Clearly, I Didn't Think This Through : The Story of One Tall Girl's Impulsive, Ill-conceived, and Borderline Irresponsible Life Decisions (9781101612255)

by Goldfarb, Anna

  There’s also a ton of deejays on there. They have a smattering of pictures of themselves sweaty behind the turntables, rocking out at a party. So he can twist knobs and score free drinks at a club downtown? Woohoo. (For the record, that was a sarcastic woohoo.) You can already tell that dating him will be a nightmare because deejays hook up with girls all the time. He sees drunken girls every week; how hard can it be? He’s gotta bother us girls during the daytime while we’re browsing the site on our lunch break with this deejay bullshit? Get outta here.

  Then you have your sports fanatics, your hungry art students, and your pushy foreigners who constantly send inquiries. It’s a madhouse.

  After skipping them all, my mouse hovered over a cutie named NotoriouslyNice77. A port in the storm, his profile wasn’t terrible. In fact, it made me laugh a bit. He said that he liked The Big Lebowski, the Pixies, and really good guacamole. I like all of those things, too. (To be fair, everyone likes the Pixies, but whatever.) Lookswise, he was good-looking. He seemed a little chubby, with dark hair and glasses with thin metal frames. His beard was full, which gave him a professorial air. And he had a sweet, Mona Lisa–ish half smile in his pictures, which I liked because sometimes guys can look too goofy with their huge, toothy grins. He seemed cool.

  I investigated the second picture he had uploaded and my heart skipped a beat. If there was a hall of fame for profile pictures, I am certain that this one would be mounted on the wall, framed in gold. In his picture, the environment was warm and inviting. A soft yellow glow to the print, it was the picture equivalent of having a mug of apple cider on the first brisk autumn day. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting through a pile of CDs. I noticed Radiohead’s Kid A on the top of the heap. It’s like a Where’s Waldo for hipsters.

  He had a pair of headphones around his neck. Aside from a knit scarf, earphones are the only other hot neck accessory for a music nerd. Well played, NotoriouslyNice77. The plaid shirt he wore hinted at possible thrifting tendencies. I could hang with that. How much fun would it be to just lie around on a Sunday afternoon getting day drunk and watching movies with him? He probably knows all the best lines to Point Break and would totally call them out while we watched the movie together.

  The one-two punch of eyeglasses and a beard was a home run. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that he’s going to be a hot dad in a few years. Could you imagine him with a Baby Björn strapped on his chest? This picture was like porn for secretaries who shop at Etsy stores during their lunch break.

  I scanned his personal information and there it was, like a set of winning lotto numbers: He was 5′6″. The sweet spot. He was the perfect height for me. I fired off a quick e-mail to him:

  Hey!

  I like your smile. Let’s talk sometime.

  Smile smile smile,

  Anna

  He wrote back instantly.

  Hey, there!

  Nice to meet you, Anna. That’s a pretty name for a pretty girl. Are you around? Wanna chat?

  Best,

  Bryan

  Sure enough, his little picture popped into a blinking chat window on the bottom of my screen. I eagerly accepted it.

  We chatted for a few minutes and here’s what I learned.

  • He worked in a cable company and had lots of clients.

  • He was a year older than me.

  • He was having a good day so far.

  • He thought I was cute.

  So he had a job and thought I was good-looking. That’s half the battle right there! I e-mailed him a few more pictures of me, and he did the same. In one, he wore a turtleneck sweater, which reinforced the professor thing. In another, blurrier one, he was jumping on a bed. I smiled. I like it when guys are playful like that. NotoriouslyNice77 was a veritable contender.

  Over the next few days, we talked constantly. He’d text me cute things while he was at work. At night, he’d call me to ask how my day went and we’d chat for an hour, like we’d known each other forever. I began to think that maybe this could be my dream man. I tried not to get too carried away, but it became increasingly harder the closer we became.

  He told me about how he attended Warped Tour in high school, and I thought, Finally! A guy who could accept my love of mallpunk bands. He told me about how he owns his own home, and I thought, Finally! A guy who doesn’t have any roommates. He told me that he has a pet turtle and I said, “What kind of grown man has a turtle? That’s weird.”

