From: Polly
To: looby
25th August, 23:06
Yes I'd like to meet u asap. Worse case we mght not fancy each other! Can u make this Wed in manc? I have an appt in Leeds which finishes at 4pm. Or how about Ilkley?
We met in the best pub in Ilkley. She was skinny, pretty, four years younger than me; her hair, somewhere between light brown and dark blonde, was dissolutely arranged around her face. She is into partying and all that entails. A thin square-necked printed dress to just above her knee, jeans, and trainers. My intuition, after a few minutes' chat, is that I'm too old in my mind for her, too thinking.
We walked along and she talked about the damage done by the imported shrubs that feature just below the old bridge at Ilkley; they did smell unpleasant. My boss at work rang, and I talked in front of her for a couple of minutes about the problems with the fax machine and the move to the new premises, pleased to be normal.
To my relief she soon suggested turning back to the pub. I was glad she didn't suggest pressing on to Owler Park and down to the golf club. I enjoy country walks which extend across the curlew-encircled plain of the car park and into the pub.
I didn't plan on eating anything, but she suggested we did and to split the bill 50/50. Yes, but I might not have 50. The food was first class, some of the best pub food I've had for a long time. I had scallops (the shellfish, not the fried potatoes which is what I immediately think "scallops" are), which came dressed in a sort of thick ratatouille-ish sauce and a parmesan crumb crust. Our waiter looked like he'd just got back from spending Daddy's money on a grammar school skiing trip to Switzerland. He remembered what we were drinking--bumping up the bill.
She put her hands on the table. "Right," she said, "hands on the table time. Yes, my hands are on the table! Erm...I don't feel any sexual attraction to you and..." I drifted, the age-old experience of watching oneself from a distance whilst having to delegate motor functions to a less impaired region of the brain. I wanted, more than anything at that moment, to keep control of myself. I sat there on automatic, nodding understandingly, hearing nothing except the commands from my other-self. "Be like Stephen in The Mill On The Floss. You must do that now. Do it, now! Go back to her, and behave like Stephen!"
Obviously that's the Stephen when he's suffocating any signs of his passion for Maggie in the drawing room in front of his fiancée Lucy, not the wild Stephen who recklessly rows her too far down the river after his shocking kisses on her arm.
I turned back to manual control and we managed a good coda. I told her that it's good that one can be this honest ab initio nowadays and told her how much I liked her hair. We stood up and did a neutral, desexualised kiss, and she went off to the station to get the train back to Leeds.
From: looby
To: Polly
27th August, 23:16
Thanks for a nice night Polly even if it didn't end up where I think we were both hoping. I'm not really looking for any more female friends and I don't want to get into yet another friend thing where I feel like a gay confidente. But the champagne was nice! All the best
From: Polly
To: looby
27th August, 23:27
Ahh I'm sorry to too. I had hoped for a sexual connection with you. I imagine it would be v playful. And in the past I may have persisted and hoped it would develop and its likely to get messy for both of us. I'm glad I checked it out with u. I felt very seen and listened to. Even if u were only paying attention to the way my hair falls! You're interesting and lively company. U I guess we won't make pans to meet given this disparity of feeling. Do stay in touch if u want and swap stories of our love and party lives. Xx
I went to the nearest approach to a rough pub that one can find in Ilkley, the Midland Hotel, opposite the railway station, and fell in with this group of blokes who were playing what seemed a very complicated game of dominoes. They were sat in the only decent place to sit in The Midland, in the large bay window and I wasn't sure whether it was a little intrusive, but at that point, kneading my rejection, I wanted to talk with someone uninvolved in it all.
"That seems a very complicated game of dominoes," I said, and immediately I was taken under their wing with a long explanation of their game and its rules. I relaxed into my role as the naïf, the curious offcomer. "You have to watch him," one of them said. "I just put my best one down but he can remember what you've put down and work out what's in your hand. He plays in the league."
I was staying at my old Uni pal's house, but he rang to say they would be late at his father-on-law's birthday do. I asked the domino chaps where Wetherspoons is. One of them started to explain it, then tailed off, took my arm and said "No, here, here, I'll take you there," and walked me round. "Have a good night then lad." It was crap. False eyelashes, Hollister T-shirts. I wished I'd stayed in the Midland.