The monkey made me do it

I wanna be a long-haul trucker

This is a story from back in February, when I made the unfortunate decision to join a team of blind-daters in a competition destined to make for a very strange spring.

The first man I met turned into a stalker that it took over two months to ditch (despite repeated threats of police intervention), this date happened a couple weeks afterwards and was my last contribution to the team before going into traumatized dating hibernation for a few months. Oh, the contest pit five teams of four people against each other in a race to finish four blind dates gathered from various sites on the internet. Dates were to be pulled from Match.com, JDate (a Jewish dating service), Blackplanet.com, and one wild card that had to be approved by the judges. My stalker date was from TheStranger.com and this guy hailed from Blackplanet. At least one of the team members had to get a kiss.

I don't remember what the prize was.

I will put the stalker story up here some day, promise... I just have to get warmed up a bit and stomp down those silly impulses to hide under a rock whenever I think about him (even better: under a rock, in a box, wrapped in steel, in a safe at the bottom of the ocean ON VENUS).

DATE #2: (In which I completely fail to ruin a blind date despite a promising start)

I have to admit I went into this date trying to get out of it – I only placed the ad that this guy responded to for a contest and the contest was long over, but he had gotten my attention with his emails and convinced me that he might be worth meeting (if only to see what kind of grown man uses “u” instead of “you” and “ur” instead of “you’re”, and formulates sentences like “if we go out and just you and me, I don't care about anything or anyone than the person I'm with and the word "embarasment" most of the times isn't in my vocab, coz the only thing that matters is the were enjoying ourselves and are comfy with each other to the MAX.). But I was determined to sabotage the date military-style and make sure that he wouldn’t ask me out again.

To that end, I did some research…

He said:

“I like a woman with a nice figure and got to have them hips and a butt;)...lol”(No problems there, since I have the hips and butt of a 12-year-old boy. My family legacy is that of minimal booty, never thought that would be a bonus…)

“like a nice looking gal, great personality, fun ,outgoin and can keep me on my toes thinking what she gonna do next to supprise me. Basically keep me interested with her, coz I got one bad habbit--I get bored fast.”(I also have a close-to-ADD attention span, and am therefore an expert at what exactly gets the attention gnats bored easily. Things I employed: staring into space for a couple seconds before talking (each and every time), getting distracted and disrupting the flow of conversation so he’d have to restart it from the beginning, keeping my answers short, predictable, and uninteresting.)

“If I hesitate about anything or anyone, or they bring up negative comments, then it just kills all the excitment of getting to know someone new.”(We both worked in similar fields, so I got him talking about problem clients and actually made him badmouth my profession in a roundabout way (score!). I tried to be as bitchy as possible without being overt, but he kept looking at my chest so I don’t think he got it.)

“Oh I forgot to tell you one of my bigest passions is EATING, love to eat good food and cooking lets me be creative ;), so yeah I cook every now and then.”(And for this, I brought out my secret weapon… tofu. I extolled the wonders of tofu “even though it’s kind of like eating a sponge sometimes” and talked about how my mom (who taught me how to cook) cooks Spanish rice by adding ketchup to normal rice.)

Now for the date. I met him on a Wednesday evening at Gameworks, a preteen watering hole with video games galore. We said hi and looked at the game packages, but the cheapest was $20 and we both balked and decided to retire to the bar on the top floor and talk for a while. The sales girl mentioned that there was a special starting at 9, but it was 7 and I thought there would be no way in hell we’d still be around by then (he was very shy and didn’t make much eye contact, I was foreseeing a short, generic, awkward date). We sat at a bar overlooking the game floor – Dance Dance Revolution to be exact – and he started talking. I was able to pay attention for the first half hour or so, when he talked about his job and a little about his family. The second half hour I subtly watched the DDR people (one 50’s-aged guy who did okay, multiple 30-40 year old women who did not, one 20’s-aged Japanese guy who should have sold tickets to his bopping, twirling feet-of-fire) and played the game where I only am allowed to say “oh” and “really”, but with different intonations to imply different meanings. “Really?” “ohhh…” “Oh!” “…really.” Ask me anything about his last few relationships. Anything. I tried not to talk a lot, which wasn’t hard given his constant barrage, and tried to keep my stories to the lower-tier ones (good lord, I talked about tofu for about ten minutes). The image I was aiming for was semi-shy, normal, boring girl with no badonka-donk and little to make me stand out from the crowd.