  “Spock’s not weird,” he said, slightly offended.

  “You named your turtle Spock? That’s even weirder.” I had not planned for this. Maybe a dog named Spot or a cat named Fluffy. That’s normal. But a turtle named Spock? I’m not the kind of woman who has turtles named Spock in her life. I’m just not. I crinkled my nose.

  “He’s so cute when he chomps on lettuce. You’ll love him, I swear.” Spoiler alert: I’m not going to love his turtle. Ever. As a lifelong reptile hater, I was sure of this. I shifted in my seat.

  “Tell me more about your house,” I asked, cheerfully.

  “Well, it’s a three-bedroom about thirty minutes outside the city. I need to fix it up some more. Right now, you can barely walk through it. There’s a ton of boxes everywhere. I know, I should really put everything away. My mom keeps telling me that my place looks like a pigsty. Every time she comes over, she tries to make a dent in the mess, but she doesn’t get very far. I’m always, like, ‘Mom! Just leave it alone! I have a method to the madness,’ but she doesn’t listen. She just starts moving boxes around, standing in the middle of the room and shaking her head.”

  My mallpunky dream man had withered into a suburban hoarder mama’s boy with a pet turtle. Gulp. I ignored these thoughts, figuring that I couldn’t make a final decision about our compatibility until we met in person, which I still looked forward to. His house could be cleaned, his mother could be put in her place, his turtle could be released into the wild; these things are fixable, I reasoned. Besides, he liked The Big Lebowski and guacamole; there was still hope.

  “Where should we go for our first date?” Bryan asked. “How about we grab a cup of coffee?”

  Full disclosure: A coffee shop during the daytime is not my best dating arena. It’s like having a gladiator fight in a tea garden; it’s not the proper venue for the moves I wanna execute. Is this something he suggested we do because this is what adults are expected to do, like paying our bills online or throwing a dinner party?

  I’m not sold on this coffee date idea because:

  • I don’t want to meet him somewhere well lit. We might as well have our first date in a dressing room at the Gap.

  • Making small talk with a semi-stranger (i.e., him) while I’m sober just doesn’t sound fun or sexy. Sorry.

  • What if we hit it off? I’m not going to grab a second cup of coffee. If we went out for a drink, at least I could grab another beer seamlessly. I guess that’s the point of meeting at a café—to limit our interaction time—but still, sometimes another beer goes a long way.

  • If he talks my ear off, I’ll have to sit there with an empty coffee cup pretending to listen as I get increasingly more jittery. I’m already nervous! Now, I’m nervous and jittery.

  • How do I say good-bye to him? Do I give him a handshake? A high-five? A hug? A kiss on the cheek? I already know that we’ll both have coffee breath. Eh. Count me out.

  Couldn’t we have just met up at a wine bar? Or a bar where he knows the bartender and can hook us up? To paraphrase James Van Der Beek in Varsity Blues, “I don’t want your coffee date!”

  “Why don’t you come into the city and we can go somewhere around here?” I said.

  “Sunday during the day is good for me. You?”

  Hey, online dating is all about going out of your comfort zone, right? I gulped. “We could do brunch,” I suggested. Normally, I would never agree to a brunch date, but my friend Lucy goes on a million Internet dates and she is a fan of the first-date brunch, if not the pioneer of them.
She told me that brunch is the most low-stress, low-pressure meal of the week, so it creates the most relaxing atmosphere for a first date. “And, things are always better with maple syrup involved,” she reasoned. I wasn’t sure I agreed—my motto is “Things are always better with strong liquor involved”—but I was open to trying out this maple syrup theory.

  “Yeah, brunch would be great,” he agreed. “I have no idea where to get a good brunch in the city. I’m gonna leave that up to you.” I knew it! Ugh! I hate when guys make me plan the date. I narrowed my eyes and gave him five demerit points in my head, like he was already in trouble with me before our date even started.

