My date leaned in for a kiss – then licked my ear

‘Don’t cook for him!’

Those were the unusual words of advice my best friend gave me ahead of my first date with Mr January.

She’d only just entered her first serious relationship, but now she wanted to save me from her domestic fate.

‘All I seem to be doing is cooking for this man,’ she lightheartedly warned. ‘Don’t fall into the same housewife category!’

In hindsight it was good advice, though not for the reasons you’d expect.

About a month earlier as we barrelled towards the end of 2020, another friend of mine had said her new year’s resolution was to date a man every month.

The aim wasn’t to date 12 new men in a year, more just to force herself to get back out there on the dating scene and commit to at least one date each month. That could be with different men or, ideally, the same man in the hopes it’d become something serious.

Being that I was also headed towards 30 and had never had a boyfriend myself I felt like it was a great idea and agreed to join her on this quest for that elusive ‘Mr Right’.

However, I fell at the first hurdle with Mr January (aka Mike*).

I matched with him in late December 2020 on the dating app Hinge because, from the looks of his profile, we could be well suited.

I was very much looking for someone who was adventurous and outgoing like me, who – while not necessarily into competing triathlons – was sporty and also ambitious. And his profile showed him completing a half marathon, in fancy dress no less, and that he worked in software sales.

All the green flags!

We matched and soon were reeling off a list of possible places for our first date to take place. Though, given that we were still in a ‘tier four’ lockdown – meaning no pubs were open – our options were pretty limited.

‘We could go for a walk?’ he suggested (as did everyone else who tried dating in the Covid years I’m sure) but I wasn’t too keen on that idea.

Instead, I opted to invite him to my house, which he happily accepted.

Feeling like I couldn’t very well only invite him in for coffee, I chose to ignore my friend’s advice and I decided to make pork belly (which I got from the fancy butchers) for us. But the red flags were there before I even served it up.

For a start he was late and when he did eventually knock 25 minutes after schedule I was astounded by his first date outfit choice.

While I’d made some semblance of effort – jeans and a nice top, full face of makeup and hair looking on point – he’d opted for salmon corduroys and a baggy cream jumper. ‘He looks like a marshmallow,’ I thought.

That wasn’t a deal breaker but, the fact that he was a good three inches shorter than he claimed to be on his profile and that he didn’t turn up with a bottle of wine, very nearly was. 

Still, not wanting to judge him too harshly, I invited him in and tried to salvage the evening.

As payment for being late I made him change a lightbulb in my kitchen, which he was good humoured about. Then I called him out for lying about his height but he says he did it because ‘girls over-egg their height on Hinge’ – I rolled my eyes.

So far we weren’t off to a promising start… but the wine (which I’d now provided) was flowing and talk soon turned to what we were both looking for and he reeled off his top five things: ‘Ambitious, kind, kinky…’ and I’ll be honest, I didn’t hear the rest of the list after that third characteristic.

Perhaps the only small glimmer of hope came when Mike told me he had 200k followers on a playlist he made – I liked that he was into his music – but then he used it to get a kiss off me. 

‘If I guess the artist wrong, you’ve got to kiss me,’ he said. It was positively cringeworthy but, as it’d been over a month since I last kissed anyone, I obliged.

The kiss wasn’t exactly swoon worthy but I still enjoyed it, right up until he licked my ear.

I was completely thrown. I would have been open to it but, surely that’s not something you do on the first kiss?!

He kept licking at my lobe like a little horny tiger and eventually I had to stop him.

‘Excuse me Michael,’ I said politely. ‘I know we’re in lockdown but this is a first date! You’re lucky you’ve got a snog with the amount of work you’ve put into dinner.’

With hindsight, I should have ended the night then – no one wants to be slobbered on like that – but I didn’t. Instead we opened a second bottle of wine and continued chit chatting between very sloppy (on his part) snogs.

It’s only after he decided to message another girl on Hinge in front of me and ‘betted’ on whether she’d respond that I reached my limit.

I not so politely showed him the door and then promptly ran to the bathroom to scrub my ear clean – I swear I could feel his saliva slowly trickling down my ear canal.

‘Awful start to the year!’ I said to myself.

Unsurprisingly, there was no second date and we didn’t speak again after that. However, I have spoken about him many times over the years mainly because he became the founding entry on my ‘Man of the Month’ blog.

In reality this was just a document I sent round to friends who were curious about how my love life was going, and after reading the two pages I dedicated to him they became hooked. From then on I promised myself to document my dates every month. 

Last year it evolved into a dedicated WhatsApp group where my other friends (single or not) share voice notes of dating disasters like mine.

We’ve shared stories of workplace flirtationships, Mediterranean men who ended up being more British than beans on toast, and even almost threesomes (though that’s a story all of its own).

And while, at the time, a part of me was sad that Mr January was far from being my Mr Right, he certainly taught me what I don’t like. 

A word of advice fellas, leave the licking (in all its guises) for a later date.

*Name has been changed

As told to Emma Rossiter

This article was originally published January 11, 2025

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