One night stand - forever

WARNING - OBSCENE LANGUAGE

“FUCK!” “FUCK!” “FUCK IT!”

From behind the chair the expletives continued to flow from the unseen owner of the obscene vocabulary. The huge auditorium echoed, vibrated, and increased the volume, as the obscenities bounced off the walls, the ceiling, and then crashed down upon the marble floor. The young man and woman on a first date, were struggling to ignore the words, like kindergarten children pretending not to understand adult language, and then repeating it later to kinder listening ears, in the more comfortable and understanding presence of a parent. They were both trying hard to hide their shared embarrassment, ignoring the verbal intrusion of the coarse expletives on their first date.

A first date, an introduction to each other, trying to introduce the best version of themselves was being continuously sabotaged by the blasts of expletives coming from behind the chair. In the end they both gave up and moved to a safer distance. The avoidance maneuver didn’t go unnoticed to the onlooking hotel staff, hovering around waiting for orders.

Now looking back through a borescope, into the voluminous depths of time, it was a significant moment in our relationship. It was certainly a memorable first date, that didn’t go according to plan, nonetheless, it had unplanned, bizarre and comedic moments that lightened the tense mood, and created an early bond, between the young man and woman, a shared poignant memory. One of those memories for both, never forgotten, and although embarrassing at the time, afterwards, later in their shared life together, could always be looked back at in hindsight with a burst of laughter, with shared fondness and treasured memories.

It was a game changing moment for so many reasons.

The location of this vivid, memorable event was the Hilton Hotel, Bridgetown, Barbados. A glamorous venue for a first date, the perfect stage for a romantic evening.

It was a momentous evening for this young man, an earlier and inexperienced version of myself. Looking back, it feels like a father with cherished memories of a son, trying to recollect with empathic feelings the earlier version of oneself. On his first date, with a woman I would later share many happy moments, in years of my life yet to come, completely unaware at the time. I was so eager and enthusiastic to invite the girl I saw on the beach, a girl that I had seen sunbathing and swimming with her friend and infuriatingly, always surrounded by local men. During this time in my young life, I had a low esteem of myself. I always assumed that others were always better than I. I suffered from a huge lack of confidence and when it came to engaging with the opposite sex, it felt unnatural, awkward. It was a huge achievement on my part just to go over and introduce myself, and initiate a conversation, to invite the friendly looking, petite, dark olive-skinned girl, my desiree - to dinner. I was still in shock, cringing with embarrassment over my fumbling invitation, and my unconfident proposal earlier in the day, but she had accepted willingly, and with a beaming smile. She looked so beautiful when she smiled.

The earlier version of myself was completely inexperienced with girls. This inexperience wrangled even more when my friends started to pair off with steady girlfriends, and I had to act as the gooseberry, and the tag along, unwanted, in a crowd of three. I was eager to make acquaintances, but at the same time, I was shy, and unworldly. I had all the good intentions, but it always seemed unnatural to engage with a girl, I felt nervous, tense in a pressured situation, as I stumbled over the right words to look impressive. The term chatting-up was never my strength. Now the older wise version knows that this younger ambitious one wanting to be the smart, witty talker, was a misplaced ideal. No one wants to hear or converse with a self-important egotistical, emptied headed oaf. If I had known back then that my humbleness, my sincerity, together with my genuine enthusiasm, speaking from the heart, far outshone any witty remarks. Together with an awareness and eagerness to know more about the other person was more important than being seen as cool as a cucumber and twice as witty and clever. Like the celebrities, one sees on these endless game shows of no purpose, trying to be the best of the bunch, the funniest with the witty answers, which ignite the audience’s canned laughter in the studio. It might well be suited for a TV show, with its superficial appeal for the purpose of entertainment, but it was far from ideal in an intimate one-on-one conversation, with the purpose of getting to know each other on a first date.

There is one factor that differentiates the young stag from an old ageing bull, it’s the emphasis on success or failure, without any middle ground. Being a young stag, the hormones create a potent cocktail, an aphrodisiac love potion. Love potions that focus the body and mind in a binary process and miss the enjoyment of the occasion, the ride not the destination, without the pressure that there must be a successful outcome. The stag’s misguided thinking is purely focused - she must like me; she must want to kiss me or even want to go further. Anything else is failure, like unforced errors in a game of tennis.

Susan was different. She was different in so many interesting ways, as I now reflect on the days of the future past. The journey to get to meet Susan in an exotic location and invite her on the first date happened so many years prior and took so many previous choices to arrive at this milestone. It was determined many years before I met her on a beautiful sandy beach in Barbados. It’s the choices or the feeling that previous experiences were leading to dead-ends, schoolboy friendships that were not going to last with time. It was breaking out of a prescribed pathway set-up by circumstances, living in the suburbs of London, the lack of expectations from a secondary modern education, parents without a clear vision, other than wanting the best for their children, without taking too many risks. It was me, the shy one, the timid one that wanted more. It was surprising, because I only felt something wasn’t right, I never had a clear vision of what was right, never. It was nebulous, it felt exciting to think about, daydreaming of these vague ambitions, and it was spelt with an A for adventure. With places and destinations only seen on global maps. Listening to other people who had experiences, or knew someone that had experiences, these conversations forged a direction and then later a focused ambition which had laid dormant, without nourishment, in those wasted years, and gradually like stepping stones across a river, a pathway was realized.