  “I was thinking we could go to Silk City. Have you ever been there? It’s a pretty great diner in Northern Liberties. Everyone loves it. You’ll love it,” I said.

  “That sounds good. So, I’ll swing by and pick you up at, say, eleven thirty?”

  “You’re gonna pick me up? Really?” I felt like Cinderella, being whisked to a ball where there would be plenty of maple syrup.

  “This is our first date. Of course I’m going to pick you up. I’m a gentleman, Anna. What did you think, I was going to make you walk? What kinds of guys do you normally go out with? Do they not pick you up for dates? That’s crazy!”

  Whoa there, dude. I’m not sure how his act of chivalry turned into an attack on every other guy I’ve ever shared a meal with, but I felt a little defensive. “Well, usually I just meet guys at the restaurant for a first date. I am able to arrive at locations by myself. Shocking, I know.”

  “Well, that’s not how I roll. You’re a lady. You should be treated as such.” For some reason, I felt like he’d said this line before. But it didn’t matter. I played along.

  “All right. But if you don’t lay your cloak over a puddle for me, I’ll be very disappointed.”

  “I’ll be sure to bring it. There’s no way that you’d step in a puddle on my watch.”

  “Yes, bring your cloak, for sure. I’ll text you my address on Sunday morning before you head over. See you then. Oh wait! Is there anything I should know about you before we meet?”

  “Like what?” He laughed.

  “Like, are you a zombie? Are you a communist? Are you missing a limb? Do you have any children? Stuff like that.”

  “No, I’m not a zombie. I don’t have any kids and I am not an active member of the Communist Party. Last time I checked, all my limbs were accounted for. Wait, is there anything that I should know about you?”

  “I can’t think of anything to tell you. I’m tall, but I’ve already told you that. Are you sure that you don’t mind me being so much taller than you?”

  “I’ve already told you: I don’t mind at all. Seriously, I think it’s cool. It’ll be fine. It’ll be better than fine; it’ll be great. Awesome, even.”

  “Cool. How tall are you again?”

  “I’m five-six. Well, more like five-five and a half.”

  “That’s just perfect,” I purred.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Nah, I can’t think of anything. Just make sure to smell good. And don’t have chapped lips. If you do that, you’re golden.”

  “Okay. I will smell good and I won’t have chapped lips. Anything else?”

  “I’m serious. Those are the top two things that most guys could do wrong in this situation.” I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed, but, hey, at least I laid it on the line. I was proud of myself for being so straightforward. Look at me, dating like an adult!

  “Okay. Noted.”

  “It’ll be fun. I’m looking forward to it.” I smiled into the phone.

  “Cool beans!” he chirped. I was confused for a second because cool beans is a phrase that should be used only by girls in 1997 writing yearbook inscriptions, not fully grown men talking to a potential date. You know which kinds of guys say the phrase cool beans? Drama club kids, guys who wear socks with sandals, religious missionaries, Dave Matthews Band fans, Hacky Sackers, and guys who own a turtle. Do you know what they have in common? They are all people that I would never date.

  I didn’t need a Magic 8 Ball to tell me that for our date the “outlook [was] not so good.” But I agreed to it because I was trying to keep an open mind. And wasn’t it my closed mind that had kept me single for so long, the reason I was in this situation to begin with? I took a deep breath. Bring the turtle owners on.

  At exactly eleven thirty-five, Bryan’s silver Mazda pulled up to my house. I bounded outside. He got out of his car to open my door when he saw me walking toward him and I gotta say, he seemed much shorter than 5′6″. He must’ve been closer to 5′4″, which, honestly, was too short for me. He missed my sweet spot by a few inches, which made me sour. To passersby, it must’ve looked like I was his babysitter or something.

  I was too nervous to say anything; I just slid into my seat and looked around. The interior of his car looked like the Burger King’s murder scene: There were fries under the seat, stiff from fast-food rigor mortis. Garbage was strewn everywhere and cracked cassette tapes lined the floor. Empty Coke cans were jammed in every crevice. It was like the inside of a meth addict’s brain in there. He knew that he was picking me up for a date; couldn’t he have at least cleared away the Big Mac wrappers and moldy coffee cups? Was he renting out his car as a bum motel? Is he morally opposed to air fresheners? What the fuck?

