Ok, so Brazilian Bae may not have turned out to be the absolute love of my life but he was definitely a vast improvement on Interchangeable Bae. I seemed to be on a steady incline and, feeling rather bolstered from the experience, decided that my plan to venture into the more international waters of the dating pool was worth sticking with. Enter Brody. I matched with Brody on Bumble. His profile told me he was from LA and an Art Director in Television. The smouldering looks and wide brimmed hats in his pictures, combined with the fact that his bio also stated his year 5 teacher would describe him as “filled to the brim with rebellion”, suggested that he was going to fit every stereotype I could mentally concoct of someone from LA. I swiped right. It was a match.
The cyber small talk commenced and things got better and better from the word go. Not only was Brody from LA and working in television, he was currently travelling around Europe working as a videographer and a tour manager from an American band called Twin Peaks. London was the last stop of their tour and he had decided to stay on for three days to explore the city before heading home. Now, my rule so far with The Dater Analyst has been to go into every date with an open mind and the hope that the person I am about to meet could be the love of my life. The fact that Brody was only in the UK for three days strongly suggested that even if this was the case, geographically, a blossoming romance was going to be challenging. Come on though, a Californian videographer on a European tour with a band - that shit’s got perfect blog fodder written ALL over it, it was too good an opportunity to miss.
The cyber small talk continued and I asked what he was doing with his time off in London. A photo pinged back to me. I have never received a photo on Bumble before, how modern! Well, technically, I didn’t immediately see the photo. The Bumblebees clearly aren’t naive to the genre of pictures one might find on a dating app so you actually get a blurred out square with directions to “tap to view image”. An attempt to avoid being blindsided by a big willy. I had only just matched with this man though, how did I know that that wasn’t what I was going to get. Tentatively, I tapped to view the image with one hand whilst using the other to shield my innocent eyes. I peaked through splayed fingers and what greeted me was so much more entertaining than a dick pic. It was a carefully staged cafe scene - a scrubbed wood table, a bunch of flowers and a cup of coffee next to an open window overlooking a quaint London street. It gets better. Front and centre of the photo was a watercolour painting of the scene and a box of paints. Brody was proud enough of his artistic endeavours to not only admit to the fact he was spending his day painting (which, let’s be honest, sounds a bit wanky) but to actually send a picture so I could see his skills for myself. How very LA!
Right, I thought, two can play at that game. I happened to be working from home that day so I curated my own still life. I moved a vase of lilies to my own scrubbed wood table, in front of a gilded mirror and placed a lit candle, open laptop and notebook in the foreground. Even sexier than a tasteful nude, some might argue. I sent it off and told him I was just doing a bit of writing. “What are you writing?” came the response…
Rule two of The Dater Analyst is that I never tell the datees about the blog. In this instance though, I was willing to bet money on the fact that Brody’s ego was a big enough that he would see a dating blog as a challenge rather than a deterrent so I told him the truth. Within two minutes I had a response: “A dating blog! Can I steal you away for a date night? You can write about it. What if we meet for just two hours and you write while I paint. We don’t even have to talk.” Boom! Hook, line and sinker!
I actually had plans that night so sadly the artistic date did not take place. I was free the following afternoon though so we agreed to meet then in a microbrewery in Coal Drops Yard, obvs! I’m about to break a third rule of The Dater Analyst here. I never normally divulge the contents of the cyber small talk but I feel it would be beneficial here in order to give a more rounded impression of the character we are dealing with. The reason I couldn’t make the original date was because I had Book Club. This got us on to the topic of literature and what Brody liked to read. I quote: “I do love Christopher Hitchens, it’s truly stimulating and chillingly current how he addresses the inevitable collapse of capitalism and things like the likelihood of Trump and Brexit but this is stuff he wrote in the 1990s…Huxley fucked me up. Have you read Doors of Perception? That book and its encouragement to experiment with hallucinogens changed my life for the better…I have done my share of experimenting and consciousness expanding but all that is only as valuable as your intention and your mentality”. You get the idea.
I arrived at the arranged microbrewery and there was absolutely no mistaking Brody. The paints were still with him but thankfully stored in his man bag. He also had a baker boy hat and a multi-coloured patterned scarf with a gold thread running through it which I’m sure had a deep meaning and was a gift from a Sharman on a yoga retreat in India but looked more like one of those ones you can buy for a fiver in Camden Market.
