How about a good date thread? Try to shake my entrenched cynicism.
Shake his cynicism and you Win A Date with John Emerson!
A bad date with John Emerson?
(Will there be any mention of my actions or words making his dick hard?)
1. Too many variables. Good first date, good third date, etc. Good blind date? Or whatever handicap you prefer. Yes, I'm looking at you, Apo.
I'm not that easy to get, ladies and Clownae.
Just convince me that in some non-imaginary cases (no trolleys or fat men please) dates and other relationship-related program activities might not be a happiness-threatening waste of time for absolutely everyone.
(An Emersonian pee stain on one's bathroom carpet would make a bit of conversation piece in years to come.)
"How long have you been in town?" asked my date. "Nearly ten years," I said. "Good," she said. "I don't date new to L.A. or newly gay," she said. Thus, with rhyme, she informed me of her bisexuality.
At dinner (this was my first mistake: begin by meeting for drinks!), she insisted on working her recent diagnosis with HPV into the conversation. On three separate occasions. My generous interpretation was that she figured I wouldn't be squeamish, but still: there was a point at which she joked about giving it to me by sharing my food, then pointed out that that would be difficult "unless you were pounding up against my cervix."
The whole thing happened in a state of airless banter. I remember thinking, I'm glad I'm treating; it means I won't have to put out.
She emailed me the next day to ask if she came off as terribly as she thought she did. (I tried to be kind.) It was definitely a bad date, but I give her props for that. I suppose I just caught her at a bad moment.
For some reason thoughts of Emerson's dick lead me to wonder whether Cynthia Plaster Caster has ever been discussed at Unfogged. Having one's member preserved for the ages would at least make an interesting date.
Way way back in college I went on what would be my only proper date up until my separation twelve years later. The girl and I got hot cider at a coffee shop and sat on the college green where she told me her personal psychopharmaceutical history. We went for a walk and I got my head stuck in a piece of modern statuary. I freed myself, kissed her, she cried and I walked her home.
I was on this date one time, and it was great. Until lateer at night, mid-coitus, I looked over onto my date's dresser and saw that it was full of pictures of young Ogged. The next couple of hours before I went home I felt kind've awkward.
10. DIY girls. http://www.gadgetcandy.com/archives/2007/02/vibrator_kit.php
Where does a guy who arranges his ex-girlfriend's abortion on a date fall in the bad-date hierarchy? He gets bonus points for taking care of business, but that's a major mood killer.
I'm glad I'm treating; it means I won't have to put out.
Excellent. Wrongshore has the idea, try to follow along, people.
14: Not so bad, as she went out with him again.
I think that I have mentioned my bad date where she mentioned that she was still married to a deployed Seal. Ouch
I think any date where the term "pounding my cervix" is used is a successful date. Either you have a fabulous story of a crazy person or you are worn out.
Wow. It is has been a long time Amber. I was just trying to help.
from the comments to the post linked in 14:
But taking the call while you are on another date = classless.
Selfish. When your ex calls to tell you she has your baby, that's not a time to say "I'll call you back." Especially if you're only on a first date.
crud. I misread what I quoted. There's indeed a good arguments against answering the call in the first place.
Pee stains can be arranged
Like into a collage you mean?
There's indeed a good arguments against answering the call in the first place.
Maybe. Unless you know your ex knows you're on a date, and you trust her, so a call means that it's probably an emergency.
I think the guy gets credit for being there for her. Much better to act like he did than to be a jackass.
If this guy recently bumped uglies with his ex and is still comfortable enough with her to tell about his upcoming dates, he might should think about patching things up.
Is it possible that we've never had a bad date thread here?
Many of the date threads have been bad.
I felt kind've awkward.
I applaud your efforts to counteract the growing tide of uses of "would of", "could of", and "should of", etc, Michael, but I think what you want here is "kind of".
From the linked post:
When he finally did drop her off, he insisted on coming in and using her bathroom. She said no, then gave in.
Doesn't this seem like a bad idea, what with the creepy conversation, the insistence on him picking her up, and him getting really drunk?
Maybe. Unless you know your ex knows you're on a date, and you trust her, so a call means that it's probably an emergency.
Or, you know, you have no reason to believe you're out on a date with the sort of psycho who would be upset that you took a call, if only to say, "I can't talk right now, I'll call you later."
Bad date: The plan--dinner and a movie. Dinner conversation was awkward. Immediately after, she said she had a headache and I took her back to where she lived. I decided to go to a bar close by to see if anyone I knew was there. I was right. There was someone I knew--the woman I had just dropped off at her room, chatting and then dancing with some other guy.
Now there are many possible reasons for it being a bad date besides her finding me to be a boring or obnoxious guy. They include that (1) (as I found out the day of our date, when I asked where to meet her) she was the roommate of someone else I had dated casually and slept with once (in my defense, this other woman wanted our mostly platonic relationship to be the way it was because I was not interested in marriage, so she knew I was looking elsewhere for non-platonic things) and (2) the woman I took out later decided she was a lesbian. So, I do not completely blame myself for the bad date (unless it is possible it was so bad that I turned her off of men completely). Still, it was not good.
28. Yes. Yes it does. She seems lacking in survival skills.
29: You don't have to be a psycho to think that someone answering a cell phone in the middle of a date is rude, especially if the person has no prior knowledge that the call is important. The caller's number is stored, they leave a voicemail, you call them back. Just because technology allows you to be available and interruptible at all times doesn't mean you should be. But maybe this is a losing etiquette battle.
My worst date story concerns a woman I dated back when I lived in New York. As our relationship progressed, and since she was hard to reach since she had no cell phone, I bought her one as a present.
One day, she informed me that when she went back to visit her old college the previous weekend for some sort of function, she met a guy from her class who she had always had a crush on, and they hooked up. She said she really liked him and wanted to date him instead of me. Hence, I got dumped.
Several months later, however, she called me, very apologetic, and said it hadn't worked out with College Guy, and could we go out for dinner and talk things over? Stupidly, I said okay, and this brings us to the worst date: While we're having dinner, the cell phone I bought her rings. Yes, it's College Guy. And she takes the call. I walked out.
The only good part of the story is that she had the chutzpah to call me again several months later, and I politely declined her offer for another go-round.
Bad date, but more for the girl. (now my wife) It's only our second or third date, she's driving, and all of 10 minutes into the date she plows into into the back of this Ford Explorer and totals her car, which is an old 80's Cadillac that belonged to her grandmother. She calls her Dad and grandfather to get their AAA number or something, and her grandfather, being the sensitive guy that he is, doesn't ask how she's doing, but says, "I can't believe you wrecked that car. I'm just glad your grandmother isn't alive to see this."
She's in tears, and we just hang out at my apartment. Being a gentleman, I do not try and use take advantage of her distress to get in her in the sack.
Pretty tame, I know. I've always had a knack for avoiding the really psycho ones.
Generation Awesome doesn't date, ogged.
But maybe this is a losing etiquette battle.
Mmm. Maybe just another good proxy. I can see getting upset if someone is constantly on the phone, but a single call? It strikes me as strange to find that rude. But that distinction is probably telling about the two people's senses of propriety in a wider sense, and so maybe that's good information to have. You're obviously allowed to find a date poor or not fun for any reason at all, including facial hair and shoes.
OK, back during the time when I was trying to be normal I was flirting with a woman I knew moderately well through various connections. It wasn't a date, but I was thinking of asking. But apropos of some story people were talking about, she said something like "Well, the thing about prostitution is, if you're going to have to go through that, you might as well be paid for it."
37: My son (31 y.o.) has only a sort of ethnological knowledge of what a "date" is. Every once in awhile one of his friends goes on a date, usually one of the socially inept ones.
And now we know the way to Gswift's heart: destruction derby.
A little while back, I met a girl for some drinks; she'd been drinking (apparently heavily) at a happy hour before hand, and eventually fell off her bar stool. She was embarrassed and insisted on paying, but then was entirely unable to sign her credit card receipt.
My own Worst Performance On A Date would be with the woman I was seeing just after my wife moved out. We'll call her C. It was our first time going out with her friends. We were at a private-room karaoke joint for the birthday of a friend of hers whom, by coincidence, I knew professionally.
When my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed someone else I knew, whom we'll call D. C. sat next to her friend to sing, and D. moved next to me. "I don't think I know your girlfriend," said D. I didn't want to be presumptuous, so I said, "Oh, not exactly girlfriend." D registered this and asked more about my status. Thinking of my separation, I thought to say, "Oh, I'm a piece of work right now," but I couldn't recall the colloquialism, and instead spat, "I'm a real work of art." At the time I think that sounded like confidently bragging about the size of my cock. Anyway, D. took it as a green light and leaned in for the hard flirt.
After a while, she said, "I should let you hang out with the girl you came with." I later found out (to some satisfaction) that C. had given her The Look of Death shortly before she scooted away. C. sat next to me and I sang "Flashdance".
