A date and a shag with a very nice man

Recently, I was at a house party where I didn’t know many people. I was actually in the mood to meet some new faces – a rare feeling on a Saturday night, which is often reserved for the familiar. It was fancy dress, which I skipped. We all have our limits.

In the tiny garden, pushed up against the fence, was Nice Guy. He was wearing a curly brunette wig, comic glasses and some cowboy chaps over shorts, smoking a vape. We were introduced by a mutual friend and, pretty quickly, I could tell he was sweet, all polite and smiley.

But I couldn’t tell if he was gay – until we started talking about Kylie Minogue. From then on, the chat was pretty natural. He told me he worked for Southwark Council, that he had some tequila inside the house, and that we should go and drink it.

Once the wig and glasses were off, we were snogging in the loo and biting into a pill. As the night progressed, so did the affection. We were kissing among the crowd and placing our hands on each other’s bums like we’d known each other for ages. But I’d been out the night before and started feeling the long overdue crash. So, we exchanged numbers and I took myself home a little past 3am.

The following morning, I thought about how nice he was. It’s a strange feeling when that happens – when you meet a guy who really is just nice. There was no chase, just pleasant, interesting chat, followed by a handsy snog in the loo. No cold body language, just nice hugs. So I texted him and, within minutes, he replied. How very nice. There was no waiting around for a reply, and he was actually free for a date.

We settled on a day and time. Seeing as I’d already met him, there wasn’t really the fear of not fancying him, so we went for a late lunch on a Saturday. First dates with a stranger should always start at a pub in case you need to quickly break away if it’s going tits up. You don’t want to be stuck in a restaurant waiting for the main to arrive before jumping out of the window.

Quite noticeably, the conversation was a lot more awkward than it was at the party. The food, at a small-plates restaurant that irritatingly calls its menu ​“snacks”, was naff. He was a vegetarian, so we ordered a plate of deep-fried cauliflower, burrata and some grilled flatbread, which all turned out to be greasy, sloppy and unsexy.

I wouldn’t say the chat was boring, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. After around half an hour, I realised he wasn’t asking me anything. That everything I said was met with a giggle, or a nod-along like a dog on a car’s dashboard.

By the end of the date, it turned out that there was a slight disagreement, after all: I moaned about the food, he said he enjoyed it. He walked me to the station and we had a brief snog. I could taste the remnants of cauliflower as we parted ways.

We exchanged some messages in the days after the date, all very vanilla. He told me about his brother, who had just got a puppy, and I told him about some Guardian recipe I was keen to make. Then he asked me out on a second date.

I ended up seeing him at another party not long after we met at the crap restaurant, when I arrived at 5am and found him deep in conversation in the kitchen. I immediately wanted to turn the other way. But we spoke for a bit and he asked why the second date never happened, about which I was – for once – very honest.

I explained that I found it a bit awkward and didn’t feel a spark. He reassured me that it was just because he was nervous, having been out of the dating scene for a while. We all get nervous. And, I remembered, he was nice.

Some hours later, I woke up in his bed. The sex was pretty good and I hazily remembered telling him how much I fancied him while he was on top, and that we should go on another date.

But as I came to, I felt different. He ran us a bath and asked me how I was – over and over again. He laughed at everything I was saying and bounced his head along, like he did during the date. He made me a coffee, offered me paracetamol, wondered what I was doing in the evening and what I was doing the week after.

All the qualities that I should like in a guy. But here, I started feeling a little suffocated.

Truthfully, there’s nothing sexier than a dick. Not a dick who screams in the faces of OAPs or anything like that. The aloof dick who tests your patience a little, knows he dresses well, raises one eyebrow and doesn’t text back for a few days. It’s called the chase, and we’re all guilty of feeding its ego.

Sometimes nice is just, well, too nice.