Itchy York article

Sex n goths n rock n roll

One goth pub, 13 guys, 12 girls, one slightly worried male Itchy correspondent, one female Itchy correspondent and a series of graded five minute conversations: what more could you want for a night of hot goth loving?

We’re nice guys at Team Itchy. Which is why when two of our correspondants set out to go goth speed dating, armed only with a brief of things to say (one neg, one Smiths lyric - we wanted to see what the Goths would say when faced with ‘Do you wear black on the outside, because black is how you feel on the inside?’, and ‘are you single?’ – you never know) we sent them off with hoots of derision. ‘You’re going goth speed dating?’, yelled the rank and file. ‘We’ve seen the people that go speed dating. They are some SERIOUS people…’ Anything we could do to help.

Alexi Duggins checks out the male position

After a quick meeting with Sue at a nearby pub to discuss tactics and apply eyeliner (‘I’m going to do something a little crazy here,’ Sue says. And then she drives the end of a pencil into my eyeball.), we step into the dingily-lit gothic pub basement that serves as the venue for tonight’s speed dating. A quick glance around reveals 13 guys, 12 girls. We’re all given cards bearing a unique number, the girls are told to go sit at tables, and the guys are told to go round in a circuit. You get five minutes, after which a bell rings, and you move on to the next table along. We’re handed pencils and told to mark our score-cards with a tick for the people we like. The pencils are, of course, black.

‘Hi, I’m Sarah. Pleased to meet you,’ says my first speed date, a nervous-looking, eyeliner-covered, raven-haired rock fan. ‘Oh good,’ she says, as I take a drag on my cigarette, ‘you’re a smoker. I’m so relieved. Now I can smoke too.’ Before I realise it, I’ve launched into a tirade about how she shouldn’t feel the need to hide her smoking habit to impress dates. I later discover that on the basis of this, Sarah would like to date me in future. See? Smoking is sexy.

After my initial rant, I pull myself together, and do my best attempt to smile and flirt my way around the various females. Unfortunately, I end up getting fairly drunk, and I start to forget the questions we came armed with. My normally extensive collection of Smiths lyrics has gone by the wayside, I’m struggling to freestyle a good neg, and the only person I ask if she’s single looks at me like I’ve just stepped into her living room and urinated on her sofa. ‘Yes, I’m single. Why are you asking me that?’ I inform her that without asking that question, we both might be sitting in on an elaborate swingers’ club and never know. ‘Hmm, you English guys are a lot more open than the men I’m used to back home’, she says. I later learn that this woman is interested in dating me, too.

Then, I meet Maria. A wonky-faced 30-something in a black, leather hat, and see-through lace top, she clutches a yellowing pencil case full of questions written out on cards. ‘Take one out and ask it me,’ she instructs.

Rummaging through the hundreds of pieces of card, I pull out a card which says ‘Given a homemade pipe bomb, which talk show host should have it force fed?’. I swallow hard, tuck it away as evidence in case I ever need to testify against this woman in court (she had ‘stalker’ written all over her, alright?), and reach for what I hope to be a less psychotic card. ‘Do you have an oral fixation?’, it asks.

Oh well. Compared to criminal acts of violence, this one should be relatively easy-going. After all, how perturbing can chatting about nail-biting be? “Well, I guess so,” replies Maria. “It just depends on the guy. It can be quite nice to do it to the right man.”

As I swallow hard, and try not to picture her doing the same, a barmaid moves a menu off the table, revealing a pile of around another hundred questions. A look of embarrassment flickers across Maria’s face, and then the bell rings. I look over at Sue, and can see her laughing and joking with her dating partner. Not wanting to be outdone, I decide to go for the neg. ‘Well Maria, it was nice being asked all those questions,’ I say to her. ‘It was sort of like a local council job interview.’ Subsequently, Maria decided not to date me.

My final encounter is with Annika, a massive 80s-metal-loving German PE teacher who I'd describe as having a barnet like she'd unfurled the strands of a rope, bleached them really badly and stuck them to her head, but I'm not sure you can backcomb rope to quite the same effect. ‘I THINK A LOT OF THESE PEOPLE ARE STRANGE’, booms Annika. Hmm, really? ‘YES. AS I AM GERMAN, I ALWAYS SPEAK MY MIND.’ I sneak a look at one of her chunky meat-hooks and start to wonder what the chances are of me getting hold of Sue’s eyeliner pencil and using it to fend this woman off. Luckily, the bell ringing the end of five minutes means that I don’t need to engage in make-up warfare just yet.

