Excerpt from Damned Lies #1: Worst Date Ever
The date was going poorly.
She was telling me that she collects commemorative plates. Do you know what commemorative plates are? They're small dinner plates that aren't meant to be eaten on. Instead, they do limited runs of plates with certain images to make note of certain events like the bicentennial of America, some battleship you never heard of having an anniversary, some 70s pop star's birthday, or the invention of the rainbow. Then they go on TV late at night and they shill these in those "order now to receive" commercials that plague you when you're up too late with insomnia watching MASH for some reason. She collects those things. It somehow hurt my brain that such things still existed and that people actually pay money to keep the commemorative-plates-for-suckers industry alive.
Naturally, I was more interested in trying to figure out why she would collect such a thing rather than actually listening to her. I decided she was either a pure old-fashioned Americana fan – the kind who has strawberry shortcake dolls and pewter unicorns all over the walls of their house to somehow show off that she's a young person with the soul of an eighty year old grandmother - or that she was a total stoner – unemployed and up at two in the morning, higher than a penthouse on Park Place, watching commercials for the Franklin Mint that were sandwiched between commercials for Jesus rock compilations and Girls Gone Wild. I wasn’t sure which she was, and neither was appealing. On the plus side, it was allowing me to focus on something other than her yammering.
Her name was Deborah, as in Deb-OR-ah, the OR heavily stressed with an unpleasant curving of her lips, as she specifically told me early on in our date. That's OR as in “coffee OR tea,” which was just as well, since she was a flight attendant. At first, that was an interesting quality. Everyone knows the stereotype of flight attendants being “easy” because they are always staying in strange cities and get lonely. Since they are flying away come the morning hours, commitment tended to be low and they were hot to trot. That's what I'd always heard, at least. Now as I was losing interest in her plate-fetish, my mind started to wander and I began to wonder if other parts of the flight attendant lifestyle spilled over to her regular life. While we’re in bed, will she ask if I need another pillow or a blanket? Does she have a button above her bed with a tiny picture of a flight attendant? I’d press the button, it would light up, and then she would roll over, press the button to turn it off, and ask if I needed a beverage or anything. “Uh, no,” I’d say, “I was actually wondering if you’d do that thing with your mouth again…”
She had long light blonde hair and very fair skin. She had blue eyes, but the really light blue eyes that look like silver. I do not know if you, Dear Reader, enjoy pale blue eyes, but I do not. They kind of creep me out. I'll admit, in the back of my mind I always wonder if they are aliens. Not for real in that "Oh my god, aliens are real, let's all hike to Roswell for a hippie campout until they come to take us back to the Alpha Centauri Youth Hostel" sort of way. More like, if I turned on the news one day and discovered that an alien sleeper organization headed by Marilu Henner had just come forward and demanded an exclusive concert with all the Canadian rock and roll greats, I wouldn't be surprised.
It was at this point I realized by her expectant look that she had asked me something I hadn't heard and was awaiting my reply. I tried to think of something neutral but affirmative, so I could pretend that I was listening. But I also didn’t want to end up replying to the wrong thing – “That’s great!” “I just told you about my mother’s cancer.” “Oh.” The tension was thick as she slowly began to realize (rightly) that I was not listening and I floundered for some acceptable response.
“Hello, I am Donald and I’ll be your waiter this evening. Would you like to start with drinks?”
Saved by the waiter! She immediately turned to him, taking the heat off me. If I had an audience, a Greek choir, or even one of those people translating into sign language on the corner of the screen, they were cheering for me; the sign language translator was shouting, “GOOOOOOOOOAAAALLL!” much to the chagrin of hearing impaired viewers everywhere.
We ordered our food, Deborah listening to the entire salad dressing list before settling on Ranch. I talked her out of an appetizer; so far this seemed like it was going to go badly, and the last thing I needed was for it to take even longer. I ordered a beer; there was no other way I was going to get through this date.
This date was not my idea. I did not find her via Facebook, I did not have her picked out as a possible soul mate by a dating site, nor did I answer an ad in the local paper. I can't even blame this at picking at the bowels of weirdness via Craigslist. No, I had been perfectly fine to sit home and entertain myself for the evening, probably surfing the internet as my entree, a dessert of, well, actual dessert, and a nightcap of porn. Instead, I was subjected to this date the old fashioned way: busy-body friends set it up for me without my knowledge and then they guilted me into going through with it. I have my old friend Bruce to blame for this imminent train wreck. Technically, his wife instigated the whole thing with a girl she had met a single time at her reading group, but the rules of matrimony and sex-withholding compelled Bruce to go along with it and involve me.
This was not the first time they had tried to set me up with someone. Despite all that experience attempting to find my perfect mate, their choice was consistently poor. In the past, they had set me up with a stripper, a single mother, and a woman who had an unnatural obsession with the Oscar Meyer Weiner song. The stripper was on meth, the single mother had vowed death to anything with a penis, and there’s only so much Oscar Meyer-related conversation I had in me. Let’s just say that at this point Bruce owes me so many apology favors that I’m pretty much family. Unfortunately, those favors still won't get me out of blind dates.
