I threw up in my handbag and tried to jump out of a taxi. The rest, as they say, is history
A Valentine's Special - the story of my first date with my partner
It was April 2017. I’d known The Builder (he’s a private man with no social media and giving him this nickname makes me feel like Carrie Bradshaw) for a few years already as we mixed in the same circle, thanks to a couple of mutual friends who absolutely shouldn’t have been together (but that’s what teenage relationships are all about right)? We’d always had a little soft spot for one another.
A few of us went to a pub quiz that was painfully quiet, but it gave us something to do mid-week. When it finished the boys wanted to carry on at the bar over the road - we played pool and drank Hooch. I was getting grilled for deleting one of the guys that was with us as a friend on Facebook a mere week or so before. From time to time I’d do a facebook cull, but often I’d delete whoever was popping up as having their birthday that day if I had reached the consensus that I wouldn’t be posting them a ‘happy birthday’ because I didn’t now them well enough, and they probably don’t remember me anyway. Call me a bitch or passive aggressive, I call it pragmatic. My latest victim was Jackie. I couldn’t place how I knew him as my finger hovered over ‘unfriend’, and I thought no harm done if this was the case; I was reminded on this pub quiz night out that he was the guy at The Builder’s birthday party a couple years prior that was flailing his step-dad’s air rifles about (I know, foolish and irresponsible… but we were barely 19 and they weren’t loaded, if that makes it ANY more acceptable). He’d noticed I had deleted him and very directly asked me why I’d done it. It was awk. I look back now and join the dots that The Builder MUST have been talking to his friends about me before this night out, and Jackie MUST have searched me to check if his mate was punching. *blushes*
Anyway, to cut a long and prerequisite story short, The Builder and I chatted away on this night probably more than we’d ever done before, and at 2am I got a text asking if he could take me out some time. Cayuuuuute! The next part of this story is not so cute…
Fast forward to a week or something later and I get my mum to drop me off at the pub in the next town over to meet The Builder. We talked, we smoked rollies and we drank - standard. But the problem was, The Builder was drinking pints and I was drinking wine (I must have been putting on a show because pints were my preference), and The Builder was buying me wines at the pace in which he was drinking pints. Oh no.
And from here on out, things got messy quite quickly. Two friends - one of his and one of mine - came to meet us and my friend caught up sharpish. Me and my mate were dropping glasses as were dancing on the tiny floorspace next to the live band, and swinging off the fenceposts out the back in between fag breaks. It appeared I’d forgotten I was on a date and was getting really rather very excitable. Clearly I was comfortable? When the pub’s last orders rang in, the next stop was another pub a few villages over to meet more friends. A taxi was called and we clambered into a 7-seater because that’s all that was available.
The 20 minute drive felt like a lifetime to me with my belly full of rosé. It was taking all my concentration to keep the Zinfandel down and not give off that I was ready to blow. After one winding corner too many, there was no hope left. My drunken brain was in panic mode and tried to escape the moving vehicle (again, I know, foolish and irresponsible) to avoid The Builder getting sprayed by my probably flammable sick based on the sheer volume of alcohol I’d consumed that night. I launched the sliding door wide open and was about to make a break for it.
Cue a fuming taxi driver (understandable) and a bewildered date, probably thinking what the eff had he gotten himself into, grabbing onto the belt loop of my jeans to yank me back into the cab. Plan A fell through. Onto Plan B.
One by one, I removed each item in my tiny H&M zip-up crossbody handbag and placed them in the hands of The Builder, who had no idea what I was doing but obliged anyway. Card. Phone. Key. There wasn’t a lot else I could have carried around in that bag it was that small. Small, but practical. Well, this bag took on a whole new level of practical when Plan B came to completion. As The Builder asked me what I was doing and I waved my finger in the air as if to say “one moment, please”, I vomited what must have been the entire night so far’s consumption of wine into my Mary Poppins handbag. And when I was finished, I zipped the bag up. Job done.
I’m ashamed to say it doesn’t end there.
I can’t quite recall how The Builder reacted, but he didn’t try to escape the taxi himself. If I had been searching for green flags at the time, that would have been one for sure. The journey came to an end and the taxi driver was equally glad to see the back of me and impressed I hadn’t incurred a fee for drenching the inside of his vehicle with the entire contents of my stomach. You’re welcome! We got dropped off at the marketplace close to the pub and I caught sight of a bin. More wine to replenish my now-empty tum was needed, but first on the agenda was the disposal of this sick bag. All I needed to do was walk over to the bin with my bag and we could all move on with our evening.
Except, I didn’t. Instead I waved this handbag like a lasso over my head and aimed for the bin. Obviously I missed. The Builder and our friends look on in horror. He could’ve hailed that taxi back and made a swift exit but he didn’t - second green flag. We make it into the pub and I do a B-line for the toilets for my encore. More sick. It turned out my stomach wasn’t empty and clearly did me a favour when my handbag reached full capacity. The body is so clever. My friends were my chaperones and tied my hair up to save any remaining dignity I had left (let’s face it, there was none left).
The decision was made by my chaperones that it was time for me to go home. Another taxi was called and I was on strict orders to keep it down this time. The Builder and our friends had accepted the night was over and joined me. But the journey went well, so well that I got a second wind and we all ended up in a nightclub. My date and I drank, and danced. We did a lot of both of those things back then. We kissed! He kissed me even with my chewing-gum-masked sicky breath! The third green flag!
8 years later, a joint mortgage, a dog, a baby… it’s a miracle I didn’t put him off. I knew he was special back then, but I’m not sure I would have believed it if someone told me that even after that shameful and quite frankly animalistic behaviour from me on our first date, we’d end up together.
Needless to say I rarely drink rosé and if I do, I get trauma flashbacks.
And I take a bigger handbag.
Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your first date stories. 10 points if you have one more shameful than mine!