I’ve had good dates…I’ve had bad dates..but, honestly, number seven will always stand out in my mind as one of the craziest ever…let me explain… I saw his profile, wrote to him and he answered right away. We followed up the e-mail with a phone call and it went ok except for this…According to his profile, he was 54 years old and the day we spoke he told me it was his birthday so I asked him if he was turning 55..no…56? no 57??? I’ll tell you later is what I got back–ok, I know people lie about their ages ALL THE TIME on match but really, can you be honest when you are asked a direct question? I’ve heard of people who have taken more than 10 years off of their age–do you think your date isn’t going to notice?? At what point do you ‘fess up’? Is starting a potential relationship off on a dishonest basis really the way you want to go? Frankly, if this was the worst thing about number 7, I might have been able to handle it but, no, it was just the start!
We made plans to meet at a sushi restaurant–red flag! Apparently, you should never do a first meeting at a restaurant because it has the potential to be very uncomfortable if it doesn’t go well….K was very adement about this but I held my ground and said it would be fine–I thought we had enough in common that it would be an interesting evening, even if it wasn’t a match. The biggest problem in my eyes (other than wondering just how old this guy was) was being in a SUSHI restaurant–for the first time in my life! What the hell was I going to order? How do you even eat it? My nerves were starting to get the best of me, but, again, we seemed to have a lot in common and I figured I would just fake my way through…
We meet at the restaurant at the agreed-upon time–and there is a line to get in. Rather than wait, he asks me to follow him down the street to another sushi restaurant he knows about (again, people, this is California…) so I do. There is no parking there, so he motions for me to park in the back of the restaurant itself (this will matter later, trust me!) Before we go in, I hand him a small cupcake in a nice box that I had picked up for him since I knew he just had a birthday. He proceeds to give it back to me because he doesn’t eat cake…ok…could he have just kept it and tossed it? It was awkward to take it back, but I did.
It seems like a low key place–we sit, he excuses himself to go to the bathroom and the waitress hands me THREE different menus! As if I wasn’t uncomfortable enough just being in a sushi restaurant for the first time, now I have to read through the equivalent of an encyclopedia volume to figure out what the hell I can order…this date has just begun and I am already starting to sweat…
He sits back down, and while in shape, he is obviously much older than he stated. As we begin to talk, he starts rocking forward and back in his chair–so much so that I become acutely aware of how still I am cause he is bouncing like a ping pong ball and I am completely distracted by this. We order and I go with a crunchy shrimp roll–not exactly sushi, but I figure I can get that down. Eventually, he calms down a bit as we start talking…about sex…um, check please? Have I had sex since my divorce? Do I like sex? How sexually open am I? OMG, all I’m thinking in my head is K saying “I told you you shouldn’t go to dinner with him” and madly figuring how to make it through the end of the meal! Thankfully, I manage to change the subject and things are calm for a bit..until he starts talking about sex again! Now he’s telling me that his 16-year-old son has sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend and he thinks it’s a beautiful thing…now my daughter was 15 years old at the time, and the thought of her having sex at that age would not be beautiful to me and I told him so–and he said I sounded just like his ex! lol..obviously the brains in that family! At that point, I said aside from the issues of emotional maturity at that age, there was also the risk of unintended pregnancy to think about…his response? Oh, she’ll just get an abortion! Now this is not a value judgement on abortion rights, but the cavalier tone that he used was unbelievable to me–I probably should have cut my losses and left at this point but I didn’t….
We finished up in silence–trust me, I was counting the minutes until I got out of there! Just before he paid the check (yes, I let him pay because he owed me for 2 hours of my life that I would never get back!) he asks me if I want to go see a movie? Really? I’d rather jump from the third floor at this point but he is obviously clueless! I politely decline and we walk to the back of the (now dark) building to get our cars.
We say goodnight with just a hug (believe me, my force field was on and he wasn’t going to get through it!) and I go to get in my car and I see something on my windshield–I step out of the car and realize it is a piece of mushy banana–as I flick it off, I see another piece–eww! I am now standing in front of my car flicking fruit off my windshield..strawberries, bananas, and orange slices..and he opens the window and asks what is wrong and I tell him I obviously have a fruit salad on my windshield to which he replies, oh, ok, goodnight and drives off, leaving me alone in a dark parking lot flicking fruit off my windshield–as I’m trying to figure out how my life at come to this! Driving home I leave the following message for Vix on her answering machine: I would rather spend the rest of my life alone if I ever have to go through another date like that (now, there may have been some curses in there as well…;) What a date!
Lessons Learned (this could actually go on forever):
1. Don’t lie about your age–you are what you are! Own it!
2. You might not want to go to a restaurant on a first date–K still believes this fully.
3. Please no sex talk at the dinner table–and especially not teenager sex talk! Ugh!
4. If someone give you a gift, accept it with kindness–don’t hand it back
5. It might not be so bad to cut a date short if you are really uncomfortable–and I was!
6. Don’t order the fruit salad to go