Chapter 5: The regular
The Dating Chronicles: Adelaide edition
I never thought much of him. He’d been coming into the café for as long as I could remember, but unlike so many of the regulars I frequently saw, we’d never created any kind of an organic back and forth with one another. He was polite and friendly enough, and despite one of my bosses being particularly fond of him, I’d never cared to really get to know him. He wasn’t unattractive, or unkind, he just didn’t give a lot conversationally and he constantly repeated his outfits. White linen button down with the sleeves carefully rolled, straight legged pants, boots, glasses, his shiny bald head, and always with a book in his hands. For someone who came in almost every shift, whether he was sat in the middle of the café, or tucked away in a corner out the back, I never really saw him. He was a little like an NPC to me.
It was March 2022. I’d been working at this café for a little less than a year, but long enough to have spent enough time with my bosses that it wasn’t uncommon for them to know the details of my personal life, and I theirs. Such is hospitality life – it fosters a specific air of closeness and familiarity simply by nature of the work itself. It’s funny how intimate these relationships can grow to be in these environments, and so quickly too. You blink and suddenly you understand these individuals on a deep interpersonal level; their pasts and invisible passions, where their hurt lies and where it was bred, certain people who irk them and why, particular eating habits and where they came from, people they’ve loved and lost, why they excel in some areas, and fumble in others. There are so many moments where you feel like one brain, sensing another person’s movements before they’ve happened, reading the tells on someone’s face, I liken it to a dance because so often that’s how it feels.
We would often have knock offs together, sometimes up to four days a week. Another facet of the industry that’s probably far too common. It’s easy to convince yourself that you deserve something to take the edge off of waiting on people all day. We had some great regulars, but Covid altered something fundamental in a lot of people, and following the cessation of lockdowns, it wasn’t unusual for people to bark orders at you without so much as a hello first. Naturally, this started to take a toll on me, and so I made an active decision to try to nurture the surface level relationships with the customers I saw almost daily, the regular included.
On one particular day we got to talking more than usual. It was Fringe season, which meant I had more conversational stuffing up my sleeve should I need to lean on it, and I did. We started talking about shows, and events, what we were going to see, and what we’d attended in previous years, when he asked me if I was going to WOMAD. “Actually yes” I said, “I’ve never been before, but one of my friends has a food truck, so I’m gonna be helping her on the Saturday for a bit, and then I get to do my own thing afterwards”. “Oh cool” he said, “well I’ve got a weekend pass so maybe on the Saturday when you’re finished, we could meet up?” “Yeah, sure! I have another friend who’s going to be speaking at the Planet Talks if you’re interested in listening to that in the afternoon?” “That’s great” he said, “I was actually already planning to go to that, so that works out”. I left his table and headed back into the kitchen (also universally known as the gossip area) eager to update my bosses on our conversation because I’ve always been incapable of keeping much to myself, and I knew that one of them was about to be thrilled. I wasn’t wrong. For context purposes, I worked for a married couple: she was the chef, and he was the front of house man (can I make it any more obvious), a decision made with intent due to her wanting to avoid customers where she could. This meant that anything that she knew about customers was almost solely from FOH talk and renditions, but even so, they often had comically opposed opinions of customers. “YEAH! GO TERRY!” he said after I told them, high-fiving me. (Terry was a nickname, not the product of an unaddressed naming error). “The regular?” she asked us, “wait which one is he, do we like him?” “seems nice enough” I said shrugging my shoulders and laughing with a look that said, ‘I have no idea’. Meanwhile, my other boss continued to sing his praises as though the two of them were best friends.
On the Saturday, the regular met me at the food truck in the afternoon, where we then made our way over to the Planet Talks to listen to Amelia charismatically discuss all things climate related to a large crowd. I felt cooler and smarter just by way of proxy, but not smart enough to answer some of the questions the regular began shooting at me afterwards. Don’t ask me! I don’t have an honours degree in environmental science! I wasn’t up on that stage! He was also blissfully unaware that I was high after having done a line of coke in the portaloo earlier. Why I had the bag I don’t remember, I never had a party drug era, knowing how poorly I respond to them, but I can recall that in this period of my life I was not taking care of myself. It wasn’t age related, I was twenty-seven years old and arguably old enough to know better, but I was living on a constant whim of poor decision making. It wasn’t unusual for me to be hungover on a weekday, and yet I would still wonder why all of my days bled into each other. I was seriously struggling with drinking, and seriously in denial about it. Looking back now, I do wonder how obvious it was to the people around me, I really did love the pub.