We shut the place down. Outside, D. said to us, "There's a party in the Hollywood Hills. You guys are welcome to follow me to it." I very reasonably thought that C. and I should caucus in private before I said anything. And then I very reasonably had a really bad idea. "Put your number in my phone," I said to D. (Please recall that the last time I was single, no one had cell phones.) She called herself from my phone and, being cute, left herself a message. I got in C.'s car.
"Do you want to go to that party?" I asked C.
"You can go to that party," she said.
"Did I kinda screw up back there?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she said.
We drove around the Valley for half an hour while I talked her down. Very carefully.
Gswift's heart: destruction derby.
It was too bad she wrecked it, because that car was hilarious. An 80's Seville, with a velvet interior.
Every date I've ever had has been completely boring: dinner, movie, missionary position. No excitement, no variety.
Mmmm. I have a bad date story that involves having to bail my date out of the clink the following day, but I can't recount it in detail. Too bad.
Back in college, at a point when I'd pretty much given up hope of ever having sex again, I went out with a very decent, religious (a liberal denomination, but serious about it), friend of a friend -- an old movie in whatever that neighborhood around Wrigley Field, and then walking around the neighborhood. We walked around for what seemed like hours, and spoke maybe six, maybe eight sentences -- I'd try something, and the topic would sit there like a dead fish. I feigned sleep on the commuter train back to Hyde Park because I couldn't bear the lack of conversation any more.
Bizarrely, backchannel through the mutual friend was that he'd had the bestest time ever, and was kinda smitten. This was a point wher I really really thought I was never going to get laid again, so I figured I could probably at least get some sex out of the deal, and might be able to manage it without too much painful non-conversation. So I asked him to a formal that was coming up (I had a truly great bizarre giant green velvet dress I found in a second-hand store) and smooched him in a corner at the dance. No responsive move or reciprocal advance was made -- he apparently had moral qualms.
Hopefully he eventually hooked up with some nice religious girl who shared his values and his obsessive love of Dr. Who and married her at some point. He really was a very decent person.
College sucked.
I don't know if was technically a date. But I've only been in one bar fight in my life, and it was with a girl, while having drinks after having dinner, and there was a mutual sussing out the state of romantic interest going on. For what it's worth, I consider the outcome of the fight to be pretty much a draw. To add to the enjoyment, this took place in a city 2200 miles from home, I was supposed to be staying in the girl's apartment, and had a 7:30am flight back the next day.
DS is teasing us. Ban him, someone!
For what it's worth, I consider the outcome of the fight to be pretty much a draw.
Cripes!
Unless DS actually can't recount it - because he doesn't remember - rather than is merely choosing not to. But he's banned anyway.
... and I ban myself! Shouldn't even have brought it up.
She punched me in the head twice; I shoved her - mainly in an effort to get some distance between the two of us - but her being drunk it sent her off the barstool and sort of head-over-heels (heels over head?).
LB, when did you meet Buck? For some reason based on an old comment of yours I was under the impression that you two dated through the better part of college.
I wouldn't like to bareknuckle someone in the head. Ow! Though it sounds as if she was at the stage of feeling no pain.
46: That wasn't Danielle House, was it?
Nope -- my sister met him right before I left for Samoa, but I didn't meet him until she handed him over to me on my return.
She went for the temple - a pretty soft spot of the skull, if I understand my anatomy. And to follow up on 56 - I'm really a non-violent and non-confrontational kind of guy, and would never actually start a fight. Even (especially?) with someone I wanted to sleep with.
Since I haven't actually had very many dates (prematurely Generation Awesome, me), I can only recount the one where I went on this date with a woman who was, by my unique standards, distractingly attractive. I had worked myself up to the point of going on a date with a girl (since I had almost always dated guys up to that point) and here I was! Hooray! Perhaps we would make out! And all seemed promising. There was chemistry. There was talk, but not disturbingly specific talk, of all the girls we'd loved before--just enough to clearly lay matters out about attraction and all that.
But then she started telling me about this fellow who had (as far as I could tell) slept with her and strung her along while dating and proposing to his "real" girlfriend. And it was like she wanted to stop talking about this--seeing as she could tell what a buzzkill it was--but couldn't manage to. She'd stop, and then make some kind of little joke, and then start up again...and slowly the atmosphere cooled until although I sympathized with her and still found her nice to look at, I was utterly unable to work up the kind of distance and beglamourment neccessary for desire.
It's a shame, too, because that was about the only time where I actively pursued someone based on mere physical smittenness, and it would have been interesting to compare with my usual affairs.
I am disappointed in your people. Where are your bad date stories? That was one of my favorite parts of dating.
Where was the conversation going before she started hitting you? (Note: not being judgmental about the barfight -- there's not a thing wrong with shoving someone who's punching you. You're just leaving out all the interesting bits.)
My first date in New York was from Nerve. I had been planning some other things, but this one guy seemed really interested in meeting me right away. His profile, though containing several poorly spelled words, suggested that he was well-read, and he had a flattering picture up of him laughing with a female friend.
We decide to meet at probably the busiest intersection in Manhattan, and I didn't recognize him because he looked so little like his picture--very dully unsmiling and a good inches shorter than he claimed. He barely looked at me, then suggested "a secret and very New York way to have fun," which was buying a cheap bottle of whiskey and drinking it out of a bag on a bench. I say, (a) I've already gotten a ticket for drinking in public and can't afford another, and (b) it doesn't sound like much fun to me. He accuses me of being fancy.
He marches off at top speed to a pizzeria, where we each buy our own slices. There's no place to sit, so we walk toward "this great bar" he knows while eating. Along the way, I ask him what his favorite Calvino novel is. He says he doesn't remember their names, and he doesn't finish novels anyway, especially if he suspects they'll have unhappy endings. So he doesn't want to talk about books. Fine.
The "great bar" ends up being Welcome to the Johnsons, a bar that looks like the basement where creepy uncles molest kids in afterschool specials--plaid ratty couches under plastic covers. He springs for a PBR and proceeds to introduce me as his date to one of the bar's resident creepy alcoholics, who touches me. I go to sit down, leaving them to some private snickering conversation for five minutes.
I check my watch, declare it's time for me to go meet a friend, and go to leave. He yells at me all of my way out of the bar about how he paid for my beer. I say, "You can finish it." I go meet my friend.
Considering I went out with several strangers that first year here, and only four or so of them ended up being unrepeatable dates, I'd say I did okay. The first one was the worst. It lasted no more than half an hour.
I'm confused. You people who don't date. What do you do?
65 "good inches" s/b "good four inches"
I was counting on AWB to have better bad date stories.
It may be only four inches, but dagnabit it's a good four inches.
68:
doesnt seem likely to lead to hot monkey sex. Becks notwithstanding.
69: Some of them are too gruesome to tell, actually. That one at least ended without me getting sexually assaulted.
66: More like "you people who date, what do you do?" I know it's the provincialism talking, but we here in Minnesota don't promiscuously ask total strangers to dinner on the basis of a few idle sentences and their beaux yeux.
Instead, we lurk with intent, have meaningful conversations and "go for coffee with my friend [Object]" until we break down and reveal all, so to speak. All, or at least most, is usually revealed shortly afterwards. Alcohol speeds things up, but is suspiciously coastal.
72: That sounds like pilots talking about landings: "A good landing is one you can walk away from."
By that standard, Decent Boy was an excellent date -- the odds of being sexually assaulted were nil.
75: So almost as good as staying home with the doors locked and the curtains drawn, except that you couldn't read?
Oh, what am I thinking. I have a way, way worse date story, and I was the bad date.
So, I wake up in the hospital, totally unsure of where I am or how I got there. I quickly count: five senses, ten fingers, ten toes, when a woman walks in and asks me how I'm feeling. I take her for a nurse and ask her to fetch the doctor; I'm too confused to even ask her what's happened. She leaves and comes back with a nurse, who explains that I had an epileptic seizure during the night. So, the nurse leaves, and the other woman stays. The ensuing uncomfortable silence tells me what is abundantly obvious to you all: I don't know her, but she knows me, because we were on a date.
It was a terrible conversation. She talked around the elephant in the room at first, saying that the whole thing was really scary, describing what a seizure looked like, etc., and I'm thinking to myself, rather impotently, "Hey, this girl's neat", before she finally flat out asks me what I remember. I tell her, "Not much", but the answer is "not anything". (Later, my memory improved to "not much".) She responds in an understandable slight huff: tells me her name, explains that we met and were hanging out that night, says she called 911 when I had a seizure, and (oof) tells me she's tired from hanging out at the hospital all night and wants to go home.
Later, I was able to reconstruct a partial narrative. Coworkers told me that we did meet when she came into my workplace that night. Apparently we hit it off, and I had smooovely asked her to see a show with me after work, and she agreed. A disciplinary notice explained that the date had gone well, for I was to explain to a committee why an ambulance had to haul a boy out of the all-girls' dormitory after hours.
