Explore O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon.
Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel.
Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon.
Follow O:JA&L on Facebook.
Support Pamelyn Casto’s text for writers: Flash Fiction: Alive in the Flicker
Support O:JA&L’s free presses.
Natalie Harris-Spencer
Speed Date Spouses
I’m almost embarrassed to answer the inevitable “How did you two meet?” question. Answering it dates our relationship to a different time: a halcyon era free from swipe rights and dick pics and geo-locators, a simpler time when you hid your online dating adventures from your co-workers, when it was still appropriate to look for love across a Tube carriage (and hope your object of affection had their hand well away from their pants).
“Speed dating,” I answer simply, my innocent expression challenging their startled response, because yes, apparently speed dating can lead to a fourteen-year relationship and seven-year marriage.
Billed as “East London’s unique singles night,” watering hole Bar Kick threw a now-defunct speed dating night that mingled football (soccer) fanaticism, Victoriana kitsch, and Shoreditch pretention in that perfect Venn diagram that I never knew existed, but was totally there for. A football fan, but in no way pretentious, I found myself attending A Game of 2 Halves in September 2010 with a male friend.
Americans: “a game of two halves” is a popular British football cliché that refers to two very different halves (forty-five-minute periods) of soccer, in which the character of the first half is resuscitated or opposed by the second half.
In speed dating terms, the “first half” involved the women staying stationary as the men approached their bar tables, or couches, or foosball tables, while the second half the men remained, and the women prowled.
The second half would change my life.
The evening kicked off with a steam punk, mustached, petticoated chap/chapette duo playing the ukulele and singing about how this could be our night to find love. As I looked around the cozy bar, replete with foosball tables, world flags, and cheerful sports paraphernalia, I registered a bunch of London singles squirming at this bizarre little hipster performance. Would I find love here? Unlikely. I’d participated in speed dating once before, during college, but it was more of a drunken joke. Now, in my twenties, I was putting my disastrous foray into JDate aside (there were about ten Jewish bachelors in England in 2010; most of them lied about their height) and trying something new. Remember: this was pre-Tinder. Pre-apps. Speed dating was as exotic as it got.
The rules? No real names. Just a nickname (I went with “Willowy Wanderer” —tall, Jewish). No talking about what you did for a living. No mention of money, because, ew. Just a real conversation, each three-minute date prompted by a brief conversation starter: What do you consider the king of the vegetables? Do a party trick…without undressing. Should Facebook be awarded verb status? It was 2010.
The whistle blew for the first half; it was time to play the field. As each date approached, I sat, open-minded, talking shit for three minutes that seemed to make sense at the time, but that I couldn’t repeat now if you paid me. I checked the “yes” box on my piece of paper for two men: my friend who I came with (guaranteeing at least one match out of a roomful of twenty-two people), and a man who made me laugh. About what? Pass. He was fit and never played the ukelele.
Half time, and it was time to neck a cosmo and go to the bathroom. The women were comparing notes, referring to the men by their nicknames—“Did you meet Herman the Worm yet? So…nice.”
The second half whistle blew, and up I jumped, moving from station to station, dredging conversation out of a soulless banker (yes, he broke the rules and told me what he did for a living), and whooping another guy at foosball. He seemed pretty mad about it. I looked down at the sheet in my hand, cradling it protectively so as not to offend the sore loser—still only two yeses and I’d had about fifteen dates. Not exactly great odds of finding a spark.
I moved across to a squishy sofa and noted the name badge on this guy—Herman the Worm. The guy who the girls in the bathroom deemed that death-word, “nice.” We started discussing football, our teams, and the creepy guy who stuck a yellow card dangerously close to my nipple. He lamented his gender. I noted his t-shirt, artsy, rainbow drips, against the plainness of his hair, whose specific color I couldn’t even tell you today. But he landed me a wide-screen smile, and I glowed.
The final whistle blew. Sweating, I ambled across to the bar to compare notes with my friend: he’d checked yes to ten compared with my measly three. Was I that fussy? At least I’d have at least one match. But there he was, standing at the bar, Herman. And he was tall. We smiled. I felt the heat tiptoe up my ears.
A brief aside: data scientists have proven that men always say yes to many more women in social dating experiments. You could partake in a probability speed dating event and check yes to everyone, revealing the percentage of the room that fancies you, but I digress.
The next day, I received an email:
Herman The Worm & Willowy Wanderer…you are a match! Now you have each other’s e-mail address. Don’t delay…send a message today!
Lady Ware & Baron Iachimo Levine
Emails flew.
He was going to France. I was going to Tunisia. And so, we waited, a sweet, frustrating few weeks, before our very first London date.
It was game over. My darling worm (a reference to his days as a summer camp counselor, it transpired, and thank fuck for that) and I were inseparable. Our epic #speeddatespouses wedding took place six years later. We built our specific dreams together, traveling the world, and finally settling in the promised land every British expat dreams of: New Jersey. Two sweethearts with a passion for football, wanderlust, and overtaking slow-walking people. He’s nice with an edge. I’m edgy but nice.
It took me three minutes to find my lifetime.
About the Writer:
Natalie Harris-Spencer is an English writer, digital editor, and blogger living in America. Her work has appeared in Pleiades, Subnivean, Hobart, The Satirist, and others. She is the winner of the Chestnut Review Stubborn Writers Contest, the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize, and she was selected by Oyster River Pages as one of their Emerging Fiction Voices. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Stonecoast, and she is the Editor-in-Chief of Aspiring Author. She is currently working on her debut novel. Natalie enjoys surprise in fiction. And tea.
Image: The Suitor by Gerhard Munthe (1849-1929). Oil on canvas. 41.3 x 83.6 inches. 1905. Public domain.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
FOLLOW O:JA&L on 
.
