The date was going well – until we hit a strip club

I got chatting to a dancer called Sapphire (Picture: Getty Images)

At 25, I hit the dating apps – hard.

I’d been single for about 18 months, having split with my long-term boyfriend for the simple reason that you don’t tend to marry the guy you met at Clapham’s Infernos when you’re 21.  

It turned out I could do well as I really fancy short(er) guys, and every other woman seemed not to. I didn’t have to be the best looking woman in the world, I just had to be in their inbox.  

While the app wasn’t full of firemen, police men, or other hunks as the promo content implied (maybe they were thinking of the Village People?), I quickly matched with Dylan* and we started chatting. 

We almost got into a weird, penpal-type situation where we’d send each other long, hilarious messages that were almost competitively funny. So when he broke the jam and suggested going drinking and people-watching in a central London bar at 3pm on a Saturday, I agreed. 

While I was happy to go where the night took me, I had no idea just how mad things would get on that date. 

He arrived late and flustered, but at 5’7, blonde, blue-eyed and almost angelic-looking, he was forgiven. 

I was happy to go where the night took me (Picture: Getty Images)

We sat at an outside table and ordered this fancy new drink everyone was talking about: a mojito. We nattered away, with Dylan telling me an anecdote about a dead dog on the Tube. 

Sadly, it was a classic urban legend I’d read on the internet years before. 

Still, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, and the chat was soon flowing as well as the drinks. 

One mojito turned into two, which turned into 10, and when it was closing time, we weren’t sure where to go next.

That’s when someone, I truly can’t remember who, suggested the strip club. 

Obviously, it was ‘for a joke’ but suddenly, we were heading to a London erotic dancing venue famed for being a tourist trap. I think we thought we were young, wild, and hedonistic. We were certainly very, very drunk and on a date that had now been going for 10 hours too long. 

I think we thought we were young, wild, and hedonistic (Picture: Getty Images)

Inside, it was immediately awkward. The dancers seemed as bemused as we were at the situation.

We were shown to the table and audibly gulped at the prices. About £7 a beer – which all those years ago, was a lot. But we decided to drink through it.

Dylan paid for everything, doing that very male thing of saying, ‘No, no, I’ve got this, don’t worry’, despite the very large bill. 

Neither of us wanted private shows, but within minutes a dancer had clambered onto the table, kicking over our overpriced beers in the process. 

She was wearing underwear but was completely topless. Dylan was more embarrassed than me, so he didn’t really look.

While Dylan was studying the menu prices and fending off dancers trying to drag him into the champagne room, I ended up talking to one known as ‘Sapphire’ for ages about her university course.

She was studying biomedical sciences, so we spent half the night huddled over a napkin brainstorming career options over the top of very loud 90s R&B.  

About £7 a beer – which all those years ago, was a lot (Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

‘Most expensive date I’ve ever been on,’ Dylan muttered as we left around 4am.

We went back to his place, a sprawling four-storey house he shared with his siblings in South London. But we didn’t have sex: I don’t think either of us could, or wanted to at that point – either down to drunkenness, overexposure, or both!

Eventually, our conversation started to fizzle out. He started seeing someone else, and so did I.

I told the story a few times to friends and forgot about him. Until one bank holiday weekend, around a year later.  

It was around 1am, and I was outside my flat with two mates, when a black cab pulled up. Dylan stepped out.

He’d been nearby, remembered I lived around there from a cancelled plan months before, and thought he’d try his luck. No message. No call. No heads up.

He hugged me like no time had passed and he joined me and my mates upstairs for a spontaneous drinking session. Sooner or later, Dylan and I were having sex in my bathroom, as my housemate who actually had to work that next day angrily banged on the door.

He left in the morning, and I never saw him again.  

But I do still have that napkin with the biomedical science CV notes, in a shoebox of odd memories under my bed, just in case Sapphire ever needs it.

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