"You Look Nice"

"You look nice," he tells her across the table accompanied by his best smile. She says nothing but thinks plenty. 

Nice? After the best part of two hours getting ready the best compliment he could come up with is nice? Nice is what you're hoping for when you visit the grandparents for Sunday lunch and is usually accompanied straight after by the word dear. Nanas roast beef and Yorkshires whilst you're sat down wearing chunky knitwear, a long sensible skirt over woollen tights, hair tied up in a bun and no makeup on. Sunday lunches are the perfect time for anyone to tell you that you look nice. Perfectly acceptable terminology.

"Very nice." He adds as if by some minor miracle that's about to help his cause. Which it doesn't. 

Well why didn't you go with very nice the first time? That makes all the difference. I'll definitely be dropping on my knees for you later and tugging at the zipper of your trousers. Wow you really know how to make a woman feel special and amazing. I wonder did you take lessons or does your charm just come naturally to you? 

There's a myriad of compliments you could pay a woman on a first date and granted it's not easy to come up with the right one. You certainly don't want to appear sleazy. There's no point in telling her that she looks hot or sexy unless her job involves sliding down a pole wearing very little attire and grabbing £20 notes between her arse cheeks. Saying she's beautiful is for later on down the line. Go with something safe that's flattering, but not cheesy or over the top or anything that's makes her feel like her effort has been utterly wasted on you. Tell a woman she looks amazing or incredible. If you've actually got charm then feel free to go with breathtaking but when you flunked charm school or worse forgot to attend lessons at all, nice isn't everyone going to cut the Mustard. 

"Hmmm," she replies.

His face looks like it's desperately searching for something more to come out from her lips like maybe a thank you or a return compliment on his best suit which he'd had dry cleaned especially for tonight. After the first five seconds of silence he should have realised it wasn't coming. After ten seconds it was starting to become awkward and after 15 he'd probably been better off making an excuse that he doesn't feel well, that something came over him all of a sudden and gave him a funny turn and that he needs to go. Be a gentleman and pay for her ride home and then go home himself quick sharp, hang up the whistle and go meet up with his mates to watch the rest of the game and when they ask about how the date went he'll simply say she didn't turn up. He definitely shouldn't admit that his opening gambit was to tell her she looked nice because they'll rip him to shreds and quite right too. 

This dating thing seemed to be getting worse every week. There was Doctor Death, Mr State the Obvious, and now this gentleman who was evoking the spirit of Harry Enfield's Tim nice but dim. Seriously how hard can it be to find a man? She can hear her mother now lampooning her for another failed date. 'Well I guess we won't be getting grandchildren anytime soon then dear. Pity.' How can one word be so cutting? Pity. It's like being able to say 'me and your father have found you to be such a disappointment dear, we had such high hopes for you and look at you now, all alone and single with no realistic hope of ever finding happiness at your age and we so desperately wanted to be grandparents,' all wrapped up in one solitary word - Pity. Perhaps she should bring her mother along on the next one. Ask the question of whether she would you want grandchildren fathered by any of these men? I mean if you think I'm a failure they'll carry half of my DNA and then the other half will be made up of one of these sorry excuses for a representation of masculinity or whatever seems to pass for it these days. Maybe her mother would like to vet her dates and save her the initial bother, just find one she finds suitable and be done with it and as the old adage goes beggars can't be choosers. She wasn't about to beg anytime soon though and especially not with what was sitting in front of her on tonight's menu. This definitely wasn't a meal she was about to choose to partake in. 

Silence descended the four foot gap that separates the two making him shuffle uneasy in his seat unsure of what to do or say next, her counting down the seconds until an exit route is presented to her and she'll be on her heels and out of the door quicker than he could say ‘really, really nice.’

“You look…” He shouldn't have paused, shouldn't have even started to try again. 

She finishes his sentence for him “Pissed off?”

The sides of his mouth pull down exposing the bottom set of teeth. Maybe he's about to do a sterling impression of Marlon Brando in the Godfather, clamp the fingers on his hand together, wave them in a circular motion and make her an offer she can't refuse. That wouldn't rescue him from his current predicament but it would at least take the awkwardness into a new direction if nothing else. His head starts to wobble ever so slightly, maybe he's about to do a Prince Charles impression. ‘One is so very sorry for any offence caused,’ and so you should be. 

“Ahhhhh.” 

Is that it? So the sum total of your brilliant chat and magnetic charm is “Nice, really nice and Ahhhhh.” Well this is going swimmingly. I wonder if it's going as well as he'd hoped for before he set off to meet her. Maybe he thought to himself I know what I'll do, I'll play the bumbling idiot who appears never to have been in female company with anyone other than his mother or a sister, or maybe an aunt or gran. That'll be a winning combination. 

She thought to herself I'd rather be on a date with Boris Johnson right now which really is saying something. 

How we got here;

https://foreverworkinprogress.blogspot.com/2024/10/obviously-is-not-punctuation-mark.html