Awful First Dates

by Sarah Wexler

  I said we should go and get together another time, but he insisted on returning to our seats and watching the rest of the show.

  THE NEXT SCORSESE

  He chatted me up online, saying he was a film director. The night before the date, he sent me a link to some of the "short films" he directed, which were basically him using a camera on a tripod to creepily film himself in an empty room. One featured him singing a song about how girls aren't nice to him, in which he appeared as both the man and, in full drag, as the woman.

  THE TIME BANDIT

  We had dinner, watched TV, and drank too much red wine. We ended up messing around on the couch and I took off my designer watch, which I loved and my mom had given me, and put it on the coffee table. I took a taxi home and called him the next morning to ask about when I could see him next to get my watch. He claimed it wasn't on the table and he'd never seen it, and didn't return my calls after that. WTF, watch-stealer!

  SKIN DEEP

  When we made plans to meet up in person after talking on an online dating site, he mentioned he had a "mild skin condition," which I figured was light acne or a birthmark or something. When he showed up, he had flakes of skin flapping in the wind, bleeding cracks around his mouth, anything but "mild."

  BUNNY KILLER=PSYCHO KILLER

  As he was driving us to the restaurant, he swerved to hit a bunny rabbit. I started yelling that you're supposed to swerve to avoid hitting animals. That's when he explained to me that he thinks it's funny because every time he and his friends do it, they earn "points" with each other, and he needed two more points "to take the lead."

  IT SLEEPS TWO

  After dinner, we went to his place so he could drop something off, and while he was in the kitchen, I decided to peek in and check out his bedroom. When I flipped on the light, a man started yelling—it was his dad, who was asleep in his bed. My date ran in to explain who I was. I asked why his dad was in his room (it was a one-bedroom apartment, and my date was thirty), and he explained that they shared the bed; his dad worked the graveyard shift so slept in it during the day, and since my date worked days, he explained, "I have the bed overnight, so we can still get freaky." On sheets warm from his dad.

  HE’LL HAUNT YOUR DREAMS

  I met a cute guy at a friend's party. I went to his place and we cooked dinner together. We talked for a few hours and then suddenly I got very tired and started to feel really sick (I have a chronic medical condition). So I explained why I felt sick and asked if I could crash there, but made it clear we would not be hooking up. He said of course, lent me some pajamas, and I went to sleep. I woke up a little later to him dry-humping my leg and whispering scary stories about his ex and their violent breakup. I was in too much pain to drive myself home or really even think straight, so I just pushed him off me several times and left as soon as I felt up to it, around dawn. He continued to call and email me for months, sending things he'd found about me online, like papers I had written in college.

  FEELIN’ GROOVY

  I made plans with a folk singer who worked at a local record store and seemed pleasantly laid-back. Well, laid-back was an understatement. When he picked me up for our date, he was clearly stoned, and he had to throw a bunch of junk off his (broken) passenger seat for me to sit down. Then he grabbed a two-gallon jug of warm juice out of the backseat and offered me a swig. I declined and asked what he had planned for our date. He said, "I think we should hang out in the woods and just groove on each other."

  NOT A SEAT SAVER

  We went to the movies, and there were still a few seats in one of the middle rows. For some reason, my date tried to drag me to the very front row, where you have to sit looking straight up at the screen the whole time. I refused and took a seat in the middle of the theater...but instead of sitting with me, he marched down to the front row and spent the whole movie sitting by himself, sulking and turning around to glare at me.

  A TOTAL KNOCKOUT!

  After our date, we met up with some of our mutual friends. He was goofing around, play- fighting with another guy. My date swung a punch, somehow missed our friend, and hit me square in the face. He kept apologizing, but when I woke up with a huge black eye the next morning, he asked me not to tell people it was from him.

  LET’S CALL HIM CLIFF

  I'm an English professor, so I said in my online dating profile that a shared love of books is important to me. Over dinner, I asked my date what his favorite book was. His reply: "1984." Which is fine, but kind of high-school-age reading. So I asked him why it still stood out for him, and he said, "Well, I haven't actually read it. I read the CliffsNotes. But I could tell that if I did read it, it would definitely be my favorite."

  THE GROOMING GUY

  I ran into a guy I knew from a few years back and he invited me to go to the beach with him. When I got to his house, he had me sit and watch a game on TV, that I had no interest in, for two hours. Then he invited his four roommates to come with us to go swimming—not so romantic. When we got back to their apartment, my date sat back down to watch even more sports and clip his toenails in front of me while watching the game. At one point, he even sneezed into his hand and looked at it before wiping it on his swim trunks. Disgusted, I left to go home, and right before I shut the door, he yelled, "Call me!"

