Thanks for the Time of My Life!

May 15, 2007

By now I should have learned not to trust my gut instincts when it comes to “love at first sight”. However I will never learn as obviously my judgment is way completely distorted by hormones. Oops, I did it again– I chose absolutely the wrong guy to become smitten with–

Our story starts about a month ago when I met this guy in a coffee shop. He was really, and seemed smart as a whip. After a few weeks we sort of fell into a routine where I would stop by at a certain time, to see if he was there …and he always would be. He would be sitting there, giving me the sweetest looks as he looked up from his notebook where he was always furiously writing. “Ah” I thought, “He’s deep! He’s another writer!”

After several more “accidental on purpose” meetings in the coffee shop he finally asked me out on what I thought was going to be a date. He told me he was going to take me some place really really special and that it was going to blow my mind. He guaranteed me that my life would be completely changed after this date.

He also told me how special I was because he found it hard to “trust” and that he was going to take me to a place where he had never taken a girl before.

So I got all dressed up, thinking we were going to some special romantic spot where he would confess his devotion to me somehow or at least say, “Hey do you want to go steady.”

He picks me up and the next thing I know we are driving into the parking lot a church and I’m thinking “well, maybe he’s really into architecture.” Next thing after that I know we are in a room filled with chairs and my date is sitting in a circle with the rest of them with a big smile on his face saying, “My name is Steven and I am an alcoholic.”

When it came my turn to speak, and I dared to say that I wasn’t an alcoholic, they all frowned and looked at me strangely. One of them even asked me if I was in denial.

During the meeting I at the very least got to find out what Steven was writing in that little book all those days in the coffee shop and it turned out to be a long “Fifth Step” where the alcoholic is supposed to take a personal inventory. In there was a litany of crimes that he voiced out loud including not paying his child support (surprise!) to his wife (surprise!), doing crack cocaine (surprise!) and driving drunk and hitting an old man (surprise!). So it seems that glow I saw on his face and then kind of fell in love with was not the glow of writer inspiration but rather some kind of sweaty guilt.

After the A.A. meeting, Steven invited me along with the rest to that same old coffee shop. I told him to “get with the program” and walked home alone.

 

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Guys – Leave Your Entourage At Home!

May 13, 2007

One of the worst dates I ever had in my life was with a guy who refused to go anywhere without his entourage. This guy was a rock star wannabe who I found out later, lived rent-free in his parent’s basement. That’s how he managed to afford what he referred to as his “gear’ (a bunch of cables and an amp that looked like it was bought from Sears) and his pseudo-glam rock clothes.

Anyhow, after weeks of exchanging smoky glances with this guy in bars, he finally asked me if I wanted to go to the movies. He showed up at my door, a half an hour late, with a posse of friends, who to me looked like overgrown muppets, with one sporting a blue mop of hair, the other an orange mop and so on through the rainbow. I knew I was in trouble, when all six of them insisted on coming in and then started helping themselves to the contents of my cupboards.

While they sat around, draining the dregs of a dusty bottle of cranberry flavored vodka, my date asked if he could borrow my phone. While his posse made snide comments about my taste in home decor, I overheard him talking to another woman.

My Knight in Shining Armor, wearing his seventies velveteens, then announced that some person named “Pinkie” was about to join us …”OOH joy!” I thought. I should have bowed out then and there but a part of me just has to know how things turn out.

I took the object of desire aside, and asked him whether or not our date was going to happen, and he gave me a very sombre speech about how I had to understand, if I was going to go out with him, that he was public property.

We left, with me foolishly thinking that we were now on our way to the movies. Much to my surprise, we ended up in a cafe, where Pinkie (his ex girlfriend and yes she looked like the singer Pink) showed up with her new boyfriend. We then, at Pinkie’s demand, ended up going to a bar, where I paid lots of money, in the hopes of getting my date’s attention. The entire time, his entourage treated me like an outsider, and I had the feeling like they were snickering at me behind my back.

Every time my date went to the washroom to empty his bladder of the beers I was

buying him, one of the members of his posse would sit down beside me and give me advice, saying things like “You can’t handle him!” or “It takes a very special person to handle him … and “Even Pinkie couldn’t handle him and they were soul mates.”

At the end of the night, he said he was going to the washroom and just disappeared. I disappeared before his entourage could stick me with the tab!

When I got home I found out that someone had stolen all the condoms out of my bed side table. Hope he and his entourage had a happy orgy.

 

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Online Dating – Some Are Luckier Than Others

May 10, 2007

I have this friend Shari. Like my friend Darlene she is also twenty-six and she has also fell in love online. Sure there is a six year age difference (he is twenty) but at least it is working this time. (He is a very mature twenty years old and is not sitting around watching Star Trek or dropping E all day.)

As I mentioned in the last blog Darlene seemed to find her true love online right away. Shari is a much different story. The more she tries the trickier the men she meets get. In the past Shari has had some pretty bad luck when it comes to men (until this last one but we will see!)

Before Shari met Christopher, she did have a couple of bad experiences that would have soured me on the whole Internet thing. Not catastrophic or truly horrible, but kind of so-so. Depressing enough to send you down to the local meet market bar.

For instance, she was thrilled when one guy she wrote to finally sent her his picture. They agreed to meet in person at a local restaurant. Imagine her surprise when her date rolled up to the table in a wheelchair. I considered seeing him, but

Then I realized …this is not fair. He omitted this information in his email and I couldn’t tell this from the photo he sent me. So I had to tell him, gently, nicely, that this kind of dishonesty was not for me.

Shari also had a one-night stand with an out of work actor that she met on the net as well.

“First I met in him in a cafe. He was also quite a bit younger than me. The whole thing was quite fast and furious…he came over that night and made love. The next day when he tried to come over again, I had to tell him that it was just for sex. He wanted a relationship and I didn’t, so he had to go. It just didn’t click. He was heartbroken.”

Even though it is possible to find sex and even a husband on the Internet, cyber-dating is still a risky business — especially for women. According WHOA (Women Halting Online Harassment) “while men are certainly harassed online, 87% of our reported cases our female. Also 54% of the victims were in the 18 to 30 range. 53% of the victims who came to us had no previous contact with the correspondents. Email is the most common forum where harassment beings –39.5% were stalked or harassed by email and 15.5% began getting harassed after

meeting someone in a chat room.

So from what I am gathering so far, online romance is the most dangerous option for dating if you are single, white, female and under thirty but it might also be your best shot at meeting someone for real. The irony is that whether you end up having a stalker or a genuine soul mate showing up at your door you are probably still going to get that declaration of love you were longing to hear.

 

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Funny Joke

February 19, 2007

Three friends had a good friend named Joe and he was, naturally, an eternal optimist. At every bad situation he would always say ”It could have been worse.” His friends hated that quality about him, so they came up with a story so horrible that not even Joe could come up with a bright side.

So the next day, only two of his friends showed up for a golf date.

Joe asked, ”Where’s Gary?”

And one of his friends said, ”Didn’t you hear? Yesterday, Gary found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, and then turned the gun on himself.”

Joe says,”Well it could have been worse.”

Both his friends said, ”How in hell could it be worse? Your best friend just killed himself!”

Joe says, ”If it had happened two days ago, I’d be dead now!”

 

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