Friday 10 August 2007

Expectations

At a comedy club last night I finally realised what it is that bothers me about talking to members of the opposite sex in an alcohol-fuelled atmosphere: expectation.

It's been said that I am quite a friendly person, will chat to anybody, and that I have a decent enough, vaguely witty personality. As a result I often find myself talking to the same man all night, in much the same way I talk to women I meet out and about.

To me, talking is all it comes down to. A verbal spar, an exchange of anecdotes and witticisms. To the men, five minutes of exchanging pleasantries whilst waiting for the barman to finally get around to serving me my gin & tonic seems to be a signal that I will be spending the night around their seedy, dirty flat, exchanging bodily fluids in an acrobatic feat of wonder.

It happened to me again last night. One simple question about whether the doors were open upstairs led to a quite sweet, but incredibly hopeless older man spending the entire night glued to my side and assaulting my ears. I say sweet, but he did have the audacity to turn to me and ask whether I was planning on inviting him back to mine for coffee. To fall back on an old cliche, I was speechless. I must have managed to mumble something about getting up for work early before promptly leaving. He didn't seem too upset I'd refused (I can only assume he uses that line often, and that it works for him sometimes?), promising instead to call me today. Thank god for caller ID.

It's a situation I quite often find myself in. I slowly realise that what I am taking as a decent, one-off conversation, is actually forming the basis for a possible relationship (of sorts) for my partner in conversation. Then the panic sets in and I realise I have to extricate myself without hurting or offending (I am actually a nice person - a potential character flaw in such instances).

The idea of differing expectations came up in theladiesloos the other day, with somebody questioning whether allowing a man to buy you dinner is tantamount to declaring you'd like to jump him there and then. I'm of the opinion that yes, yes it is. Nobody gives anything without the expectation that they'll receive something in return. I hate, hate, hate the idea that in some warped way, a £30 dinner has potentially committed me to a night in this man's bed.

In fact, I'm so incredibly anal about such things that more often than not, even if I do want to jump the gentleman's bones, I'll still pay for my own dinner. I've only ever let one man pay for dinner for me - J, my very good, very complicated, married friend. Even then that sense of dread overcame me as he batted my credit card away with his when the bill was presented.

And so it begins to make sense why I prefer my own, sordid company.

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