A few years ago I went to a party on Abbotsford St, one of those really raucous affairs where everyone's doing things that aren't strictly legal, though as for myself, I spent most of the night drinking out of a hip flask and dancing awkwardly to electro-nonsense.
At the end of the night a striking young lady took an interest in me, which was highly unusual in itself at the time, because I'd just come out of a long-term relationship and any attempt to engage me in discussion was often a circular affair that very quickly took the path of least resistance back to my own feelings of misery and inadequacy. In the event, she mistook my brooding self-pity for signs of reclusive genius and basically carried me back to her house (I was pretty trolleyed by this point) on Flemington Rd somewhere after four in the morning, whereupon we promptly engaged in a bit of the old hoppo bumpo, if you catch my drift.
Come the afternoon, I really felt that, after further abortive attempts at intimacy in the boudoir in between the delicious scrambled eggs she served me for brunch, I really hadn't fulfilled my end of the bargain. My stunted abilities forgiven, before I began the long stumble home, she graciously accepted my request for her number, and after a few days of flirty winky faces over SMS we arranged to meet at the Metropolitan the following Friday.
To cut a long story short, I was intimidated into one embarrassing blunder after another. There was she, a beautiful and effortlessly immaculate creature, preparing to begin her graduate work as a doctor nearby, witty and intelligent with a laugh that could intoxicate the head of the Temperance League. Here was I, wearing my filthy duffle coat that hadn't been washed in three years over an op-shop sweater with holes around the elbows, who hadn't even done my prospective life partner of shearing the thick canopy of black hairs sprouting from my nostrils. It was doomed from the start, though I did at least have the joy of a very how's-your-father calibre spell of French Kissing at her front door after accepting her request to walk her back home.
I really enjoyed looking at the decor of this front place while my mind was desperately grasping for something to say to break the suffocating din of awkward silence that periodically hung in the air between us. The meals were great and the barman working that night was one of the most affable and pleasant I've met in the business. I would definitely come here all the time if being in the vicinity of the place didn't arouse such strong feelings of shame. Mind you, I bet Christine Nixon feels the same after she got sacked for eating a Parma here on Black Saturday... read more