Left in Love is a dating column for progressive daters who give a damn! Each month, Meghan Murphy matches couples looking for radical love and documents the date in this space. Our couple this month is Angus and Maddy.
Angus is a 33-year-old campaigner for an online organization against corporate power. He really likes hammocks but doesn’t make an effort to lie in them enough. Socialist/loud.
Maddy is a 28-year-old visual artist, caregiver for her grandma, and a kids’ art programmer. Hopeful/cynic.
Angus: Maddy was ten minutes late. This is actually a good thing if we are going to meet up again because I am consistently ten minutes late. (Though it did make me wonder, during those ten minutes, whether I was giving a false first impression by being on time.)
Maddy: When I arrived, Angus got up to hug me without hesitation, which felt very warm and confidently forward. He also didn’t mind that I was ten minutes late. In fact, he said he loved being ten minutes late for everything, which was a nice thing for me to hear.
Angus: Five minutes into the date, Maddy and I reached a verbally binding agreement to rate each other highly to ease the nerves. Before that, I had felt a little nervous, partly because I’d read a paragraph from one of the previous Left in Love columns and one of the participants was talking about deciding what to wear, which turned out to be way more formal than what I ended up wearing. Ultimately, though, I figured that I didn’t care what my date thought of my tank top.
Also, knowing my friends will share this column added to the nervousness and made me feel like I was in a 21st-century/small-scale version of the (hit!) syndicated show Blind Date.
Maddy: I’ve never been on a blind date before but because I’d just gotten back from a festival and had been running around a lot that day, I luckily didn’t have time to think about it enough to make myself super nervous. I would have had a difficult time being a sane person and getting ready if I’d had any time to comprehend how terrifying the concept of a blind date is.
That said, when I was already on the date, I realized that I’d wore the wrong bra, which was on my mind the whole night.
Angus: The conversation flowed really well. We talked about all sorts of things: the concept of the date we were currently on, booze, Amy Winehouse, D’Angelo, exes, Meghan Murphy and the homework which she assigned us to be handed in the next day, dating people that didn’t have the same politics as us, opinions that divide the left/progressives/activists, the DTES, apartment size and cleanliness level, other Angus’, other Maddys, festivals, family, life, death, dating… We just conversed, really.
Maddy: Our conversation was quite good. He seemed like a professional interviewer and was one of the more perceptive people I’ve met (which actually threw me off a little, as I’m usually the most perceptive one on dates). He asked me questions that made me feel like I was getting very good career/life-planning assistance. He seems like a very talented and giving person in that way. There were also lots of weird coincidences surrounding us that almost turned me into a mystic/fate-believing person.
Angus: When I walked by on my way back from the washroom, I saw that one of my work emails (that represented my politics pretty well) was in her inbox on her iPhone, so it was pretty obvious we had similar politics…
Maddy: There was this moment when he was coming back from the washroom and saw that he had sent me an email from his work! That was pretty crazy.
Angus: Maddy is an artist at heart and has a deep appreciation for sewing machines. She seemed easy-going and kind with a good sense of humour. The passion with which she talked about her sewing machine was very moving, cute and endearing.
Maddy: Angus lives quite an interesting life — he writes email petitions and travels around the world. His personality seemed complex — very upbeat and high-energy while also being calm and personable. He had very good eye contact and an awesome sense of humour that could be quite dark (which I like). He doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously and I really admired how much he wants to work at The Onion.
He also took my obsession with Amy Winehouse very well, which I appreciated.
Angus: Maddy was really genuinely thoughtful and considerate towards the Nuba staff (Nuba was excellent, by the way!) and towards people in general which gave me the impression that she is a kind-hearted human. I really value that. She laughed at my jokes, which may have also been kindness on her part… Either that or she just has an awesome sense of humour.
Maddy: We laughed really hard when we both realized we had a history of dating older, but immature, people and he told me an amazing story about a family hamster that was murdered by an evil cheerleader who administered it beer at a party he threw in high school. The story had many levels and totally blew my mind.
Angus: It ended up being a pretty long date (which is a true sign that I felt happy on the date, because otherwise I would have bailed). We met up at 6:30 p.m. and our last text message exchange was at 2:45 a.m. We parted ways at about 1:30 a.m., which made it a seven-hour date in total.
Maddy: All in all, the date was fascinating! While we ended up drinking more of our gift certificate than eating, the food was great.
The date ended up being pretty long because we went to a couple of bars and rode our bikes around afterwards, which was really fun.
Angus: At the end of the date we made out and exchanged numbers. Overall, a pretty good blind date — maybe my best blind date ever (though I haven’t had many blind dates until recently).
Can I just say how fun this whole idea is? Having a complete stranger pick out a date for you and having that date turn out not to be a complete disaster is surprisingly fun…
Maddy: He kissed me at some point after I ranted about Harper. I would definitely like to see him again.
Angus: I would like to see her again and left with the impression that we would — at least as friends… And we did exchange numbers and make out, so…
Angus rated the date 8.7348 out of 10.
Maddy rated the date 9 out of 10.
Tired of wading through profiles on online dating sites? Apathetic offerings getting you down? Left in Love is rabble.ca’s answer to dating fatigue. And where better to find your match than among fellow progressives! Who wants to waste a night out with someone who thinks heath care is bad for the economy or who suggests things like “pulling oneself up one’s bootstraps?” Let us send you out on the town with someone who will tickle your radical fancy! If you’re in the Vancouver area and would like to take part, contact us at love[at]rabble.ca and fill out an application.
Meghan Murphy is a writer and a journalist in Vancouver, B.C. The column Left in Love is published every month.
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