John and Natalia met online.
Well ... perhaps 'met' is the wrong word. Natalia sent John a WINK on a dating site. When John responded, Natalia immediately replied with a request that they meet in person, which led to a dinner date at a popular hotel restaurant in the city where Natalia lived.
John came up by train and arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes early. He was shown to a table-for-two by the window and he took a small beer while he waited, enjoying the moment of anticipation. This was the seventh date he was on since joining the dating site some months ago, but he felt optimistic about Natalia for several reasons:
(i) Her three photographs showed a slim, dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties who was feminine without the
'And I Love Me So'
vibe of many attractive women's profiles.
(ii) There was no bullet-list of requirements.
(iii) She had made first contact.
For John, this last was the most important. He had been the initiator of his six previous dates, and it had never worked out. John was a red-haired man in his mid-forties, divorced with two adolescent boys he saw every other weekend, and he learned early on that sending WINKs and messages to younger, good-looking women was a waste of time. Instead, he focused his efforts on women roughly his own age and level of attractiveness, assuming they would approach the dating process with his own pragmatism.
They never did.
When John met the women, he could see in their eyes that they wanted to be treated as though they were gorgeous. And when he played along -- acting as though they were retired movie stars rather than okay-looking females -- they smiled and laughed and wanted to see him again. He'd go home thinking, 'How can intelligent women be this dumb?' The following day, he would send the woman a short email telling her he'd had 'a nice time', while omitting the suggestion of a second date. This gave the woman the chance to politely reject him without having been 'officially' rejected herself. After all, they were all intelligent women. They got the message.
Natalia was fifteen minutes late. John had finished his beer and was wondering whether to order another, when he saw her arrive at the desk of the maître d'. His instant reaction was disappointment.
Natalia was small with big hair -- long black hair pumped up by back-combing and hairspray. When the maître d' took off her long coat, John saw a black outfit—dress, stockings, high heels—which was supposed to look sexy, but instead made her look fragile. A man has to be careful with fragile women and John felt a wave of tiredness at the prospect of the evening ahead. Still, he shook it off as his date was being led towards him. John got to his feet and gave the approaching lady his warmest smile.
Natalia was flustered as she shook John's hand. She apologised for being late, then apologised for her Slavic-accented English, and finally apologised for apologising so much. John smiled as he assured her and reassured her that everything was fine. The waitress brought them menus and took their order for two glasses of white wine. Natalia noticed the empty beer glass as the waitress plucked it off the table and told John she would be okay if he wanted to change his mind. John said he was fine with wine, and Natalia apologised for bringing it up. Then she groaned and shook her head.
'I'm sorry,' she said as she looked at the menu. 'I'm not usually this nervous.'
'Well...' said John, and he was about to say: I'll take that as a compliment. But, in his head, it sounded smarmy and he paused to think of something else.
'Well, what?' said Natalia.
'I don't know,' said John.
'Or perhaps you do know, and you don't want to say?'
John looked at her. Within the mass of black hair and blacker mascara were two bright, dark eyes which gazed directly at him. No nervousness this time.
John smiled. He raised his wine glass to her.
'Correct,' he said. 'Two points to you.'
Natalia laughed. She pushed her hair away from her face so she could take a drink of her own wine. She looked back at John.
'So, what was it you didn't want to say?' she said.
John paused. He leaned on the table and looked the woman in the eye.
'When you said you weren't usually nervous,' he said, 'I was going to say,
"I'll take that as a compliment"
. You know, as though my devastating handsomeness was the cause of your being nervous. But then it occurred to me that you might be nervous for a hundred other reasons, so I changed my mind.'
'But you meant it as a joke, yes?' said Natalia.
'Yes, I suppose,' said John. 'But jokes are meant to be funny.'
'True.'
'And making jokes while you were nervous also struck me as a bad idea.'
'Possibly true.'
'Although, I have to say...' said John, swirling his glass. 'You seem okay now.'
'It helps that I'm sitting across from an intelligent man,' said Natalia.
'Thanks for the compliment.'
'It's not a compliment. It's a fact.' She paused. 'And you strike me as a man who already knows that, but you don't want to appear arrogant.'
Natalia took a slow sip of wine, her gaze never leaving the man before her. John looked back at her, frowned, and looked down. Below the table, a full-sized erection had appeared out of nowhere, and John tried to focus his attention on the opened menu.
