Sep-2016
Offering to play tour guide for two Kiwi guys who were in town for a couple of days, I knew it wasn’t going to be the most conventional of Tinder dates but I’m not sure I could have imagined just how unexpectedly it would turn out…
I matched with this super fit Maori Kiwi guy on Tinder that turned out was living in Calgary, far far out of my preset distance radius of 10km – what can I say? I want to meet a man but I don’t want to travel far to do it! He explained he’d used the feature on Tinder where you can swipe in other cities, to meet some “people” before a road trip he was planning to take with his friend in a few months, but let’s call it what it was, it was to meet girls, not people! We chatted a little but it never came to much and, despite his washboard-stomach-filled pics, I quickly forgot about him.
Until, that is, he turned up in my Bumble search a few months later and we matched again. Being that the female has to start the convo on Bumble, I opened with the classic “I might be wrong but I think we’ve matched before on Tinder – the joy of being on multiple dating apps!” He responded pretty quickly and said he thought so too but unlike last time he was now in Vancouver on his road trip.
It was a random Wednesday night and I’d just had a couple of girlfriends round to watch a naked dating show from back home (if you haven’t seen Naked Attraction, google that shit) when he asked what I was doing night. I said I wasn’t up for going out but we could maybe arrange to meet up the next day. And when I say we, I mean “we three”, yup his friend was going to come too… At first it seemed like it could be a little weird but actually it felt like it might take the pressure off in a strange way.
So we made plans to go for drinks that next night and, after waiting for what seemed like AN AGE for them both to get ready at their hotel (which happened to be in the dodgiest part of town), they finally made their way to meet me by my apartment, with just one slight misunderstanding of directions enroute.
Prior to arriving, he told me that he was wearing a shirt that was too tight for him and not to laugh when I saw him. Hmm…interesting tactic to make sure I fully checked out the tightness of said shirt the minute I saw him. In fairness, as soon as I came through the doors of my building out onto the street, even if he hadn’t mentioned his shirt beforehand, I’m pretty sure my eyes would have still gone straight to the arms.
THOSE ARMS.
As I think I’ve mentioned before on here, I have a thing for arms. It’s been getting progressively “worse” as the years have passed. A bicep you can really grab onto? Bliss. A shirt just slightly straining to contain the muscle? Heaven. I have to seriously restrain myself from just reaching out and touching a good one. Like a lot of people do with pregnant women’s bellies? I’m like that with arms, just wanna reach out and have a stroke.
Ok, anyway, the arms were great but you see how they sidetrack me? And I knew instantly he would forever be referred to as Kiwi Arms. Not least because his actual name wasn’t too far from Arms, so it all made sense.
As the three of us started to make our way to the bar I’d suggested for drinks, Kiwi Arms declared he didn’t actually drink. He’s a Crossfit coach and lives a pretty healthy lifestyle. Um.. ok, well this should be… interesting (read boring)? Thankfully his friend piped up with “well he maybe doesn’t drink but I sure as hell do” and with that we became like 3 mates just going out for drinks.
And that was kind of how I felt the night was going as we were having some drinks (alcoholic for two of us, non for the other one), sharing life stories and grilling Kiwi Arms’ mate about his dating life. I’m pretty sure the waitress probably thought I had two friends visiting from New Zealand and not that I was kinda, sorta, not really on a Tinder date with the one I was sat next to.
At least that was how it felt, and what it likely appeared as, until I felt a hand slide up my leg under the table. At first I couldn’t tell if it was an accidental graze but after the second or third lingering touch I decided it was maybe a little more purposeful than I first thought. And for the first time on the “date” I actually thought there might have been a chance of something happening.
His friend looking across the table at us made me rethink that in an instant though. How exactly was this going to work? Dear god, I hope they didn’t expect a threesome…
We moved from the first bar to more of a club type place but it turns out we were one of only two groups in there – it’s fair to say I don’t normally go out on a Thursday night. Having said that the tunes were 90’s classics and despite not drinking anything Kiwi Arms was more than happy to bust out some moves. For such a random night, which had the potential to be ridiculously awkward, it was incredibly fun.
Not enough fun to keep us in that bar though, and after one round I suggested we went back to mine for our next drink. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth I quickly followed it up with “but seriously, just for a drink, there’s no three-way stuff happening.’ I didn’t think it needed to be said but you never know and I figured it was better to state my case before I ended up with 2 strange men in my apartment looking for a threesome. Ya know? Or maybe you don’t..