  I watched him as he fastened his seat belt and, to my horror, he had dry lips. His pucker was scalier than a lizard’s taint. I’m not sure if he was making out with sandpaper before he picked me up or if he’d used his lips to scrub his pots and pans or if he did some kind of extreme sport where he was exposed to dangerous elements, but his lips were disgusting. His lips basically had dandruff.

  And the shit cherry on top of the shit sundae: He smelled bad, like he hadn’t brushed his teeth in a week. I’m not sure if he willfully ignored my warnings or this smell was an improvement over his normal everyday stench, but I was livid.

  If this date had an eject button, I would’ve pushed it. It’s not like he needed to find plutonium to get us back to 1985; he just needed to not look like he’d been playing tongue hockey with gravel for the past four hours. ChapStick is available pretty much everywhere, so there was no excuse for this. I couldn’t even look at him.

  “It was easy to find your place. It’s a nice neighborhood,” he said.

  “Thanks! Yeah, I love it.” I looked out the window, wishing I could just jump out of the car and roll onto the sidewalk.

  Then I heard a robotic woman’s voice command us to “take a left on Spring Garden Street in twenty feet.”

  “Sorry, that’s my GPS. I’ll turn it down.” A GPS? We’re only going fifteen blocks in a straight line! I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.

  We arrived at the diner and he opened my door for me. It wasn’t until we sat down at our table that I noticed he was missing a prominent tooth. I tried not to stare, but it was there: a black hole where a pearly white should’ve been. Missing a tooth is like the Snuggie of tooth troubles; basically, his smile was wearing Crocs.

  What happened? Did he lose a bar fight? Did he run into a stop sign? Did he let it rot away without giving it proper attention? None of these scenarios made him look any more attractive. Should I pass a hat around the diner and raise the money for him to fix his mug? He’s an adult man! Why is he missing a tooth? He looks like a bum fighter, for cryin’ out loud. Then I had a flashback to his online photos and it made sense why he never smiled in any of his pictures. Fuck.

  I had asked him on the phone if there was anything he wanted to tell me before I met him; did he not remember that he was missing a tooth? Did he not think that it was an important factoid to reveal? Is he so used to not having one that it’s like wearing eyeglasses or having a receding hairline—an insignificant detail that he’d just absorbed into his being, unworthy of comment? I felt like I was on a Hee Haw audition.

  And his shirt was too baggy for his body. Is he a juvenile delinquent
attending his great-aunt’s funeral? Is he fourteen and interviewing for a part-time position as a shopping cart wrangler at the supermarket? There were handfuls of extra material surrounding every part of his torso. He looked like an inchworm in a sleeping bag. I hated his stupid baggy shirt. I felt like he might be trying to camouflage a potential moob situation. But honestly, I’d rather see a slight outline of a flabby moob than see several yards of extra fabric floating around his midsection like he’s in a dream sequence. Seriously, a kindergarten class could huddle under this shirt on goof-off day in gym class—that’s how excessively baggy that garment was.

  Because I’m mature, I held the menu up high above my eye level so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with him for a minute. I needed to compose myself. Just one meal and then you’ll never have to see him again, I thought.

  “Does anything look good to you?” I said, my voice half-muffled by the towering menu.

  “Yeah, totally. I’m debating between the pancakes and the waffles.”

  Thankfully, the waitress came to take our order. I asked for two poached eggs on rye toast.

  “I’ll have the pancakes. With a side of home fries. And a side of bacon. And a side of sausage, too. You know what? I’ll have an English muffin as well. And two scrambled eggs. That’d be great. Thanks.”

  I’m not sure what kind of lumberjack competition he was training for, but that’s a shit-ton of food. I wasn’t even sure if it all would fit on our table. We handed our menus to the waitress, and I felt a pang of panic that my prop was taken away. I’d have to sustain eye contact with him now.