I wondered how much longer this date was going to go on. Unfortunately, with the advent of cell phones, I had, like many, stopped wearing a watch. The thing about watches is that they were nice to surreptitiously check the time on - a nice tilt of the wrist and you were fine. Since phones are usually in pockets, looking at the time is very obvious. I scanned the walls over her shoulder and while I saw fine, inoffensive restaurant landscapes, I saw no clocks. I looked over at other tables to see if someone else had their phone out. I tried to make eye contact with other young men so I could show them the pain in my soul with this date and get their pity so they'd show me the time on their phone. Alas, I was out of luck. So I slowly slid my phone out of my pocket. I tried to keep this as casual as possible, since she was talking and looking right at me. I kept staring into her eyes, nodding and saying “mmhmm”, waiting for her to show a sign of weakness and look away so I could steal a glance at the time.
“Uh huh.” “Yeah, sure.” “That’s very interesting.”
Her conversation stopped and she began staring at me. I had no idea what she last said. My hand froze, the phone halfway out of my pocket. A false rictus smile stretched across my face. She still kept staring at me. I debated looking over her shoulder and smiling or yelling “What in the world is that!” to fake her out.
Once again, the waiter saved me. I made a mental note to tip him well and do some male-designated sign of solidarity like a fist bump with him before I left. He came with her salad, and she finally looked away from my deer in headlights impression. I quickly looked down at my phone, cursing the fact that the display had gone dim from inactivity. I darted a glance back at her to confirm she was distracted, then I jammed on the sluggish touch screen until it lit up. 7:30. I turned back to her quick enough to give her a strained smile.
She was currently telling me about her cat, Admiral Fluffynuggins and the cute way he drinks water. Normally I don’t call someone boring just because they like to talk about their beloved pet. But if I have to wonder if their pet outranks me or if it possibly fought in the Great War, I draw the line. She reached into her purse and produced a book of cat photos. It turns out Admiral Fluffynuggins loved boxes and laying around on furniture. Shocker!
I think that was the final straw. Yes, I admit that there was probably a huge amount of my own complicity in the date's disconnect. Maybe it was because I was not willing to try to connect with her, maybe it was because I have intimacy “issues.” Maybe it was just because I’m kind of an ass. Probably it was because I’m kind of an ass. Whatever the reason, I made the decision then and there that the date would need to end.
I was going to sabotage it.
This is always a questionable topic. Do people really sabotage their dates as a way to shorten them? It seems a television gimmick or some ribald bar conversation. Are people so heartless? Are they so unwilling to be honest that they would actually try to make things go so poorly? Am I really such a terrible person that I would not only do it but confess unapologetically to a stranger like you, Dear Reader?
The answer is yes to all of the above. Date sabotage is one of the long refined arts of the coward and the inertia-laden sitcom character. The key to the technique is in making them pissed off at you but without it being your fault. You have to get them to dislike you as a person so much that they think you'd be a horrible boyfriend, so it becomes their decision to end the date. You then escape guiltless.[1]
For some reason, when sabotaging a date, it is better to come off weird or crazy than rude. Rudeness throws the fault back on you, as if you're doing something assholish, rather than being something they dislike. Being a weird, awkward creep ranks higher than asshole in recollections to friends the day after in date postmortem[2]. So, to do this you need to “accidentally” blurt out something that makes the other person either incredibly uncomfortable or immediately insulted. You’d think this would be easy, but it’s not. You can’t just go for the throat, because then they’ll know it was intentional. If you are too outlandish or too non sequitur about it, they also realize you’re fucking with them. You have to subtly and reasonably horrify them. The name of the game is careful escalation.
For example, I first tried to take advantage of the fact that Deborah was a flight attendant. If the media is to be believed, flight attendants hate being called “stewardesses"; they feel it is demeaning. This was the perfect button to push on. So I nonchalantly questioned her about her work, “accidentally” calling her a stewardess. Then I sat back and waited for the outrage so I could feign ignorance and then apologetically and ineffectively back peddle, dropping worse offenses on the way.
The problem is that she didn’t take the bait. She just went on talking like I hadn’t said anything wrong. I made another statement, saying stewardess again. I said it slowly, pausing right after it so it hung in the air. Stew-ARD-ess, my tone as black and venomous as I could make it without risking the charade.
No reaction. Nothing. No outrage, no anything. Was she stupid or oblivious?
I was frustrated. I decided it might be time to pull out the big guns.
“So are you kinky?” I asked, being cocky. It was kind of a non sequitur and I knew I would lose some points from the judges, but it made some sense within the context of a date and it was, of course, a very polarizing subject. This was sure to turn her off, especially brought up this early and without any rapport developed through the date. I decided to put the cherry on top and pushed one sentence further: “How naughty do you get once we’re in bed?”
She chuckled playfully. “Oh very. I’m sure you’ll have many opportunities to shackle me and whip me. I’m a total painslut.”
Umm…
“Well,” I said, switching gears, “back to airlines, the real reason that airline tickets are expensive but the workers are underfunded is because of the Jews.” I ended that sentence quickly taking a drink to hide any expression I had.
