They would only look at each other briefly across the table and in a perfunctory manner; only when they
had to. When the situation warranted it…or when the silence became too uncomfortable.
“The bread is good here”.
“Yes, it is”.
He nodded; she managed a forced smiled as they exchanged a brief glance at each other. She then looked away in silence to ponder that large, protruding mole on his cheek; the one that she knew if she looked close enough, she could probably see Sir Edmund Hillary planting a flag upon the peak.
He took a sip of his drink hoping the alcohol will help errase his memory of witnessing that extra chin bubbling out from under her two pre-existing ones.
This is a hell date; one arranged by Satan and greenlit by God JUST because you called Tommy Moranz a ‘Tick Face’ in fourth grade and well, karma is after all, a bitch.
Ever been on one of these? I have. They’re horrible. But I’m convinced that bad dates are payment for being the cause of a bad date. If you’ve ever been the reason behind why a date didn’t work, then you have this karmic debt that has to be paid.
I’ve been the root cause and I’ve also been the victim. Both are painful. But why does it have to be like that? We hurt others so indiscriminately—especially when we’re younger–we think we’re bullet proof. We’re not and that’s one of the ridiculous foibles of youth. We make decisions based on such limited experience and a frontal lobe that’s not fully formed.
In my mid 20’s, I rebuffed many men because they weren’t up to par or what my idea of par was, whatever that was. One man I met while completely inebriated at a bar in Mexico one Friday night, apparently asked me out for a date. I suppose I said yes because I gave him my number. He called the next day. I didn’t remember him at all, but he sounded polite and courteous enough, so I pretended to remember him and we arranged our date for that night.
He arrived at the prescribed coordinates. I opened the door and he saw an average looking face attached to a behemoth’s body. We’re talking at least 120 pounds overweight. I left with him, utilizing every acting skill my High School drama class taught me in order to appear interested, but I’m afraid I showed a skillset more like Pia Zadora than Meryl Streep. The worst part about this date was that I couldn’t hear a thing he said. All I could focus on what how large he was and how completely turned off I was by it and how awful it made me feel. We were supposed to have drinks then see a movie. I made it through one Scotch and then developed fabled “bad date” cramps.
I saw his face as he looked at mine as I lied to him to end this fiasco. He knew I was lying and sadly, I think it wasn’t the first time this had happened to him. He took me home and I never saw him again.
But rest assured–I got mine in spades.
In 2004, I distinctly remember three dates like this, but I was on the receiving end.
For starters, I had no business dating anyone at the time. I’d just gotten out of horrible relationship with a soulless clod. I walked out of that relationship and the only thing was intact was scar tissue. Secondly, these were online dates. Involving myself in this community of sociopaths was as much of a mistake as the relationship I just left.
So, the first two ended in “headaches”–his, not mine. The first “headache, gotta go” I exeperienced, I knew was a BS, but I wanted to give him the benefit of doubt. I wanted to believe that maybe….just maybe that old Korean war wound (a stab to the head with a bayonet) was in fact, bothering him as he was insisting it was.
OK…so he was born two years after Korea ended.
The second date I knew from the beginning, my rejection was imminent. He managed to stay about 20 minutes longer, until ‘his headache” had become unbearable.
Sadly, it got to the point where I could recognize the signs–even in their very early stages. It’s the small talk. The disinterest that echoes in the voice and radiates from the eyes. You could chill a Key Lime Pie in his cold “I’d kill to be anywhere but here, with her” demeanor.
By the time I went on the third date, I knew when I took one look at him, it was going to end early–one way or the other. I’d become quite versed in reading the semaforic nature of all those red flags and 37 minutes into the date, I was right. His cell phone rang–obviously a a fail safe escape set up call and he went through the motions of acting upset with the requisite number of “Oh no’s” and one overly dramatic, “Oh God, when did it happen?” and the classic, “How’s mom taking it?”
He hung up and then announced in a hushed tone that his grandmother just died. By this point in time, I stopped a giving a damn. I took a sip of my drink and replied, “Well, if yours hadn’t died, mine would have had to!”
He said nothing and instead threw a couple of $20s in my direction and ran out of the restaurant before the bills fluttered down to the table.
I vowed that I would never place myself in that situation ever again. I stopped dating after that and I’m pleased to say this self imposed moratorium has been in effect for almost 20 years now. I’ve learned something about myself; namely how shallow I’d been in the past. How I deserved to be inflicted with the same rude, judgmental pain on my pudgy mystery date. I was shallow and petty.
And as I do the work needed to creep towards self improvement, I have to ask why? Why do we make sweeping rejections based on one’s physique? We don’t want to get to know each other at all based on the fact that one person has the audacity NOT to be physically appealing in the dater’s eyes? That’s how I felt with my Mexico date 25 years earlier. And this came from a woman who even back then, hated rejection. But while thinner, cuter, c
ertainly younger all those years ago, was I any kind of prize? Well, I can do nothing about how others perceive me, but I can damn sure be more fair in the way I perceive others.
I’ve been talking to a lot of other like minded people hoping that maybe Rep. Adam Schiff will tire with his “get Trump” obsession soon and perhaps tackle dating reform. It needs to happen.
The harsh reality is, he who rejects, gets rejected. If it hasn’t happened yet, it will. See, there comes a time when we must understand that our windows of opportunity to be hot little objects of wanton desire are narrow and extremely sporadic, especially as we age. I still hear people risk mocking #metoo by referring to more desirable people as being “hot”. Really? Is that used as an adjective? At 59, all I can hope for is to be regarded as ‘remotely ‘tepid’…and even that would be a stretch.
But there’s one rock solid positive about Time: it’s an outstanding equalizer. It chills the hot, engorges the thin; slims the tubby; hippens the geek; makes nuns out of wild, aimless women and can make decent husbands and fathers out of the jerks and heartless, uncaring players. Don’t believe me? Well, class reunions are wondrous 3-D Viewmasters that contain vivid Technicolor examples of how the passage of time can weave its magic or inflict mass casualties.
And there will be those days where you take trips down memory lane…back to high school or college, perhaps. And this gets you thinking, providing your still capable of at least, transient thought. You reflect back on your life and those care free days of youthful narcissism and misplaced ego. You think about how many social zeroes you met at a bar or while on a blind date. Or you thoughts hearken back to those loser kids in high school you never considered talking to, much less include in your circle of friends and how they’re now even more forgettable…just nameless, grainy black and white photos on the yellowing pages of an old, forgotten high school year book.
Or maybe you come across a few names in an old diary that you don’t remember or one hastily scribbled nickname in a dusty old address book that spent your 30’s and 40’s at the bottom of a dusty box that’s at the bottom of an even dustier storage room.
These nameless, faceless people become this faceless, nameless crowd that you may have celebrated at one time or they heralded you. Whatever the relationship was, whenever it was, it must have mattered albeit briefly, right?
Or did it? The uncertainty spurs on a chill that runs up your now osteosporotic spine. You realize that someday , someone will come across your name and your old phone number in a dusty and forgotten address book……or they’ll look at your grainy, black and white photo on a yellowed page of an long forgotten high school year book and to them, you’ll be just as unrecognizable.
Just as unmemorable.
And just as meaningless.
Touché.
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