I went on a walking date with a man almost two years ago. I decided not to go any further with that date because … and I am cringing as I write this… I thought he smiled too much.

I sent a message to a friend after this date that read ‘what do you think of people that smile a lot’ and then I carried on to say that I thought this man insincere because ‘nobody genuinely smiles that much’

I felt bad about it afterwards but by the time it was a bit too late. I’d already cut ties with him.

Or so I thought.

The same man reached out to me recently. I hadn’t remembered that it was him. We started a conversation, I was enjoying it. He mentioned meeting at some point. I said what I normally said about knowing a base level of information about a person before I meet them. That’s when he mentioned that we’d already met. Had already kissed.

I cringed as I realised I only remembered three things about him. His first name, that he drove a white car and that he smiles a lot.

I went back and forth about it. Do I go with my first reaction from two years ago? Even if I was hazy on the details? Do I give him a second chance?

I decided I would. Maybe I would be less cynical this time around and just appreciate his smiley nature as being …nice? pleasant? some other happy thing?

Only it never got that far.

We arranged to meet again. For a coffee date. Only on the day that we were meant to be meeting I had just been given a courtesy car from a local garage. They didn’t have any automatic cars available so they dropped off a manual car to me. No big deal, I can drive a manual car. I just hadn’t driven one myself in about three years.

Only when I got into the car, I couldn’t depress the emergency handbrake. And when I got it off my driveway, I couldn’t get it into first gear. I actually sat in that driver’s seat and cried my little eyes out. Thinking how could I have forgotten something so important? How is this so hard? How had I fought for so long to get a courtesy car and now I can’t even drive it.

I wasn’t thinking about him. I was thinking how am I going to get to work? How am I going to get to my course? How long am I going to have this car and when is my life going to get back to normal and when will I get my own fucking car back that I haven’t driven in nearly three months?

I sent him a message though. I was honest. I said I had been looking forward to seeing him again and catching up but I couldn’t drive my courtesy car with any sort of confidence and that I was distraught about it. Maybe after some catch up lessons that a friend had offered, I’d be able to meet him.

He sent me a dick pic. And insisted I was desperate for him.

His message was so far away from anything even remotely important to me at that point. I did start to explain how irrelevant he was at this point in my life but I realised in that moment that I didn’t care.

Why do I need to explain to someone that there are more important things than the possibility of being fucked by a stranger? I didn’t have the energy for that. So I blocked him.