I bet you are now suddenly angry. I don't blame you. But before you throw down this book in disgust, before you begin throwing outrage like a monkey flinging poo, stop and wait for the explanation. Know that this is a tactic. I do not really believe this. I don't believe in a conspiracy, and I am the first to roll my eyes when someone attributes the evils of the world to Zionists. In actuality, this tactic is exploiting how pro-Semitic (i.e. sane) people generally are. Few like an anti-Semite and even if they don't have strong views on the subject, it's generally a reason to look down on someone for being intolerant. And for a first date, it is the touch of death.
Except here. “Oh, completely!” she said. “It’s so refreshing to meet someone who will finally admit that openly. My father always hated them and their conspiracy. He taught me all about them, as well as staying true and staying proud.”
“’Staying true and staying proud?’” I asked.
“To my race,” she said. “No mixing. That’s why I like that you have such fair skin. We are part of the superior race.”
It was a moment before this truly sank in.
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER! A giant robot hanging from the top of a skyscraper was warning me just how crazy she was. I have learned to trust the phantom robot to tell me when a prospective date had just crossed into crazy town. I have no idea where that robot came from or why he appears in my mind, but distrust the robot at your own peril.
In the throes of a fight-or-flight panic, I somehow stammered out that I needed to go to the bathroom as I stood up and knocked my chair over. I didn’t look back as I went straight to the restroom, nearly body-checking a waiter on the way there. Inside the bathroom, I clutched the sink, panting, as I stared in the mirror frantically. I splashed water in my face and calmed myself down.
Where’s that girl that was obsessed with the Oscar Meyer song? She wasn’t so bad a dinner companion. The meth whore? The man hater? All preferable to Little Miss Crazy White Supremacist out at the table.
I’m usually pretty open minded about people’s individual quirks and trips. Whatever they want to do is cool. It may not be something I agree with, and that’s okay. That's their thing. But this is where I draw the line. Discrimination and intolerance just bug the shit out of me. Always have, always will. I’m intolerant of intolerance. I’m sure there’s some irony, hypocrisy, or contradiction, but there it is. When will people reach a state of enlightenment where they realize it’s so much better to dislike people for individual reasons, rather than their arbitrary grouping, a cultural background, or the color of their skin?
Besides that, even if I might be okay or neutral about her racism, I still thought she was crazy. There were too many markers of extreme psychoness in the evening. On the crazyometer, she was rating batshit-and-a-half.
So I knew I had to get out of the restaurant somehow. I went over my options, delineating all the strengths and weaknesses of any plans:
Plan A: Sneak out of the bathroom and then restaurant without her seeing. I would need to do my best stealth impression. What would Ezio do? He’d probably just sneak up behind her, do a stealth kill, and walk out without having to worry about being seen. Flaws: Deborah was sitting with the wall at her back, lack of assassin training, prison time.
Plan B: Just leave the bathroom and walk directly out of the restaurant. Don’t sneak, don’t run. Just walk, and never turn and look at her. Ignore her shouts, her inevitable harpy-like screeching, and her questions of how she was getting home. Flaws: The size of the cojones required for this plan would make walking prohibitive.
Plan C: Go back out there, sit down and finish out the evening. Gritted teeth, neutral small talk. End the date with a weak handshake and awkward silence, don't respond to her calls, tweets, or Facebook requests. Under duress resort to the mantra of "it's not you, it's me". But what if she kept wanting keep up the racist banter all evening? I’ve faked my way through a lot of things, but I had no desire to fake my way through NeoNaziLoveMatch.com. Flaws: I lack the patience to pull this off. Despite effort to become so in college, I have never been the better man.
Plan D: Go back, explain respectfully that we are not a match, pay the check, then take her home early. Have the most awkward ride ever. Flaws: Who are we kidding? That’s not who I am.
Instead, I hatched a cunning plan. Except substitute cunning with “cowardly”, since that’s really what it was.
I pulled out my phone and called Becky. I prayed she wasn’t on a date, at a movie, doing her hair, whatever. I prayed she was available and willing to do me a big favor. She was the only person crazy enough for what I had in mind. Sometimes you need to fight crazy with crazy.
I waited in the bathroom as long as I felt I could get away with it before making the reluctant death march back to my table. I almost imagined a waiter calling out “Dead man walking!” as I passed. My chair had been righted. I slid back into it. A strained smile.
“Did you fall in?” she asked with a genuine smile.
I faked some laughter and grabbed some of the bread the waiter brought, stuffing it in my mouth to cover any facial expression. I like bread.
“I took the liberty of asking the waiter to bring us a bottle of wine.” She said, coyly pointing to the bottle.
White wine. Why was I not surprised?
I chugged my beer. She looked at me oddly, but said nothing. I then poured myself a glass of wine and downed that. Then I poured myself a second glass. Her eyebrow was raised.
"Do we need to order another bottle? Or one to take home?" she asked, trying to make light of it, but her humor felt strained too.
I grunted a negative with a shake of my head as I drained another glass of wine and shoved more bread into my mouth. I chewed slowly, my cheeks puffy like a chipmunk.
