Days 11 & 12: A Real Live Date

Friends, I had a date last night.  And I'd like to begin by saying he was really, really hot.  Probably hands down the best looking guy I've ever gone out with.  No offense to the three other people reading this who've ever gone out with me.  He had amazing hair, which sounds really stupid saying, but I do love a man with good hair.  This is extremely hypocritical, because I have the worst behaved hair on the planet, that, if it ever looks acceptable, has required hours of battle and gallons of Aveda.  He was dressed nicely, in good jeans and a button-down, he smelled good, and he even had on respectable shoes.  (All in all, achieving this level of outfit success appears to be unbelievably difficult for men, so this alone was an honorable accomplishment.)

He had asked if I wanted to meet him at a wine bar in Shaker near my apartment, which of course was a win, (a) because it was a wine bar; and (b) because it meant I wouldn't have to cut my afternoon nap short to allow time for driving somewhere far.  I'd actually thought about texting him and canceling.  I'd seen his picture, because he'd asked me out after seeing my profile and e-mailing me, so I knew he was handsome, BUT...

The guy can't spell, type, or manage social graces to save his life.  I don't want to say it, but he was from Parma.  To you good people of Parma, this alone is not his downfall, but I couldn't leave it out.  He also works for the Clinic, in I.T., so we were both Caregivers.  Best common ground out there, naturally.  I knew in advance from his profile, texts, and e-mails that his communication skills left a good deal to be desired, but "Do it for the blog" is not only pervasively running my life right now, it's also running my social circle's lives, and there was no way I was going to live down declining the one date proposal I'd actually received.

So I make myself show up, and we're sitting and talking, and you can just tell these things from the word Go, but the night was going to be one big long effort of creating and maintaining conversation.  Let me go ahead and rephrase that: I could just tell from the word Go that this was the case; he could not, and since my social graces are in excellent form, I was succeeding at, slash, making the mistake of fooling him into thinking things were going great.  What does one do in this situation?  Act rudely by not laughing at his jokes, not asking him additional questions, not helping to carry the discussion?  I knew that he'd invited me here, was going to pay, and was probably going to ask me out again.  Not in a cocky way, but just in a way that I was able to read him pretty well, and I could just tell.  I was amicable and engaging the whole evening -- not overly so, but enough to make a good impression, which was apparently enough for him.  I felt really fake and kind of deceiving.  But I also would have felt incredibly uncomfortable sitting there pouty or non-responsive.  I wasn't interested, which I knew from the first five minutes, but what do you do?  Fake it, or be a bitch?

Suddenly, I saw my chance to discreetly wrap things up.  We were seated out on the patio, and we'd finished our first drink, but this was over the course of about an hour, since our server was taking FOREVER to come back outside to the table.  He'd mentioned wanting to order another one, but I yawned and said I had to get up early the next morning and that I wouldn't be able to drive myself home if I'd had another one.  (Cue his expected social skills.)  This was probably so unconvincing on so many levels, because clearly every picture of me on my profile was me with a drink in my hand, probably before lunch, so pretending that one glass of wine at 8 p.m. would do me in was a cute little joke.  Cue my plan.  I excused myself and got up to go inside and find the restroom, and on my way back, I stopped our server at the bar and quietly asked her if she could bring the bill out to the table.  I hadn't wanted to ask for it in front of him, so as, once again, not to appear rude.  "Oh," she said, "he just ordered another round for the two of you."  ARE YOU KIDDING ME, I was in the bathroom for 90 seconds, and he managed to track her down and get an order in?  "Ughhh," I sighed audibly.  "Oh no," she lamented, definitely understanding the first-date conundrum I was in, without me having to outline it.  "Do you want me to cancel the order?  I can cancel it," she offered.  "No," I said, "you can't, what am I going to tell him, I ran into you by the bathroom, we discussed everything, and then we braided each other's hair and un-ordered?"  She gave me a kindly smile, and by the grace of the Lord and the nature of women's universal mutual understanding, when she arrived at the table to hand us our drinks, mine was like half full.

He kept telling me how funny I am, and how he's gone out with "a lot" of girls who were "skinny and cute and stylish" but that it was nice to go out with someone funny.  Yes, HOW NICE FOR YOU.  I just kept looking at him and thinking, maybe we can trade some of your Beautiful points for my Funny points and we could be even.  By the time we finally got the bill, and he was saying things like, "So, autism, those kids grow out of it, right?" I didn't even have the energy to tally everything he'd (unknowingly) done wrong.  He walked me to my car, kept saying how much fun he'd had (shit.), and joked that he didn't want to get robbed walking back to his own car since it was 10 p.m. at Shaker Square.  Cue my social skills of promptly ignoring his implicit wish for me to drive him to his vehicle.  "Haha!" I said instead, as I opened the door to get in.  He hugged me goodbye, then kissed me on the cheek.  Fewer than five minutes after we'd driven away, I get SEVERAL texts that say (spelling and typing authentically preserved from the original):

"So your not worried, I didn't get mugged..lol"
"I Didn't want u to lose sleep wondering if I did..lol..I should of had u give me a ride back to my car..lol"
("Maybe I should have," I said.)
"I wouldn't have mugged u..lol..I had a fun time w u tonite.."
("Thanks, it was nice.")
"Good cuz i'd like to see u again.. :)"
(no response from me)


I don't think this will be a Wedding Date Prospect, mainly because I and everyone else would not be able to stop making fun of him the whole time, primarily behind his back, but eventually it would probably also turn into doing it to him, and as bad of a human being as I am, that sounds cruel.  GOD, he does have amazing hair though . . .  I'll keep you posted.