The Really Bad Date

Inspired by reading the blog Simply Solo today, I'm sharing one of my really bad first date stories.

The Really Bad Date

He was an artist. When you're 20, you think that's hot. What it really means, you learn, is that he doesn't have a job, has at least one addiction, and lives in Brooklyn, off the G train. (If you don't know what that means, we call the G train the Ghost train, because it never shows up.)

But, in the spirit of adventure, I patiently waited 45 minutes for the G train on a hot, humid, New York summer evening. I had tried my best, as women do, to look pretty. It was our first date, but it wasn't a blind date; we had seen each other before at a party- in the dark, inebriated- so there wasn't too much suspense, though there was some self-imposed pressure to live up to whatever had drawn him to ask me out in the first place. I had tried on about 97 outfits before settling for a pink linen blouse and a flowy skirt. I was ready to have a great date.

When I got out of the subway, he was waiting for me. How sweet, I thought, forgetting that I'd just spent hours of my life in an underground hell. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that said, "Legalize Marijuana." Well, that's an odd choice. Whatever. He probably just wants to make me laugh. I said hi and smiled. He still looked as cute as I'd remembered him. He kissed me on the cheek and my heart started racing. I waited for him to tell me I looked nice. He picked up the cue and checked me out- head to toe- before saying, "You look hot." Not exactly what a girl hopes to hear as the first compliment, but no problem. He's an artist, he's playing it cool.

He took me to the restaurant where we were going to have dinner. The place was crowded and when the hostess said there'd be a 15-20 minute wait, he turned to me and said, "Let's go somewhere else." I told him I really didn't mind waiting, it was friday night and there'd probably be a wait anywhere we went, but he really didn't want to stay there. I thought he was going to take me to another restaurant, probably one as nice as the one we were just at, but instead he took me to a diner. Now, I have no problems with diners. I actually love an old-fashioned new york city diner and don't think it's a bad place for a date. But I was really confused about how his plans to take me out to dinner at a nice restaurant had turned into eating at a poorly-lit, unimpressive diner, and started getting paranoid that maybe he didn't think I was pretty anymore and didn't want me to have any expectations.

As soon as we sat down, though, he started to explain himself, "You look all dressed up, I feel bad bringing you to a diner, I should've made a reservation, I never think anywhere's gonna be as crowded as it is." Oh, how cute, I thought and decided to ignore that his second compliment of the evening was you look all dressed up. "Please, don't sweat it," I said and gave him my best smile, "I rather be somewhere where we can hear each other talk anyway." He seemed pleased with my response and smiled back, which made him look super cute and I was back in this-date-is-going-to-be-great land.

Then the waitress came over. I've never been any good at being the girl who orders a garden salad at a diner, so I ordered a burger, fries, and a chocolate milk-shake. I guess that shocked him, because he blurted out, "What are you, pregnant?" The waitress looked at me, and my face must have registered, "What the fuck?" because she said she'd give us a few minutes. He looked at me and said, "I'm just joking around, I know you're not preggers."

Aside: to any male readers, if I may give you some advice here: Never, never, ever, ever, on date number 1 or date number 508, not even on a date with a woman who is pregnant, not even on a date with a woman you think is so skinny she'll most certainly understand that it's a joke, should you ever, ever, ever joke about a woman being pregnant. And, for the record, "preggers" will never be funny.

So, now that he had succeeded, with one sentence, in making me feel fat and self-conscious about what I'd ordered, you can imagine how the date went. I shut down and became monosyllabic. He could sense that something was up, though, and talked enough for both of us. For an artist, by the way, he was incredibly boring and I might as well have been on a date with an investment banker whose favorite hobby was collecting stamps. The highlight of our conversation was when he asked me to guess where his four piercings were. I'll spare you the details on that, as I myself have worked very hard to try and push that memory away.

I barely ate my food, which he didn't seem to notice, and when the check arrived, I didn't offer to split it, which I always do. He picked it up and paid for it with wrinkled $5 bills that he took out of his pocket (no wallet ever made an appearance), and asked me if I wanted to go to a bar and, I kid you not, "have some shots". I yawned and said, "It's a long way back for me, I think I should go home." He looked semi-defeated.

He walked me to the subway, and when we reached it I tried to avoid direct eye-contact so as to kill any impulse he might have kiss me, but he grabbed my hand and tried to kiss me anyway. I was so startled I almost fell on him. "Oh I'm sorry, I was trying to kiss you," he said. "Yeah, I noticed, I didn't see that coming." And then we stood there in an awkward silence. I mumbled the obligatory thank-you-for-a-nice-evening, and he replied with the let's-do-this-again-sometime, and then I went down the stairs to the subway, thinking to myself, Golly, I'd rather have had a date with the G train.

The next day, he wrote me an email (this was just before men resorted to texting for all forms of communication), saying it was great meeting me and asking me out again. I wrote back politely declining.

A few years later, he found me on facebook (yep, creepy), and sent me a message: "I know I wasn't good enough to date, but wanna be my facebook friend? I still think you're hot!"

Um. No, thanks.

Image from here.