How it all went sideways:

1. I wore a red shirt and tightish jeans (I wasn’t thinking, it’s my standard going-out look). My jacket was on for the first half of the date, but I got warm and took it off. He didn’t look at my face again for over an hour.

2. I started drinking heavily. His incessant talking was getting to me, and I went to the bathroom a couple of times with my phone in my hand, debating whether or not to call for rescue. Alcohol seemed like a better solution in the end. Problem is that booze makes me more animated and brings humor to any situation. Plus I spilled my fourth drink onto the front of my shirt a little and it further emphasized the problem discussed in #1.

3. It got to be 9 p.m. somehow and he wanted to play video games.We went downstairs and he bought an unlimited pass for the rest of the night. I was fully expecting to be out of there by 9, and didn’t realize at first that now I was stuck until 11. Luckily the booze also makes me ignorant and happy. We started out by playing a few games of pool. Something about the combo of wielding a big stick and hitting things always makes me sassy, and the boring-girl façade started to slip a little. I talked smack. I picked my ball-archrival and threatened its honor and extended family. We moved on to basketball (which I did amazingly well at considering I haven’t played in years and was not at my best coordination-wise) and a soccer-kicking thing (didn’t go as well, was wearing heels and am not used to power-kicking anything other than club gigolos with that handicap) and a very aged, laughingly-rendered shooting game that he claimed was his favorite. I died embarrassingly often (I have an issue with avoiding grenades, apparently), but with the unlimited game card and a stubborn aversion to ducking we managed to beat the game and he began to guide me about with his hand on my waist. Who knew all it takes to win a man is shooting hundreds of blocky anonymous henchmen? There was also an off-road vehicle driving game and another brutal machine-gun game, but I began to get restless and was looking for something that would truly test me and my alcohol-induced feelings of grandeur.

Then I spotted it – the 18-wheeler challenge, complete with miniature fake truck cab, gi-normous shift pattern and really long bench seat! I squealed like a schoolgirl, grabbed the game card and ran towards my new destiny. It’s always been a dream of mine to be a long-haul truck driver for a few months, to live the truck-stop life and drive like a maniac (plus they have those cool built-in beds and LOUD HORNS. mmmm.). At this point I had given up any pretense and was working from the id. My ass hit the vinyl and I was one with the game. My date had no idea how to deal with this new development, he eventually decided to find it charming but seemed a little disturbed at the personality transformation. Shy soy-lover to hollering, cussing trucker wannabe. Don’t know why that bothered him…

The club closed before I could finish my game (giving me another opportunity to give a blue-collar verbal barrage as the poor game-dude had to push me out the door), and the date walked me to my car with his arm planted over my shoulders. The rush from the game had worn off a little and I searched my brain for any other way I could make him stop liking me (or at least get his arm off), but I had already burned any of the bridges to freedom I had established earlier with my drink-induced honesty. And my subtle attempts to walk slightly apart from him only resulted in his following and our walking on a diagonal. Dammit. I said goodbye and he has already been trying to get together again, which leaves me with the less-favorable e-mail breakup option. I guess I’m not meant for a life of dating subterfuge.

(Denouement: He wanted me to meet his mother, despite the fact that I had not agreed to a second date with him based on school schedule craziness. I finally told him that I didn't have time to date anyone and sorry for wasting his time. He said he didn't mind being part-time and still wanted me to meet his mother.)

posted by LadyJay @ 8:30 AM