Susan was the torch bearer. She was two years older than I. She was around 22 years old when I met her, but she had already led an interesting life, she took risks, she had flown the nest, although she was currently temporarily living with her parents. Now on her return, the roles had reversed, and she was no longer treated as a child – more like a temporary guest. I found out later that her parents were unhappy, ready to split up, and it was only her return to the family house, as the only daughter became the peacemaker, she became a comforting ambassador in her parents’ strained relationship.

On leaving school, she wasn’t academic in the slightest, she started to travel and found a job as a nanny- cum-au pair to help with the children of a family in the south of France. The experience of living abroad, away from the parental nest, gave her tremendous confidence, and most importantly – independence. It was this time in France that was the making of Susan, as she told her story with pride, I could imagine this young pretty girl, with her dark olive skin, riding around on her biciclette, a small motorized scooter, struggling with her French language, which she gradually gained control, and learning how to ski in the French Alps, in a location that one could ski in the morning, and swim around the Côte d'Azur" in the afternoon. Susan was an inspiration, and when I met her in Barbados, she was now working for BOAC, the intercontinental airline prior to the merger into British Airways.

Listening to the broad strokes of her young life so far, there were similarities. I don’t believe her parents thought she would amount to something, but she had, and she had surprised them. Susan had a solid relationship with her father, not so much with her mother. It was that daughter – father relationship which underlined a lot of positives when it came to meeting men. She was an only girl, but she was not spoiled, in fact, the reverse, her mother was strict with her upbringing, and her father was sensible.

It was this commonsensical upbringing that came to the fore on that first date, as the voice behind the chair continued with his barrage of expletives. The evening hadn’t gone as planned from the moment they both entered the hotel reception. Their plans were scuttled as the main restaurant which had been recommended was closed for a private function. Susan as ever was a gentle lady, and she didn’t show any negative signs of anger or regret at the announcement, and she gracefully accepted instead the recommended alternative to sit in the vast auditorium, with cocktails and snacks. First dates can affect the throat and stomach muscles, as stress and tension constrict a normally relaxed constitution and appetite, the more relaxed alternative was a hidden blessing.

If only the restaurant doors had remained closed for the benefit of the function, but unfortunately the doors leaked, gushed out when the continuous opening and closing of doors, the rowdy noise erupted and cascaded out into the quiet auditorium. Often drunken exhibits from the function started to stagger, slithered out as the rowdy event expanded its unruliness outside the walls of the function room by the minute. The swinging doors surrendered, and remained open, as the raucous function party, fueled by alcohol, spread like wildfire and invaded the quiet reception area, the auditorium. The man hidden slouching behind the chair with his language banned from hell, was an extension of the rowdiness. He and his misplaced coarse language. He was part of an irritating human spillage that originated from the noisy event, the function room which had closed the restaurant for a night of unruly frivolity.

Someone from the hotel came across to find out why the man was cursing and swearing and not joining the rest of the drunkenness and rowdiness in the furor of the noisy, rowdy function room. The man was quiet for a moment, you could count the minutes as his addled stewed brain contemplating first the question, trying to find the owner of the question through blurry eyes and then to comprehend and make sense of the words through his blurred and distorted thinking process. Whatever the answer, it came minutes later after the hotel man had disappeared, in slurred words that were incoherent gibberish. Nonetheless, after the gibberish ended, the repeat venting of expletives; FUCK, FUCK, FUCK IT!, which was uttered loud and clear, and shrill as a ship’s whistle.

I remember that the explanation given by other party goers, or members of the hotel staff, was that the function was for the sales guys, the distributors of FORD Motor company, or CHRYSLER, for the people who gained the top sales performers for the year. The slouching man with the language banned in hell, was from Chicago, and Susan and I were told he had imbibed too much of the devil’s brew, Johnnie Walker. I’m not sure it was our mock shock and surprise at that news, but the person or person’s trying to explain or excuse Chicago’s top salesmen, must have thought Susan and I looked like we missed the last boat, in our angelic innocent response to the news.

It was a first date to remember, my first date with Susan.

I enjoyed her easy company instantly. She inspired me with her life story. She had a lovely smile, but it was her gentleness, her grace, I felt at ease in her company. We laughed together about the man from Chicago, and his continued torrent of cursing. We never managed to talk to him, he was oblivious to the world that night, at the bottom of his bottle. He was the type that would wake up in the morning and not remember a thing. He took the edge off the tense first date meeting, by diverting our nervous tension from those awkward pauses, instead it did give me time to compose myself and think, rather than blurt out stupid words to fill in those awkward pauses. In the end the situation was something to look back on and it created an early bond between Susan and me. I’m thankful for that.

I discovered my soulmate that night, she became the first girl in my life that I fell in love with, and will always thank her for being there, the right girl, at the right time in my life.

RIP Susan.