Blast from the Past

So it has been awhile since I posted... I swear I will be better but to tide me over here is a email I sent a few years ago that has somehow resurfaced and made its way into the play I am currently working on for the Kansas City Fringe Festival. So sick and completely true.

Email circa 2007:

So I thought you all might get a kick out of the date I had last night. I will try to be brief but trust me when I say it was so bad that the retelling of it might be longer then the date itself. (And for this reason I have highlighted the key words for skimming purposes.) Feel free to read or discard. But let this be a warning to all those in favor of Internet dating. So for back-story, I blew this guy off a few weeks ago for another guy who subsequently blew me off so I figured I would give him another shot as some sort of karmic retribution. Keep in mind this is the first time I am meeting this guy- a first and last attempt at online dating. The date did not begin well. I was irritated that I had to drive out to see him in Pasadena instead of meeting somewhere in the middle and even more irritated that I had to meet him at his apartment (Mother, I know, a no-no, sorry) and that he gave me wrong directions which lead me to drive around in circles for a half an hour when he wouldn’t answer his cell phone. So when I finally get there I am not happy. He meets me and wants to go play pool, I suck at pool but figured, what the hell, I’ll try to be nice. But before we can go play pool he has to ‘lock up his apartment’, where he attempts to get me to come inside and have a drink. When I turn him down, repeatedly, under the guise of not wanting to drink because I have to work the next day, the patronizing begins- and continues for the rest of the date. “Oh, I see, so one drink is going to kill you (insert sarcasm)”. Then we get in the car (again, Mother, a no-no, I know, forgive me) and while driving down a dark alley I joke (half seriously) “You aren’t taking me down here to kill me and cut me up into little pieces, are you?” To which he replies, half angry and completely serious, “Have you never been on a date before?!#$@%” This shuts me up for the rest of the drive. The next thirty minutes go something like this: We go to the pool hall – he’s still irritated that I don’t want to drink.We start to play- He pretty much ignores me and plays by himself. Seriously- ten minutes go by before he even looks at me.When I do get up to shoot, I am instantly reminded of trying to play golf with my dad when I was little (For those of you who know him- you know what I mean. For those of you who don’t, it goes something like this- There are an endless barrage of critiques, comments and/or ridicule until I feel twisted into a pretzel, I am worse then when I began and I want to jab a golf club, or in this case a pool cue up where the sun don’t shine.) In this case he was breathing down my neck so much that I pretty much lost the ability to even hit the ball, until of course, I, in a fit of rage sent it hurling through the air right toward the head of a small Asian man wearing an I-Pod who totally didn’t see it coming. Oh, by the way, while this is all going, Prince Charming managed to: Hit on everything in a skirt.Harass some homeless man. Torment a young girl selling Halloween decorations for charity for the better part of five minutes- I thought she was going to cry. I told him he was a dick. He thought this was cute. Oh, and in one sentence, he managed to make a slur against women, gay men, Kuwaitis, and anyone non-Christian. Impressive, I know. As the evening continues I lose all ability to control my inner monologue and pretty much everything that crosses my mind I say- in someway hoping maybe he will get upset and I can go home, put on my pajamas and watch Veronica Mars. Comments include: How often do people call you a jerk?You really are such a dick.In response to his, “Am I making you angry, ‘cause it might help your game?” - “No not angry, you just repulse me.”Did you mother tell you that you were cute a lot, because that would explain so much.And obviously- “I don’t know how it is possible but this date just continues to get worse and worse.”And the always favorite, “This is the worst date ever!” Now you maybe thinking that was a bit rude (and I know Mother, that was not at all Ladylike or Christian) but trust me it was completely warranted. You see, during an approximately 5 minute period when I didn’t want to jab my eyes out with a pool cue and we were actually having a semi-normal conversation where he was asking me about my job, the following occurred: Me: “So, blah blah blah, something about my work, mid-word…” PC (Price-Charming): “Oh my god, I just realized you have HUGE ears. You totally try to hide them with your hair.” Okay so right now I am thinking: 1: Where the hell did that come from? 2: That was completely rude. 3: This guy is total freak. 4: I may have a lot of huge features to pick on, I mean Pinocchio I get, but I don’t have big ears. So I say, “No, I do not have big ears,” as flatly as I can, hoping to just end what I know is going to be a nauseating argument and sure enough he just won’t leave it alone. He continues to insult me, slowly escalating until he stops addressing me by anything other that ‘Dumbo’ and insisting I pull my hair back. To this end he makes the manager, waitress and bartender look for a rubber band which he demands I use to pull back my hair. I instead shoot it at his head only to have it fly over him and land in the middle of another table’s game. Around this time I am considering how possible it would be to say I was going to that bathroom and instead sneak out and call a cab to take me to my car. All the while he is trying to appease my wrath by asking every single waitress/waiter in the place if he/she thinks I have the cutest ears he/she has ever seen. I finally say, “Enough, I want to go home,”- because he is, in fact, unbearable (spoken, not thought). While he is paying the bartender gives me a sympathetic look and I run to the bathroom in shame to make an emergency, if-you-don’t hear-from-me in-twenty-minutes-it-is-because-I-am-lying-dead-in-the-bottom-of-a-ditch-somewhere phone call to my girlfriend. When I can’t get service it results in a outburst of turrets like you’ve never seen or heard and I am afraid I may have terrified the girl sitting in the stall, whose presence I was unaware of until my final @##*$^#&^&#^ had passed. Luckily my friend calls me as we are entering the parking garage and I am safe until we get to the car. I inform her that I am Dumbo, a reference she somehow understands and responds to with due disgust. We make it back to his apartment complex and I know relief is near but the persistent little bugger just isn’t giving up. He tries to get me to go upstairs and I respond in the only way I can at this point, “Um, hell no!” But his apartment complex is huge, like four wings huge, and I am completely lost and in need of some direction, which he takes to mean he should grab me and physically spin me around in circles until I want to vomit and says “Now do you know where you are?” and when I say “NO” He thinks it would be a good idea to do it again. We all know about my personal bubble issues so let me say this was not taken well. After I give him the death stare, he responds like the utmost gentleman by say and I quote, “Do I really have to walk you to your car?! (Jerk voice)”. At this point I really just wanted to take my chances with the axe murderers of the neighborhood but yet the date continued at my car where he leaned against the door and refused to leave. I kept trying to open the door but every time I forced it open an inch he would slam back against it. And when I was stupid enough to ask for directions to the freeway, you guessed it, his cue for spinning. I had to yell “Enough!” in a way which was definitely not Ladylike or Christian but necessary at this juncture. When finally, I think the end is near and I have managed to get one leg inside the car door, wedged in such a fashion that it would be impossible for him to close it – a giant blur of a 250-ish lb. black man comes charging at us like a line-backer and the ever valiant PC starts swinging. In the middle of this I almost pee my pants and get thrown against the car (oww!) just to find out that it is one of his stupid ass friends trying to play a joke. Yippee. After I get my heart down out of my throat, I take this as my cue to leave but not before he can literally gab my head like a basketball and in his most ‘seductive’ (disgusting, pervert) voice say, “Let me get a look at those ears,” as he tries to stick his tong down my throat. So I do the only thing I can, I hit him in the chest and get in my car. He says something about seeing me again and I say something a long the lines of “not likely.” And three wrong freeways later I am back at home in my pajamas promising myself I will never date again. For now.