guy)

Last night I went on my second grindr date. 

Profile pics can be very misleading. I wasn't disappointed or anything, merely had a moment of lag at said-gentleman's door opening onto someone ten to fifteen years the senior of what I'd been expecting, in hindsight inexplicably. I hadn't gathered as much information as I'd thought, I'd made an assumption from a profile pic (fuckin rookie) and obstinately went with that. I've gathered it's totally etiquette to request not just one but a series of pics from a person, and people are generous enough in mutual avoidance of a 'god not another uggo' moment when you do meet, at which point I'd imagine you either go through with the date (hook up), excuse yourself lamely with a faked emergency, or be brutally honest (maybe even state the instance of false advertising in moral outrage before suggesting a revised diet and exercise plan). 

He was wearing too much cologne. It smelt good from a distance but at close range I could taste it on the air all metallic and off-putting. I thought later he went overboard with the grooming out of nervousness. David Foster Wallace says hygiene anxiety is social anxiety (through an equally meditative character in his first book The Broom of the System, I rate).

I feel less comfortable writing this one up. Something about this guy made me feel all maternally concerned; not a swoon, more a dull kind-of-annoying ache, maybe because he seemed sad. Or maybe it was the initial mood being awkward I then misread as sad, because his flat was the opposite of sad, it gleamed modern and bright with tasteful art stuff and overstuffed bookshelves. Maybe I think no one's as happy with themselves as I am, which is fucking ludicrous.

Anyway he was not my standard-issue guy. Grindr had engineered an otherwise highly improbable meeting, and I made a quick-fire decision to go with it (all adventurous girls do!).

What resulted was some comparatively tender fucking, by the previous date's standards anyway. A new body in all it's willing vulnerability is just delicious. I can't think of anything I like more, but this from a twenty-three year old gay guy with an oral fixation. Maybe next year I'll be off sex and my thing'll be horses, or botany. 

Later, I had coffee and he had Coke Zero on his porch and it was freezing at like four in the morning and I had, as always, too many cigarettes. I know they in fact elevate heart rate but something about them takes the edge off certain situations, if not bodily soothing then spiritually. I caught a cab home because he had work in the morning and, as I'd gauged, he was comfortable with the idea of me staying over which bothered me for some reason. 

Am I missing anything? The conversation was pretty awesome, and there was as much of that as there was fucking. We talked meditation, mindfulness, the psychic detriments of being too future-oriented, the flimsy ideals of youth and life's frequently surprising dismantlement of these. 

Back to his cologne. There was definitely too much and the taste gave me headaches. It made me wonder what I taste like and whether its pleasing to strangers, like hints of something that take said-stranger to a nicer place than 'I don't wanna know where the fuck you've been'. I reckon my skin'd be a blend of coffee, truffle oil, Nutella and cigarettes. Lovely.