Anyway! After they had a quick chat with each other (the content of that conversation I would’ve loved to have been privy to), we headed back to mine and Kiwi Arm’s friend and I had another drink. After the one beer, his friend made his excuses and asked me to call him a cab. There wasn’t much of a discussion other than some comment from his friend along the lines of “I’ll leave you two kids to it”.
The door had barely closed behind him when Kiwi Arms clearly decided to make up for all the wasted time during the first part of the night and let’s just say I was much more sure of his intent than with the first under-the-table leg graze… For someone I wasn’t sure had any interest in me a couple of hours ago, he was now making things crystal clear.
To say things escalated quickly is an understatement. The catalyst was a single question which has haunted me since – “have you ever done it on your balcony?” My answer to that was no, and at that time it was truthful. But since that night, I’ve been asked that same question by a number of other men and have always had to deflect it in anyway possible. Because honestly, they only want to hear the answer I was able to give Kiwi Arms that night. And I’ve never been able to give it again.
All I’ll say is sex with a view and fresh air isn’t the worst. Would recommend. Add in glimpsing those arms gripping onto the handrail in front of me and you have yourself a party. A balcony sex party that is.
From the balcony, to the bedroom, it was a long, and amazing, night. In fact so long that at one point we took a break and ended up in the kitchen cooking bacon in just our underwear – he needed protein and it was the only thing I had in my fridge that wasn’t alcohol. But it was at this point that the saying “never judge a book by it’s cover” presented itself in human form to me.
We talked about everything. He spoke about his family (he’s one of 13!), his previous drug problems, his decision to leave a well paying engineering job to pursue his passion of becoming a Crossfit coach, how he’d followed a girl out to Canada which was how he ended up in Calgary, his process for writing in his journal everyday. And he didn’t just speak. He asked.
He asked me about my marriage, about moving out to Canada by myself, how I dealt with the loss of that relationship, why I took so long to get back into dating, how gratitude had played a part in where I was now.
These were deep, raw, long, honest conversations. And he was no longer this muscle-head gym junkie that I’d maybe first assumed from his dating app profiles. He was this sweet, funny, sincere, genuine, emotionally sensitive, self aware guy.
Albeit with massive muscles, stood in my kitchen, now eating bacon in his underwear.
There wasn’t a lot of sleep had but their road trip was carrying onto the States the next day and I had an easy Friday ahead, so we made the most of it. There was a lot of sex. It was probably the most energetic sex I’d had up until that point of my dating life. And while at first I was a little intimidated by his clear and present hotness, it actually only made me feel better about myself. Neither of us hated the mirrors in my bedroom…
In the morning, after maybe 3 hours sleep, we rallied for some pre-work, pre-road trip fun. Though this time we kept to the confines of the bedroom, it was daylight after all and my balcony isn’t exactly out of view of the neighbouring buildings. What do you take me for?!
He commented afterwards that it was a good showing for our last time and I unthinkingly said “unless of course you’re still here at lunchtime and fancy a quick one.” Fast forward 4 hours, turns out he is still in Vancouver, he’s somewhere near my apartment (which in turn is near my office) and he does in fact fancy a quick one.
Having re-lived many, many of the previous evening’s events in my head while sat mindlessly at my desk since getting into the office, I weighed up the fact I’d never had lunchtime sex, I was never going to see him again and, as they say, a girl’s gotta eat. Jokes. That’s disgusting. Full disclosure – that exact saying did run through my head and I did laugh.
In the midst of this one of my colleagues had been messaging me about maybe going for lunch but as soon as I got the text from Kiwi Arms saying “I’ll be at yours in 10”, my Brazilian colleague must have wondered where my appetite had disappeared to as I grabbed my keys and my bag and practically ran for the door, while shouting something about having to move our lunch to Monday.
We arrived at my apartment building at about the same time and, unsurprisingly(?), today’s shirt didn’t seem that much looser than last night’s. Albeit maroon and last night’s was white, the muscles were still being effortlessly well presented where the cotton met the skin, mid-bicep.
Whether it was tiredness, ill-preparedness or the lunchtime rush, our middle of the day session wasn’t without its difficulties. But the ease with which we laughed through it and managed to eventually get it to “work” had us actually high five each other afterwards. And, if my memory serves me right, I’m pretty sure he called me “champ”. We were all romance.
And with that high five, and a cursory kiss and hug in my building lobby, 10 minutes later I was on my way back to the office. Tired, every so slightly sensitive in certain areas and wondering what the hell had just happened in the past 20 hours…
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