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26 september 2000

more dreadful dates

This is the story of Me and the Guy I Met in a Dark Club While Not Wearing My Glasses Who Seemed Cool at the Time. While I don't know that I'd call it the worst date ever, it was definitely the most excruciating. This dude was a snoozer.

So about a year-and-a-half ago, I'm at a club in Chicago where I knew the manager. In fact, I had been on a couple of casual dates with said manager, and we were going to go out after the bands were finished. So I'm in the balcony enjoying some local Ska band, when a guy quietly sidles up to me. He stands there listening to the music for a bit, then very unobtrusively begins to chat me up. (For the life of me, I can't remember his name, as I've tried to put this incident out of my mind. So we'll call him, "Boring".)

Boring and I are having a perfectly nice conversation, sipping our beers, and seem to have a few things in common. Most of all, though, he just doesn't seem to be trying too hard, which impresses me greatly. It is extremely dark in there, I'm not wearing my glasses, but I am able see a few things. He is my height. He has dark hair. He is Caucasian, and is not missing limbs or horribly disfigured. So far, so good! About an hour into the set, he asks for my number. I give him my work number (better safe than sorry), and we plan to go out the next weekend. Oh, boy!

Alright, so Saturday evening arrives. Previous to this, Boring and I have had two phone conversations. Now, I'm not much of a phone person anyway, so I just assumed that he wasn't either. No biggie, right? We would have a great time this Saturday night --- I just knew it!

My doorbell rings. I go downstairs, dressed in a casual but nice pair of pants and sweater. I've combed my hair and rubbed on a bit of makeup. I smell nice. I am date-ready. I open the door. There is someone standing there.

Is this the same guy I met at the club?

Let's start from the bottom. He was wearing the rattiest, grossest, most bent-up pair of sneakers I've ever seen in my life. They looked like Reebok chew toys. His jeans were crumpled at the ankle. He wore a t-shirt with some sort of crappy logo on it. But the worst, the absolute insult, was his hair. Dear Lord, his hair!

You have to understand that I have a lot of fun, arty friends with goofy or way-long hair. But each and every one of them keeps it clean and nice, so that the kookyness of it suits them fine. They are a lot of things, but they are not messy or ill-kept. Boring, on the other hand, looked as if he had allowed a blind, three-fingered barber cut his hair. It was beyond description, this haircut. He had tried to comb it, I think, as it was wet on the sides. But as he casually turned his head, I saw the clincher. That neck hair of his had not been clipped, like, ever. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. My grooming standards aren't exceptionally high, you know? I don't care if you're not in style. I don't care if stuff matches exactly. But damn if you're going to show up at my house not looking freshly- scrubbed, smelling nice, and without NECK HAIR!

I came so close to feigning a seizure to get out of this. You just don't know how close.

We go on the date anyway. He took me to a Cajun-themed restaurant in the heart of Chicago's tourist district, smack in the middle of places like the Hard Rock Cafe, the Rainforest Cafe, and the Hey, More Crap on the Walls! Cafe. Probably my fault for not expressing the fact that I prefer out-of-the-way places in Chicago's more intimate neighborhoods, but he kind of got points off for lack of imagination. Nonetheless, dinner was tasty, and I thanked him for taking me to a nice place. Efforts to make stimulating conversation were grueling. It turned out that he was a local-haul trucker for a distribution company in the area, which I thought was kind of cool. I figured he must know Chicagoland like nobody's business. And I was interested in hearing about some of his driving adventures --- for the first half hour. Until I got just waaaaaay too many details. Gears, load weights, distribution centers, etc.

So I tried to steer the conversation off the highway, and asked him what he likes to do in his spare time. He looked square at me and said, "well, I don't like to go out much. There's really nothing I like better than to stay home with a six-pack and watch tv.

CHECK, PLEASE!

Alright, so we're out of there and onto our next destination, which is the House of Blues. They had Irish bands that night, which I suggested, and did pay for my own ticket. (Note to the ladies, yes, I always offer to dutch the date. We wanted liberation, we gotta pick up sometimes, too.) He goes straight to the bar, and I follow, if only to numb myself a bit. It turns out that the bands are wonderful, and the crowd is really getting into it. Everyone on the center floor begins to dance, and I'm right there with them. I try to get Boring out on the floor, if only on the periphery, but he will have none of it. Like, he's not even tapping his foot. I guess he would spill his beer. So I tried to compromise, dancing some near him, and then returning to the side for more fabulous conversation.

The evening draws to a close. I anticipate that he will want to rid himself of me immediately. He says that he's having a really great time and you wanna go somewhere else??? I can't take anymore. I tell him that I have to be at church early the next morning, and really need to get home. And, to his credit, he takes me home without pushing it. Nor does he make things even worse by a smooch swoop. He plays it safe, and I am thankful.

Did he call for another date? You bet he did --- four times! I finally told him that I was beginning to see someone (I was "seeing" my friends a lot --- does that count?) and left it at that. Am I horrible? I felt badly, but how much worse would it have been to lead someone on with whom I was clearly incompatible? I was so tempted to mention the neck hair, if only for his own well-being. But then I figured that either he'll find some girl who doesn't care, or he'll figure it out someday.

As for the dark club where I met Boring, they don't need condom machines on the bathroom walls. They need to be selling some public-service flashlights. "Avoid a disaster --- check him out! Only seventy-five cents." I'd pay it.