After a few hours, we’d covered almost every stretch of the parkland grounds, and every corner of conversation sustainable for two people who really don’t have that much in common. I wasn’t having the worst time, but I wasn’t feeling particularly excited by him either. But at this point of my life, I was still in the mind of forced optimism, not recognising when to leave things alone out of a hope bred from the glittering idea of potential. It was always less about saying no, and more about saying yes. A little like improv, and equally as punishing, I was always a fan of seeing how things could pan out.
Having exhausted most of our dialogue that we’d been forcefully stretching out, it felt as though the night was coming to an end. We were taking another lap of the grounds and had made it back to a row of portaloos we’d passed earlier when the regular asked me if I wanted a Ritalin. Hm. Despite not yet having my diagnosis, I already had my suspicions about my brain, but I’d never had Ritalin, and I thought it would be fun. “Ok!” I said, resigning myself to the night between us continuing to unfold. Mere moments later, the Ritalin barely down my oesophagus, the regular decides that actually, he’s pretty over WOMAD, and would I like to go back to his instead? Great. Why did I take this? And why did he offer it to me seconds before deciding he wants to leave? I knew sleep wasn’t on the cards, and for whatever reason I didn’t want to go home, so I threw caution to the wind and the next thing I knew we were enroute to his house.
It was dark when we entered, but the first thing I noticed when he gave me the walk through was that it was tidy. Eerily tidy. Despite it being full of all of the standard things you might find in one’s home, it looked like nobody lived in it. Like it was simply a place where he stored all of his belongings but didn’t use them. Strange, I thought to myself as we continued quietly to his bedroom to avoid waking up his roommate. His bedroom told a different story in that I didn’t feel the same level of disconnect I’d felt when I walked through the rest of his home. It wasn’t anything extraordinary, but his things littered about the space gave it, and him a sense of normalcy.
He invited me to sit on his bed whilst he rummaged through his bedside drawer. I didn’t know what he was looking for until he procured a small, white medicine bottle. “Do you want another Ritalin?” “yeah…sure, whyyy not?” I said. I didn’t know what the effects were supposed to be, but whatever I had expected, wasn’t happening. My brain felt like it was mirroring his house, eerily quiet, and uncomfortably orderly. He handed me two and without question I swallowed them. In hindsight, I can’t help but consider if this was an intentional move on his end, loading me up with stimulants before bedding me as though the Ritalin would double as a performance enhancing drug. Did it work? It’s hard to say, but it certainly didn’t hinder my attention to detail, which I was about to desperately need.
We’d been making out on his bed fully clothed for all of five minutes when he sat up to remove his shirt. “I hope this isn’t weird” he began, “but I’m wearing a bralette”. Huh, I thought to myself, not quite what I’d expected was in store for me. “I’m in the process of reconsidering my pronouns, and I’m also bisexual” he said as he began to unbutton his shirt. “That’s cool, yeah it’s um, it’s a really nice bralette”. I mean, it was, really very nice. I might’ve asked him where he got it from had it not been for the Ritalin making me increasingly hypervigilant about what was and wasn’t appropriate to say out loud.
I followed suit and began to remove my clothes alongside him as though we were a married couple of thirty plus years who had scheduled sex nights. There was no sense of intimacy, no lusting, or pining, it was again, strangely methodical. A shirt for a shirt, pants for pants, a bra for a bra. Turning to face me on his bed almost expressionless he asked, “can you sit on my face?”. It felt like we worked in an office together and he’d just asked me to go and grab something from the printer for him. Still, who was I to deny myself of the act? I am but a mere mortal. I willingly obliged and climbed aboard facing forward with my feet against his steel bedframe, reciprocating the gesture by way of hand. We continued on like this for a while, until he stopped momentarily to ask if I could play with his nipples. I felt like a deer in headlights, I’d never played with anyone’s nipples before, and considering that my sensitivity had decreased significantly in that area following my augmentation, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. How did it work? How frequently was I supposed to alternate given that I only had one free hand? Was there a certain amount of pressure I was supposed to know to apply? Was there a method? I didn’t know, but I summoned all of the confidence possible and acted as though I did. My toes were now grasping for life onto the small steel posts inside of his bedhead as my hands continued to alternate in a triangular motion: nipple, nipple, downstairs, nipple, downstairs, nipple, nipple. I felt like I was playing a human version of Bop-It! Twist it! Pull it! Flick it! I was growing weary. Minutes (that felt like hours) later he stops again, “do you mind if I put a toy inside of me?” At this point I was both weary and impatient, and knew it was only a matter of time until the balancing skills I’d finessed in the last thirty minutes gave out on me. “You go for your life” I encouraged him.
