His version of a perfect first date reads: ‘We dress up in matching rubber suits, eat cotton candy and pizza, communicate via smoke signals and move to Iceland together.’
        I giggle and I send him an e-mail.
        We set up a date for the next day.
        It takes us an hour to get together because we are waiting in front of different branches of ‘Ben and Jerry’s’ on Leicester Square and his phone is switched off.
        He is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sports a grey beard and a good twenty kilos too many. He has a limp caused by an accident. It is the reason he has been unemployed for a year. We hobble to a restaurant in Chinatown, which is so dirty my hands stick to the tablecloth. All waiters greet him by name and don’t ask for our order but start bringing food right away.
        ‘They mix me a wicked special spicy sauce,’ he grins. ‘I used to come here every day when I had no money for real food.’
        These days, however, things are looking up. He still hasn’t found a day job but has recovered sufficiently from his accident to work as a freelance paparazzo. He spends his nights waiting in front of clubs and shoots celebrities leaving in early morning hours. His most successful picture was a knickerless crotch shot of a model I have never heard of, in front of a bar whose name I cannot remember. He sold it to Heat magazine and has been hunting for a follow up ever since.
        While he talks, the wicked special spicy sauce drips out of his mouth. Yellow, gooey drops cling to his beard and dry into something that looks like tiny balls of pus. He wipes his mouth with a napkin and they crumble back onto his plate.
        He asks me to contribute five pounds to the bill and covers the rest.
        When he walks me to my bus he puts his arm around me.
        His limp makes the embrace clumsy and uneven.
        The smell of his special spicy sauce mouth makes me nauseous.
        I push him away.
        ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ he says defensively. ‘I just want to feel your body.’
        I hop on the first bus that stops. It takes me ten minutes to realize I am going the wrong way and another ten minutes to gather enough energy to get off.
        I ignore his first phone call. There is no second.