After a particularly unhealthy series of weekends and weeks in college, along with the recent break up of a long time boyfriend, I decided I needed some serious detox.
I had heard about some type of health beverage and as I perused the health and vitamin store, clearly lost, a guy approached me and asked if I needed any help. Which I accepted, and he talked to me for about ten minutes or so before I realized that… this guy was wearing sweatpants. This guy did not WORK at the store.
In which case, he asks for my number. And I’ve spent this amount of time chatting with him, and accepted his advice and in the mindset of moving on, I gave it to him.
He calls and texts. I’m not so entirely into him, but it’s complicated to get rid of someone especially when, it helps to be interesting to someone new.
Finally, I agreed to go out with him.
Here’s the deal, I tell him, “I have to be somewhere tomorrow but I will have ONE DRINK with you.”
So he comes to pick me up at my house in Long Island. Now. The guy who comes to pick me up is NOT the same as the one I met in the vitamin store. This guy has got a shaved head. And a sports jacket. And tight jeans. And he’s shiny and tan. Like, really shiny. MIAMED out. Plucked eyebrows. He got READY for this date. All 5’ of him is decked out. And jacked.
We get in the car. He tells me that he’s taking me to a restaurant, that he knows the bartender, on the Jersey Shore which is half an hour away.
News flash: he’s 19. He’s independent because his mom is schizo. And more of this for half an hour.
ONE drink, I tell myself, and oh yeah, breathe.
The bartender is an old guy. We have a drink. He tells me then, that his best friend’s birthday is happening at a bar ten minutes away. That we should hit it up. That taking me all the way back home, half an hour away is just not really what I wanted to do, is it?
(it must be nice to live in the city…)
So this next bar, was awful. And his friends. Meatheads. A crowd of meatheads, all shaved and jacked, shiny and muscled.
“Feel my arms,” he would say, and place my hands on his biceps. He appeared to have shimmer lotion on. All over his body.
“She’s hot, she likes my muscles,” he told his friends. “I’m on this date with an amazingly beautiful woman.”
I’m right here.
And then. A girl from college who I cant particularly call my friend turns up.
“Oh my god,” she says, “He’s so hot.”
Ahhhhhhh. The worst thing ever!
It’s getting late. This is far more than one drink.
“Did I tell you that I’m a club promoter?” he asks. “We’re going to the club. That’s why I’m dressed up like this.” He gropes his muscles with my hand again.
“I am not going to the club tonight,” I told him. “I need to go home. You need to take me home.”
“Really?” he doesn’t seem to get it through all that shimmer lotion let alone into his head.
And I convince him to get out to the car and get on with the driving me home. This process involves him making phone calls to a number of people. And telling them about the date he’s on (currently) with this amazingly beautiful girl…
My driveway! I will never love the sight the way I did that night, four hours later than planned.
Dashing from the car, towards my front door, he catches up to me and sweeps me off my feet, carrying me the rest of the way to my door and depositing me on the doorstep.
Horrifically, I avoid any face contact and get the fuck inside.
* later, after I ignore phone calls and texts, he finally sends a text: did you want the bartender instead?
Really?