  JEALOUS OF WHAT?

  We both liked to dance, so we agreed to go out for a light meal and then go a club. But when we met up, he said his back hurt so we had to skip dancing. So we went to dinner, where he proceeded to tell me how he had just lost his job—apparently his boss was a terrible bitch who fired him because she was jealous of him. Then he told me he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, that she was his soul mate, but the problem was that she was a bad kisser. He then asked if I could demonstrate for her how it was done and pulled out his phone to try to record himself kissing me. When I pulled away, he started cursing at me and telling me I was an ugly bitch with (surprise!) a jealousy problem.

  THE FAIRY KING

  We met at the shoe store where he was a sales clerk. But during our first date, he informed me that actually his true calling was being a sculptor. I asked how he got into it, and he went into this monologue:

  "When I was a kid, my class had to do reports, and one girl did hers about fairies. She said that at first she didn't believe the fairies were real, but then she saw some in her grandmother's backyard. But the teacher hated her report and said that fairies weren't real. Her face fell, and in that moment I decided that I would make her believe in fairies again. [At this point tears are welling up in his eyes.] So I went home that afternoon, went into my backyard, and found some dead birds. I mean, they were already dead—I didn't kill them myself or anything. And I took them inside and boiled off the skin, then used the bones to build her a fairy!"

  I'm not sure what he said after this, because after the boiling-dead-birds thing, my mind was pretty occupied with planning my escape.

  THIS DATE ROCKS

  While we were talking, I noticed he was sort of chewing on something, but it didn't look like gum. I asked him what was in his mouth, and he pulled out a rock. He told me he chews on them to "keep him grounded"...because he finds them on the ground.

  HE’S NOT PLAYING POSSUM

  He asked me out to swing-dance, which I love. He picked me up in a church minivan and took me to the "dance hall," which turned out to be his church. He introduced me to everyone as his girlfriend. When he finally agreed to dance, he trampled all over my feet and complained that we would be great if I only "knew how to follow." I told him I wanted to leave. He was driving the minivan dangerously fast, talking about what a great driver he was, when he ran down a possum with a terrible crunch. I was devastated, but his reaction was deranged giggling. The high-pitched laughter continued all the way home, at which point he insisted on walking me to the door and actually dared trying to kiss me. Then he invited me to youth group that Sunday.

  ANGER MANAGEMENT

  When he arrived to pick me up, he an
nounced that our first stop would have to be the mall, because he needed a belt. (I don't know why he didn't get the belt before picking me up, but I tried to be open-minded.) After the mall, we headed to the restaurant, and it started to rain. His windshield wipers didn't work, which made him start shouting and cursing. Upon arriving at the hibachi-style restaurant, he was irritated to find we'd be seated with strangers and refused their offer of an extra restaurant coupon, taking it as an insult that he couldn't afford dinner. Afterward, he stopped at a gas station to buy gum (probably thinking I'd make out with him), and was furious to find that it had already closed, so he started yelling and banging his fists on the door.

  (GRAND)MAMA’S BOY

  After dinner, we decide to go back to his place. He pulls up to a really big, fancy house, and leads me up to his room with a huge fancy waterbed; I think he's done really well for himself to have a place this nice. I figured, worst comes to worst, he still lives with his parents. We're making out when a lady starts yelling in the other room about the television. He says, "Oh no! I didn't know Grandma was home. This is her room!"

  THE SOUND OF SILENCE

  As I walked to meet my date at the bar, a bird crapped on me, covering my hair and outfit in bird poo (I should have taken that as an omen). Once we'd been sitting together for a while, I realized that I was doing all the chatting and breaking every awkward silence, so I decided to see how long we would go without speaking if I didn't fill the space. The answer? Twelve and a half minutes. Then I left.

  TURNING JAPANESE

  He'd studied abroad in Japan, which he decided to show off by speaking to me only in Japanese (I don't speak any). I took him to a party at my friend's house, which he thought was apparently the perfect venue to do tai chi and try to quietly meditate right in the middle of it.

  LIGHT ME UP

  This may have been the shortest date ever. I picked him up at his house and, as I pulled out of the driveway, he pulled out a cigarette. I'm not a smoker, so I said, "I prefer if you didn't smoke in my car." He took out his lighter and lit the cigarette anyway, so I pulled back in the driveway and asked him to get out.

  A GROOVY DEAL-BREAKER

  I met a seemingly nice, normal guy for drinks at a trendy new wine bar. We had good conversation, shared our food, opined about the wine, etc. I was excited that he called me the next day...until he told me that I was "a grave disappointment" and ultimately undateable because I had somehow conveyed to him the previous night that I wouldn't want to dress up in full 1970s costume and accompany him to a KC and the Sunshine Band concert.

