Thursday, November 10, 2005

One from the archives (my archives, that is, not the blog's)

I've only been on two blind dates in my whole life and both left me feeling like the people who had set me up either didn't know me very well or didn't like me all that much.

Blind date #1 - I was a junior in high school and I had won tickets to a hockey game from some radio station. Great, except 1) I didn't like hockey. 2) I didn't have a car. and 3) ... well, there's no #3, I just thought the list needed more than 2. - So, a friend of mine, John (who, it later turned out - right before he moved out of state- I actually had a crush on) fixed me up with Dave, this guy who was renting a room from John's parents. All I knew about Dave was that he had long hair (which was a plus because I was in my heavy metal phase) and light eyes and drove a motorcycle (!) We talked on the phone a couple of times and he seemed cool and he had long hair AND A MOTORCYCLE, I thought I had hit the heavy metal jackpot, there was no way I was not going out with him. The day arrived, he roared up to my house on his motorcycle and I stood at the window, breathlessly waiting for him to take off his helmet and... one word: mullet. Yep, totally business in front and a big old party in back. And he wasn't cute, either. Not. At. All. And he was short. Then I had to endure a trip from Orange County all the way to Los Angeles trying desperately to hold on, without touching him. In the end, we had good tickets to a hockey game and I never, ever saw him again.

Blind date #2 - I was about 21, I had been dumped by my awful boyfriend, Abusive Matt, and wasn't necessarily looking to date anyone, but I would have been amenable to having a boy to hang out with... and by "hang out with" I mean, "have crazy monkey sex with". So one day I'm bitching to my slutty high school friend, Jennifer* about how my car was not working properly (because Slutty Jennifer's parents own a car repair place and I'm hoping for some kind of freebie) when Slutty Jennifer and her mom start talking about this guy named Brad who works at the shop.

"You and Brad would get along SO well! You're funny, he's funny. You're single, he's single AND he's a great mechanic... I can't believe we've never thought of fixing you guys up before!"

My mind flashes back to the last blind date and I ask if he has a mullet. "No, actually his hair is kind of shaved, it's really short."

Okay, fine (because I was over the whole heavy metal phase), so I ask if he's tall. "No, he's kind of short," they tell me. Well... okay, it's not like I'm dating anyone else and I do need someone to fix my car and height is kind of relative when you're horizontal.

"But he's cute, right?" I ask.

There is this giant lull in the conversation that should have told me everything I needed to know, but then Slutty Jennifer's mom pipes up "Sure, he's cute." (She's a mom, she kind of had to say that)

"He has red hair, though," Jennifer reluctantly mentions. "Oh, and he's kind of a nazi... but it's not that bad to where you'd notice**."

Here's where I mention that I was an idiot when I was 21 - because I agreed to go out with him. As it turned out, Slutty Jennifer forgot to mention that in addition to being a short, red-haired nazi, Brad was super skinny and had a RED FU-MAN-CHU MOUSTACHE.

So at the end of the date (we went to the drive-in to see "Babe"), Jennifer pulls me aside and tells me that Brad "totally" wanted to kiss me, but he'd just had dental surgery that day and he couldn't and he "totally" felt bad.

"Trust me, Jen," I said. "He'd be feeling a lot worse if he tried to kiss me... because I'd probably have to kick his ass... and I'm totally bigger than him, so I could do that."


note: Blogger apparently knows something that I don't about Slutty Jennifer because it suggested that I replace "Jennifer's" with "sniper's"

* Didn't everyone have a slutty high school friend named Jennifer?

** I never had ANY idea what that meant - like he was a nazi-lite or something?