Never got much more info than that. I got a note from the girl asking how I was, and I sent her flowers to thank her. It seemed like it would be rude to not ask her for a chance to make it up to her, so, even though I knew I had no chance—I set 'em up, and she knocked 'em down. True story.
Indeed, Smasher, that is a very seriously bad date.
You people are just getting sloppy.
I'm confused. You people who don't date. What do you do?
Cry, cry, masturbate, cry.
76: Yep. That's it exactly.
77: Oh, man. But it sounds as if both you and she handled it with the maximum of aplomb.
I think speed dating would be a ton of fun.
Like many people, I don't really go on things I'd call dates. I've been on, er, a couple of dates with people in which we discussed whether we were having a date, and denied it.
I recounted this in part once before; it counts as a date:
I picked the guy up at his rowhouse, and he was entirely unprepared, at 7 pm, watching some absolutely blaring talking head show on investments. He insisted on finishing the show and weakly cleared off a chair for me in the meantime. I fidgeted. It was really fucking hot in that place.
I wanted to stop by a nearby newly-opened wine and cheese shop in his neighborhood. I'd mentioned this. Why not? He declined to get out of the car and go in with me to explore. Um, okay. He sat in the car.
At the restaurant, conversation was alright, but at some point he asked, "Why do you like to do this?"
"Do what?"
"Eat out."
Well, so I drove back toward his house; he criticized my driving. This I recounted in some other thread.
We got to his house: I'm thinking of the no seating arrangement in there, the heat, lack of air-flow, and No, I am not going in there.
So we make out for 5 minutes or so in the car. At some point he jerks back and exclaims that I've, uh, nicked his lip with my tooth?
And he says: "I prefer to be treated like a delicate china teacup."
I can't even finish this.
There's nothing wrong with some beaux yeux.
FUck, the girl i asked out at work said she 'doesn't think of me like that.' ITs so rare i actually enjoy talking with someone. she made me a cake for my last day. ANd i pretty sure i'm as attractive as she is. i'm blaming my workplace non-sexual vibe. i've drank so mubch prb since friday
ANd i pretty sure i'm as attractive as she is.
Dude, you may be, but if you're thinking about it in these terms you're making a category error.
Oh, my very very first date was pretty awful too. I was 14, in my freshman year of high school, and there was one of those dances the girls are supposed to ask the boys to. I had been in English class with an excruciatingly cute boy who, for some reason, had whispered and giggled with me all semester. So the dance is coming up, and I ask, "So, have you got a date to the dance yet?"
Boy: "No."
Me: "Do you want to go?"
Boy: "Sure!"
Me: "Okay, I'll call you later and we can discuss plans."
The week before the dance passes. A male friend we had in common asks me about the date. I say we're going as friends, and he replies, "That's not what I heard. You'd better bring mace, then."
I get totally turned on by the possibility that Excruciatingly Cute Boy has a mutual crush on me. I buy the world's cutest dress. I make plans with my older brother and his girlfriend that we'll all go to dinner together.
We pick him up, and ECB is meltingly sexy in a suit. He has a gorgeous corsage for me. I pin his boutoniere on. We go to dinner. ECB is visibly nervous. Brother's GF keeps pulling me into the bathroom to say how hot, smart, and funny my date is, etc., congratulating me on my excellent taste.
We spend the whole night tremblingly dancing, tremblingly not-eating, tremblingly taking heartbreakingly cute photos in which we appear to be tremblingly in love. End of date comes, and nothing happens.
The next Monday at school, I walk in on my date telling some friends that he thought I meant, "Do you want to go to the dance [with someone]?" and that he answered "Sure!" because he hoped this other girl nearby would hear. It never occurred to him that I was datable. Our mutual friend had lied, hoping to make something else happen because he liked me better than the other girl.
My heart was broken, like, forever.
83:
"delicate china teacup"? Fabulous. Now that is a good bad date! Did you roughhouse with him after he said that?
64: The bar tab for a bunch of people had been left open on her credit card, and when those people wanted to leave and were asking how much they should leave, I realized that I had no idea, was too drunk to figure it out, and told them to leave and that I'd take care of it. She then returned to the area from talking to a friend and was freaking out because she thought everyone ditched her with the bill, and then when I told her what happened, told me that I needed to stop making more money than her, and went for the punches.
It's not as onesided as that makes it sound, naturally. I'd been sort of winding her up all weekend. And for I guess the year prior and the two years since.
parsimon, that guy got a five-minute-makeout? Where are your standards?
I think that Smasher's bad date was cheating, sort of like using steroids except that they're organic steroids.
With proper dosages of antidepressants, even CCMC is out (both C and M). We just sit and look at the wall, mostly.
In Minnesota, Frowner frowns and I grump. I'm not sure what Minneapolitan does. Chopper is really from Dakota so he doesn't count.
"Dude, you may be, but if you're thinking about it in these terms you're making a category error."
I just mean that i didn't expect rejectino based on physical reasons.
Doesnt the cold make you Minnesotans want to pair up?
"It is going to be fucking COLD tonight! Wanna keep me warm?"
rejectino
The elementary particle of which all emotional pain is constituted.
94: Isn't that the point of ice fishing? Hot monkey sex in the hut?
I'm not sure what Minneapolitan does.
Something depressing in finance, IIRC. Frowning doesn't pay as much but the benefits package is better. Don't know 'bout Chopping--I think it depends on whether you chop wood or necks. Grumping is a dying industry, but there's still some high-paying work for niche-market grumps who use speciality materials.
97:
That is what I thought. I figured Minnesotans would be always getting it on, if nothing else just for warmth.
99: Longing keeps us warm, actually. Consummation not so much, since you have to take at least some of your clothes off and it's cold here. And longing lasts longer than consummation, so it's more useful in the cold weather.
I haven't really dated as much as I've ended up dating friends. But I did date a guy who called me his beautiful goddess.
In ancient Egyptian.
94: Mrs. Robert Bly (Carol) made exactly that mistake. The answer is no. (She wasn't talking about Robert, but everyone else in Mn.)
97: Not necessarily all-male, but it's mostly guys getting out of the house and drinking.
Cala how does one make a friend into a girlfrind. Other than getting drunk and going dancing.
one of those dances the girls are supposed to ask the boys
Sadie Hawkins dances, that would be. Al Capp, empowering young ladies since 1937.
Everyone knows that you have to be naked to keep each other warm. If you want to survive in the cold, get naked with someone else and share body heat.
Surely, someone has studied who has more sex: people in hot climates or people in cold climates.
Unfogged's contribution to science.
77 is tragic, but is a good enough story that it's almost worth it.
There's also the sex-in-the-back-of-the-van followed by an awkward date notable for the statement "you're not seriously trying to play innocent, are you?", followed by two scheduled dates on two separate weekends that had to be called off both times because I ended up in the hospital after a motorcycle accident. Talk about not meant to be.
There's also the joy of realizing that the person you are on a date that is not going well with, one of your exes you still like, and some other person who you think is kind of an asshole form a cycle of length four on a hookup chart, and that all four people would have exactly the same thought, with only the roles changed.
This is the guy who's into Bostoniangirl, right, Cala?
100: But consummè can be very helpful.
Heat is a sexual catalyst. See my high school junior English thesis "Heat as a Sexual Catalyst in the Plays of Tennessee Williams." Why? Heat makes us light-headed. Cold makes us very reasonable.
One of my girlfriends refers to early spring as Fucking Strangers Season, and early summer as Boyfriend Season. It's the circle of life.
109:
It is early spring and I don't know you. How you doing?
111: We're past that already, will! We've done our worst!
Does the guy who kissed me and then barked (like a dog) count as a bad date?
Or how about the guy who took me to an improv-a-thon instead of the originally promised dinner (I was starving; he complained that the restaurant wait was too long) and did some psycho Jim Carrey imitation all evening?
There are other stories, but they would take too much effort to type.
103: Let's see... there's the friend bit, then there's your friends scheming a bit, and then one person decides to kiss the other and see what happens.
107: I hope not! Both of those guys are now married. (Yes, there was another guy with the ancient Egyptian thing.) But if BG's guy is like about half of the guys I've dated, what she needs to do is kiss him and see what happens.
Summer is good for flirting but not for sex because it's already hot enough without having to be around another person. (Exceptions are made for lurking shivbunnies. Hi babe!)
116: Yes, but summer's very good for not wearing any clothes, and you're sweaty already, so you might as well.
improv-a-thon
I read this as "improve-a-thon" and was picturing some kind of all-night self-help blowout.
kissed you and then barked like a dog? Fabulous.
Was it a baying hound dog or a tiny chirping small dog yap?
116: I realized i liked this girl riding home on the bus from work a few weeks ago. summer is great for sex. life is terribhel.
It's not so bad. Great story. Plus: I don't remember it at all!
Are we six months out from BG's thing yet? Where's the update?
"116: Yes, but summer's very good for not wearing any clothes, and you're sweaty already, so you might as well."