I was feeling pretty good by now, tapping on the table and humming a tune, while doing my best not to make eye contact with her. Still I wondered where the cavalry was. My drunken good humor would only last so long. Five long minutes had passed without us talking. How long could I keep it up for?
“You know, you’re still on a date,” said Deborah, breaking the blessed silence with the cacophony of her mouth noises.
“Yes, I know,” I said, trying my best to look sheepish. "I'm not good with dating," I mumbled over another piece of bread.
I started to wonder if my original tactic was starting to work. Maybe I should have started drinking sooner. I could have played the alcoholic card and drank myself out of the date. Of course, that's assuming alcohol didn't have me doing something stupid like bringing her home. Drunk Me seems to really enjoy making me pay for mistakes.
“So you’re just playing hard to get now, is that it?” she said. “I don’t mind. There’s something in the thrill of the hunt,” she said, holding her wine glass in her hand. She gave me what should have been a sly smile, but instead it looked like she was glowering at me.
At this moment, at my most uncomfortable, is when things started to change. I heard a familiar voice across the restaurant.
“What the hell are you doing?” Just the nice mixture of shock and outrage, but it still felt honest. I liked it. She was getting into her role.
Becky came storming up to our table, her face a mask of rage. She looked back and forth between me and Deborah, her eyes narrowing.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she said looking at me. Then, looking at Deborah, “And you! You damn slut! Who do you think you are?”
“And just who are you?” said Deborah icily.
“His girlfriend, that’s who!” replied Becky. “He’s my boyfriend! Who the hell are you?”
There was a moment of silence. This is where Deborah would back down, then Becky would angrily drag me out of the restaurant while I looked appropriately chastised, and then when we were out of sight at the curb I would start jumping for joy.
“I'm the girl who’s going to steal him away from you and show him what a real woman is like,” replied Deborah. “Cause if he’s out with me, you sure as hell aren’t doing it for him!”
Ouch. I was admittedly surprised that Deborah decided to go on the offensive. I figured she’d think I was slime and she’d sympathize with Becky. I really was supposed to be the target. Deborah would follow Becky's lead and hate me, then I could wriggle out of this, the weight of cheater's guilt hanging on my shoulders. Instead, things were going to a very bad place. Deborah surprised me by fighting back, and Becky surprised me by throwing a punch at Deborah.
Okay, I admit it. Becky’s punch wasn’t a surprise. I expect those kinds of reactions from her.
Becky isn’t actually my girlfriend, as you may have guessed. There was some general interest when we first met in college, but it didn’t work out. She thought I was arrogant, I thought she was crazy. Both are correct. She is quite uninhibited, for better or for worse. She acts more through her emotions, but at the same time, she has a perverse sense of humor. For example, when I suggested that she come and act like a jealous girlfriend to get me out of this date, she thought it was hilarious. I wonder if she knew she was going to get into a fight. She likes fights.
Deborah didn’t go down easily. Becky’s punch knocked her out of her chair, but she immediately got back up and socked Becky. Becky staggered, shocked. Usually she dominates fights precisely because the other person doesn’t want to fight. In this case, she met a very willing opponent. And while she likes fights, she wasn't expecting this to be a real one. She was expecting to at best punch a prissy girl, make that girl cry, and the fight would be over. She wasn't expecting a real slugfest, but she threw herself back into the fight anyway. Soon the two of them were locked in a desperate struggle.
Other men would have stepped in to stop the fight. Better men. Men who were probably not the focus of both women’s anger right now. I was not one of those men.
In the course of my life, I have dealt with zombies, fought hobos semiprofessionally, experienced worlds other than ours, sorted out clones, fought ancient alien deities, and had many adventures that most would not believe, but even I knew better than to leap in between the fury of women scorned.
Instead, drenched in cowardice like it was cheap cologne, I slunk across the restaurant on my belly. Most of the other restaurant patrons were glued to the catfight at my table and never saw me slip by.
I crept past the podium at the front of the restaurant as the hostess and one of the waiters talked frantically about calling the police. When I was last in earshot, they had already started dialing. I straightened up as I walked through the restaurant waiting area. I shook my head to the people there. “You might want to wait outside,” I said.
In a moment, I stepped out into the cool, refreshing air of freedom. I felt a weight lift from my shoulders and I had a spring in my step. I stretched my arms wide. It was a wonderful feeling, my spirits lifting. I had escaped! The most important part was that I had extricated myself from that bad situation without having to bite the bullet and do the right thing.
I breathed a sigh of relief, pulled out my car keys, and stepped off the curb.
I remember the growl of an engine and somebody shouting. I remember turning to see myself reflected in the glass of the windshield before there was a terrible pain and I had the feeling of flying. I don't remember hitting the ground, just things going black.
Continued in Damned Lies #1, Available NOW!
Footnotes
[1] It's not really guiltless. We're talking social guilt. To an external watcher or a live studio audience, you are still "in the right". Not guiltless in the way that there's still a dark, cold spot deep within you for the things you do, waiting to catch up to you and making you drink alone late at night.
