AMROU AL-KADHI
Today, I met up with the hottest man who has ever wanted to go on a date with me. A gorgeous face, a body like Hercules, a winning smile, an abundance of talent and charm — the jackpot. He may actually be the best-looking man I’ve ever seen in real life.
I’m really not used to this kind of luck. I’m more accustomed to racist and transphobic British gays telling me that they “don’t fuck Asians” or that they think I’m cute but “way too much of a fag”. And here he was, the human embodiment of a trophy, who, after having sifted through my pictures, decided that, yes, he wanted to meet me, a flailing drag queen who can’t even tie their shoelaces and who was once likened to a Rasputin lookalike at school. What do they put in the air in LA that transforms my fate so?
It was all quite overwhelming. Especially as I arrived at lunch hungover from a party the previous day, and was wearing my T-shirt backwards because it had a massive pizza stain on it.
When Mr Perfect excused himself to go to the restroom, I texted my friend: “Oh my God, this guy is insanely hot, and I look like a tadpole.” Except I didn’t send this message to my friend, I texted my date instead. Gotta love the neurological frizzle of a hangover. When I realised what I had done, my heart literally fell out of my arsehole, and I felt like the cosmic order of my usual dating story had returned. No way was Allah gonna let this turn out well.
When the man of my dreams arrived back from the loo — with me having played the whole thing pretty cool — I had to just come clean about the text he’d be finding on his phone any second now. He looked at it and smiled: “Aw, that’s nice. At least you weren’t being horrible about me.” We limped on for a little bit longer — I think we even talked about the weather — while I had the desperate urge to be devoured by a deep pit of quicksand, before we said our awkward goodbyes, in which I obviously didn’t get the kiss I was so desperate for.
I’m not really sure what the moral of the story is here. This sort of situation is my biggest nightmare. I agonise over e