Amen.
i liked this girl riding home on the bus
So don't bother with your co-worker -- go for the bus girl.
Jesus, there are guys more socially inept than me in the world.
Though actually, up to age 35 or so I could have done any of those dumb things, or at least something equally bad.
I'm most mystified by guys like the one parsimon dated and the one in the linked post. Isn't "be accommodating" one of the most basic rules of a date? It says "dating" right in there!
126: But a lot of guys are really worried about what kind of relationship you'll have, so they front all the bad stuff. Wouldn't you already know that, ogged?
What a great time to also be depressed and have the couple of people i liked in law school to have moved away.
I thought being accomodating marked you as a beta and fucked up your sarge, thereby ensuring that you'd never get laid. Or something.
But a lot of guys are really worried about what kind of relationship you'll have, so they front all the bad stuff.
Jesus, really? Who are these retards?
they front all the bad stuff. Wouldn't you already know that, ogged?
Very funny, missy. It's one thing to tell your date about the bad stuff, but it's another to act like a heel; I can't believe that they're thinking that they'll act like jerks just to get that out of the way.
130: Guys who never get laid and blame women for it.
Note to Vice President Gore: If you're trying to stay anonymous to regulars, you're starting to drop too many hints. (Of course, if you're not trying to stay anonymous but are merely being coy, hint away.)
133:
Did everyone here go to the same law school? Did I miss that somewhere?
131: Fair enough. I tend to exaggerate the things about myself that might let a guy know we're not compatible long-term, but at least I'm functional and nice on dates.
I didn't even know anyone know my other name. plus right now i don't really care much about anything.
What do you do?
I love it when threads have a theme song.
Don't front the bad stuff. Chances are if we like you and the bad stuff is just you being neurotic, by the time we find out about it we'll think it's sort of cute, or we won't care. This includes exes.
88, 90:
Gah, I'd had a previous 20-minute make-out with him that had been quite good. Of course it wasn't in a car.
What a fusser he turned out to be.
A pity, the previous encounter was kinda hot, but we developed crossed wires or something. Once the "delicate teacup" and the nicked lip thing came out, he was going to have some work to correct it. Nix. Neither of us was willing to bother.
I always assumed that the other person would think I'm trying to put my best foot forward, and that telling the bad stuff up front would only make her think, "if this is what he's telling me now, god only knows what crazy revelations await down the road."
Note to archive:
Parsimon is an aggressive kisser.
"if this is what he's telling me now, god only knows what crazy revelations await down the road."
Yeah, I think this is right. If someone is inconsiderate and selfish on a first date, jesus, get away.
Increasingly, Emerson's No Relationship Policy seems like a sane one. You go out and you try to enjoy yourself. If you're a dick, that will out. That's a good thing. If you're not a dick, and she (or he) thinks you are, isn't that still a good thing to know? I don't really get the "hide the bad stuff" thing; don't most people not offer up the bad stuff to people they don't know very well, anyway?
134: I haven't checked the IP -- generally I'm too lazy -- but we don't have a whole lot of unmarried lawyers commenting here.
I remember someone telling a hilarious story about a high-five - that was a friend of a commenter, right?
I just try to be honest about myself
140: I find the problem is that a lot of guys with whom I'm not compatible start imagining babies and a house in the suburbs, so I find it's useful to say that I'm very career-oriented, not shy, and into frequent and interesting sex. Unfortunately, this seems never to put off the "We're made for each other!" crew, because they've already got a vision in mind that involves my genetics, not my personality.
I doubt anyone knows me from law school. on the 3L superalitves i got "most obscure."
I remember someone telling a hilarious story about a high-five - that was a friend of a commenter, right?
Dagger Aleph (pbuh).
Is there a sign-up sheet somewhere?
Mark me in the unmarried, but seriously dating lawyer category.
46 appears to be intended as a setup for TLL.
I shot a man in Reno, just to show my date what kind of person I was.
143: You'd think that. But it seems pretty common for my friends to date someone who seems nice but then bitches about his ex the whole evening, or starts off by telling about his bout with depression, thinking that he'll get it out of the way.
There was a great column that I can't find now, about sports figures and how it takes much more courage to try as hard as you can, because then if things go wrong and you lose, it's because you personally suck. Peyton Manning was used as an example of this, with Davis Love (?) used as an axample of someone who doesn't, and so is able to live a much more contented life. It's perfectly understandable for people with certain issues to bring them all to the front early on as a way of giving themselves an excuse.
Pathetic, but understandable.
eb: yeah, that was my friend J. He had an awkward date with a woman then at the end, when they were saying goodbye, he figured, a handshake is too formal, a hug is too familiar. So he high-fived her.
156: At least he didn't do "got your nose".
"a handshake is too formal, a hug is too familiar. So he high-fived her."
So 1990s. Chest bumping would have been appropriate.
Pwned on my own anecdote. Sigh.
I remember someone telling a hilarious story about a high-five - that was a friend of a commenter, right?
I've got one of those. It was a couple my wife and I saw when we were dating at BYU. We were hanging out that night outside her dorm, and another couple were getting back from their date. They both gushed about how much fun the date was, and high fived several times. We about died laughing.
You'd think that. But it seems pretty common for my friends to date someone who seems nice but then bitches about his ex the whole evening, or starts off by telling about his bout with depression, thinking that he'll get it out of the way.
Wow. I guess I'm with gswift and ogged; that makes me wonder if that's actually the bad stuff. I could kind of see telling someone stuff that I don't think of as bad, but others do. But that I don't think it's a big deal, I would think, would become apparent from tone and gesture.
Dating ... dating ... oh yeah. Now I remember. Except not really.
start imagining babies and a house
This on the other hand ... tomorrow morning I get up at 5:30, drop the kid off at a friend's place, and then drive my other half to the maternity ward where a big ole jug of pitocin awaits.
So the moral is ... er ... I dunno. Enjoy your dates this weekend.
On my first date with my now-girlfriend, a high-five in the bar led to a kiss in the bar. I believe the line was "if we had executive assistants, we'd be unstoppable." High-five! Kiss.
But this is not a bad date. More bad date!
I know enough neurotic guys that my guess is that it would probably be the end of the bad stuff, but I've never dated anyone who started off a date like that, so it would be hard to judge.
I didn't realize you were due for another, Gonerill; congratulations, boring guy.
I don't know if it counts as a date, but shortly after college, I spent a pleasant and fairly drunken evening schmoozing a guy at the bar (a rare event then and now) and finally we decided to go back to his place for whatever was to happen next. It probably should have meant something to me that his place was an actual house, but he was a couple years older than I, and was a nurse (I didn't know then how shittily nurses are paid) so I figured, okay, he has a house.
We set about to do some smooching and fumbling on the couch when the kitchen light goes on, and in shuffles an older woman in a bathrobe. My date pulls his hands from under my shirt and introduces me to his mother. She says hello with no apparent interest and heads back into the kitchen. Noticing that I've stiffened up a bit, and not in the good way, my date says, "Don't worry about it, she's cool."
We pick up where we left off until after a while, my date stops, looks up, and says, "Pete, what do you WANT?" Since I am at this point trapped underneath him, with both hands down his pants, all I can do is crane my head backward to see, upside down, a teenaged boy standing on the stairs above, watching us. "I wanna watch TV."
I decided that was enough for the night.
According to the Kinsey Report every average man you know
Prefers to play his favorite sport when the temperature is low.
I went out with a girl on a blind date. She didnt know much about me and started passionately discussing abortion in an anti-choice fashion.
I looked at her and said, "[friend x] didnt mention my association with all of that baby-killing??!?!!?" (just to shock her a little.)
We wrapped that date up pretty quickly.
I think it's good those guys front those things about themselves early. It's not conducive to HMS, but it does let a date in on the kinds of resentments they'll hold onto.
Of course, most of the things that make us incompatible are hard to name. Laughing at the wrong kinds of jokes, being weirdly competitive in conversation, feeling pressured or overwhelmed by sex--these things you can't front right away because they don't show up until you're already pretty intimate, and usually people don't even know they have those issues until they get there.
about sports figures and how it takes much more courage to try as hard as you can, because then if things go wrong and you lose, it's because you personally suck.
As sports cliches go, that's one of the ones I hate most. Most of the guys who are successful--Manning, Jordan, etc.--have had almost nothing but acclaim since they first entered the league. Someone--maybe the Wages of Win guy--had a nice article suggesting that one of the crucial factors for long-term success is ending up, by chance, in the right situation.
There are guys who just keep trying and trying, of course--someone like Matt Barnes, for example--but when they fail, we don't see that as courage, we see it as foolhardiness.
That said, I was, and may even still be, a Kwame Brown fan, so depreciate the above accordingly.
Gonerill; congratulations, boring guy.
I'm more boring than can be imagined, but also I've pretty clearly been getting some action.