[2] Nobody knows why. The universe has many mysteries.
The date was going poorly.
She was telling me that she collects commemorative plates. Do you know what commemorative plates are? They're small dinner plates that aren't meant to be eaten on. Instead, they do limited runs of plates with certain images to make note of certain events like the bicentennial of America, some battleship you never heard of having an anniversary, some 70s pop star's birthday, or the invention of the rainbow. Then they go on TV late at night and they shill these in those "order now to receive" commercials that plague you when you're up too late with insomnia watching MASH for some reason. She collects those things. It somehow hurt my brain that such things still existed and that people actually pay money to keep the commemorative-plates-for-suckers industry alive.
Naturally, I was more interested in trying to figure out why she would collect such a thing rather than actually listening to her. I decided she was either a pure old-fashioned Americana fan – the kind who has strawberry shortcake dolls and pewter unicorns all over the walls of their house to somehow show off that she's a young person with the soul of an eighty year old grandmother - or that she was a total stoner – unemployed and up at two in the morning, higher than a penthouse on Park Place, watching commercials for the Franklin Mint that were sandwiched between commercials for Jesus rock compilations and Girls Gone Wild. I wasn’t sure which she was, and neither was appealing. On the plus side, it was allowing me to focus on something other than her yammering.
Her name was Deborah, as in Deb-OR-ah, the OR heavily stressed with an unpleasant curving of her lips, as she specifically told me early on in our date. That's OR as in “coffee OR tea,” which was just as well, since she was a flight attendant. At first, that was an interesting quality. Everyone knows the stereotype of flight attendants being “easy” because they are always staying in strange cities and get lonely. Since they are flying away come the morning hours, commitment tended to be low and they were hot to trot. That's what I'd always heard, at least. Now as I was losing interest in her plate-fetish, my mind started to wander and I began to wonder if other parts of the flight attendant lifestyle spilled over to her regular life. While we’re in bed, will she ask if I need another pillow or a blanket? Does she have a button above her bed with a tiny picture of a flight attendant? I’d press the button, it would light up, and then she would roll over, press the button to turn it off, and ask if I needed a beverage or anything. “Uh, no,” I’d say, “I was actually wondering if you’d do that thing with your mouth again…”
She had long light blonde hair and very fair skin. She had blue eyes, but the really light blue eyes that look like silver. I do not know if you, Dear Reader, enjoy pale blue eyes, but I do not. They kind of creep me out. I'll admit, in the back of my mind I always wonder if they are aliens. Not for real in that "Oh my god, aliens are real, let's all hike to Roswell for a hippie campout until they come to take us back to the Alpha Centauri Youth Hostel" sort of way. More like, if I turned on the news one day and discovered that an alien sleeper organization headed by Marilu Henner had just come forward and demanded an exclusive concert with all the Canadian rock and roll greats, I wouldn't be surprised.
It was at this point I realized by her expectant look that she had asked me something I hadn't heard and was awaiting my reply. I tried to think of something neutral but affirmative, so I could pretend that I was listening. But I also didn’t want to end up replying to the wrong thing – “That’s great!” “I just told you about my mother’s cancer.” “Oh.” The tension was thick as she slowly began to realize (rightly) that I was not listening and I floundered for some acceptable response.
“Hello, I am Donald and I’ll be your waiter this evening. Would you like to start with drinks?”
Saved by the waiter! She immediately turned to him, taking the heat off me. If I had an audience, a Greek choir, or even one of those people translating into sign language on the corner of the screen, they were cheering for me; the sign language translator was shouting, “GOOOOOOOOOAAAALLL!” much to the chagrin of hearing impaired viewers everywhere.
We ordered our food, Deborah listening to the entire salad dressing list before settling on Ranch. I talked her out of an appetizer; so far this seemed like it was going to go badly, and the last thing I needed was for it to take even longer. I ordered a beer; there was no other way I was going to get through this date.
This date was not my idea. I did not find her via Facebook, I did not have her picked out as a possible soul mate by a dating site, nor did I answer an ad in the local paper. I can't even blame this at picking at the bowels of weirdness via Craigslist. No, I had been perfectly fine to sit home and entertain myself for the evening, probably surfing the internet as my entree, a dessert of, well, actual dessert, and a nightcap of porn. Instead, I was subjected to this date the old fashioned way: busy-body friends set it up for me without my knowledge and then they guilted me into going through with it. I have my old friend Bruce to blame for this imminent train wreck. Technically, his wife instigated the whole thing with a girl she had met a single time at her reading group, but the rules of matrimony and sex-withholding compelled Bruce to go along with it and involve me.
This was not the first time they had tried to set me up with someone. Despite all that experience attempting to find my perfect mate, their choice was consistently poor. In the past, they had set me up with a stripper, a single mother, and a woman who had an unnatural obsession with the Oscar Meyer Weiner song. The stripper was on meth, the single mother had vowed death to anything with a penis, and there’s only so much Oscar Meyer-related conversation I had in me. Let’s just say that at this point Bruce owes me so many apology favors that I’m pretty much family. Unfortunately, those favors still won't get me out of blind dates.
