I was seeing this girl and it was getting serious, we’d been on quite a lot of dates but there was a problem, she kept vomiting. To begin with it was quite cute because I knew that no matter if I screwed up on the date or said the wrong thing or was inadvertently offensive, nothing I could do would be worse than her vomiting. It was a safety blanket in a way.
I will invoke McCannonymity for this girl and call her Carla (A Time To Kill, 1996 – [?]). You know it’s going to be a good story when I can’t name the person involved.
On our first date, she had vomited in the street as we left the pub, quite late in the evening thankfully. On our second date she was displaying signs of possible vomitation after a similar night out drinking so I decided to get us a taxi home. The whole trip I had to monitor her for signs of upcoming upchuck; I was gazing at her every moment, like some lovestruck young fool would hang on every expression.
Eventually, she slipped into the danger zone, I calmly instructed the driver to pull over (FUCKIN’ STOP MATE SHE’S GONNA PUKE EVERYWHERE!) and opened the door just in time for her to soil the pavement with a jet of vomit that could easily have quashed a violent group of protestors. A quick wipe and a slam of the door and we were off again. Romantic times.
Some weeks later there was a leaving party at work and I invited Carla along. We started in the work bar, and moved on to a local bar in Soho, there was quite a group of us and the drinking was heavy. My friend Ross was involved. He is a maniac. In a good way; a very good way. He went to the bar and returned with three bottles of Sambuca and practically every shot glass the bar had, placing them in the middle of the table where we were all sat. Even I was feeling rough by this point, and if nothing I’d learned my lesson with Carla, so I asked her if she was OK enough to have a shot, she shook her head. I had her shot and then my own. She wasn’t looking good, so I turned to her and said “If you feel ill at all just let me know I’ll take you to the toilets.” After all we were surrounded by a whole bunch of my colleagues from work. I didn’t want any incidents.
She replied, “It’s too late for that.” I thought she was going to be sick so I grabbed an ice bucket – to catch the vomit and also hopefully via the ice to preserve it so we could take it to the doctor and examine it and find out what the fuck was wrong with her that she vomited every time we went out.
But no, she meant “too late” as in she had already thrown up. All down my back.
Yeah the party was basically over. I was the one who had to rush to the toilets, take off my shirt, spend ten minutes running it under a tap, put it back on, then go back to the group and say “YAWN I’m tired, SHALL WE GO!?”
It should have been more obvious at the time but the problem with Carla was simple; she didn’t really drink. And I did. A lot. So to try to fit in with me she would try to keep up and she just wasn’t used to it. We eventually realised if she just drank whatever she was comfortable with and didn’t bother trying to match me, she’d be fine.
The “vomance” became a romance once more, but that wasn’t the end of our unusual dates together.
We had dinner one night at a lovely little Italian place called Limoncello in Tooting. I discovered it because I love limoncello, the lemony liqueur – that was all it took to get me in the door. They had the homemade stuff flowing all over the place. They had a speciality starter called a Limoncello, a special pizza called a Limoncello, and a special ice cream dessert made with it called a Limoncello. On one occasion I actually placed my order as “Can I have the Limoncello, the Limoncello, um, the Limoncello. Oh, and a limoncello please. It’s closed now, which is both surprising and unsurprising. It’s surprising because it was an amazing little place, the food was lovely, and the owner was incredibly charming and charismatic, taking great care over every customer, even though he did always seem to be quite drunk. But perhaps the reason he was able to take such care over each customer is there just never seemed to be anybody in there.
This evening with Carla was one of many times I’d gone there and we were literally the only customers. We got our pick of the tables so we took the one right at the middle of the front windows, Carla had her back to it and I faced her. We ordered, we bantered with Enzo the owner, he didn’t blab about the fact I always bring dates here, and we got our starters.
It was about halfway through the starter that I began to pay attention to the flashing blue lights outside. Some little paramedics car had been there for a minute or so, I’d initially thought just caught in traffic on one of Tooting’s main roads. There seemed to be some congestion. We waited for our main course and chatted some more, then I noticed the ambulance, and a couple of police cars. Carla looked round, we wondered what it was and tried to ignore it as our pizzas arrived. Two fire engine blocked the road right in front of us, the flashing lights were getting increasingly distracting. Outside seemed to be rammed with emergency services. Was there a bomb or something? Man, this pizza was good. Man, Enzo was drunk.
We tried to pretend nothing was going on and carried on our evening, the ultimate British reaction. We were too stuffed for desserts and had some limoncello (the drink) straight out the freezer to finish off. Tarpaulin had been erected around a huge chunk of the street outside. Me, Carla and Enzo were the only people in view that weren’t in high visibility clothing. As we finished, paid and tipped Enzo (felt we had to, we were the only people there), we walked outside. Not only was the commotion outside bigger than we thought, we were right in the middle of it. Limoncello, and two buildings along on either side, were all inside the police cordon. We couldn’t see what was going on but that bus was bang in the middle of the fuss. A policewoman escorted us away as we rubbernecked trying to get some clues; there must have been 12-15 emergency services vehicles there. About 40 staff too. It seemed like someone might have been hit by the bus, but the response was overwhelming. I couldn’t really enjoy the fact we’d spent our first night without vomit, given that someone had clearly died instead.
So you’re probably thinking Carla is the mummy in the post’s title. She’s not. I’ve never dated someone with kids, at least no-one who admitted to them. I find the word MILF has become a great confusion for me as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger, a MILF (if you don’t know what it stands for, Google it, I’m trying to keep my site, um, family-friendly) was someone like your mate’s mum who was still a bit hot despite being older. As you get older yourself it changes and I’m not sure I even know what it means anymore. I know a girl at the moment, who’s about mid- to late-twenties I think and she’s expecting her third. And she’s fucking hot. Like seriously hot. Is she a MILF? I guess technically she would be. But it’s not what I would immediately associate with it. MILFs are meant to be older right? But my mum’s 67. I wouldn’t call one of my friends’ mums a MILF, not any more. That’s just wrong on many levels.
I guess at my age a MILF is probably someone my own age (I’m 34)? Even that’s not right. I’d probably use MILF to describe someone up to ten years older than me, whether or not she had kids. So the whole meaning of it is out the window now…
She’s probably a MILF now…
Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, the headline story. This will come as a surprise…
I was out with Carla again, in Chelsea, and we went to this big pub on the King’s Road with a huge beer garden; it was a nice evening, given it was late October. A bunch of weirdos came and sat at the table closest to us, four of them, all dressed up for Hallowe’en. We had a zombie, a vampire, some kind of green thing (he was supposed to be either Incredible Hulk, some kind of lizard or just very jealous at his friends’ costumes) and a mummy.
The mummy costume was certainly thrifty. The guy was basically wrapped crudely in toilet paper.
Me and Carla laughed at them for some minutes then tried to carry on our conversation, but they were very noisy and clearly pretty drunk already. As I was looking over at them shaking my head like the old bastard I had become, the lizard man next to the mummy just took out a lighter and calmly set fire to the back of his toilet paper costume. It took a few seconds for anyone to notice, especially the mummy himself. He scratched at his back a couple of times before he really started to feel the fact he was actually ablaze – the flames were spreading like … well, like fire through toilet paper and as he squealed and screamed like a big girl and stood up trying to put out the flames, he was pretty much left standing there in just his pants.
I guess MILF really does make sense … Mummy I’d Like To … FUCK FUCK FUCK HELP I’M ON FIRE!
