Ok, so if you are like me (and I know I am), you are probably spending some time trying to find a social outlet. And, assuming you are reading this now (my now, your now maybe?), you are probably having as much luck as I am. It takes time, but it can be a little lonely.
So, here’s my suggestion: post a reasonably PG and not-too-scary dating disaster so I can feel better about not being out on the town. Here, I’ll start:
This is more just pathetic than a disaster, but when I was in college I got up the nerve to ask out this super-cute bartender. She was totally cool about going out, but it was noisy, so I wrote her a note to meet me at 4:00, right after her shift was over. She didn’t show. I ran into her later: I used to make “closed” 4s, and a sloppy closed 4 can look like a 9 (especially in my chicken scratch). So we missed each other by five hours… and I didn’t have another date for months. But my 4s are all open now!
Ooookkkayyy, you asked for it! I dated a guy in high school that I ended up marrying who was an abusive ass that I stayed married to for 25 years. I haven’t been on a date SINCE. Now you probably think that sounds horrible, but I’m lovin’ the single life!! So yep, I’m not out on the town either, but it could be SO much worse. You’re among friends HERE, Pantalones!
During an early foray into online dating, I set up a first date with a woman who lived an hour away. We were going to meet up at the zoo for an afternoon. Unfortunately, about 15 minutes before I planned to leave my house, my dog (who was a bit of an escape artist), climbed the backyard fence, so I had to chase her down. So now I was hot and sweaty and running late. This was many years ago, and at the time I didn’t have a cell to let her know I was running behind. Then I managed to bonk my head on the edge of my metal carport while getting into my car. It wasn’t until I made it to the zoo parking lot that I noticed the cut. So I showed up almost a half-hour late, disheveled and bleeding slightly from my forehead. She was gracious, but there was no second date.
I’m glad this thread exists, because I dunno if I would have started it.
I wouldn’t call it a “disaster,” just one of those things where the future is unclear.
I knew it wasn’t a boyfriend/girlfriend thing from the git-go, but I’m a bit embarassed by some of my “performances,” having been fairly drunk and extremely sleep deprived on both occasions.
But she keeps coming back for me, noting that my mouth and hands are very good. Interpret that however you will, but it’s true. I ain’t been playing music for most of my life and having been shacked up with women most of my life without being very good at certain things.
That’s PG enough, IMHO: just a matter of interpretation.
Oh yeah, so texting her back yesterday when she asked, “How ya doing?” I told her I was taking a break from drinking and hanging out at bars to get a bit healthy again. Further, I said yadda yadda “see you again later this week” to do yadda yadda, definitely not PG or G, so I don’t mention it.
No reply.
I don’t think she’s a ghoster, and even if she were, that wouldn’t bother me so much. I like her but I wouldn’t even call it “friends with benefits”: more like, “with benefits, but friendly.”
Recalling a bad date that still makes me cringe to this day…
I used to date a girl while I was going to college back in the mid-90s and she seemed to get off on playing mind games with guys back then. She used to be in the medical field back when she was in the Army and we were talking about diseases or something like that when out of the blue she said she had cancer and I remember I felt devastated as she went on saying it might be terminal and I was actually in tears when she said that. Then all of a sudden she started laughing on the phone that she was just kidding and that she really had me going and I’m just in a dead silence on the phone for maybe a couple or a few minutes and then I said You Think that’s funny?! And she said Yeah because I wanted to see if you really cared about me and I was like um well I didn’t appreciate you thinking that telling me something like this would be funny afterwards! And I proceeded to tell her I don’t think we should see each other anymore and I broke it off after that.
Fast forward to June, 2017 and we happen to cross paths again and she told me her mom had passed away in April of that year and I had just lost my first wife of 16 years to Cancer in January of that year so we decided to go out to dinner to console each other and things went well on the way to dinner, at dinner, but after dinner things went off the rails! She had a couple of mixed drinks and she seemed pretty happy at dinner but while on the way back to her apartment she told me she had a boyfriend that was there and she didn’t want to go back there because he as supposedly abusing her. He wasn’t there when I went to pick her up so this really caught me off guard! Then she says lets go to my place and I was not even thinking about bringing her home to my house and said to her that I’m sorry but that I was taking her back to her apartment and that I would drop her off in another parking lot so he wouldn’t see her getting out of my car. Then she started crying and sobbing that she didn’t want to go back to him and didn’t want to get out and then got angry at me that I wouldn’t do what she asked and on and on for at least a good hour! Finally she decided to get out and as she did a small bottle of Vodka fell out of her purse. It became quite obvious that she was an alcoholic and she was a complete mental mess. I never contacted her again afterwards.
Oh. Disregard my previous post. Game on! All the way on.
I mean, we don’t really go on “dates”: I met her for drinks and to play some pool last week (she’s in an APA league, and I like to play). And I’ve run into her once since then at random, at a bar, natch.
We might have pedicures together sometime this week, at my suggestion. She thinks that sounds fun, especially since she’s since [seen] how mangled my toes and toenails are from the j-o-b. [Second woman lately who’s been horrified and thinks that somehow I just don’t know how to trim my toenails, which isn’t the case.]
But we’re definitely “getting together” this week.
No, knuckleknobs, not on Valentime’s day, or whatever it’s called! Later. She wanted to go later today, but she knows I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do. So, that’s kind of sweet of her to think about that.
No, not my special lady, she’s my lady friend! Well, we’re friendly anyway. Neither of us knows much about each other, really, although we’re both capable of light conversation and have done some of that as well as the other.
Some disasters are so enduringly baroque that superstition prevents me from recapping them. I will, however, mention the time that I met a guy through a Personals ad and when he dropped me off after the (mediocre) date, I left my sketchpad in his car. He didn’t want to see me again and he ignored my requests to return the sketchpad. A truly magical level of tacky, then and now.
People think I’m exaggerating when I say that I’m committed to being a weird loner if things fall through with Mr_Potroast. I’m pretty sure that I’m not exaggerating. Dating blows.
This woman, whom I now see three or more times a week in her new capacity as a bartender at my regular place, still has this ballcap of mine (not fancy, just a plain black FlexFit that had become sculpted to my skull just right).
It’s just no use sometimes dealing with flakes. Anyway, I don’t wear ballcaps unless it’s medium-sunny (not enough for the real sunhat), so it just annoys me is all.
That said, after about two months on the job (for her), she finally got wise that I wasn’t a creeper, just a barfly, and started being friendly even.
But, still, no way would I ever “go there,” even as friends with her.
I suppose this might help in a different way because I’ve never had a bad date. The reason for that is that the last time I went on a date was about 15 years ago. And before that date, I hadn’t been on a date in about 5 years. So my dating life is essentially non-existent.
However, having said that, I don’t really mind it. It bothers me on occasion, but generally, my feeling is more… eh, whatever. …which might be why I haven’t been on dates. I probably don’t exude the right attitude.
