by Vivienne Pratfall on London dating, terrible taste, and one very good cocktail
Right, confession time, and I promise this is going somewhere more interesting than just me complaining about men, though obviously there will be some of that too because it is Tuesday and I have earned it.
I have, against every promise I made myself after the last one, developed a genuine, foolish, entirely predictable crush on a bartender. Not just any bartender. The specific kind of bartender who remembers your order after one visit, makes deeply unnecessary eye contact while shaking a cocktail, and has absolutely no business being that charming for someone who is, by his own admission, only doing this job “for now,” a phrase that has apparently meant something different to every single bartender who has ever said it to me.
The Setup
He works at a small, ridiculously overpriced cocktail bar near Liverpool Street that I only started going to because a friend dragged me there for her birthday, and which I have now visited, I am slightly embarrassed to admit, four times in the past two weeks, each time under the extremely thin pretence of “just fancying a proper drink” rather than the actual truth, which is that I fancy watching a man in a very good waistcoat make me a Negroni while asking pointed questions about my week.
My friends have started referring to this establishment simply as “the crush bar,” which is deeply unhelpful when I am trying to convince them, and myself, that this is purely about the quality of the cocktails.
What London Is Actually Talking About
Between obsessing over waistcoats, I did manage to catch a genuinely brilliant piece over on The Daily Mash this week, the sort of thing that makes you laugh out loud on public transport and then have to explain yourself to a stranger, which I did, poorly, to a man on the Central line who did not ask for the explanation but received it anyway.
I also caught a proper gem from NewsThump, which I read while pretending not to watch the bar for any sign of the waistcoat situation, a strategy that worked for approximately four minutes before I gave up entirely.
The London Dating Landscape, Generally
I want to be clear that this is not really a piece about one bartender, however good his forearms are in that specific rolled sleeve situation. It is about the genuinely strange, slightly exhausting texture of dating, or trying to date, or accidentally developing a crush while ostensibly just there for the drinks, in a city where everyone is busy, everyone has three apps open simultaneously, and genuine, unplanned chemistry with an actual stranger has become almost novel enough to write home about.
My friends and I have started a running tally, entirely for our own amusement, of how many actual, in person, unplanned meetings any of us has had in the past month versus how many matches sit unanswered on our phones, and the numbers are, frankly, embarrassing for the apps.
The Waistcoat Incident, Continued
He asked, on my fourth visit, whether I was “just really into Negronis,” which I took, correctly I believe, as him clocking exactly what was happening, and rather than dying of embarrassment on the spot, I simply said yes, obviously, who isn’t, and he laughed properly, the kind of laugh that is not performed for a customer, and gave me his actual number written on the receipt like this is 2004, which honestly, credit to him, worked.
What My Mother Would Say
My mother, if she knew any of this, would remind me that I said the exact same thing about the last one, and the one before that, and would be, unfortunately, entirely correct, which is precisely why she does not know any of this yet and will not be finding out from this particular column, should she ever accidentally stumble upon it, which, mother, if you are reading this, hello, I am fine, everything is fine.
The Friend Group Verdict
I ran the entire situation past my friend group in our chat, the one we all use far too much, and the response was split roughly down the middle between “finally, someone with a personality” and “please remember what happened last time before you commit to a second Negroni,” which I think is a fair and balanced summary of my dating history that I did not ask for but will begrudgingly accept, since they have, historically, been right about roughly sixty percent of these situations, which I choose to interpret as a coin flip slightly in my favour.
Where This Leaves Me
We are, as of this writing, getting a drink on Thursday, at a different bar, his suggestion, which I am choosing to interpret as a genuinely promising sign rather than simple professional courtesy about not dating people who tip well and return often.
I will report back. I always do. That is, in the end, rather the entire point of this column.
Further Reading
Caught a genuinely sharp piece over at The London Prat too this week, proving that good writing about London chaos exists well beyond just my own increasingly detailed cocktail based crushes.
Sign Off
More of my ongoing romantic misadventures can be found at my author page at The London Prat, and further material is collected at Bohiney Magazine.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
