Dress down

On Friday I went out, after a fashion, with the woman I bumped into the other week. A minute after I'd sat down with a pint she texted saying that she was in a different pub, saying that it was too crowded in the one we'd agreed to meet in. I texted her. "I've just got a pint two minutes ago so I'm not wasting that :)"

She turned up ten minutes later and said "I can't sit facing the mirror". We swapped places; I started feeling like a mental health worker. We lasted about forty minutes. She didn't like the pub and said she was going. She walked out, taking her glass of wine with her then came back looking for her scarf. Everyone good-naturedly got up to have a look for it. "Someone's stolen it," she said.

She's just rang, saying that "it's a bit odd that you've got two girlfriends" and "I'm a bit traditional like that."

"Hang on," I said. "I've got only got one," as if I were trying to rescue something. In fact I was pleased that she seemed to be working up to saying goodbye. "I know I'm not very attractive, but -- not to be nasty -- you're no George Clooney are you?" "Wouldn't claim to be, love." Then she said "well, I've run out of things to say," and hung up.

Pity she's a nutter. A female lush around my age would have been a useful addition.

The women at Mel's friend's 40th do the following day were altogether different, more sparkly, both in terms of dresses and personalities.

Mel knows the birthday girl from a community garden project she's involved in, and the guests were all Community Engagement Equality and Participation Inclusion Officers, or things like that. They were off the leash, with their husbands at home looking after the children. One of them in particular, a slim girl with tousled dyed dark blonde hair, wearing a spangled black minidress that she let ride up, posed a difficulty.

The karaoke was lazily run by a man in drag who sang several songs himself, and joined in, unasked, with some other people's songs. I'd been practising my song, You're My First, My Last, My Everything, but he'd set the mic levels wrong, so I couldn't hear myself. I got a couple of pats on the back as I came off, and Miss Minidress spoke to me briefly.

"You were a bit touchy-feely with Miss Minidress," Mel said the next morning. I sank into regret: the salacious older man, tarnishing Mel by association, and trying to remember, precisely, in what way I had been touchy-feely. I remembered the harsh touch of her chemical dress, its glittered surface and its scratchy surface. So yes, I must have had my one good hand on her.

"No, don't worry. Really, it's OK, I don't think she minded. She was drunk anyway. Don't think about it." I did think about her though.