Here's Looking at You Read Free

said.
    He’s actually Polly?!
‘Sorry?’ Anna leaned in sharply against the noise, fork in mid-air.
    ‘As in polyamorous. Multiple partners who all know about each other,’ he added.
    ‘Ah yes. I see!’
    ‘Is that a problem?’
    ‘Of course not!’ Anna said, perhaps too enthusiastically, fussing with what was left on her plate, thinking:
I don’t know.
    ‘I don’t believe monogamy is our natural state but I realise that’s what a lot of people are looking for. I’m willing to give it a try for the right person though,’ he smiled.
    ‘Ah.’ Good of you.
    ‘And perhaps I should say that I’m into mild sub and dom. All hetero, but I’m not vanilla.’
    Anna gave a grimace-smile and debated whether to say: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak kink.’
    What was she supposed to do with this information? Blind dating fast-tracked the personal stuff, that was for sure.
    ‘I mean, I’m not that
out there
in the scene,’ Neil continued. ‘I’ve tried figging. But we’re not in the realms of the Shaved Gorilla though, hahaha.’
    He was invoking shaving and animals in the boudoir. And figs, if that was what figging involved. Anna wasn’t disappointed anymore. Disappointment was a motorway junction ago. She was passing through into severe bewilderment and at this rate she was likely to take the next exit into a Welcome Break.
    ‘You?’ Neil said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Anything your “thing”?’
    Anna opened her mouth to reply and faltered. She’d usually go with ‘none of your business’, but they were on a date and it putatively was his business. ‘Uh … uhm. Usual sex.’
    ‘Usual sex.’ Oh God. She was underprepared and over-refreshed. This was like that temp job in a cinema one summer where, during the fun selection process, she’d been asked: ‘If your personality was a sandwich filling, which would it be?’ She got brain-blankness and said: ‘Cheese.’ ‘Just cheese?’ ‘Just cheese.’ ‘Because …?’ ‘It’s normal.’ Normal cheese and usual sex. She shouldn’t even be on the internet.
    Neil surveyed her over the rim of his water glass.
    ‘Oh. OK. From your profile I thought you presented as heteronormative but might be genderqueer, for some reason.’
    Anna didn’t want to admit she didn’t know what the key parts of that sentence meant.
    ‘Sorry if this is quite confronting,’ Neil continued. ‘I’m a big believer in honesty. I think most relationships fail because of lying and hypocrisy and pretending to be something you’re not. Much better to say This Is Who I Am and be completely open than for you to say on our fourth date, woah.’ Neil held his hands up and beamed reassuringly, ‘You like piss play?’
    So ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to charge your glasses and raise a toast to the happy couple, Neil and Anna. And to the blushing bride, bottoms-up. You’ll want a full bladder for later.
(Applause.)

2
    ‘Right, I’ve got Inspector Google on this Shaved Gorilla bullshit,’ Michelle said, squinting at her iPhone screen, Marlboro Light aloft in the other hand, smoke curling upwards in the empty dining room.
    Anna couldn’t have coped with so many bad dates without the prospect of her friends to flee to at the end of the evening. Fortunately they worked hours that made them ideally suited to nightcaps rather than nights out.
    Michelle’s ‘traditional British cooking with a twist’ was served at The Pantry, just off Upper Street in Islington. It was Grade II listed, with antique chandeliers, potted palms and buttercream wooden panelling. The kind of place where you have wartime affairs with men called Freddy in BBC dramas, and use phrases like ‘it was a horrid business’.
    Daniel, Michelle’s long-standing front of house, was one of those semi-famous maître d’s who got mentioned in
Time Out
for being a ‘character’. The word character could be a euphemism for ‘tiresome git’, but Daniel had genuine charm and authentic eccentricity.
    It was partly