The man sitting across me frowns with a sense of genuine dissatisfaction.
“It looks like I came here under false pretenses. I thought I would be the only one making you lewd proposals. Now, if your photos have been on the Internet, you must be getting a lot of those.”
He then moved his glass on the table a little closer to mine. I was about to assure him that I will consider his lewd proposal, when I realized that the whole situation reminded me of something. I too, once went on a date under false pretenses.
Years ago, I met a guy at a party and he was instantly into me. We flirted, he paid for all my drinks and even hailed a cab to get me home safely. Since he was on organizer´s duty on that particular event, he could not excuse himself so he promised to meet me the next day.
So the next day, as soon as we could get up we snuck into a cafe. As soon as he sat across the table from me, I noticed something was off about him. He was grinning, a grimace of dissatisfaction ruining his pretty face. I thought that maybe he had a girlfriend all along, and now, sober in broad daylight, his conscience got the best of him.
He said nothing of it, just remarked that he´d remembered me differently, maybe it was the light. I casually remarked that I had poor eyesight in the dark, that I actually liked him better now. Our conversation flowed from there on pretty smoothly. He was still interested in me, and suggested we meet again in the club, after dark. Still, there was this feeling that something is off, that I couldn´t properly account for.
My doubts remained unanswered until Monday when I casually remarked on my plight to a young client who came to my office. The man in question turned out to be a mutual acquaintance. When I told her about the surprised grimace, she covered her mouth in awe, and uttered,
“Don´t you know?”
“Know what? What am I supposed to know about him that escaped me?”
“It was the glasses!”
“What?!”
“The glasses!”
“What do you mean?”
“He has a huge fetish for glasses. The school teacher look. You have it. You must have taken them off later!”
I realized that indeed, I was wearing glasses on the night but not in the morning. I´ have heard about fetishes and costumes, I just never knew it had such power to create false pretenses.