My BFF came to visit me and we went out to eat with my boyfriend and another couple. She drove. On the way to the restaurant, he asked me to change the radio station. I told him I would as soon as the song then playing was over. He grabbed my pony tail, pulled my head back, and told me again to change it. I, of course, never did change the station.
Dinner was delightful as the other couple was fighting, too, and my friend was trying desparately to engage anyone in conversation. She asked my (by then ex?) boyfriend about his religion and he told her he believed in death and misery or something like that.
Years later I found out that the pet name he had for me -- a supposedly hard-to-translate term of endearment -- was actually "fatso" in his native tongue. A real charmer.
ouch Di. That stinks.
Congrats Gonerill.
Not a bad date story but 168 reminds me of a story Mark was telling me about his recent trip to France. The boyf and he were staying at a cute little hotel in the Alps with balcony overlooking a lovely babbling brook. They got there after dark and decided to sleep with the French doors to the balcony open so they could listen to the sound of the water all night. They woke up in the morning and started to fool around and mid-fooling-around his boyfriend caught a peek out the balcony and realized for the first time that on the other side of the brook was a grammar school and there were a number of children standing there agape watching them get it on.
depreciate
Come on SCMT...
That said, I was, and may even still be, a Kwame Brown fan
Dude, it's long past time to let that one go.
173: By the "got laid at least once about nine months ago" standard even the frustrated ones are mostly doing OK.
"got laid at least once about nine months ago"
Some chicks really want to get it on a lot in that last trimester. My wife is not one of them.
183:
Wow. I'm going to bed before that topic takes off. True statement. I just hope that you meant to include "when they are in their last trimester."
Here it is. I think it's eminently plausible, as I do that kind of shit at work all the time.
184: Whatever happened to Cha/rles Mud/ede anyway?
The body that had the sex that resulted in the pregnancy is not the same as the body that is in the process of producing a whole new life. The first body was attractive (like a flower is attractive); the pregnant body, on the other hand, is used up by the function of the pregnancy. What a woman loses in the long process of a pregnancy is precisely what made the pregnancy possible, the flower of her body.
Oh, a bad date in a different way:
So, several years ago, I hooked up with my then-roommate/now-coblogger's brother. This was a mistake for many reasons that I didn't know ahead of time, like that the brother was perfectly fine with intelligent women before sleeping with them, but afterward became infantilizing and absurdly competitive (asking me about my work, and then, after I get one sentence out, delivering an hour-long lecture about Asian history). The point is, I should have asked my roommate if it was a good idea ahead of time. Ahem.
The night after we had sex and then told the roommate, to clear the air, there was all this awkwardness, because the roommate wanted to explain to me why this had been a bad idea, but didn't want to spoil any potential fun. But we had plans to go see Pink Narcissus, a silent gay porn flick from the 70's, that night. So we went.
We spent two hours in the dark, listening to the brother act increasingly less comfortable. "Oh, look, more beads. Huh," etc. It was the most silent ride home I've ever had.
I was reminded of this because tonight my best friend and her husband and I went to see Fassbinder's Querelle, a really good/awful 70's gay porn flick, and there was serious tension afterward, about things I don't fully understand. There was fighting! Then silence! Then fighting!
Here's my (being) a bad date story:
I was already the "other man" in a really bleak little long-distance love triangle, but of course was not locked into anything exclusive. A new person had just been hired at work. Not only did we hit it off right away, but she had just moved from another state, but she had just broken up (in other state) with a complete asshole (he had sold all of her record collection while she was at work one day, because he thought she should only listen to techno).
So I ask her out to a play put on by some friends, which was both very funny and very blue, even maybe a bit offensive. We agree to meet at the theater, but since she's new in town, she gets lost driving there, and can't find a parking space near the entrance. With a minute until the show is scheduled to begin, I walk down the block to where she's parked, she starts feeding the meter, and I'm so nervous about not making the curtain that I'm sort of edging toward the theater, trying to coax her into hurrying. This goes on for a minute and I realize that she has a slight mobility impairment, that had not been obvious at work. She's really flustered, and I'm feeling like the biggest heel ever, but we make it in to the auditorium and wedge ourselves into the uncomfortable temporary seating.
After the show, it's pretty clear that the production was way past her comfort zone for theater. She drives me home and actually asks if I want to hang out longer, but I figured it had been such a disaster that I might as well just cut my losses.
We were fairly cordial at work after that, but after I had quit and moved away, I found out that the asshole ex had moved to town and that they'd gotten back together. Sucks to be her, I guess.
Does Querelle really count as porn?
Huh. He wrote "aZoo". Whaddya know.
189: I think so. I was surprised at the lack of actual cock in it, which is instead represented by lots and lots of graffiti and architectural things, but there is explicit depiction and discussion of sodomy. (That's for you, Falwell!)
But we had plans to go see Pink Narcissus, a silent gay porn flick from the 70's, that night.
He sounds like a tool, but he just might have bad date story of his own about "that chick who took me to see gay porn".
189: I'd love to hear why you don't think it counts. We were all getting quite steamy about it, and not in a merely R-rated way.
179:
and there were a number of children standing there agape
Oh god, this is a classic. Many years ago, there came a pounding on the door. Bedroom door: one of my roommates yelling:
Whatever the fuck you guys are doing in there, pull down the fucking shade because the kids in the house next door are watching!
(The mother next door had come complaining. I could never look her in the eye after. Sorry. Sorry.)
192: I don't blame him for teh awkward there. It was unfortunate timing all around.
194: It's been too long since I've seen it for me to have a strong opinion about it, but I just don't remember any seriously explicit "hey, those guys are really doin' it" sex in it. And anyway, I wouldn't call a movie with even fairly explicit sex scenes in it porn; I'd call a movie of people having sex porn.
Maybe it's time to rent Querelle again.
I do that kind of shit at work all the time
Oh yeah. Figuring out that my subconscious would much rather be thought lazy than stupid was illuminating, if not particularly helpful.
198: Yeah, I think it's perhaps more explicit than you're remembering. Either that, or we saw some new re-cut of the film with 20% more cock or something. It was like Tom of Finland in painfully drawn-out live-action sex sequences. I thought it was totally silly, liberating, and ridiculously hot, my friend's (bisexual) husband said "Beginning to end, nothing but two hours of big juicy cock," and my friend declared it "An incredible portrait of the erotic violence that underlies all homosocial interaction." She wanted to read it as an intellectual allegory for the lives of heterosexual men, which was also really erotic. Her husband and I were arguing that here was the gleeful abandon of morality and politics in the face of totally kick-ass, inch-by-inch nerve-yanking hottness, and that the intellectual/theoretical stuff was kind of a joke.
It was like Tom of Finland in painfully drawn-out live-action sex sequences.
Then again, maybe it is not time to rent Querelle again.
Not the type of guy as ToFish, as there are lots of "types" represented, but the masculine-on-masculine thing, and the games around "we're just guys! hanging out! it's normal! gay chicken! tell me about your sister again while I make out with you!" etc.
Al Gore, I don't know what to say. Perhaps email someone you trust under your other name?
I guess I can also throw in the New York City date I had shortly after 9-11, when vast chunks of downtown were still restricted and we hadn't even invaded Afghanistan yet, let alone Iraq. Nevertheless, my date went on and on how America got what it deserved because of the various evils it has perpetrated throughout the world. That one wrapped up pretty quickly.
I suspect our dear, departed VP is unaware of the pseudonymous presidential policy here and just stumbled into a good thing.
Stumbled into a thing, at any rate.
I was a prop in someone else's bad date. There was this big party at a friend's house, and this woman he was seeing was pissed off at him, for paying insufficient attention. I didn't really know her -- having been out of town as they'd started seeing eachother, but everywhere I went at the party, there she'd be, trying to make it look like we had some kind of budding physical relationship. To make the friend jealous.
I was somewhat substantially impaired, and totally confused by the whole thing. Wait, why is she rubbing up against me like that? It's not like there's any chemistry. Isn't she supposed to be hanging with my friend?
So I kept finding ways to wander off to another part of the party, and after a couple of minutes, there's she be. And as her plan wasn't working, she kept escalating. All the while, I'm being polite, and nonchalant, and getting ever more confused.
My friend is also impaired (the girlfriend isn't, which is definitely a problem) and he's also confused by the thing. Following at a distance.
Finally, she sort of corners me in the bedroom doorway, takes my hand, and presses it to her chest. There's no polite or nonchalant way out of this -- I pull it back like I've touched hot coals, and beat a hasty retreat. She never spoke to me again. And broke up with my friend in fairly short order.
I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.
Dinner was delightful as the other couple was fighting, too, and my friend was trying desparately to engage anyone in conversation. She asked my (by then ex?) boyfriend about his religion and he told her he believed in death and misery or something like that.
That seems like a great answer to me.
That seems like a great answer to me.
You can't stay a 17-year-old virgin forever, Ben. Soon you'll be 18.
209 is the essence of smoove, all right.
I pull it back like I've touched hot coals, and beat a hasty retreat
First gay encounter with a gentile?
