I can’t tease you any longer, my friends. It was cruel of me to do so in the first place. The fun little trilogy that started with a dating challenge and moved on to me and a hot guy swapping sex stories is just that: a trilogy. It’s not the first chapter in a brand new erotic romance. Fuck it, though, he and I had a lot of fun, and personally I find it fitting (and deeply satisfying for my overall philosophy) that the guy who restored my faith in dating didn’t do so by being the perfect match, but by embarking on our dates with genuine emotional honesty. When I set out on the initial challenge (‘ask out the hot man who works in my shop’) it wasn’t about whether he said ‘yes’, only about whether I was brave enough to ask him in the first place. Likewise, the success of our dates didn’t come down to whether we kicked off a serious relationship, but whether we met as equals with a genuine desire to find out if we matched. The fact that we don’t match is no more than a footnote. The headline is that we found that answer swiftly, respectfully, and while having a fair bit of fun. Shop Man Part 3. Let’s do this.

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This man has spent the last twelve months greeting me with eager smiles each time I see him. When I walk into the shop, he looks up and sees me then beams a fully radiant grin. I return it with gusto, and he smiles even more brightly. Something about this guy’s warmth makes me want to get to know him better. But something in every fibre of my being recoils at the idea of being bold enough to actually ask him out.

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The other day, I fell for a stranger. I choose my words here carefully. ‘Fell for’, not ‘fancied’ or ‘desired’. ‘Fell’, like you would if you slipped on a banana skin. Fall as in pratfall. But also fall as in ‘fail’. Perhaps this fall wasn’t a trip or a stumble (cue laughter track) but something more dismal, like a ‘fall’ off the edge of a cliff in a climactic episode of Eastenders. When I told this story to friends over WhatsApp, with a winky face and what I thought was a killer punchline, half of them reacted with sympathy. One asked if it was meant to be funny or sad. It was meant to be funny, but I guess if that isn’t obvious I should ponder why my friends are responding to the comedy of my life like it’s a tragedy. Maybe I should look a little closer. Let me tell you a story about falling for a man I’ve never met.

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Here’s a kiss I’d really love to have: the oh-fuck-we’re-about-to-miss-our-tube kiss when we get kicked out of the pub at closing time, having overstayed our welcome because we got stuck into a fun discussion. We know that we both want to fuck but early morning meetings make that impossible tonight, so we give each other the kind of snog that’ll leave the other person hungry for next week’s follow-up liaison. That’s one of the kisses I’m hoping for when you message me on a dating site.

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I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times someone’s removed my bra with dexterity and skill. It just doesn’t happen very often. There’s a reason for this: bra hooks are pretty tricky to handle! When I was younger I think I bought in to the propaganda that a guy who was ‘good in bed’ would be able to magically unhook my bra one-handed while we were making out, without any fumbling whatsoever. But that’s bollocks. Nowadays, I think that the hottest way to remove a bra isn’t to fumble with it, or even dispense a little quick-fingered wizardry. The sexiest and most efficient way to remove my bra is to just tell me to take it off.

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