The Fighting Irish: Part II

Picking up where I left off yesterday: I don't think I've ever been so at odds with a person on so many (mostly) trivial issues before--neither one of us could say anything right, and from what I could tell, what follow are the three main things I did wrong. Since Joseph was a ballplayer, I thought the baseball analogy was fitting.

Strike One: I wasn’t jumping at the bit for marriage

In the car on the way to dinner, I asked him about the wedding to be polite. I was expecting something along the lines of “Oh, it was really nice”—what I got instead was a detailed ten-minute rave. I nodded my head vaguely throughout, and then made an innocent remark about the number of acquaintances I had who were getting married in the next year.

Me: Yeah, it seems like everyone and their brother is getting married these days.

Him: Why do you say it like that? Like it’s a bad thing?

Me: Um, well I didn’t mean it’s a bad thing necessarily. There are just a lot of weddings coming up. I guess I’m just nowhere near being ready for that sort of thing.

Him: …

Strike Two: I was in love with the supreme enemy

We never ran out of conversation during our meal, which was heartening. During the course of our little tête-à-tête, Joseph confesses something to me.

Him: You know, I’ve never read a Harry Potter book

Me (in mock shock): You’ve never read a Harry Potter book! That’s un-American.

Him (deadpan): Why is it un-American to have not read an English book?

Me: A British book.

Him: Same thing.

Me (who practically minored in British history): No…

I then take this opportunity to talk about my Anglophilia—how I’ve been to the UK three times,  how much I love London and Tudor history, how side-achingly hysterical I find their particular brand of humor, how mesmerizingly adorable I find their accents. I end my mini-rave with this throw-away statement:

Me: …and I think their system of government is so much better than ours.

Him (looking at me very seriously): I don’t.

Me: (looking at him very bemusedly): Quoi?

Him: I think that it is horrible how they treated the Irish during the Irish Potato Famine.

Commence a full-on FIVE minute rant on the Brit’s treatment of the Irish during the afore- mentioned disaster. I really wish there was someone there to record my facial expressions during this segment of our date, as I’m sure they were priceless.

Sidebar: I later asked my friend, Joey, another Irish-American, if he was still personally offended by the Irish Potato Famine. He said no.

Strike Three: I’m an argumentative bitch who likes uniforms

After dinner, we get in the car and are driving to what I think is the next portion of the date. During this time, Joseph tells me some stories of his experiences at a Jesuit high school out west. Among these was his explanation of the “Great Sock-Off of 2003,” which had something to go with the guys wanting to wear flip flops to school. I stop him right there:

Me: Wait, you didn’t have to wear uniforms?

Him: No.

Me: I’ve never heard of a Catholic school that didn’t require uniforms before.

Him: Well, I was glad; I hate uniforms.

Me: That’s interesting, since you’re a sportsman and all. I mean you wear a uniform on the field…

Him (exasperatedly): Well, why do YOU like uniforms so much?!

Me (thoughtfully): Well…I think that it certainly makes things easier in the morning. I never had to think about what I was going to wear.

Him (emphatically): Neither did I.

Me: Okay, I get that you’re a guy, but you still had to choose a shirt.

Him: Hmph.

Me: And, I think that since we looked more professional, we acted more professionally at school.

Him (heatedly): I think our ninety-nine percent graduation rate onto a four year college proves that we showed up ready to work!

Me: …Dude, not trying to personally attack your school, just giving you my reasons for why I like uniforms…

And she's out!

Very quickly after this exchange it became clear to me that Joseph was driving me back to my cousin’s house. Time elapsed since he picked me up? Exactly one hour.

He gave me a butt-out hug, as if prolonged touching would turn him into a psycho, marriage-hating, uniform-loving Anglophile.

The next month, he unfriended me and blocked me on Facebook. Apparently, my evil powers could also travel over the net. Who knew I had that kind of sway?

The Fighting Irish: Part I

I met Joseph MacLaren through family my first year out of college. It was after an Aggie football game, and I was already laid out on my cousin’s futon, face washed and glasses on, throwing myself a pity party about my job—not exactly the first impression I would have chosen.

It seems that I didn’t scare him off completely, because he friended me on Facebook, and we began exchanging messages every so often (clearly, I didn’t learn my lesson last time with Luke), then with increasing regularity. He was cute and Catholic, and I enjoyed the attention. Finally, he asked for my number, and we arranged to go out the next time I was in town.

The move from Facebook messaging to text messaging and phone calls raised a few concerns on my part. The first warning sign came after our first phone call. We were in the process of firming-up plans: he wasn’t going to be sure of his schedule until the following Tuesday—he had gotten a last minute invite to a wedding and wasn’t sure when it was—so I said he should call me then and we’d figure things out. Later, at the end of a textersation, I said that I’d talk to him Tuesday.

