London coffee shops and failed lesbian dating experiences. It’s a natural conceit.
el&n
239 brompton rd
sw3 2ep
You enter the coffee shop. The theme is both high femme pink and ‘late capitalism’. You immediately take a selfie against a row of plastic flowers. Damn, you do look good there. Maybe this whole grossly uneven distribution of wealth thing is gonna be okay? At least your blush and lippy are on point. You know that Bourdieu is feeling it from the grave.
You glimpse her and cringe as you realise not only that she’s wearing that ‘Live/Laugh/Love’ yoga crop unironically, but that you have definitely seen it at Sweaty Betty. The bag she is carrying has some name, kind of like a Birkin but more effortlessly boho. It definitely costs multiples of your rent.
She comes closer and smiles the poreless smile that seems to come with an Equinox membership. She got into girls at her girls’ school; you realise you should really stop fetishising girls who read Latin. She tells you about her family skiing holiday in St Moritz; you pray that she does not also like horses. Her hair is long and dyed; smooth like a mink. You nod vaguely. Later, you will spend £20 on a bulk pack of Korean face masks and a hair straightener on Amazon at 3 am. They will sit unused under a battered copy of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish for three years.
The latte, though, does have glitter in it. You photograph it forlornly for your Instagram after she leaves. Her Instagram is perfect. She likes ‘the Arts’. You may or may not have scrolled through it afterwards, muttering things about the 1871 Paris Commune, but also wondering wistfully if you should learn to apply highlighter. When you posed with that Yayoi Kusama, your cheekbones definitely didn’t look that good. You hate-follow her to this day, though you would never admit this even to your best friend.
foyles bookstore coffee shop
top floor, 107 charing cross road
wc2h 0dt
Her bio reads ‘I love book & reading!!!’ so you propose meeting here, in a spate of hopeful messaging that lasted from approximately 11:05 to 11:35 pm a few nights ago. These are growing more infrequent, but still. Clearly you haven’t noticed that hope is futile and you live in a bleak, loveless wasteland. Never mind. You have your nails done in a radiant, pinkish glitter.
The coffee shop is packed, and at least one tourist couple and one innocent pre-theatre browser are going to hear every word of your date. You mindlessly stroke a table succulent, hoping that everyone else doesn’t do this, given that they’re actually alive. You idly consider writing a novella from the perspective of the succulents that live on the Foyles Café tabletops. She arrives in a blur of coat layers. She tells you five minutes in that she identifies as a Hufflepuff. You identify as having read Ursula Le Guin first.
You contemplate committing lesbian dating seppuku in the toilets, but manage to emerge and, through gritted teeth, ask what else she likes to read. In the poetry section she leads you proudly to a copy of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey. To your despair, Foyles CCR does not serve drinks. You helpfully share the random fact that Verlaine once shot Rimbaud in the left wrist when they were lovers. She looks at you like you’ve killed her adorably besweatered pug, of whom you have already seen 17 photos. Most of them are actually quite endearing, but you have a cat.