I wondered how much longer this date was going to go on. Unfortunately, with the advent of cell phones, I had, like many, stopped wearing a watch. The thing about watches is that they were nice to surreptitiously check the time on - a nice tilt of the wrist and you were fine. Since phones are usually in pockets, looking at the time is very obvious. I scanned the walls over her shoulder and while I saw fine, inoffensive restaurant landscapes, I saw no clocks. I looked over at other tables to see if someone else had their phone out. I tried to make eye contact with other young men so I could show them the pain in my soul with this date and get their pity so they'd show me the time on their phone. Alas, I was out of luck. So I slowly slid my phone out of my pocket. I tried to keep this as casual as possible, since she was talking and looking right at me. I kept staring into her eyes, nodding and saying “mmhmm”, waiting for her to show a sign of weakness and look away so I could steal a glance at the time.
“Uh huh.” “Yeah, sure.” “That’s very interesting.”
Her conversation stopped and she began staring at me. I had no idea what she last said. My hand froze, the phone halfway out of my pocket. A false rictus smile stretched across my face. She still kept staring at me. I debated looking over her shoulder and smiling or yelling “What in the world is that!” to fake her out.
Once again, the waiter saved me. I made a mental note to tip him well and do some male-designated sign of solidarity like a fist bump with him before I left. He came with her salad, and she finally looked away from my deer in headlights impression. I quickly looked down at my phone, cursing the fact that the display had gone dim from inactivity. I darted a glance back at her to confirm she was distracted, then I jammed on the sluggish touch screen until it lit up. 7:30. I turned back to her quick enough to give her a strained smile.
She was currently telling me about her cat, Admiral Fluffynuggins and the cute way he drinks water. Normally I don’t call someone boring just because they like to talk about their beloved pet. But if I have to wonder if their pet outranks me or if it possibly fought in the Great War, I draw the line. She reached into her purse and produced a book of cat photos. It turns out Admiral Fluffynuggins loved boxes and laying around on furniture. Shocker!
I think that was the final straw. Yes, I admit that there was probably a huge amount of my own complicity in the date's disconnect. Maybe it was because I was not willing to try to connect with her, maybe it was because I have intimacy “issues.” Maybe it was just because I’m kind of an ass. Probably it was because I’m kind of an ass. Whatever the reason, I made the decision then and there that the date would need to end.
I was going to sabotage it.
This is always a questionable topic. Do people really sabotage their dates as a way to shorten them? It seems a television gimmick or some ribald bar conversation. Are people so heartless? Are they so unwilling to be honest that they would actually try to make things go so poorly? Am I really such a terrible person that I would not only do it but confess unapologetically to a stranger like you, Dear Reader?
The answer is yes to all of the above. Date sabotage is one of the long refined arts of the coward and the inertia-laden sitcom character. The key to the technique is in making them pissed off at you but without it being your fault. You have to get them to dislike you as a person so much that they think you'd be a horrible boyfriend, so it becomes their decision to end the date. You then escape guiltless.[1]
For some reason, when sabotaging a date, it is better to come off weird or crazy than rude. Rudeness throws the fault back on you, as if you're doing something assholish, rather than being something they dislike. Being a weird, awkward creep ranks higher than asshole in recollections to friends the day after in date postmortem[2]. So, to do this you need to “accidentally” blurt out something that makes the other person either incredibly uncomfortable or immediately insulted. You’d think this would be easy, but it’s not. You can’t just go for the throat, because then they’ll know it was intentional. If you are too outlandish or too non sequitur about it, they also realize you’re fucking with them. You have to subtly and reasonably horrify them. The name of the game is careful escalation.
For example, I first tried to take advantage of the fact that Deborah was a flight attendant. If the media is to be believed, flight attendants hate being called “stewardesses"; they feel it is demeaning. This was the perfect button to push on. So I nonchalantly questioned her about her work, “accidentally” calling her a stewardess. Then I sat back and waited for the outrage so I could feign ignorance and then apologetically and ineffectively back peddle, dropping worse offenses on the way.
The problem is that she didn’t take the bait. She just went on talking like I hadn’t said anything wrong. I made another statement, saying stewardess again. I said it slowly, pausing right after it so it hung in the air. Stew-ARD-ess, my tone as black and venomous as I could make it without risking the charade.
No reaction. Nothing. No outrage, no anything. Was she stupid or oblivious?
I was frustrated. I decided it might be time to pull out the big guns.
“So are you kinky?” I asked, being cocky. It was kind of a non sequitur and I knew I would lose some points from the judges, but it made some sense within the context of a date and it was, of course, a very polarizing subject. This was sure to turn her off, especially brought up this early and without any rapport developed through the date. I decided to put the cherry on top and pushed one sentence further: “How naughty do you get once we’re in bed?”
She chuckled playfully. “Oh very. I’m sure you’ll have many opportunities to shackle me and whip me. I’m a total painslut.”
Umm…
“Well,” I said, switching gears, “back to airlines, the real reason that airline tickets are expensive but the workers are underfunded is because of the Jews.” I ended that sentence quickly taking a drink to hide any expression I had.