Him: What? I can’t call you until next Tuesday?

Me: …I mean, you don’t need my permission to call me before then. If you call and I don’t want to talk to you for whatever reason, I just won’t answer the phone…

Later on the phone, he reprimanded me for using some PG-13 language while talking about TAKS testing.

Sidebar: If you teach in Texas, I guarantee that you use words worse than “damn” and “shit” when talking about state testing.

I was beginning to get the impression that

a) He was way more into me than he should be, but  

b) He also appeared to be into a Disneyfied version of me that didn’t exist in real life.

I’ve no idea where he got this impression from, as I have no filter and haven’t pretended to be anything other than a bubbly, if slightly eccentric loon.  

But still, I pressed on and the weekend of our ill-fated date arrived. He called me as soon as I got into town to check-up on me, which was nice, I guess, but rubbed me the wrong way (I mean, we hadn’t even gone OUT yet—who did he think he was, my dad?), and because, although he knew I was hanging out with my friends that night, he was wondering if I wanted to meet up for drinks later. It was all a little too earnest, and I was looking forward to our actual date less and less.

After talking it over with my friends, I decided that our original plan of a picnic in Research Park was looking like a bad idea (seclusion didn’t seem like me best bet with this one), and so I texted him to say that the mosquitoes were worse than I thought and it got dark sooner than I was thinking (both true), and perhaps we should choose a restaurant instead. He responded that that was fine, and he would surprise me (cue creepy serial killer music).  

I exchanged horrified glances with my friends, and then insisted, no, I really needed to know where we were going so that I could dress appropriately (always a good excuse). He relented and said that he would take me to a little Italian restaurant downtown. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I had a full schedule the next morning and afternoon, so I decided to take a nap before Joseph came to pick me up. While I was asleep, someone came to the door and my cousin answered it. As it was at least an hour before I expected Joseph, I didn’t think anything of it. I got up about forty minutes later and brushed my hair and teeth, and then went to sit on the futon with a book while I waited for him to text me.

Imagine my surprise when he walked in through the back door with my cousin—the wedding had ended early, and so he’d been hanging out at the house with my cousin for the last hour. While I was asleep in the next room.

What followed was probably the worst date I’ve ever been on.

**Stay tuned for Part Two!**

There's a Reason These Dates are Numbered

My senior year of college, I took a trip to New Orleans for St. Patty’s Day (I could never do Mardi Gras, NOLA-style, as I would die; St. Patrick’s Day is more my speed. Plus, you get to drink green beer). My friend, Angie, and I had a blast hanging out with my high school bestie, Brittany: getting soaked in the rain at the parade, trading kisses for beads, dancing at F&M’s, shopping on Magazine. It was a great trip, but, alas, it had to come to end.

On our way back to Texas, I got pulled over for speeding. Actually, pulled over isn’t entirely accurate—it was more like the cop pointed at me and then pointed to the shoulder. He wasn’t even in his car, he was just standing there with his laser gun.

Sidebar: I never get off easy with these things, no matter how polite I am. Funny “Elise gets pulled over story,” real quick though: once, I realized that I left my driver’s license at home when a cop asked for it and my insurance when he pulled me over for talking on a cell phone in a school zone. I was talking to my dad about a red-light ticket I had just gotten in the mail. Total number of tickets that day? Three.

I put on my big-girl panties and took the ticket without whining or crying (though, really, I was just going with the flow of traffic). For some reason, Louisiana doesn’t tell you how much your ticket is going to be; it’s anyone’s guess. Since I was a poor college student and I wasn’t going to ask the rents for more money, I decided that this was the perfect time to tap an as-of-yet untapped resource: my blood.

No, I wasn’t going to prostitute myself to the newly out-of-the-coffin vamps on True Blood. I was going to sell my plasma.

If you’ve ever lived in a college town, you see ads all the time for places like DCI Biologicals, where one can sell one’s plasma for cash. It seemed like a perfect plan and an easy and painless way to raise the money for my speeding ticket.

It turned out it wasn’t quite so easy. I was constantly battling low iron or low blood pressure (seriously, it’s like I’m dead). I would drink a liter of water right before I went so that I could qualify, and started eating Fudd burgers instead of Wendy’s chicken sandwiches in an effort to boost my iron (as well as my cholesterol).   

The process of donating one’s plasma is pretty simple. They check you out to make sure you’re in good health, then set you up in a recliner-bed type thingie, and hook you up to the machine. They take the blood out, spin it around so that the centrifugal force separates the red blood cells from the yellow plasma, and then put the red blood cells back in. You can donate up to twice a week, and get between $25 and $35 per visit.

Sidebar: You may be wondering at this point, where I’m going with this. Be patient.

The other thing that they do when they give you your red cells back is add an anti-coagulante, which prevents the cells from clotting.

