“I may or may not have fallen asleep”
The one sentence everyone wants to hear 20 minutes before a date.

For these things, it comes in handy to have a few friends who can be late with literal days – you end up getting pretty fortified against only a few minutes. Luckily, I’ve been well-trained on this field.
Though they still miss out on the opportunity to throw in a sassy “might be late but worth the wait”

The house was already outrageously neat, which is quite a feat for a Man Cave.
Yet, there is one thing we can’t really offer to our guests: A seat. Our couch is ∩dsᴉpǝ poʍu, which leaves the carpet the only place in the house where you can “comfortably” chill. This makes our home a little more unique, and there wasn’t a single person so far who had an issue with our design/taste:

After all, if you’re not sitting on the couch, you’re more likely to be productive. This is exactly what happened in the next 5 minutes: It was time to cook a proper dish.

Both of us agreed that our cooking skills are below average.
She can burn water, I can overcook it. You can imagine the rest, if this is how we deal with the simplest things. Nevertheless, I began chopping carrots, mushrooms and spinach leaves, mixed them in a pan with chili and black beans, cooked them on low heat for 10-15 minutes, and served them with baked onions for the touch of crunchiness and overall ultimate taste.
When I began to add salt somewhere in the middle of making this delicacy, she gently expressed her concerns for my spicing skills.
I mean, the measurement tool I use for spicing is my heart, not “twelve thimbles of salt” like in the American recipes, so it’s fair to assume that I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing.

20 minutes later when we put it to the test, the reality was that I fucking nailed it.
8/10 would cook again.

At this point we arrived to the pinnacle of the evening, when we began to open 3 decades old bottles of French wine to give our unemployed livers a job.
The first bottle’s cork I completely screwed up. Whether it was the lack of experience or simple bad luck, millions of crumbles flew everywhere around the kitchen and inside the bottle.
With the help of a sieve I filtered what I could, but it tasted like vinegar.
Drinking it would’ve been like letting a zombie give you a hug. Not smart. Not smart.

Since she speaks French, it seemed like a good idea to ask her to open the second one. You know how French people are. You better speak their language or you’re fucked. Perhaps it works the same way with their grape-gods, and only a worthy individual is allowed to open a bottle with a fairly intact juice that pampers our taste buds.

Lo and behold, she did it twice without missing her mark.
The setup was flawlessly good:
Smooth music with sunlight. A roomy balcony, food, board games, great company and some old ass wine.
We could discuss a hoe’s pros ‘n cons, partially selling our souls for a bigger bank account, the benefits of a chonky dog, our friend circles and their effects on us.

Time flew by and the moon switched places with the sun. That’s when the pancakes were about to come. She was so annoyed by how slow the process was, that the salt ended up not going into the dough. That brought the overall dishes made today in balance; I used “a loooot” and she used none.
The way she frowned at the pan still haunts my thoughts.
By the time the plate was full with female tortillas, she revealed that her favorite movie is also Interstellar. Thought she is a little more dedicated than I, with a fluff-ball hamster named Cooper and over 10 views in total.

We sat out again to finish the wine, spread some honey and sprinkle the blueberries + cinnamon combo on top of the gold medalist pancakes of the night.

At this moment you’d think that Life couldn’t be any better than that, that’s when we turned on Rick and Morty to further improve our involvement in the Hedonistic Arts.

It took one episode to realize that there is one last thing I could do to improve my TinderDates rating:
“I’m gonna check out your shoulders” – I say without smirking
She threw off her shoes in a blink. While I was setting up the bed, she was still busy enjoying grandpa Rick.

Now, here is some solid advice for giving a proper massage.
If you’re a complete beginner, this’ll give you an incredible boost to your skillset:

1) Make sure the environment is comfortable, safe and relaxing.
– Set up the bed in a place where no passing eyes can peek in from the street/a balcony. If the chance of being seen is there, they won’t be able to relax fully.
– Use the right intensity with light and music. A dim room with soft music is very pleasing; it makes it easier to give a heavenly experience, and it doesn’t cost you any extra effort to do it properly.
2) Focus on “giving” a massage, not on “doing” the massage.
– The biggest difference between a good massage and an incredible massage isn’t about the techniques, but the amount of attention and effort you put into giving the best experience you can to the person you’re massaging. Feel their response and adjust, don’t just go through the moves like you’d do with your grocery list.
– Always remain in contact. You can walk around the bed, move, or change angles if you will, but [at least one of] your warm hands should continuously stay on the area you’re massaging.
– Use variety. You can repeat moves, multiple times, but remember that you can also play with the amount of strength, speed, and surface you’re using. Use the bottom of your palm to apply decent pressure, then gently slide your fingers through the soft spots, this’ll make the whole experience a lot more colorful and exciting.

If you’ve never given a massage before, I can still guarantee that you can do a wonderful job just by using what’s written above.

And now, back to the Date:

I made mistake of letting Rick and Morty go on without turning it off, but I already started the massage, so I couldn’t lift my hands off of her clothes (Rule #2). Surely enough, this couldn’t go on through the whole session, so I broke a rule to fix another, and eventually managed to keep both.
Rick and Morty off, Lo-Fi on, let’s send them back to heaven where they belong.
The shoulder check happened to involve the back, then the arms, all the way to the fingers – which turned into doing the legs too, from the tiniest toes all the way to the buttocks.
She was so ticklish at one spot, that even a little pressure could make her twist and jump with giggles coming out of the pillow her head was resting on..

The moment I was done, she wasn’t quite sure which galaxy we were in at this point.
The 30 year old wine + Rick and Morty did a great job.

“That was more than just checking out my shoulders”
Oops.

It didn’t sound like a complaint tho.

She managed to crawl on the floor, lay on the carpet and use her jacket as a pillow – contemplating whether she should go to work tomorrow.
Tomorrow, as in to a meeting in 7 hours.
After a few minutes of struggle, she made herself function for another 15 minutes until she gets home, leaps in bed and probably damns her moral code for being responsible.

In the morning when I asked whether she made it to the office, the response was:

“Of course! My Mama didn’t raise a quitter”
Let’s hope her liver lives by the same principles.

Blue Star Dates EP1
2020.08.23 – Day 580