Free Not Meeting Mr Right by Anita Heiss Page A

I couldn't really
complain about not having met Mr Right at this stage,
because I wasn't at all bored, or lonely. I continued
to chant my mantra on a daily basis: I am deadly and
desirable and desperate! Whoops! I am deadly and
desirable and delicious!
    Not long after, I went on my third blind date in two
weeks. Dannie was determined to prove Peta wrong
and find me my life-partner, so she had arranged a date
with her cousin Charlie, who liked to play pool. I'd been
known to sink a few, and Dannie thought we might
have some fun together. Charlie and I were to meet
at the Marlborough Hotel in Newtown the following
Saturday.
    Just before leaving for my date, I sought Aria's
advice, and was puzzled: 'Leos won't have to travel far
from home to find love and romance today, so don't go
looking outside your own perimeter.' Did Aria mean my
physical or mental perimeter? Was inner-city Newtown
too far from home?
    I met Charlie at the pub, and the first thing I noticed
was his daggy, tan, eighties-style sand-blasted leather
bomber jacket. That would have to go for a start. The
skin-tight, pale blue jeans, turned up at the cuff, with
white Dunlop Volley shoes, would be following behind
quickly. I didn't even know they still made those
shoes. Or perhaps he'd bought them with the jacket
two decades ago. Charlie also wore an akubra hat that
pushed down his dark hair, and even though he did the
gentlemanly thing and removed it when he greeted me,
I wished he hadn't. The hat-hair look didn't sit well with
the jacket and jeans.
    Dannie had told me Charlie was 'cool'. She seriously
needed to get out more and see what today's fashions
were. She may have been okay with George's clothes,
but I wasn't ready to settle for a man dressed in timewarp
garb.
    Bad dress sense wasn't the worst of Charlie's
problems, though. He had dreadful skin, clearly the
result of a bad bout of chicken pox as a teenager.
    It's what's inside that counts, I told myself. Our bodies
are mere shells for our souls to walk around in would be
my mantra of the night . I'd read somewhere that scars
just show that you've survived something horrible, that
you're strong. Surviving chicken pox wasn't quite the
same as surviving a fire or an appendectomy, but it must
have been hard growing up with those pock marks.
    I should just stop being such a lookist, I thought.
I wouldn't focus on Charlie's skin. It was the scars I
couldn't see that I really needed to worry about.
    Charlie came back from the bar with two schooners.
    Don't look at his skin , I thought. 'So, did you have
trouble finding a park?' I asked. 'King Street can be a
nightmare.'
    'I don't drive. I'm car-free, I like to say.'
    Oh god, I was going to have play chauffeur to this
fella if we dated. That was not an attractive option at all.
I wanted to play passenger occasionally.
    Charlie read my face. 'I can drive,' he said. ' I just don't
want to pollute the environment. I believe it's worth
suffering a little inconvenience to save the planet.'
    He was right. I felt ashamed of my reaction. I
noticed that Charlie had a beautiful smile and dreamy
chocolate-brown eyes hidden under the rim of his hat.
    ***
    Over the next few hours we played pool and put money
in the jukebox, both choosing some old favourites from
Blondie and ABBA. We had exactly the same taste in
music – appalling taste, Peta would say. Neither of us
knew who was at the top of the charts, and at one point
Charlie asked, 'What's an ARIA?' Peta would have been
mortified, but I really liked his unashamed pride in not
being up-with-it. We were having fun, and the time
passed easily.
    I was warming to Charlie, no doubt about it. After
a few more beers, I found myself making plans. My
hairstylist could fix the hat-hair permanently, and we
could burn the hat with the jeans and jacket. The shoes
he could keep for sport if he wanted to. Dannie, Peta,
Liza and I could do a Fab Four makeover. It might even
be fun. The full transformation. Surely there'd be some
way to