See? I'm not the only one who has bad dates!

Today I've got a special guest post lined up from Jay of Genius Pending fame. Jay is a minimum 30 kinds of awesome, and I truly aspire to be like him in at least 27 of those ways. He was nice enough to offer to shorten this post if I thought it to be too long, but honestly, I don't think I would want change a single thing about it.

(Jay took it upon himself to write his own introduction and I can't really do any better. Although I would have probably said he was 37 kinds of awesome because 37 is my favorite number. I also would have said that I'm more awesome than Jay, so I don't really aspire to be on his level of awesome, as I surpassed that around age five. But we all knew that anyway, right? And without further ado, I give you Jay's worst date, which almost beats the crap out of all my bad dates. But not quite.)

(Oh, and I'm currently working out a way to send Jay anthrax and/or herpes via internets for that Burger King link. I have nightmares about that. You could have at least linked me to a hot picture of Shirley Manson, but noooo...all I get is the Burger King. Watch your back, Jay. And I'm writing over there today...so click and read, bitches!)

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Hello there to the sexy readers of Shine's blog. Trust that I'm intimately aware of your collective sexiness because Shine outsources all of her Facebook stalking to me, and yes, that picture of you in the "WWJD Inside of Me?" t-shirt did help to sway my sexy decree. However, I'm not really here to talk about how incredibly sexy either of us is. This is a guest post, and the rules of engagement clearly state that if I'm going to fawn over anyone, it must be the host blogger. Although Shine did say that I could also fawn over Shirley Manson, or exploit her odd obsession with The Burger King.

What I'm here to talk about today falls right in line with a popular topic on these pages. As we all know, Shine's prone to having awkward dates, or more to the point she somehow manages to discover a previously uncharted sector of dating hell with each new guy that she meets. Normally I'd assume such a situation to be her fault, as she's the only constant in this never-ending vortex of bad conversation and creepy douchebags, but I've yet to find any overarching flaws in her that would necessitate such blame (read: she's not the bad kind of crazy). In fact, the only plausible theories that could be attributed to her dating woes are 1. she was somebody horrible in a past life, or 2. she stole something from an Indian burial ground and has yet to return it.

Now while Shine is admittedly a pro with bad dates, I imagine that very few of us can claim total inexperience with them. There are some dates that you just know something is off with and/or you simply have no connection. Things can get a little crazier, like the girl with the cold sore you can't stop staring at (who STILL tries to kiss you at the end of the night). You might also experience mid-range bad dates, where they won't stop talking about their ex, ditch you halfway through the night, or drop a racist joke before the first drink even shows up. Sadly, those are all examples of girls I actually went out with at one time or another. Sadder than that is how none of them even come close to touching what I went through on the worst date of my life. We all have one of these stories, and I hope you appreciate mine:

It was the summer of 2000, and I had recently moved to Oregon from Texas. I was living in Portland, and my brother in Salem about 50 miles south. He was adamant about setting me up with his co-worker, I was adamant about getting laid for the first time in over 6 months, so we set something up. I didn't have a car because I didn't really need one where I lived, so she agreed to come to Portland for the day. We went to the rose gardens and the Zoo, had lunch, and honestly I thought we were hitting it off quite well. On our way out, she told me that her sister was having a small "get-together" at their apartment that evening, which we could gladly let our date spill over into. "You can stay the night, it's no big deal" she said. This should have thrown up a red flag immediately, but all I heard was "Please come sleep in the same house with me after a night of drinking." So I said yes.

This is where it all started coming apart, as if I were a superhero in the capture of some supervillain, and she now felt confident enough to expound on her master plan of crazy to me. Over the course of the hour-long ride down to Salem, she shared the following tidbits about herself:

• That her Mom had left her Dad 5 days ago, and wouldn't tell anyone where she was staying.
• She had an abortion last year because she dropped so much acid the first month of the pregnancy (before she found out).
• Her previous boyfriend of 2 years, who was the father of the lost baby, had sold naked photos of her after they broke up -- ONLY 3 WEEKS AGO.
• How much she hated science fiction, especially Star Wars and Star Trek.
• She once woke up in the back of a police cruiser completely naked, save a blanket from the cops and one of her socks.
• That pain and pleasure are often good bedfellows.

