The Blind Date.

I’ve been thinking on and off all day today about the question I touched on yesterday: ‘who am I?’ I was going to make an extended post about it, because it really is an interesting subject. As I deliberated, the question became ever deeper and more complex. Even if you ignore the more rarefied aspects presented by an interest in Vedic spirituality and keep the issue secular and grounded in a material context, it brings into question what we might call the sense of self. It got too deep, too complex, and I decided to leave it – for now.

Instead, let’s have another silly naval story.

We were in Halifax, Nova Scotia for two weeks. There was a big NATO review taking place and we were part of it. The weather wasn’t quite as hot and sunny as it had been in Quebec, but it was summery enough for me to feel good about life. I was exploring the town alone and wondering whether to go to the cinema that night, when a fellow cadet approached me excitedly. He said he’d been given a number to call for a blind date, and asked whether I was game.

A moment of indecision. My libido was perfectly healthy, but I was also rather fussy about whom I was inclined to share it with. I thought for a few seconds and decided that ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ should be the order of the day in this situation. ‘Yeah, OK.’ We found a public pay phone; he dialled the number and wrote an address down on a piece of paper.

‘We can go straight over now,’ he said, and so we hailed a taxi and soon found ourselves in a well heeled suburb of Halifax.

The houses were all detached, and quite big. We rang the doorbell feeling nervous. Well, I was nervous anyway; my colleague was a year older than me, and there was an unwritten rule of seniority among officer cadets that the older one is entitled to take charge. I was happy to let him. The door was opened by a slim, pretty, dark haired young woman. Our spirits rose. Well, mine did anyway...

‘Come in,’ she said, and showed us into a very large room which took us aback for a moment.

It was all but empty: no furniture, no carpet, no pictures, no curtains, just a juke box standing in one corner. Our hostess said that she would fetch the two ladies in question, and invited us to make ourselves at home. I’m sure we both wondered how one is supposed to make oneself at home in an empty room. One of us offered the opinion that they must be students or something – no money, but into big parties. That might just bode well, and we expressed the hope that the two ladies would be as attractive as ‘madam.’ The door opened and the ladies walked in.

Now, I have to explain here that we were only teenage boys. Neither of us had reached an age where mature, refined discernment replaces the simple tastes of youth. I have to admit that we were disappointed. No, they weren’t as attractive as madam. In fact... well, you get the picture. And it wasn’t just the fact that their facial features were... er... unprepossessing, or that one could have doubled for a beanpole while the other would have made an excellent stab at playing Nellie the Elephant in the student panto. No. We did have enough discernment to recognise that there was something essentially sour about them as well. They said very little, just gave us a time to return and pick them up that evening. What could we do? We were nothing if not men of honour. We agreed and left, and then returned at the appointed time.

‘What would you like to do?’ we asked.

‘Go for a meal.’

‘OK.’

We found a pleasant restaurant and paid for everything. Despite our best efforts to engage them in conversation, they said very little. They ate a lot, though. And burped rather a lot I seem to recall, but maybe I just imagined that bit. When the meal was over we asked them again

‘What would you like to do now?’

‘Watch the fireworks.’

‘OK.’

There was a fireworks display that night, as part of the review celebrations. We found a grassy bank overlooking the harbour and watched the fireworks. We tried again to engage them in conversation, but they remained reticent.

‘What would you like to do now?’ we asked when the fireworks were over.

‘Go home.’

And so they did. And so did we, feeling relieved.

I’ve wondered ever since whether we got it all wrong. We were, as I said, young and naïve. Maybe ‘madam’ really was a madam and we simply missed the point. I shall never know, of course. I’m comfortable with mysteries.