My "Worstest" Date Ever
Think back, gentle reader, on all the man-dates you have ever been on. Which of them do you consider the worst, and why? I want to hear your story! Here's mine in the meantime. I am changing identifying details because even a 63 year old flake like "Brice" is entitled to privacy.
Brice and I have been exchanging messages on bear411 for it must be 2 or 3 years now. He lives at enough of a distance from me that one of us would have to go to effort for us to meet, and there just wasn't enough "oomph" on either side to make that happen. But we did eventually meet, last summer at Provincetown "Bear Week."
There's a certain kind of guy I call a "nowhere man," after the Beatles song. If you live near a college campus, you would recognize the young adult version of this person. He's always on a device, usually one with ear plugs, or busy texting on his cell phone, even when he is in a social situation surrounded by people he's supposed to be hanging with. Then later when he's with the people he was texting to earlier, he's still on his phone, only now texting others, probably about how bored he is.
He's never in one place. Some part of him has already left the scene. When you are standing by him, he's focused on his watch or his cell phone, so he's not here with you, but he's not really with them either.
He's nowhere. That's why he's a nowhere man.
Another way to be "nowhere man" is to engineer the time you have for meeting someone to be minimal because "I have to get going" to meet an imaginary deadline.
It's ultimately about power and control.
Lucie Seduces Charlie Brown
With the Football, Again
So yes, Brice generously gave me five minutes to meet face to face in Ptown in July, looking at his watch a few times through the meeting to remind me how Important and In A Hurry he was. I took the hint and let the correspondence go quiet. A few months later, we started chatting again. I think I let him talk me back into it. (I have learned to let go of grudges. You start out holding the grudge, but over time, the grudge ends up holding you.)
And then a few days before New Years, he sends me a message saying "wouldn't it be great if we were each other's first blow jobs of the new year!" (Really, you who couldn't give me more than 5 minutes when we were standing close enough to shake hands last summer?)
It reminded me of an expression we use in my family, "I love your guts," like a slobbery kiss, the awkward but diametric opposite of "I hate your guts!" and definitely signaling the speaker's good attitude.
Hope springs eternal in Charlie Brown's heart. This time, Lucie will keep her finger on that football!
Between that and having other plans for Saturday evening fall through at the last minute, I got him to invite me over and made a long drive to spend the night, through what turned into horrible rain.
In retrospect, maybe the first sign that Lucie had already pulled the football away was the "greeting" I got. No kiss, no hug, not even a goddamn handshake, just a once over with the eyes and a nod.
He introduced me to his ancient exotic cat and Boston terrier puppy, which was wheezing in excitement the way dogs bred for "the pushed-in face look" (think Boston terriers or French bulldogs) do. Then he took me to dinner, saying it was the least he could do after the drive I had made.
I volunteered over dinner that I am kind of a slob, and the look that came over Brice's face, you'd think I had just 'fessed up to being a war criminal or serial killer. He became more withdrawn, and I felt like I was the adult trying to draw a surly teenager into conversation.
He's physically a little taller than I am, with an overall spare look except for a protruding abdomen. I worked for years in substance abuse, and at the same moment I was starting to wonder if I was looking at ascites, the "beer belly" that even a thin alcoholic might have, he volunteered "I was never an alcoholic, but I went sober 12 years ago." Umm, okay, Brice, sure, just as I could call myself a vegan except for when I give in to a craving for steak.
There is a kind of alcoholic who gets sober and stays sober by adhering very strictly to a routine. Many of them make outstanding "dog dads" because pets, especially dogs, do well with that kind of routinized life. It dawned on me later, I was a double threat to all that, both by disrupting whatever the Saturday evening routine of the house is, and also by identifying myself as a slob, i.e. saying in effect that the rigid order that you base your daily life on, Brice, is not something I particularly prize. LOL not the first time I have turned out to be a heretic regarding a belief the other person thought everyone had to believe in his heart the way he did.
After dinner, we went back to his place. He shut down. The evening was over. I thought about admitting that this had been a waste of time and just driving back home right then, but one of my headlights had burnt out on the drive over and I didn't want to chance getting pulled over by a cop. We got into his double bed to go to sleep. I tried once to touch him, but he just lay there motionless. We squared off to opposite sides of the bed, and I drove home in the morning.
It was too soggy for me to pull the car over and clap dust off my shoe soles when i pulled my car out of his driveway, but a gesture like that would have been satisfying if it had been a drier morning.
And this is how I process shitty dates now, I blog about them.
As I said at the beginning of this account, I would like to hear about YOUR worst date of all times, too. It will help me put this in perspective.
Jim