Gregor was playing an online board game when a direct message landed in his inbox. It was his third week of 'shielding' himself from the coronavirus pandemic on account of severe asthma and he was trying to find things to keep himself busy, to keep his anxiety in check, and, in turn, his breathing from deteriorating.
Recently, he had just broken up with his girlfriend, and unrelatedly, turned vegan. So, when he began to think about dating again, joining a Facebook vegan singles group seemed like the ultimate, "Well duh!" move.
However, just about everyone in the group seemed to be from another country. There was hardly anyone from the UK and even less from his country of Scotland. Still, it was a nice bunch of people, the banter was good, and the fact that he was never going to meet any of the women he spoke to here emboldened Gregor to do a bit of harmless flirting.
About a week ago he saw a post asking if anyone was up for a virtual pub quiz. Gregor, who loved a bit of a pub quiz with his mates, said to count him in and a date was set. To be honest he had totally forgotten about it when he got a message 4 days later saying that the quiz was about to start in 25 minutes. "Sorry buddy," he said into his headset, "we'll have to finish this later."
Gregor poured himself a drink (Tia Maria and Coke, he'd run out his usual drink which was beer) and sat down in front of his laptop. With 5 minutes to spare he clicked the url in his message which took him to the zoom website where he joined the group video chat.
When he hit the start video button he was greeted by a mirror image of himself. He looked like shit! Before he had started playing online games with his friend he had been gardening in an old rick and morty t-shirt and a pair of off-white joggers. They were both splattered in mud. "No, this won't do," he thought.
He ran upstairs, grabbed a nice short and a pair of skinny blue jeans, hastily throwing them on as he headed back downstairs. When he arrived back at his laptop people were beginning to arrive. "This is a total Quorn sausage-fest," he muttered under his breath, luckily it wasn't picked up by his mic.
There were four video windows, including his own, and each was filled with guys in their thirties and forties. He couldn't believe he'd put a shirt on for this shit. The one glimmer of hope was there were a couple of ladies taking part but he couldn't see them as they were only using audio. He guessed they were shy. One lady from Hungary and called Hanna and the other was called Amita, she didn't say or type a word so where she was from was anyone's guess.
The quiz got underway, it was mildly diverting, but he felt bad for the quiz master as despite his best efforts there was no banter or interaction between the participants. Gregor tried his best to enter into the spirit of things, but it felt more like a mandatory business meeting than a shits and giggles, fun activity.
There was a short break so that everyone could refill their drinks or do whatever they needed to do. Gregor grabbed another drink and logged back in. The only other person that was already back was Hanna. She was still audio only but they started talking about the lockdown and she seemed to really open up. Every so often she would flick on her webcam, then she would laugh shyly and switch it back off again.