  GOOD-BYE, NEWMAN!

  MY DATE: Wow, I'm firing questions at you like an interview. Seinfeld said the only difference between a date and an interview is that you have a chance of getting naked at the end of the date. [laughs hysterically]

  MY DATE, AGAIN [noting that I'm not laughing]: Are you familiar with Jerry Seinfeld?

  ME: Yes.

  MY DATE: Well, he said the only difference between a date and an interview is that you have a chance of getting naked at the end of the date! [laughs hysterically again]

  That was our best conversation.

  THE ATTENTION JUNKIE

  As we drove away from my building, he catcalled at the supermodel who lived downstairs from me; then he confessed the most interesting thing about him was that his sister was famous. He thought Benihana would be fun for dinner, and when we got there, he tried to force our table into a communal discussion about why I should like him. When he got up to use the bathroom, they all encouraged me to "just leave." When he dropped me off, he couldn't understand why I wasn't inviting him up. (I mean, hadn't he mentioned that his sister was famous?)

  PAGING DR. FREUD!

  All he could talk about was how hot his mom was. And how his friends all thought she was hot. And how he couldn't imagine meeting anyone as hot as his mom.

  DOUBLE SURPRISE

  He told me our first date would be a surprise—and I certainly was surprised when he picked me up with the car full of his friends. I reluctantly climbed in, hoping this wouldn't turn out like a Lifetime movie. They refused to tell me where we were headed. After stopping to pick up earplugs (?!), we drove for another hour and a half, my stomach turning, until we pulled up at...a monster truck rally. It wasn't really my scene, but I seriously was such a good sport that I figured we'd definitely be going out again. The guy called the next day to say he was getting back together with his ex.

  Awful First Dates: Hollywood Dispatch

  "I was having dinner with a girl in a restaurant, and I was so incredibly bored—I had to get out. So I told her I had a business meeting I'd forgotten about and had to leave right then. I certainly don't think she bought it—luckily I never talked to her again."

  —Tommy Hilfiger

  Chpater 9

  MR. CRITICAL

  There's a funny old joke: "Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes." This guy, though, doesn't mind criticizing his date right to her face. Before he even really knows her. Maybe he's trying to assert his dominance by putting her in a lowly can't-do-anything-right position. Maybe he's just a very candid person, and he truly thinks he's helping you by sharing his honest opinion. Whether he's trying to be harmful or helpful, you don't have to sit there and take it. I mean, who died and made him Judge Judy?

  A lot of women struggle with self-esteem—and it's no wonder, if the people who are supposed to like us end up insulting us. A surprising number of know-it-alls want to ask you out, only to inform you that everything you do, like, or think isn't good enough. Thanks, dude, but we already have bitchy girlfriends and our mothers for that.

  NO FAT CHICKS

  I called to tell him I had just parked at the restaurant; he said he had too. I said I'd meet him in front of the entrance. After about ten minutes, I started getting concerned. I called him, but it went right to voicemail. I texted him; no answer. A few minutes later, he finally got out of his car and we went inside. We had decent conversation, but I didn't feel any chemistry. When I got home, he texted to ask me out again. I wrote back that I was sorry, but I just didn't think we had enough in common. He responded by saying that he disagreed, but it didn't matter because I was too fat for him anyway...which was why it took him ten minutes to get from his car to the door of the restaurant. He said he saw me standing there and couldn't decide whether to dash or not.

  VERY ENCOURAGING

  My date started off well, since he looked like the rapper Common (on that basis alone I was willing to overlook the fact he showed up forty minutes late). After we ordered, I admitted I don't exercise often, but to make up for that, I'm careful with what I eat. He responded, "It's a good thing you don't mind being fat." The worst part was that he honestly thought he was being encouraging.

  AT LEAST HE’S WALKING

  When I arrived on time at the bar we agreed to meet at, the bartender informed me my date had already been there for three hours. To make conversation, I told my date that my hobby is running; he called me "a jackass." I mentioned my favorite band; he said, "You're an idiot" and gave me the finger. Okayyyy, great conversationalist. Not long into the date, he admitted that he was an alcoholic and repeatedly tried to grab me. I left to walk to my car and cringed as he walked into traffic, making cars swerve and honk at him as the rest of the bar watched in horror.

  LAUGHABLY LAME

  I went on a date with a guy I met online. We walked around the mall, where he proceeded to tell me how "lame" everything I liked was. Then we drove to dinner, and he made fun of how "lame" my car was. The date ended with us walking out of the parking lot and him saying, "That dinner was so good, I just want to take a dump so I can eat it all over again." Then he tried to kiss me—lame!