Date Diaries: The Obligatory Pre-Shag Drinks That Turned Into A Quest For Fried Chicken

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This week, Lily a 24-year-old bisexual office assistant from Liverpool calculates exactly how long a realistic toilet break is…*

‘If it’s terrible, you can just leave’, I reminded myself as I downed my second glass of Echo Falls Summer Berries, half way through my eye makeup and already 5 minutes late. I’d delayed getting ready to put off the feeling of dread that fills me whenever I have to put my ‘best self’ head on and go out on a date. But it was now taking over my entire body.

There was an energy about this date that meant it had to go well. The wheels had already been put in motion when we’d met the weekend earlier, on a night out in Liverpool.

I was in the smoking area of my favourite club with my belligerent sister when he approached us with a bear-like grin. An hour earlier, I’d been telling said chaotic sister that I needed to find a fuck buddy in London, lest I be sexless forever. Apparently, she had took that casual statement as her life mission.

Three seconds into Liam introducing himself and revealing he too lived in London, she thought it appropriate to scream ‘Omg, he can be your fuck buddy!’. I would’ve cringed, but I was drunk too. So we all laughed as he happily agreed ‘Yes, I can’, and it became clear no one in that conversation was actually joking.

We drank more, danced and eventually exchanged numbers -at the time I was grateful for my sisters lack of tact. But now, getting ready in my tiny room in the house I shared with five others, the weird pressure I’d put on myself set in.

I was meeting Liam for a drink in a pub near where we both lived, funnily enough he was only one tube stop away from me. I really wanted to like him, mostly because after our first conversation being the way it was, it would be awkward as fuck if I turned him down now.

Frankly, I’m terrible at saying no to men even when it makes me uncomfortable not to – it’s a flaw I’m working on. But this was a step further, the tone of our messages meant this was very much not a getting-to-know-each-other date, this was the obligatory-drink-before-shagging date.

Half a bottle of wine down, I left the house to meet him – only 20 minutes late, score. He was waiting outside as I approached the pub and I was happy to note my beer goggles weren’t on when we first met, he was still attractive sober (soberish, let’s be honest).

We ordered drinks and took them into the beer garden where my best-self-head took over my dread-head and my nerves settled. Ten minutes in and half way through my third glass of wine, I was no longer shitting myself and subsequently, I realised, I had an entirely new problem: I’m fucking starving. Starving, and now very tipsy. An excellent combination for dating success.

I made a joke about it to Liam and he commented that I couldn’t get too drunk, a nod to the unspoken plan that we were definitely shagging after this. The next time he went to the bar, he got me a water as I text my friend ‘he is shaggable, thank God.’

When he returned, I drank the water before the wine, but I was quickly entering drunk territory regardless, and I knew there was only one thing that would save me. I needed food now.

My stomach grumbling, I debated options in my head. This pub didn’t serve food, so we either had to go for dinner or pick up a takeaway on the way home. I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, and I definitely wasn’t about to change the whole dynamics of this date by suggesting a sudden dinner.

If you can’t tell, I was massively overthinking this. But there is a strange delicacy in pre-shag drinks that makes it uncomfortable to suggest anything that feels remotely formal. After all, I can’t have him believing I see this as a serious date, or relationship potential – which let’s be honest men often do if you show any slight interest. What is it about men and thinking you’re falling in love with them and/or are desperate to commit to them for no apparent reason?

In my completely ridiculous brain I only had one option: I needed to SECRETLY get food without him knowing. Pub crisps simply wouldn’t do, I would have to venture outside. ‘I can just tell him there was a long toilet queue’, I reasoned with myself.

I knew there was a KFC next door, but could I run there, get served, eat my food and run back to the table in the time it takes to realistically pop to the toilet? Only God knows. So I put my faith in Him and risked it.

‘Just going for a wee,’ I smiled at him as I made my great escape. I darted through the pub crowd and ran straight to KFC, all while figuring out the quickest order that would fill me up enough. It was obvious: a large fries.

Naturally - because someone somewhere was trying to tell me I was being a stupid bitch that just needed to learn to say ‘I’m hungry’ - there was a queue of kids taking 800 years to decide what they wanted. At least, it felt like 800 years. In reality, I was probably served in under five minutes. I ordered the fries, paid and walked back over to the pub stuffing my gob as I went.

‘You can’t go in with them,’ the bouncer laughed at me as I attempted to re-enter. And so, I began a Man vs Food style eating competition to wolf down all of the fries as quickly as possible.

0.2 seconds later, the fries wrapper was in my bag and I was heading back to the table, greasy mouth be damned. I already felt more sober, probably because of the adrenaline rush from attempting a Great Chicken Run for KFC.

Less hungry and much happier, we continued the date for one more drink before we ventured back to mine where you can guess what happened. Now I look back, I’m not so glad I sobered up. Let me just say this, eating those fries on the pub doorstep was the most satisfying part of that evening.

I never told him about the Great KFC Escape, not just because it made me sound ridiculous but because I wasn’t planning on seeing him again after I seemingly preferred salted potato to sex with him. But, the entire experience did make me realise that I need to bring some of my dedication to fast food into my dating confidence. After all, if the dynamics of pre-shag drinks are all about not caring, perhaps I should stop caring whether someone will misinterpret dinner for devotion.

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