During this time, I met a guy, Ethan, through my friend, Janet; they were (and still are) vet students in College Station. We had made arrangements to go out one summer’s night and get to know one another better. I was still adding to my envelope of cash, so the afternoon of the day in question, I went to sell more plasma.

When I got home, and started getting ready, I was met with a shocking revelation. Miss Scarlet had come home to Tara with a vengeance. I later realized that the anti-coagulantes I had been given were just doing their job (though not in a way that was expected), but at the time, I thought I was dying. Seriously, my roommates were about ready to take me to the hospital.

I was laid up in bed, moaning, when Ethan called, wanting to know what time to come pick me up for dinner. I wasn’t really sure what to say to this, as I felt I was in no condition to leave the house but didn’t really want to give anything but vague reasons as to why I was not feeling well, embarrassed as I was.

I made some sort of flimsy excuse, but Ethan would not be deterred. I’m pretty sure he decided to bring me some sort of soup, and showed up about an hour later with a little rose from his backyard. It was sweet, and I managed to rouse myself and adjourn to the living room, where he and I and my roommates played an exhilarating game of Cranium (I’m kind of awesome at Cranium, no lie).

I went out with Ethan once more after this, a truly awkward meeting at Sweet’s. The spark had died, and we made uncomfortable conversation for about an hour before I made my excuses and left.

I eventually made enough money to pay off my speeding ticket, and ceased selling my plasma. The scars, both emotional and physical, have begun to fade.

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.

A Belated Start

*A word of warning: I cannot tell a short story, and am prone to copious tangents and parenthetical asides. Hopefully, you can continue to wade through my neuroses and slightly flamboyant diction J  


I was a bit of a late bloomer in high school. A six-inch growth spurt, combined with the addition of braces, swapping glasses for contacts, a sudden and impressive increase in cup size, and a general lack of coordination made me extremely awkward physically. Inexperience teamed with the naive belief that high school would be like the teeny-bopper movies of the early millennium (She's All That and Princess Diaries come to mind as far as the “geeky girl transforms into a hot princess--sometimes even literally--and inevitably gets the guy despite great odds and majorly mean girls” genre goes) made for a socially lethal combination.


I wasn't allowed to date until I was sixteen, and I preciously believed that on July 7th, 2003, I would wake up to gobs of suitors outside my door, who were just waiting for the day when my parental units would permit them to take me to Braum's for a double dip of Cappuccino Chocolate Chunk. Imagine my surprise when all my birthday brought was an admittedly killer birthday video and a collection of penguin pictures. Don't get me wrong, it was a great birthday. But I wanted my Jake Ryan.    


Fast forward to my senior year. Somehow, my inept AIM flirting (learned from countless afternoons spent in the "green room" backstage in our Performing Arts Cafeteria) had fooled some poor schmuck into thinking I knew what I was doing, and he asked me out. Our plan? Dinner and a movie (I know, I know, craaaazzy kids). I'm fairly certain we were going to go see Phantom of the Opera (I'm also pretty sure it was going to be my third time to see it in theaters).


Sidebar: This brave soul who took me on my first date was a younger guy who I had a huge crush on. He played the piano like you would not believe. In fact, I date my now instant fascination with pianists of the opposite sex to this point.


So my gentleman caller--let's call him Vincente--calls the night before to firm up plans for our date. My best friend, Brit, was there to witness my half of the following conversation:


Me: Hey! I'm really excited about tomorrow night!
V: Yeah, me too. Listen though, I have kind of an...awkward question for you.
Me (in my head): The last time a guy prefaced a query in this way, he followed up with "What size bra do you wear?" This is going to be good.
Me (out loud): Um, okay.
V: How do you feel about facial hair?
Me (in my head): !!
Me (speaking to Brit via eye contact/telepathy): What the HELL?!
Me (out loud): I mean, I'm not going to ask you to shave...


Sidebar: This date was going down over Christmas break, when we were not in school and therefore not subject to our school’s strict dress code that forbade facial hair on the young men. And side burns that exceeded one inch. Hence Vincente's chin scruff and subsequent concern. I also did not put two and two together as to why he was concerned until after the fact...


The actual date is a blur in my memory. I do recall not eating much of my dinner (nerves) and feeling bad that he was paying for food that was going to waste, leaving the movie during "The Point of No Return" to call Brit and inform her that the PoNR had indeed been reached and I had decided that I was no longer interested in Vincente through no fault of his own, and finally, veritably fleeing the car when he dropped me off, lest he try to burn me with his beard.


I then wrote a very empowering entry in my journal about how I wasn’t going to let myself be defined by a guy, and besides, I didn’t have time for a boyfriend anyway…which proves my theory that it’s easier to be alone when you believe that it’s by your choice and not your lack of options or deep-seated fear of commitment.

I later apologized to Vincente for being an insane person. He denied that it was a date in the first place.