T is for...

For anyone new / non regulars, you won't have met Anna yet. Anna Holt writes an instalment of The Doomed Dates Diary every Monday for the Daily Dodo. Here's the fourth of her specially themed A-Z offerings. To read more - check out Mondays in the archive since January this year... enjoy!

T is for Trevor

         'You've got a beard,' I said.

         'Yes,' he said.

         'Is it itchy?' I said.

         'Sometimes,' he said.

         'Do you ever find things living in it?' I said. It was more of a joke really.

         He thought about it for a moment.

         'Not recently,' he said.

         'Uh-huh,' I said.

        

         Trevor was a tap dance instructor, but he didn't exactly look like one. Not the way I'd pictured him anyway. For a start- I don't remember Fred Astaire having a goatee. I was also a smidge disappointed that he hadn't turned up wearing a top hat and tails- and didn't snap his fingers at the barman and order champagne or a Martini with a green olive in it. He had a cranberry juice and some cheese and onion crisps instead. My 1920's fuelled, black and white film fantasy was falling apart at the seams and I'd barely sat down.

         I get this a lot. I'm notoriously bad at guessing what people will be like in the flesh. I'm a dreamer. Always have been. In my over-active, rose-tinted mind, Trevor should have been brought up in Paris before moving to New York as a teenager to be taught by one of the last remaining greats of tap- Sore Toes Murphy. In his nineties now and almost blind but still as light on his feet as an angel. The old man and his young student would tippety-tap, tippety-tap, tippety-tippety-tippety-tap away on the rooftops of Harlem to the applause of the locals, hanging out of their windows in the sultry heat of summer.

         Oh dear. See what I mean? I get completely carried away.

         Trevor was actually from Brighton where his mother managed a small hotel that was dog friendly and had distant sea views- if you were willing to view them from the top of a wardrobe or swinging precariously from a light fitting.

         In lots of ways I preferred my version. Maybe that's why I'm still single?

        

         Despite the face furniture, Trevor seemed like a nice enough guy. The way he incessantly drummed his fingers on the table was only vaguely annoying now, but I could see it being a major stumbling block in the future. Not that we had a future. Apparently I wasn't what he had imagined either.

         'I thought you'd be taller,' he said.

         'No,' I said.

         'Oh,' he said.

         And we left it at that.

***