I bet you are now suddenly angry. I don't blame you. But before you throw down this book in disgust, before you begin throwing outrage like a monkey flinging poo, stop and wait for the explanation. Know that this is a tactic. I do not really believe this. I don't believe in a conspiracy, and I am the first to roll my eyes when someone attributes the evils of the world to Zionists. In actuality, this tactic is exploiting how pro-Semitic (i.e. sane) people generally are. Few like an anti-Semite and even if they don't have strong views on the subject, it's generally a reason to look down on someone for being intolerant. And for a first date, it is the touch of death.
Except here. “Oh, completely!” she said. “It’s so refreshing to meet someone who will finally admit that openly. My father always hated them and their conspiracy. He taught me all about them, as well as staying true and staying proud.”
“’Staying true and staying proud?’” I asked.
“To my race,” she said. “No mixing. That’s why I like that you have such fair skin. We are part of the superior race.”
It was a moment before this truly sank in.
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER! A giant robot hanging from the top of a skyscraper was warning me just how crazy she was. I have learned to trust the phantom robot to tell me when a prospective date had just crossed into crazy town. I have no idea where that robot came from or why he appears in my mind, but distrust the robot at your own peril.
In the throes of a fight-or-flight panic, I somehow stammered out that I needed to go to the bathroom as I stood up and knocked my chair over. I didn’t look back as I went straight to the restroom, nearly body-checking a waiter on the way there. Inside the bathroom, I clutched the sink, panting, as I stared in the mirror frantically. I splashed water in my face and calmed myself down.
Where’s that girl that was obsessed with the Oscar Meyer song? She wasn’t so bad a dinner companion. The meth whore? The man hater? All preferable to Little Miss Crazy White Supremacist out at the table.
I’m usually pretty open minded about people’s individual quirks and trips. Whatever they want to do is cool. It may not be something I agree with, and that’s okay. That's their thing. But this is where I draw the line. Discrimination and intolerance just bug the shit out of me. Always have, always will. I’m intolerant of intolerance. I’m sure there’s some irony, hypocrisy, or contradiction, but there it is. When will people reach a state of enlightenment where they realize it’s so much better to dislike people for individual reasons, rather than their arbitrary grouping, a cultural background, or the color of their skin?
Besides that, even if I might be okay or neutral about her racism, I still thought she was crazy. There were too many markers of extreme psychoness in the evening. On the crazyometer, she was rating batshit-and-a-half.
So I knew I had to get out of the restaurant somehow. I went over my options, delineating all the strengths and weaknesses of any plans:
Plan A: Sneak out of the bathroom and then restaurant without her seeing. I would need to do my best stealth impression. What would Ezio do? He’d probably just sneak up behind her, do a stealth kill, and walk out without having to worry about being seen. Flaws: Deborah was sitting with the wall at her back, lack of assassin training, prison time.
Plan B: Just leave the bathroom and walk directly out of the restaurant. Don’t sneak, don’t run. Just walk, and never turn and look at her. Ignore her shouts, her inevitable harpy-like screeching, and her questions of how she was getting home. Flaws: The size of the cojones required for this plan would make walking prohibitive.
Plan C: Go back out there, sit down and finish out the evening. Gritted teeth, neutral small talk. End the date with a weak handshake and awkward silence, don't respond to her calls, tweets, or Facebook requests. Under duress resort to the mantra of "it's not you, it's me". But what if she kept wanting keep up the racist banter all evening? I’ve faked my way through a lot of things, but I had no desire to fake my way through NeoNaziLoveMatch.com. Flaws: I lack the patience to pull this off. Despite effort to become so in college, I have never been the better man.
Plan D: Go back, explain respectfully that we are not a match, pay the check, then take her home early. Have the most awkward ride ever. Flaws: Who are we kidding? That’s not who I am.
Instead, I hatched a cunning plan. Except substitute cunning with “cowardly”, since that’s really what it was.
I pulled out my phone and called Becky. I prayed she wasn’t on a date, at a movie, doing her hair, whatever. I prayed she was available and willing to do me a big favor. She was the only person crazy enough for what I had in mind. Sometimes you need to fight crazy with crazy.
I waited in the bathroom as long as I felt I could get away with it before making the reluctant death march back to my table. I almost imagined a waiter calling out “Dead man walking!” as I passed. My chair had been righted. I slid back into it. A strained smile.
“Did you fall in?” she asked with a genuine smile.
I faked some laughter and grabbed some of the bread the waiter brought, stuffing it in my mouth to cover any facial expression. I like bread.
“I took the liberty of asking the waiter to bring us a bottle of wine.” She said, coyly pointing to the bottle.
White wine. Why was I not surprised?
I chugged my beer. She looked at me oddly, but said nothing. I then poured myself a glass of wine and downed that. Then I poured myself a second glass. Her eyebrow was raised.
"Do we need to order another bottle? Or one to take home?" she asked, trying to make light of it, but her humor felt strained too.
I grunted a negative with a shake of my head as I drained another glass of wine and shoved more bread into my mouth. I chewed slowly, my cheeks puffy like a chipmunk.
