The man with me pictured above is my friend Jason who is in no way romantically interested in me but my facial expression in this picture is what I imagaine being the same aghast look my features had been fixed into at the end of my worst date to…well…date.
On the heels of almost a YEAR of bad dates—one of these being with a man who decided to “relate” to my pursuits in health education by indulging me in a story about his past bout with Chlamydia and ANOTHER including a Don Juan who attempted to lure me back to his apartment by citing that he needed help finishing a bottle of wine that was “about to expire”—I managed to find myself out with a man foul enough to make those other guys seem like quintessential Casanovas.
I met this man—we’ll call him BananaHammock to keep his true identity a secret—in a typical fashion. I was at a bar and he asked for my number. Bananahammock was tall with the brawn of a lumberjack worthy of Bounty Paper Towel modeling paired with a boyish face and a curtain of lashes fringing coffee-colored eyes. Being that I am both a caffeine addict and enjoy a man who looks like he knows his way around a forest, I divulged my digits with alacrity. Let it be noted that although Bananahammock was of a sturdy build, he had a layer of jelly masking any washboard abs, probably the result of good ole ale. Being that I feel a spare tire makes a much better pillow than washboard abs, his slight chub around the middle only added to his appeal.
I was dressed to the nines on the night of my date, wearing heels that pinched my feet to the extent of such pain; I knew they had to look good. I was keyed up with excitement to see my date, and even more thrilled to sit down being that the shoes were beginning to choke off my circulation. Bananahammock arrived at the fancy restaurant of his choosing looking even cuter than I remembered.
“Hey there,” he said flashing his pearly whites. “You want to go sit at the bar?”
My heart had been spurred to rapid thumping due to his cuteness, so I was delighted to remedy my situation with some liquor. I ordered tall rum and coke, thinking in terms of Starbucks lingo where tall means small. Apparently, however, tall at a bar means tall and my drink was delivered in a glass that could compete height-wise with a 7-Eleven Big Gulp. A grin spread across Bananahammock’s face at my drink’s arrival and a twinkle of “this girl’s going to get wasted” glimmered along his irises. Little did my suitor know, just because I am pint-sized does not mean I don’t know my way around more than a few pints of booze. Papa Dye blessed his flame-haired daughter with an iron stomach and Irish tolerance—it would take at least a few shots more along with my drink before my words started to get slurred.
“Did you reserve a table?” I asked, taking a large gulp.
“Oh…” Bananahammock’s smile dimmed. “Um, actually I had a meal before I got here. I thought we were just drinking.”
I immediately slowed the pace of my swigging. I’m Irish, but I still prefer to have some food on my stomach to aid in the absorption.
I didn’t quite understand why Bananahammock had chosen such a fancy establishment to simply sit at the bar. To make matters worse, one of the waitresses kept rotating between the bar and tables, carrying delectable entrees with her.
“Wow,” Bananahammock mused at one particularly enticing plate of pasta something-or-other. “The food here always looks so good.”
You don’t say??
It quickly became evident that Bananahammock’s intentions were to get me drunk as he kept urging me to order more supersized beverages and allowed his hand to flutter along my knees. Feigning a twitch, I swatted the hand away like a mosquito and attempted to have a mature conversation.
“So you went to Towson University?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he replied, wrenching his eyes from my chest at the question. “How much longer do you have there before you graduate? Are you working?”
“I have about a year and a half. I do freelance writing outside of school.”
“Oh…uh…yeah! Writing, that’s really cool. So do you like books and stuff?” he asked.
“Yeah, I read a lot,” I responded, resuming my guzzling of liquor in an attempt to make Bananahammock more interesting.
“I’m really into books,” he announced with pride. “Some days I’ll just grab a book by, like…you know…Socrates or some s**t because that’s just how I roll.”
“That’s fascinating,” I deadpanned and signaled for the bartender. “I’ll just have a water please.”
Bananahammock’s gaze sank to the space between my knees. “I like your dress…”
Sober, I allowed Bananahammock to walk me to my car. The date hadn’t been completely terrible, but it certainly wasn’t what fairy tales are made of. I decided to offer him a hug good night and a kiss on the cheek. However, immediately when I turned around for a perfunctory “thanks, I had a really good night,” Bananahammock thrust his lumberjack physique upon me and sucked at my face like I was hiding the secrets of the illuminati in my esophagus. His one hand patted across my chest like he was a cop searching me for cocaine. He began to gyrate like a fish out of water and I suddenly felt the crack of a hand against my behind…twice. That’s right folks! In the middle of a well-lit parking lot outside of a classy restaurant I had just been spanked…SPANKED! Thankfully his thrusting ceased soon after as I am pretty sure he had just come in his pants.
“Um…er…GOOD NIGHT!” I sputtered and wriggled away quickly into my car.
Bananahammock called me two weeks later and told me that he was “in between jobs” so he could not afford to take me out on another date and asked if he could come hang out at my apartment. I promptly hung up and have not spoken to him since.
I was initially upset at the experience but that quickly diminished after regaling my friends with the outrageous story and receiving uproarious laughs from them over it. “This is something you should blog about,” my one friend suggested. And so I have…
