Xbox Dan

Dan looked up from his September edition of The Economist only to see the most beautiful girl in his world. Of all places he found himself on the Rainbow 5 bus en route from Long Eaton Green to Derby city center, occupied by a nouveau-fascinating article on the disillusionment of his yuppie generation with modern Europe. He wore a maroon, collared T-shirt embroidered with a small moose emblem, mustard-colored chinos and leather slip-on shoes with those little tassels on the top.

He didn’t know what attracted him most to the girl - whether it be her sweeping fringe sprayed into a malleable arc using a polymer-based aerosol product or her sweatshop-crafted pink cardigan which was the colour of farmed salmon. Maybe, just maybe, it was the sophisticated moleskin diary which she clutched to her chest with her finely lacquered (colour: ‘choo choo magnum pink’) fingernails.

Regardless of the reason, one thing was for sure – she was the epitome of a 21^st century eligible female and indeed a most suitable match for a monogamous, British partnership and, from the feel of his palpitating crotch, she was also the epitome of a 21^st century eligible partner for coitus and/or less mainstream forms of physical intimacy. Yes, she was the most wonderful profile he had ever seen.

Dan did not know what to do; indeed, all of his skills in the domain of social communication were reliable only in the online or application-based domain. But this girl was real, and localised, and certainly not an equally inept, lustful teen from Minnesota (or some remote place in some other remote region) also playing a popular online game behind the façade of a promiscuous druid warrior. He felt anxious, confused and totally uneducated regarding how to pragmatically satisfy his tentative erection via a girl who he couldn’t even face speaking to.

So, Dan did the only think he knew how to: he watched, he vyed and, seven minutes later, lamented as her salmon form evacuated the bus at Church Street station. With the closing ‘thud’ of the vehicle doors he buried himself inside a mental fortress of self-pity, wallowing and anti-romanticism.