People shouldn't be asking others about their religion anyway. A casually tossed off "oh, I believe in death and misery—you know" seems just fine.
My first boyfriend, a million years ago, had an enormous poster from Querelle on his wall. It's been in my Netflix queue for a year.
I've had about five dates in my entire life, none of which were entertainingly awful.
216: What about related questions. You know, "Hey, ben, this is a tasty gimlet you've prepared for me. Are you cut or uncut?"
(Just asking hypothetically; go Bears!)
At that point I'd just whip it out.
Don't make her ask, subtly whip it out to stir your coffee or something.
215 -- A somewhat coarse Tennesseean. She was genuinely surprised at my lack of interest in her. She came to the conclusion that I must definitely be gay, and went around telling people so in the following days. I have no idea whether anyone believed or cared.
Here's a good bad date story. I had a crush on a guy in high school and worked up the guts to ask him out. So I ask him, he says yes.
Next day, a friend of mine says, you asked Anthony out? And I say yeah, so? And he says, he's dating Janelle. And I was all, he's what? My friend laughs. Why the fuck did he say yes then, I ask. Friend says, probably he didn't know how to say no.
Even so, somehow we end up going through with this farce. We go to a movie, I dunno which one. At the box office, I pull out my wallet and he says, no, I'll pay. I asked you, I say, it's my treat. He argues with me and pulls the I'm the guy card. Okay, fine, whatever, I say. We watch the movie, go out afterwards for a bite (he keeps paying), have the most awkward non-conversation ever until the date is, blessedly, over. By which point my crush is killed, at least, b/c while cute, he's also really boring.
Needless to say all our mutual friends totally gave me shit about it for the rest of the year, too.
[whine]
I need an anti-histamine and Sudafed isn't it. bahhhh. Cala the Red-nosed grad student.
I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom
Was anyone else there?
225: Falwell died today, Cala. It's like you're sniffing for him, ironically*.
*not the Dave Eggers definition of irony, blah.
226: Getting busy in a Burger King bathroom? It's a Whopper of a time.
Gawker has a series of reviews of the best bar bathrooms for sex. No word on when they'll review BK.
I haven't been able to concentrate all day.
It's one thing to tell your date about the bad stuff, but it's another to act like a heel; I can't believe that they're thinking that they'll act like jerks just to get that out of the way.
A lot of guys imagine that their perfect relationship with a woman would take up about 10% of their free time and never inconvenience them in the slightest. These are the guys who say "I broke up with her as soon as she started trying to change who I am."
Putting the worst foot forward is their strategy to weed out the women who aren't desperate, because the women who agree to a second date are those who will put up with any type of nonsense without complaining.
Okay, I'm sufficiently Becks-style to tell the story from 46, bans and propriety be damned.
It starts out with a long crush on a woman who is teh hott, as the kids say, in a model type of way. We run into each other at a party one night, she's charming and delightful, my Dumbassed Male mode kicks in and we agree to go out for drinks.
The night of the date arrives, and we decide to start out at a well-known pub we both frequent. I can't remember what the rest of the plan was, but it doesn't matter; I discover that my date is an alcoholic by the fact that, twenty to thirty minutes after walking in the door, she's gone from being stone-cold sober to being sloshed to the point of barely being able to form a sentence.
The next couple of hours pass in a blur of propping her up and keeping opportunistic assholes away from her. Eventually I pour her into a cab. She drunkenly invites me to spend the night with her at my place; I (thinking I'm being chivalrous) tell her no, I'll drop her off at her place. Which I do.
The next morning at about six, I'm woking by a mysterious ringing emanating from somewhere in the pile of of clothes by my bed. I dig around and discover she's accidentally left her cell phone with me, but not in time to take the call. Not to worry: after another ten minutes, my land line rings. A police voice informs me they're patching in a call from the local correctional facility; it's my date, informing me she's in jail and urgently begging me to get her out.
I go down to the facility and am informed by they'd arrested her for outstanding DUIs and no-shows in court. (Talking to her friends later, I discover that a disliked relative had been staying with her, and I realized suddenly she probably wanted to go home with me to avoid having to deal with them. The cops were called to a domestic disturbance with said relative.)
Because I'd failed to read the signs earlier, I feel a little guilty about having enabled the situation, so I spend the remainder of the day trying to raise bail money for her from her friends and my own meagre bank account. End of the day, the bail money raised, I promptly feel like more than a little bit a chump. We travel in similar social circles, but have never really spoken since.
I've never had any really bad dates.
I had a couple really boring and awkward dates during my high school years when my policy was "Any girl I am attracted to is way too good for me, so I should only ask out girls who I am not attracted to but who I think are attracted to me". But that's nothing out of the ordinary.
And a couple instances in college when I was kissing a girl in a non-anticipatory way, and she started becoming more passionate than I had expected, clearly thinking I had some sexual experience when in fact I hadn't. I actually don't remember how those encounters ended.
Excellent, Slack. Though I wonder if she was really an alcoholic (you'd think she wouldn't get drunk so quickly) or just nervous. It was good of you to say "no," despite the outcome.
DS wins the thread! All other comments can now be about:
-bees
-bikes
-sexism
-Jerry Falwell
-sex with dolphins
-swimming
-lasers
-meat
-stuff
-etc.
It was good of you to say "no," despite the outcome.
Why was this good? She was literally asking for it.
DS wins the thread!
Whoa whoa, you can't give someone the Bad Date Award just because it ended with one of the principals in jail. Especially since in this case she ended up in jail for unrelated reasons, not for anything they did on the date. DS's story is actually an uplifting moral tale. "Delicate china teacup" is much worse.
She was literally asking for it.
... and Really Not Attractive. Ogged is kind, but I don't think it qualifies as that much of an ethical feat.
I don't think it qualifies as that much of an ethical feat.
Assuming you were attracted to her, I genuinely don't see why this would be an ethical dilemna. You're on a date with her, she has a few drinks, and she asks for some sex. So what?
231: Oh damn, DS, I had one that started off the same way. I'd only been in city X for a couple weeks and went on a date that started off well --- meet for drinks turned into go to dinner turned into lets go to a bar I know. So I follow her home from the place we ate, she jumps in my car and directs me downtown (where I'd never been) to a bar she knew.
We'd had a pretty good time but right about closing I realized she'd overdone it. Really overdone it. So we're ushered out of the bar and I wander off looking for coffee. I get her some water, but she's getting incoherent. I find a cab (not easy) just about the time she's given up telling me to just leave her there (in the park, sure, no problem) and decided to pass out properly.
So then it hits me. I have no idea where she lives. It's 3am and I don't know anyone she knows I could call. She won't wake up enough to tell me an address (just..hic... leave me here). I end up taking her back to my place, basically carrying her up 3 flights of stairs, figuring out where my linen is (just moved) makeing a bed out of the couch for her.
The morning wasn't much fun either. Both of us hung over and surly, reconstructing the night and figuring out where to get my car from.
My freshman year I ended up on a date with some grad student. I have no idea why he thought this was a good idea, as I was the rawest of country bumpkins to ever hitch up his overalls and ride the turnip cart all the way to Chapel Hill, but whatever. I can't remember how we met now, though it was some mutual activity; hell, maybe we met at a meeting of the queer student group (named, I shit you not, B-GLAD).
We go to this awesome place on Columbia St. called the Hardback Cafe (a moment to mark its passing, please) and it's a little bookstore and cafe and I'm trying to demonstrate that I can muster something resembling an intellectual life and he's extremely snotty about everything. He doesn't like the Hardback because all the books in it are just pop trash. He doesn't like Whatever Thing We Met At because no one really cares or they care too much, I can't recall. He doesn't like dinner dates because they're too straight. He doesn't like the sluts in the gay student group because they have no use for dates. Blah blah blah. He also complains that the place doesn't have enough vegetarian options; this is 1992 and its menu is about one-third vegetarian, it's like a menu from any respectable cafe from 2007 had been mystically transported back in time just to serve him, but he's tweaked.
Of course, he doesn't mention that he's a vegetarian until I've ordered my roast beef sandwich; once the waitress is gone he states that all meat is ultimately cannibalism. Our food arrives and I am unspeakably glad to get to stop talking for a little while. Halfway through our meal he pipes up, "How's your seared animal flesh?"
"A little overdone, I like it redder," I say. "You know, in high school I read a novel about a nuclear war and in it the main character ate what he called Carnivore Sandwiches: raw ground chuck and horseradish on a sandwich roll. I've always wanted to try one of those but I don't like horseradish."
We barely even spoke when we went our separate ways. I think I finished early, asked for my check and left before he was done, actually.
So what?
So she'd probably resent me for taking advantage when she sobered up.
A lot of guys imagine that their perfect relationship with a woman would take up about 10% of their free time and never inconvenience them in the slightest.
This is my idea of a perfect relationship too. Where are these guys?