My head was swirling by the time we arrived at her place, and the quaint "get-together" turned out to be a 30 people crammed into a two-bedroom apartment. I was already planning my retreat, but decided not to put any plans into motion after seeing the insane amount of alcohol they were hosting. I had surmised after our car trip down the TMI Expressway that this night would not be ending well, and it sort of made sense that the best approach to the situation might in fact be a drunken one. Many beers later I was feeling much better and not just from the beer, but also because my date had been noticeably absent from the crowd for over an hour. Then I got peer-pressured into taking a shooter I had never heard of before, something called a “Prairie Fire.” It looked reddish and soupy, and in my mind I imagined it as some kind of cinnamon liqueur and Kahlua combo

Wrong.


A Prairie Fire is actually shot of tequila with a dash of hot sauce for flavor. Only in this case as I later learned, my impromptu bartender opted for a liberal amount of habanero sauce instead. My throat and mouth were instantly on fire, as were my eyes a moment later after accidentally rubbing them. The pain I experienced faded slowly, although it was quickly replaced by a far worse one in my gut. I knew what was coming long before it arrived, although I daresay we've all been at that point where you know you're going to puke but choose to fight anyway. Once I could fight no more, I ran into the bathroom and without a moment to spare fell to my knees, lifted up the lid, and proceeded to turn and projectile vomit all over their bathtub. While I had in fact made it to the toilet just in time, it was too full of someone else's... business for me to even consider sticking my face in there. Although if I were to be completely honest, it looked more like the business from a demon that had been eating from a taco truck for the past week.

The night continued to carry on against my favor, subjecting me to such personal tortures as round after round of charades and an impromptu rap battle. Somewhere past 2am, the party finally dispersed and my date's sister gave me the all clear to sleep on their couch. No doubt she felt bad for me since her sister disappeared several hours ago, and that despite the multiple angry voicemails I left with my brother, a rescue mission didn’t appear to be in the works.

Cut to 4am. I'm abruptly awoken by my date climbing on top of me. I can tell she's drunk because of the way her breath smells as she tries to make out with me; a wonderful milieu of cigarettes, gin, and what is possibly throw up. "You're so nice for sticking around" she tells me in a slurred voice. It was either sleep here or pay $60 for a cab back home, I think to myself, and it's really too bad I'm so close to broke right now. I sat up and got her off of me, launching into my normal nice guy routine, "You're drunk, this isn't a good idea, so on and so forth..." and she loses it. Near hysterical crying, blubbering things like "I just want to know where my Mom is" and "We were supposed to get married," each belligerent declaration doubling the size of the red flags I had been skillfully ignoring all night.

But you can only take so much crazy you know? Especially when it's 4 in the morning.

I knew what had to be done. In my nicest nice guy voice I gave her the "let's get you to bed" line -- I even went the extra mile by carrying her to her room. After laying her down gently in bed, pulling the covers up nice and close, I told her to try and relax while I go grab her a glass of water. Although instead of fetching the water, I opted to get the fuck out of there immediately.

Two hours later I managed to backtrack to the freeway and get to my brother's house. Upon finding me on his doorstep, all he said was "So I guess the night didn't turn around for you after all?" When asked – since he had obviously received them – why he didn't return any of my desperate pleas to be evacuated, he said it was because he knew this girl was a sure thing, and that all I had to do was tough out a little bit of crazy for her to eventually come after me. This pissed me off, but only because it made pointless the rage that had been building towards him all night. After all, he was right about the whole thing, even if he did severely underestimate the level of crazy I’d have to work with.