I end the evening by ticking ‘yes’ for every woman I meet that night – after all, I wanted to be scientific in my approach. Two days later, I ended up with five ‘yes’ results, five ‘friend’ results and two people who never wanted to see me again. Which apparently makes me ‘very popular’. Even, strangely, with Annika. Still, at least I got five more dates out of the night than Sue ‘I don’t want to put down “yes” in case they’re weird’ Ostler.

Sue Ostler checks out the female view

A Speed Dating virgin, I’d agonized over what to wear to this auspicious event for like, hours. Being more rock than goth, I abandoned my black jeans and T-shirt idea at the last moment with a wave of va-va-voom-inspired madness, I stepped out with lashings of cleavage. Frankly with that sort of approach, I wouldn’t have to worry about much else. Personality: who needs it?

Date One introduces himself. Dan’s a community radio guy. A key factor for me was personality and body language. Within seconds of sitting down, it was game on. I recognized the inward mantra: ‘Don’t look at her boobs. Don’t look at her boobs. Don’t look at her boobs. And d’oh there it was – the oh so familiar nose dive. And this was no quick cheat ‘n peek – it was a full on ogle. And he didn’t let up for the whole five minutes. It was embarrassing. I tried to steer the conversation towards the ‘are you single?’ question to separate the cheaters from the keepers and he just looked at me with absolute bewilderment and nodded. Time to whip out the scorecard and decide his fate - Date, Mate or Ditch? – you guessed it: ditch.

Another hefty slug of my drink before launching into Date Two and things start to look up, well eyeball wise anyway. Steve took his seat and said, ‘hi’. A gentle-eyed, quietly-spoken goth with black panda eyes and Russell Brand hair, he was happy to ramble on about himself and his art. He drifted along and finally managed to steer the conversation into the cul de sac of no return. After what seemed like the longest five minutes imaginable, it was time to move on…

Date Three sat down. Andy was a dark haired, intense IT guy who fired questions at me relentlessly. Where did I go? What music did I like? What did I do? The furious questioning took any possible fun out of the exchange and sadly only allowed me the one, ‘are you single’ question which got the token indignant, ‘yes!’ but his eager beaver preparation meant that there was no chance of the conversation progressing naturally.

A fifteen-minute break allowed us to get well oiled for Round 2, a rum-soaked blur where thanks to the two-for-one cocktails, everybody had their giggle goggles on. Alexi and I tried to compare notes surreptiously. As far as I could gather he was a pussy when it came to asking the hard questions but hey, we still had a few dates to get through.

And then I met Mike. A stocky, bald butcher. Elaborating on the, ‘are you single? question he confessed all about his clingy girlfriend of 3 years and why he had to dump her – ouch. Looking for a way to lighten up the conversation I went for “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?”. Mike nearly lurched out of his chair. “A three way sex orgy!” – er thanks Mike. Good thing he didn’t think to ask the question back.

Next up was Tim who again, had prepped for the event. His questions came thick and fast. Where did I go when I went out? What music did I like? We discovered we’d both been to the same New Order concert a couple of weeks back and we had a few laughs. We were still chuckling away when the bell went and he didn’t show any intention of leaving until my next suitor was standing waiting to take his seat. As the guys shifted positions, I looked up cagily hoping that Alexi would see us having a grand old time.

And then there was Vladimir – the ‘special date’ of the night - a very strange, tense, heavily accented man who made no eye contact. With his black cape flung over his shoulders, he talked non stop about himself. He hadn’t slept for 48 hours. Yawn. He’d been racing all weekend (car racing apparently), and frankly he was the biggest bore I met that night.

The results were emailed through a few days later. We’d had a choice to tick ‘See Again’ or ‘Friends Only’. Since I didn’t meet the man of my dreams, I’d ticked the ‘Friends Only’ column and discovered that if I wanted any new friends, I’d made 11 new potential mates out of it. Not the worst way to spend a night out.

Mail this page to a friend

Post to: del.icio.us | digg | newsvine | nowpublic | reddit

Comments

interesting
- me from brum on 13/12/2006 -

Add Your Own Comment

Recent York Articles

Itchy's in love with a cyborg, but that's OK
Your next getaway is just nibbles away!
Laugh for Less
'Outsider-Pop' is in
Calling all bands!
Tokyo Police Club comes to town
All change on the go: get ready on trains/in toilets
Stage: not so safe?
'The Bank Job' and other tales
From the director of Pan's Labyrinth...