Ack, reading all this, I'm questioning my non-dating stance. I mean, is this the worst you can come up with? There must soul-crushing angst somewhere, or else I've been an unnecessary coward, which is much worse than the regular kind.
I'm obliged to offer a post-dating story here: we've just broken up a month ago, we're both seventeen. I'm gainfully employed, she's predictably and visibly pregnant, but assures me abortion is the only option, n/m how many appointments she's missed. It kills me looking at her: how I love her, and how I want to be with her and our baby for the rest of our lives. She's told me that an abortion costs $500, and I've given her six. Today she tells me that it's an extra hundred or two for anesthetic, I don't remember which. But she's visibly pregnant, and I want it and I don't, I want her and the baby but I don't want the other guy.Anyway she tells me that it's an extra hundred for the anesthetic and I go to the ATM and tell her "Here you go, Knock yourself out" and two years later she talks to me and I pretend I don't care.
"How's your seared animal flesh?" "A little overdone, I like it redder," I say.
Excellent.
Gswift, whatever happened to the dictum that gentlemen don't fuck completely trashed chicks? Especially on a first date, where there's no previously existing relationship?
Gswift, whatever happened to the dictum that gentlemen don't fuck completely trashed chicks?
What, chicks don't ever go out looking to get drunk and get laid?
247: That's what made 240 stressful. I literally couldn't think of anything else to do but take her home, but felt reluctant to have any sense that I might be taking advantage of her.
247 has it right. If both parties are more-or-less equally trashed, that's one thing; but if one party (particularly the male one) has the advantage, not so much.
If both parties are more-or-less equally trashed, that's one thing; but if one party (particularly the male one) has the advantage, not so much.
Seriously, this is ridiculous. It would have been ok if you were drunk too? To be clear, I'm not talking about getting on her after she's passed out, or pressuring someone with an obviously diminished capacity. But if she basically turns to you and says something to the effect of "let's go to your place and fuck", I don't see that as taking advantage.
Drunk is one thing; practically falling over is something else.
It would have been ok if you were drunk too?
If both parties are impaired, at least one party wasn't coldly calculcating about it. (Not, obviously enough, the kind of ethical reasoning that would impress Plato, but it does sort of hang together to a point.)
I don't see that as taking advantage
It's not about how I could slice and dice the logic the next day. It's about how she'd feel about it the next day. I doubt confronting her with "that's a double standard, baby! I wouldn't have felt 'taken advantage of!'" would impress.
After all, in drunk driving cases we hold someone responsible for having gotten drunk, thereby enabling future bad decisions—indeed, even Aristotle endorses doubling penalties for misdeeds done while intoxicated.
110 - What? You mean like, where am I to tell bad date stories? I haven't had any disastrous dates. Dull ones, but not bad dates that would be an interesting story.
Gah, we're not talking about ambiguous consent here. I find it very difficult to think of it as taking advantage when it's the other party doing the propositioning.
we're not talking about ambiguous consent here
More like competency to give consent. Of course I've had questionable hookups where I wasn't competent to give consent and shouldn't have, but such are the joys of male privilege that this isn't a big thing for me. A lot of women aren't in the same position*.
(* Pun not intended.)
Serious question, is it really sexy to think about fucking someone who's that drunk?
I wasn't asking you, since obviously you're not insane.
More like competency to give consent.
I guess I see a proactive request as fundamentally different from giving consent.
is it really sexy to think about fucking someone who's that drunk?
No. Unless I'm the one who's drunk, in which case the answer is a resounding yes.
#244: Anyway she tells me that it's an extra hundred for the anesthetic and I go to the ATM and tell her "Here you go, Knock yourself out"
Given the context of your comment, I'm guessing that line was not supposed to be funny.
265:
Funny? No I suppose it wasn't. But the pun was intended. I suppose this is what you'd call black humor. She didn't think much of it either.
244: I think there's not much that can happen on a first date that can be that soul-crushing. All the really horrible soul-crushing stuff happens in relationships. You want horrible, miserable moments from the life of failed relationships, that's going to be another thread, and none of the comments will be funny. All of them will be long. Let's not do that to each other.
The first date I ever went on (and one of the few in my life) was bad, bad enough that I somehow blocked it out last night when this discussion was raging.
I asked girls out, in high school, pretty indiscriminately -- though the total number of girls I asked out wasn't huge, the asking was generally based more on feeling like I just wanted to go on a date already and maybe kiss a girl rather than any actual specific interest in the askee. So at the end of junior year, like in the course of signing her yearbook or something, I asked R. if she'd like to get together sometime over the course of the summer; I took her tentative yes as a full-throated admission of the hots for me.
In July or something we went to a movie. Possibly the worst first-date move EVAR. (Really -- check out the summary. I am having a hard time stopping laughing right now.) I may have tried to put my arm around her torso during it; I may have been rebuffed. I'm pretty sure I paid. From the theater we went to the local gay coffeehouse for dessert and coffee, where I spent maybe a half hour gazing into her eyes and fondling her necklace -- I'm not sure how this came about but my memory of it is pretty clear.
I spent the rest of the summer stalking R. -- when she told me her parents had forbidden her from using the phone as punishment for something, I wrote her love letters; I went to her house unbidden one afternoon and knocked on the door and had a brief awkward conversation with her. In September I went away to college and continued to write love letters; in October or so I received my first reply from her, in which she let me down easy.
We were asked to leave the bar because we kissed too much...
216: It's not quite as bad as it sounds. The thing is, my BF(for not quite)F(after all) knew no one at the table but me, I was not in the mood at that point to engage in polite conversation with anyone, and one of the only things she knew about this guy was the name of his religion. Given that she was a hard-core, religious-right-type Christian, the fact that she just genuinely wanted to know what it is his religion was about and never even vaguely attempted to persuade him to convert was pretty good.
218: If she knew anything about his religion, she'd have known the answer to that as well.
Presumably all the men here have enjoyed the experience of taking someone to a concert only for them to spend the entire evening sitting on the edge of the stage, gazing soulfully at the lead guitarist. Doubtless most of the women too, only the last hot woman lead guitarist was Sister Rosetta Tharp, so their date was probably gawping at a backing singer or something.
I mention this only to point out that this situation becomes more tiresome when a. you can't go away because it isn't an area where you can safely leave young women to make their own way home, and b. you have promised her parents (everybody involved being 15 at the time) to get her home by a certain hour, and she won't fucking go, because of her obsession with said guitarist.
Were you enjoying the music?
All the really horrible soul-crushing stuff happens in relationships. You want horrible, miserable moments from the life of failed relationships, that's going to be another thread, and none of the comments will be funny. All of them will be long. Let's not do that to each other.
Ahem.
My father at Carnivore Sandwiches in the form Steak Tartare, and got an enormous tapeworm. A word to the wise. (He did lose a lt of weight, if that's your goal).
Drunk women are always careful about birth control and safe sex, and they can't get pregnant, so where's the problem?
232: This is why I don't like dates. Unfogged always confirms my worst, worst fears about scary life experiences, and I now accept that John Emerson Is Right.
got an enormous tapeworm
Delicious sandwiches and a free, low-maintenance pet! Win-win.
Freshman year, interested in a girl who lives in my dorm, we've made out a time or two, but not gotten beyond that. I ask her if she wants to go down to the beach for the weekend, and she accepts. So we drive down, get a cheap hotel room, drink some beer, things are going swimmingly. About fifteen seconds into the actual sex, she starts crying.
Uh oh. I'm only seventeen years old, but I know this can't be a good sign. So I stop and ask her what's wrong. She says, "When I was a little girl, my parents used to take me to the beach and we stayed in places just like this." At which point, she rolls off me and goes into full hysterical sobbing.
Never did get any more explanation of what that meant, and we drove back mostly in silence the next morning. I picked up a completely insane old toothless hitchhiker on the way who preached to us from Greenville to Raleigh, and I was grateful for his presence.
269: Possibly the worst first-date move EVAR.
I do believe I can top that one. Violent gang rape scenes make it hard to strike a romantic note later on.
Tapeworms grow as long as 60 feet and live as long as 10 years.
A friend of mine is an Air Force pilot and says he learned from his military training that you can kill a tapeworm by drinking some kerosene. I never figured out if he was kidding.
Tapeworms grow as long as 60 feet and live as long as 10 years.
I'll remember that as a topic of conversation next time I'm on a date. Especially over dinner.
Hmm. This guy's heard of the kerosene thing, too. Thank you, Google.
I've been told that in the Philippines people eat pickled beef tapeworm. I may have been lied to.
279 -- What about this one? Good or bad first-date movie? I never had the opportunity but I would probably have taken a girl out to it, and have had another bad date story for my annals.
"Blue Velvet" would be a good date movie for the right person. You can "screen" your dates very effectively by choosing the movies carefully. (Ha! Pun!).
You know, Emerson, I should introduce you to my mother. She's also the face of the Angry Left, she's roughly age appropriate, and since breaking up with my dad, she's got the attitude toward relationships and the opposite sex of a bobcat with a severe toothache and its hind foot in a trap. The two of you are perfectly compatible, in a way best expressed by never meeting each other and remaining several thousand miles apart.