I was feeling pretty good by now, tapping on the table and humming a tune, while doing my best not to make eye contact with her. Still I wondered where the cavalry was. My drunken good humor would only last so long. Five long minutes had passed without us talking. How long could I keep it up for?
“You know, you’re still on a date,” said Deborah, breaking the blessed silence with the cacophony of her mouth noises.
“Yes, I know,” I said, trying my best to look sheepish. "I'm not good with dating," I mumbled over another piece of bread.
I started to wonder if my original tactic was starting to work. Maybe I should have started drinking sooner. I could have played the alcoholic card and drank myself out of the date. Of course, that's assuming alcohol didn't have me doing something stupid like bringing her home. Drunk Me seems to really enjoy making me pay for mistakes.
“So you’re just playing hard to get now, is that it?” she said. “I don’t mind. There’s something in the thrill of the hunt,” she said, holding her wine glass in her hand. She gave me what should have been a sly smile, but instead it looked like she was glowering at me.
At this moment, at my most uncomfortable, is when things started to change. I heard a familiar voice across the restaurant.
“What the hell are you doing?” Just the nice mixture of shock and outrage, but it still felt honest. I liked it. She was getting into her role.
Becky came storming up to our table, her face a mask of rage. She looked back and forth between me and Deborah, her eyes narrowing.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she said looking at me. Then, looking at Deborah, “And you! You damn slut! Who do you think you are?”
“And just who are you?” said Deborah icily.
“His girlfriend, that’s who!” replied Becky. “He’s my boyfriend! Who the hell are you?”
There was a moment of silence. This is where Deborah would back down, then Becky would angrily drag me out of the restaurant while I looked appropriately chastised, and then when we were out of sight at the curb I would start jumping for joy.
“I'm the girl who’s going to steal him away from you and show him what a real woman is like,” replied Deborah. “Cause if he’s out with me, you sure as hell aren’t doing it for him!”
Ouch. I was admittedly surprised that Deborah decided to go on the offensive. I figured she’d think I was slime and she’d sympathize with Becky. I really was supposed to be the target. Deborah would follow Becky's lead and hate me, then I could wriggle out of this, the weight of cheater's guilt hanging on my shoulders. Instead, things were going to a very bad place. Deborah surprised me by fighting back, and Becky surprised me by throwing a punch at Deborah.
Okay, I admit it. Becky’s punch wasn’t a surprise. I expect those kinds of reactions from her.
Becky isn’t actually my girlfriend, as you may have guessed. There was some general interest when we first met in college, but it didn’t work out. She thought I was arrogant, I thought she was crazy. Both are correct. She is quite uninhibited, for better or for worse. She acts more through her emotions, but at the same time, she has a perverse sense of humor. For example, when I suggested that she come and act like a jealous girlfriend to get me out of this date, she thought it was hilarious. I wonder if she knew she was going to get into a fight. She likes fights.
Deborah didn’t go down easily. Becky’s punch knocked her out of her chair, but she immediately got back up and socked Becky. Becky staggered, shocked. Usually she dominates fights precisely because the other person doesn’t want to fight. In this case, she met a very willing opponent. And while she likes fights, she wasn't expecting this to be a real one. She was expecting to at best punch a prissy girl, make that girl cry, and the fight would be over. She wasn't expecting a real slugfest, but she threw herself back into the fight anyway. Soon the two of them were locked in a desperate struggle.
Other men would have stepped in to stop the fight. Better men. Men who were probably not the focus of both women’s anger right now. I was not one of those men.
In the course of my life, I have dealt with zombies, fought hobos semiprofessionally, experienced worlds other than ours, sorted out clones, fought ancient alien deities, and had many adventures that most would not believe, but even I knew better than to leap in between the fury of women scorned.
Instead, drenched in cowardice like it was cheap cologne, I slunk across the restaurant on my belly. Most of the other restaurant patrons were glued to the catfight at my table and never saw me slip by.
I crept past the podium at the front of the restaurant as the hostess and one of the waiters talked frantically about calling the police. When I was last in earshot, they had already started dialing. I straightened up as I walked through the restaurant waiting area. I shook my head to the people there. “You might want to wait outside,” I said.
In a moment, I stepped out into the cool, refreshing air of freedom. I felt a weight lift from my shoulders and I had a spring in my step. I stretched my arms wide. It was a wonderful feeling, my spirits lifting. I had escaped! The most important part was that I had extricated myself from that bad situation without having to bite the bullet and do the right thing.
I breathed a sigh of relief, pulled out my car keys, and stepped off the curb.
I remember the growl of an engine and somebody shouting. I remember turning to see myself reflected in the glass of the windshield before there was a terrible pain and I had the feeling of flying. I don't remember hitting the ground, just things going black.
Continued in Damned Lies #1, Available NOW!
Footnotes
[1] It's not really guiltless. We're talking social guilt. To an external watcher or a live studio audience, you are still "in the right". Not guiltless in the way that there's still a dark, cold spot deep within you for the things you do, waiting to catch up to you and making you drink alone late at night.
[2] Nobody knows why. The universe has many mysteries.
