Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Blind Date 2

Accepting the blind date was my first mistake, but showing up was my fatal one. In retrospect, I should have called and canceled thereby avoiding what had to be one of the most painful experiences I have ever had (and that includes falling on the balance beam in Gymnastics only to have my crotch stop my fall.) The plan was that he would pick me up from work and from there we would go to a baseball game. I figured it was safe, we were in a public place and if all else failed, I could at least watch the game.

By the time 6PM rolled around I was a mental and emotional wreck. I would have been much better suited to lay down in traffic and act as a speed detourant. Of course, as a girl, I did the whole self doubt thing, I second guessed my outfit, my hair, my makeup…everything. My self doubt dissolved into pure anger because my date, Ross (“Hella cute, ex-baseball player who is studying business at the UW") was 45 minutes late. He of course saw no problem with his lack of punctuality and indeed played it off as if everyone shows up to their dates almost an hour into them. To make up for his tardiness he did utter sweet nothings to me upon first sight. He said,

“Man! Thank God you’re not an uggo! What’s up? I saw you sitting in front of the store and I though you were either my date or a really hot hooker.” My mental anguish over the night vanished as I realized that my date had the collective intelligence and sensitivity of a snow pea. Why are people like that are allowed out in public, let alone to procreate is a mystery to me. He had no social grace and obviously no internal filter for his thoughts…at least we were late for the game though.

As it turned out, Ross had decided that tickets to the game were too expensive for a first date and we would therefore be spending our evening listening to the game on his car radio while dining. “Dining” as he put it actually consisted of the drive through at Jack In The Box. My mother always taught me that if someone else is paying and the date is going sour, order the lobster…super sized seemed the only way to go. We drove to what I guess was his frat's equivalent to make out point and he rolled down all the windows, reclined the seats...I couldn’t tell if this was for ambiance or to create the illusion of a soft top. Ross turned up the game far above the decibel to allow for normal conversation and then it occurred to me that this was either part of a well laid plan to completely turn me off because he wasn’t into me and wanted to spare my feelings by making me think that he was a huge jerk…or he was just that stupid. I feared the latter of the two. The date itself turned out to be the romantic equivalent to contracting the West Nile Virus.

We sat in complete silence for about 10 minutes after the game was over. I then decided to call a spade a spade and end this date before anymore fun could be had. I said,

“Listen, this has probably been the worst date of my entire life, let’s just go home, loose each others phone numbers and pretend tonight never happened, okay?” He looked completely dumbfounded (so I guess it would be safe to say that his expression remained the same), started the car, and drove me home. It was safe to say that the date was doomed to failure once he tried to prove that he could fit 4 fries up his left nostril.

Blind Date

Ug, the though hit me last night that I haven’t met anyone or made any sort of physical contact with a member of the opposite sex in months, other than handing them a drink or change and when that starts to get exciting, I know I have hit rock bottom. Of course when one is sexually frustrated and angry at men, one tends to harbor a slightly less then sunny attitude about life.

Mel, my coworker, sensed that I was out of sorts and began gently probing to find out what my problem was. Though Mel is a deeply sensitive and gentle individual I would never in a million years expect her to understand my problem. She is the kind of person I would love to hate and I could easily hate if she wasn’t so Gad damn nice. She is absolutely and without question the most gorgeous person I have ever seen close up. You can see little flickers of envious hate flash from other womens eyes when they see her. Men have problems constructing whole sentences when she is around and being asked out/given jewelry/marriage proposals are an ever day occurrence for her. So, of course, she could never understand my conversation, though she did try bless her.

She did try the first step in consoling any woman by trying assure me that my hips, but, thighs, legs, earlobes, etc did not look fat. She then suggested several solutions to my frustration, one of which was knitting. Mel wanted to teach me to knit? It seemed even more depressing, thought practical, that I was going to be getting a jump start on something that I was going to spend the bulk of my spinsterhood doing. However, I shot down the idea because the thought of knitting a tea cozy on Saturday night was too daunting.

She then threw out yoga as a solution. She proposed that by channeling my energies positively and learning to breath I could effectively detract myself from the petty preoccupations of the flesh. I could also stop shaving my legs, listen to sitar music, burn incense, and eat only soy based foods, but for some reason breathing and contorting did not seem like an effective or feasible way to make me any less horny. Besides I hate sitar music and those funny unitards which make me look worse then I do naked.

As a third and final offer, Mel wanted to fix me up with one of her friends. Though everyone knows that blind dates are probably one of the most emotionally scaring events that one may live through, I was desperate. I know I needed something…last night I found myself getting excited when my gums didn’t bleed when I was flossed. I need a life. We are going on out on Friday.