(Your mention of Martha Mitchell in the other thread brought this to mind -- Mom has an excellent extended Martha Mitchell routine.)
280: Does symbiosis violate your no-relationship policy?
If JE ends up as LB's stepdad I'll friggin' die with joy.
288: You can't do that. Your mother has to EARN the right not to be in a relationship with John Emerson. You can't just walk in off the street and expect the world. There are a series of tests, including feats of strength, involved.
I'm cool with LB's mom as long as she stays on her side of the line. She can have the East, which reaches all the way to Chicago, and she can have the South, too, which reaches central Iowa, though I doubt she wants it either. But the Northwest is mine.
Man, this thread makes me feel like I've led a sheltered life. I can't think of a single bad date. Although maybe that's cause I don't conceive of much as dating. There was that time, though, that I was trying to have sex in a hotel room and got interrupted by sundry hotel staff trying to clean the room, check the minibar, and give us extra pillows four times. Every time, it was put on clothes and shit, and then "should we keep going?" Apparently the answer was yes.
293 -- They have little cardboard hooks you can put on the door-knob, to notify the hotel's staff that you are in flagrante.
287, that was done in "The Squid and the Whale" already.
Possibly the worst first-date move EVAR.
Two of the three most boring movies I've ever seen in an actual theater were on first dates ("Random Hearts" and "Small Time Crooks", with the third being "Man Push Cart"). On the other hand, I had one relationship that lasted far longer than it should as a result of going to see a wonderful and romantic movie that presented a very rosy view of female mental illness.
Hey you know, Sylvia and I went to the Museum of Natural History on Monday and discovered they are once again exhibiting the squid and the whale -- it is in the lovely aquatic life exhibit on the lower level. I think for a long time it was not on display.
Clownae: I think it was down because they were renovating the entire Hall of Ocean Life.
Worst first date movie EVAR? Oh, ya'll are sooo trumped.
A Good Mormon Girl attending BYU chatted me up on a flight from NYC-SLC. Passed the time, that was nice.
Two days later she showed up at my office. She knew my first name, that I was an engineer, and what part of town my office was in. Armed with that information, she went door-to-door asking for me.
She found me and I ushered her to the nearby coffee shop while trying to figure out WTF was going on. I decided that she wasn't violent, so I might as well ride this for a laugh or two. There was a Jewish Film Festival at the bar/theater in my neighborhood that weekend, so we go see the opener. I've already decided that I'm going to need to be drunk to get through this.
Remember - Good Mormon Girl.
Movie night comes along, and we go see Nina's Tragedies. Poor girl was just shell-shocked.
Not a bad date, just an update on the situation with John. It's painfully slow, and his crappy doctor-schedule doesn't help, but it is heading in the right direction.
I hope that nattarGcM isn't in this thread, because he'll either make fun of me or I'll irritate him. It really kind of is in a holding-hands-after-church stage.
I haven't seen John for a couple of weeks, because he's been on call. He did put his hand on the small of my back in church, and we do sit very close to each other now and whisper asides. I did go over to his place. I should have kissed him then, but I didn't.
I did go out to brunch with him and some other people. Some girl started flirting with him once she heard about his job and his apartment. She was moving and getting rid of some furniture, and he was going to look at it. At one point she flicked her hand over his, and he glanced at me as she did it. He also mentioned that I had seen his apartment. Walkign away from brunch he told me that he probably wasn't going to buy any of her furniture.
This week I did send him a short e-mail which said, "I hate people who talk to me like I'm stupid, and I hate being yelled at by my boss." His reply was prompt and sweet: "if you are stupid, then we are all in trouble. I generally find that the boss-yelling can be fixed with a single glass of wine, beer or gin & tonic. You deserve better." I've got to run, but I did want to keep you all informed.
unfogged is hard enough when i'm not away from the internets for days.
i had a slightly bad not-really-a-date. back in dc, i had just ended a long painful relationship. a couple of my very hard-drinking wv friends came up to visit for a weekend, and we went out in adams morgan. i couldn't keep up w/ my friends, got blotto, and started asking any or all of them to please take me home, please. everyone else was having too much fun. eventually a friend's friend took a liking to my sad drunk vulnerable wanting-to-go-home persona, and decided she wanted to take me back to her place. i tried to argue otherwise, but she was smarter than me and much soberer. my friends thought this would be the heart-mending tonic i needed, so they sent me along w/ her, instead of loaning me $10 to take a cab (forgetting atm card = dumb).
we left. it started snowing like it never snows in dc. we walk, i fall, repeat. we eventually reach her place, where she convinces me that some naked time would really cheer me up. she and knob creek persuade me, until the knob creek changes its mind mid-coitus and decides i should throw up for an hour.
in the morning, i am embarrassed, and she is talking about being my gf, or something. i decide i should leave. the problem is that overnight dc had been blessed w/ the most massive snowstorm in a decade or so. i have no jacket, gloves, hat, &c., and the metro has shut down. so i walk from adams morgan to eastern market w/ the worst hangover in years, which takes me 2.5 hours (including falling down repeatedly and almost being run over by people skiing down the streets), and only by the grace of the infant jesus did i escape frostbite. back home finally, my friends interrupted their rousing game of mixing drinks w/ snow to laugh and laugh.
that sucked.
Don't forget to kiss him next time, BG.
She knew my first name, that I was an engineer, and what part of town my office was in. Armed with that information, she went door-to-door asking for me.
Whoa!
And matty, your story is pretty hilarious. I had a friend do the long, drunk, blizzard walk once in Chicago. If I'm remembering correctly, he was such a pathetic sight that a cabbie picked him up and gave him a free ride.
This thread makes me think I should date more.
Though I think I'm too old to be part of Generation Awesome!, I've never really dated -- just had relationships and humiliating rejections.
thanks, ogged. tragedy and time, or whatnot.
that's the thing about dc. most cities don't shut down every available form of transport when it starts snowing. in dc, the only possible way to get around that day was skiis / snowshoes, so i couldn't even hitchhike or plead w/ cabs to let me pay back home.
on the bright side, the government shut down for a week, so i got to stay home and help my stranded friends drink all the beer on capitol hill.
Being really shy seems to have sheltered me from a great deal of awkwardness, humiliation, and rejection. But it all seems bearable, for the most part.
That's what we've been trying to tell you. And Teo, and Ben....
The people who died from embarrassment aren't here to tell us about it.
Now all I have to do is learn some scripts social skills.
Lift some weights, puff out your chest, talk in the deepest voice you can manage; the rest will take care of itself.
Don't forget to ask out girls by email, so that there's ample chance for them to think you're someone else.
Being really shy seems to have sheltered me from a great deal of awkwardness, humiliation, and rejection.
Awkwardness is highly over-feared, IME. It's like earnestness. It makes people uncomfortable, so they avoid it. OK, you don't have to seek it out, but really, awkwardness is not so bad. And seeing somebody handle awkwardness downright well is an attention-piquer.
313: I wasn't actually offering that as real advice, O.
I hear it helps to assume that they're already interested in you.
I hear it helps to discuss the nuances beforehand with a large group of 47-year-old balding men.
It's like you already know all the rules.
To: <recipient list suppressed>
Subject: guess who?
Hmm... speaking of bad dates, does going to a wedding with your ex-fiancee who hasn't told all of her extended family that she decided called the thing off count?
To: EB
Subject: RE: guess who?
You're that Iranian guy at the pool, right? Stop bugging me.
You're that Iranian Persian guy at the pool, right? Stop bugging me.
I had a date with a deathly boring guy, when I first moved to Austin. I was pawing for any topic to keep the conversation alive, when he mentioned that he rode a tricycle, so I jumped allover that shit like it was on fire. I was just hammering him with questions about his adult recombinant tricycle bike, ie, "Do you have a flag that sticks up in the air? Do you sit in a mini-hammock? How do you steer?"
At one point in the barrage I asked, "How much did your bike cost?" He waggled his eyebrows and said, "I won't tell you, but from what I've said here, you can go online and you could put the pieces together."
(I was like Oh You Fucking Blowhard, Please.)
>You're that Iranian guy at the pool, right?
>Stop bugging me.
The guy with the kickboard? Not me.
>The guy with the kickboard? Not me.
Omigod I'm so sorry! I'm leaving for Sweden tomorrow, but how about lunch when I get back?
One of the two of you making fun of me better have had sex once in your life.
There are actually three of us making fun of you, at least one of whom has definitely had sex.
I count at least 4 people making fun of you.
I too like to make fun of Ogged.
One of the two of you...better have had sex once in your life.
The proper response to this is "We'll have gotten right on it."
I'm gradually developing a mental picture of Ogged as a hard-working immigrant who tries to date American babes but is only really compatible with his countrywomen, much to his frustration. Like Latka Gravas, or Tony Montana.
