Maybe He’s Just a Closet Romantic
“Hey”, he croaked.
This 6 feet 2 inches, muscular and intimidating personality is my date this evening.
“Great”, I thought.
Not only do I have to play poise woman all night, but I have to play it to the book so that Mr. Oh-So-Perfect finds me even slightly interesting. Not because I want to impress him but because I don’t want him to be unimpressed. There’s a difference.
He is the 21st century man behind the facade of a macho and manly get up. Thick hair and an even thicker beard. Plaid shirt and a leather jacket. Tan boots. He was dressed to knock women over. And suddenly my girlie LBD and heavily done eyelashes looked like a jarring joke. The incongruous set up fits every definition of annoying and discomforting.
He didn’t pull my chair, nor did he buy me flowers. “What did he think”, I wondered.
“Let’s order”, he croaked again, more like an order than a statement.
I was bordering furious by now. This lack of chivalry is new to me and so is this lack of niceness. I call myself an independent, equal rights seeking woman but with a man I am on a date with I still expect some level of Victorian era chivalry and the evoking of princess-like feeling. I know. It’s quite messed up. I don’t mind splitting the bill, okay?
Anyway, I decided to put in zero efforts in impressing this man. I wanted to look like nothing close to attractive or civil or even remotely dainty. I wanted to now look like a disaster to upset his otherwise cool and controlled demeanour. I decided to go reckless on this one and straight up ordered scotch on ice and a beef steak. Oh believe me. On a date, I would never do that. I’d be the light humble egg salad and a glass of Sangria. I’d be the cross-legged cutie with a lot of batting of the eye and flicking of the hair locks. He was surprised. Good. He asked the waiter to double my order. Hmm.
“So, you are a whiskey person“, he said with a crooked smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.
Oh god, why is he so good looking. It’s disorienting.
“I cannot be?”, came my swift and snide reply.
“Of course you can be, in fact it’s a nice thing, really”, he fumbled. He didn’t see this one coming I figure. Checkmate yet?
He finds my cold behaviour really amusing. However, he takes the conversation to safer territory and I for a while forget my cold facade.
Anyway, fast forward to a few months later. We are chilling at our favourite French restaurant.
“Let’s order the cheese fondue today”, he says grinning.
Now for me, fondues are a romantic dinner idea. And I slowly agreed but I couldn’t stop wondering how I hadn’t noticed. From the near absence of anything remotely close to a romantic streak, this man had changed ever so little and yet his behaviour was peppered with these surprises I cannot assume to be anything but romantic. Did I forget to mention that we are dating? Right. My bad. That date night was a disaster. But we decided to sort of meet again and fix things and turns out it wasn’t a bad idea after all.
And my thoughts are wavering. I have caught this uptight young man turn into a romantic fool in certain circumstances.
Like that day he ordered some (previously disregarded) wine at a fancy candlelit dinner he took me to, after an entire week of ordering pizzas. Men.
Or like that day he set an alarm to wake up early and bring me breakfast in bed. Who are we kidding? He is the last one to get up on the entire planet and is a croaking sleepy mess all morning even after one fix of caffeine.
We usually fight over the music that’s played around us. He needs head banging, glass shattering, heart beat racing metal while there are days I want a little country. All hell breaks loose when this war begins. And yet, the other day, he was all for slow romantic songs with a little bit of (fail) ballroom dancing.
All these are really low key events that occur as frequently as the Haley’s comet.
But. But he is also a romantic. He is a closet romantic. That’s it. That’s what he is.
And I can’t help but realise that this is more me and my type than a perpetual mushy romantic. There is solace in the occasional and boy, am I lucky!
