Another thing Judy Blume didn't prepare me for...

After three months of self-imposed romantic solitude, I had grown weary of being the only singleton in my group of smug-dater friends. In a fit of desperate boredom, I allowed what the chronically single both love and fear to happen: I let my friend, John, set me up on a blind date. Oh, the blind date. The possibilities are endless, and while inwardly you always hope that it will end spectacularly, outwardly, you treat it with disdain, so that when it does fail you can at least say, “I told you so.” Anyway, the date ended up being only partially blind, since it turned out that Arthur was the son of a family friend, though it had been ages since we’d seen one another, making that point, in the end, moot.


Arthur was a great guy (a statement which we all know foreshadows his inevitable downfall).  We met for coffee at a local shop and talked for hours, mostly about a retreat that we had both recently made. Since this pre-meeting had come off so swimmingly, we set up another, more datey-date (dinner and a movie, natch). Then, things began to fall apart.


Sidebar: The secret to any great anecdote is also one of the hallmarks of great comedy, and that is the Rule of Three. According to that co-op of knowledge, Wikipedia, “things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things.” So, all of my bad date stories have three main points. I, of course, am using the term “points” loosely, as that would imply that they are quick and dirty, as opposed to long and convoluted.


Artie and I hit our first snag at the Thai restaurant where we had dinner. The poor guy kept mispronouncing things on the menu, and had no idea who Audrey Hepburn was, which immediately turned me off (clearly, I was operating under the delusion that all straight men have seen Sabrina, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s, at least). I must confess this elitist attitude on my part was nothing new; I once turned a little boy down in the fourth grade because he didn’t know who Mozart was. After I had to stop and explain that I was being sarcastic for the fifth time, I was pretty much done.


My snobbish revulsion continued at the movies, where Arthur sat with his left foot on his right knee, a position that resulted in his smelly Adidas practically hitting me in the face. At this point, I was shrinking away from him as much as possible and plotting my escape.


At the end of the night, I fled the car before he had a chance put it in park (now my end-of-date M.O.) and watched him drive away slowly from behind the curtains in my bedroom.


Apparently my erratic behavior did not turn him off completely, bless his heart (that or he was just blissfully thickheaded), because he continued to call me for at least two more weeks, even though I habitually let him roll over to voicemail.


During the interim between our slightly disastrous date and him finally getting the picture, I wandered downstairs to my parents’ room and curled up on the bed for a rare mother-daughter chat.


Me: You know, I don’t think I’m going to see Arthur again.
Mom: Awww, honey, why not? He seemed so nice.
Me: No, he is. I’m just not really interested in him. Like, romantically.
Mom (awkwardly): …Sweetie…you do like boys, don’t you?
Me: God, Mom. Yes. Just not this one. Jeeze.

I have to say that the awkward teenage years are not complete until your mom insinuates that you’re a lesbian.