Eventually, we exhausted both ourselves and our foreplay and decided to call it a night despite not having seen anything through to completion. I didn’t care, I was too concerned about my toes and whether I’d permanently altered the shape of them after sustaining my monkey grip for an unnecessary amount of time. He rolled over and immediately went to sleep, and I laid in his bed with my brain rid of all thoughts until I almost met the next day’s sun.
Two days after WOMAD and all that came with it, I was beginning to feel extremely hot. Not in a sexy way, but in a I definitely have a fever way. I took a RAT and to no surprise tested positive immediately. “Hello” I messaged him, “just letting you know I’ve tested positive for Covid”. “Oh no” he responded, “that sucks! Does it make you feel any better that I’m on my way back from getting a PCR test, but I have also tested positive for a RAT about an hour ago? I was going to message you when I got home”.
For the next three days we continued messaging each other to discuss trivial things like Covid aches, groceries we’d purchased online, and tv that we were consuming. Gripping stuff. He was feeling mostly fine, indulging in ritzy groceries, and watching engrossing crime series’ whilst I felt rotten, couldn’t remember what I’d ordered from Woolworths, and was consuming MAFS at an alarming rate. One of these things is not like the other. He was also making an annoying habit of frequently discussing the upcoming election. Was I disappointed to miss out on my democracy sausage? had I signed up for my vote pack? had I posted it? followed by unsolicited advice after he’d discovered I hadn’t posted my vote on the same day that he had. “Don’t the instructions say you gotta post it by 5pm today? Like before polls close”. “Nah we’ve got until next Saturday to get it posted”. “Okay we’re both half right. You’ve got to fill it out, seal the blue envelope, and have it witnessed by 6pm tonight. Then you have to post it early enough so that it arrives at the Electoral Commission before next Saturday”. Did it bother me? Yes. Did it bother me enough not to invite him over that same evening because I was feeling sorry for myself? No.
When he arrived at mine, I was under the impression that it was going to be an afternoon of flopping under the air conditioner with minimal talking and trash tv – how wrong I was. He had been inside for all of five minutes when he asked, “Do you have a TV? I want to watch the election”. Did you see a tv, sir? “Um no, actually we don’t…but you can use my laptop if you really want to watch it?” “Yeah, that would be great”. And so, we spent the next five hours downstairs in the company of both Amelia (who also had Covid), and the running commentary from the live-streamed election broadcast. Me, star fished on the couch sweating with a Vicks inhaler wedged in my nostril, him, cross-legged on the floor engrossed in the tiny screen, and Amelia, stuck somewhere between us after he’d trapped her in his own hours-long running commentary. Poor girl, I knew she wanted my help from the looks she kept discreetly shooting at me, but I simply did not have the means.
When Amelia finally found the courage to interject to let him know she was going to bed (escaping), I realised that this was also my opportunity to vacate from my sweaty position on the downstairs couch. I also realised that I had the ick, and that there was no coming back from it. It’s one thing to be well-versed in the intricacies of Australian politics, but it’s another entirely to go to a woman’s home and not only expect her to devote her time to your interests, but also fail to engage in any conversation beyond them. By no means am I apolitical, I just prefer to get my election updates in real time via The Daily Aus, much like how I prefer a man to actually speak to me when he comes over. “Yeah” I said, “I think I’m also ready for bed” I chimed in. “Ok” he said, “no worries. Upstairs?” Please, go home.
When we made it to my bed his hands immediately began creeping towards my body. I knew what was coming, and even if I had still been into it, there was simply no way that I had the stamina to endure anything remotely similar to what had happened five nights prior. I pulled away from him, blaming it on my fever, why won’t this thing break already!? And he gently moved his hands back to the other side of my bed.
I decidedly pulled the plug on continuing to see him, later explaining that it was solely due to his desire for something casual, rather than admitting to him that I simply could not Bop-It! again or tolerate endless talk about the Labour party. He was graceful about the whole thing and continued to come into the café on account of my green lighting his inevitable attendance. But what the poor man didn’t know, was that every time he entered the venue, all my bosses could talk about was me playing with his nipples like a DJ deck. Such is hospitality life.