The Last Five

By Erin Deborah Waks

I’m sitting at Revolution bar in Durham on a date with a perfectly nice but rather dull Geordie boy. It’s going well, conversation flowing well enough. But things take a somewhat awkward turn when he suddenly goes quiet. 

To my, ‘is everything he okay?’ he responded, ‘Yeah, my ex’s best friend just walked in.’ No matter, I presumed. Just a tad awkward. Except it did matter. They’d broken up just days before. You can imagine my reaction when, after making a swift exit from said bar, he suggested we go back to mine for more drinks. Nice try. 

The next one was better. A lovely boy who seemed completely bewildered as to how he’d got me to go out with him (evident only from the way he looked at me, and not due to any undue arrogance on my part, I can assure you), he told me he’d read every word I’d ever written, commenting on my way with prose. He took me out during the daytime, evidently not just intent on getting me into bed, and asked me about politics and religion. He was so kind, so sweet, so complimentary and so respectful, and I really wanted to fancy him. Wanted to, being key. 

Then a friend of mine set me up on a blind date. We talked literature, Murakami especially, and he asked all about my life. He was one of the few men I’d met who’d read almost as much as me - and clearly wasn’t exaggerating. Where his rather boring IT job lacked fascinating tales, his interest in books gave us enough to fill a two-hour date, but nothing more. Intellect and kindness aplenty, it was abundantly clear we’d make great colleagues. Or book club buddies, perhaps.

The next friend dying to play her hand in the saga of my love life then encouraged me on a date with a friend of hers. A brunette and an investment banker with a taste for the finer things in life, she thought we’d hit it off. She was right - we got on great, although perhaps only as he ordered the most expensive bottle of wine in the most expensive bar I’ve been to all year. It was just a pity he hardly asked a single question. Oh, and a pity he showed off his ability to ‘speak’ the foreign language in which I am fluent, being bilingual myself. Pity, since the waiter happened to speak said language too.  

So I took a break from dating, because so many other things in my life were better than sitting, bored, across a bar table from some guy I didn’t really like. I went traveling, spent time with my family, went to lots of art galleries, read even more books, and even started a new job.

And then I went on another date. 

I don’t know if it was the dark hair, brown eyes, our shared favourite film or the way his face lit up when talking about music. But somewhere in that north London bar, halfway through an espresso martini, amid easy laughs and conversation, I thought to myself - this one.