As his messages should have highlighted, Brody did not do small talk. We quickly covered both of our career ambitions, an extended American history leading up to the civil war, my neurological disorder and the fact that he could relate to this because his cat also had a neurological disorder. Surprisingly though, he wasn’t as wanky as I had expected. He actually came across as more self-assured than self-righteous. Conversations were two-way and he would quite often start saying something and then say “sorry, I interrupted you, carry on”. This sounds small but is amazingly rare, especially on dates.
Although it’s not something I have discussed a lot on this blog so far, I’m normally quite open about talking about the neurological disorder I was diagnosed with last year on dates (this is largely because it causes me to have shaking fits at random moments - I remain totally compos mentis through these but I kind of have to pre-warn people in case I suddenly start manically shaking with no advance warning). I don’t normally tell strangers though that one of the things I do to help manage it is Qi Gong, a movement based meditations which I do every morning. You can see why, it sounds hippy dippy, fairly out there and a difficult one to explain on a date whilst still sounding halfway normal. I thought it might be Brody’s cup of tea though. Indeed it was, he already knew all about Qi Gong. We had a long discussion about it and a specific type of yoga he used to practise which involved getting up at 4:30am and lots of chanting. It sounded suitably on brand and soul-searching for Brody. Then I realised though, that the way I judged him for his yoga routine was exactly how I was nervous that people judged me for my Qi Gong. Brody didn’t care or judge me though, he was comfortable with what he enjoyed doing, happy to talk about it and open-minded to different interests.
One beer down and I felt I hadn’t got all the details I could out of Brody so I agreed to show him a bit of London. We walked along Regent’s Canal, through Camden Lock and Camden Markets, past the zoo where you can see the warthogs and lions from the canal path, through Regent’s Park and up Primrose Hill for a sunset view of the city (I smashed it as a tour guide). I was right though; I had only seen the tip of the iceberg. Brody’s family life sounded suitably wacky. In brief: he had grown up on a ranch somewhere in the mid-west, which was sold when his parents, Steven and Angela, had split up. Steven currently holds a world record - he had a heart attack and was officially dead for fifty-two minutes whilst they did CPR. That is one of the longest times someone has been technically dead for and been resuscitated with no long-term physical or mental implications. Steven now lives on a houseboat with his new girlfriend. Pretty cool! Angela met her first boyfriend when he moved to America from Greece to avoid conscription. Their next-door neighbour reported him for selling weed though so he had to move back to Greece and Angela went with him, travelling around Greece for two years. It was all a pretty colourful past.
There were other parts of our date that were slightly more dubious. I’m all in favour of vegetarianism but wasn’t quite prepared for an in depth discussion on the perception of an animal’s soul. I swiftly moved the conversation along. I do which I had proved more on one of his more recent ventures though. He told me he was currently involved in the art direction of an all-male feminist magazine. The more I think about this, the more questions I have. I am under no doubt that men can be feminists but to make an exclusively male feminist magazine sounds slightly counter-intuitive to me? Surely this is just more men excluding women from a conversation that is about them, men mansplaining feminism to women? Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick but this seemed to be the patriarchy jumping on the zeitgeist to maintain their control? You never know though, maybe I’m being defensive; maybe this is going to be the next big thing. If you suddenly hear about a new and trendy male feminist publication do let me know, it could be Brody.
Eventually it began to get dark so the tour came to an end and I dropped Brody off at the nearest tube station and bid farewell before he flew back to LA the following day. I came away thinking that Brody really hadn’t been as narcissistic as I had expected. In many way, I had drunk the Californian Koolaid: as much eye-rolling as there was at the LA cliches Brody embodied, he also had that American confidence that made him totally comfortable in his own skin and with his own interests. He was unashamed in discussing his flaws and his strengths and skipping straight past the small talk to try and really get to know a person.
That would a sickeningly soul-searching end to the post though and absolutely not the light-hearted, scathing judgement that any of you read this blog for. If I’m being totally honest, what really happened was that I just enjoyed the opportunity to be as wanky as he was. For an afternoon I could happily discuss humanitarian politics, the benefits of meditation and what I felt fulfilment looked like rather than dissecting Love Island and complaining about commuting. It’s quite fun to be a knob every once in a while and I would happily spend a similar afternoon with Brody if he were to find himself back in the UK. If distance wasn’t an issue though, would Brody be The One? I think, realistically, probably not. I had had an engaging and enlightening afternoon but there weren’t exactly many lols. I think I’m looking for someone who can chat shit rather than chataranga. Or at least a bit of both.