How to alienate your date

I am SO. TIRED. And not like regular tired. Like, I just ran a marathon and single handedly saved the world from evil and solved the economic crisis while giving birth to a baby that will grow up to develop a cure for AIDS and also I'm an amputee, so I did all of that with one hand. Excessive exercise and one-handed heroics with a baby genius wriggling out of my twat. Exhausting.

I decided I have the plague, and since I am always selflessly looking out for others, further concluded that I should be quarantined. And put on bed rest. I'm a doctor. A traveling physician, as a matter of fact. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, it might make sense if you read this).

That lasted about ten minutes. See? I'm so good at what I do, I cured myself inside of a half an hour. Also, I think I was having an allergic reaction to sitting still. My health is so precarious these days.

In the Halloween spirit, I have a scary story to share. I went out to dinner with someone last night. I don't really date people that I don't already know. At all, ever. This was a good reminder why.


I got picked up at 8 o'clock. The car ride was a little awkward, but I expected that. No big deal. Some small talk, some silence, a little poorly adjusted radio. Okay.

We got to the restaurant pretty quickly. The entire staff knew him by name. I was not sure how I felt about that. That kind of thing can go both ways. You might get special treatment and off-menu food, or strange things could happen. We had to wait by the bar for a table and the place was incredibly loud and crowded. We kind of had to stand in the middle of everything, shuffling back and forth like we were doing some kind of half-assed line dance to let a waitress go by on one side, busser on the other, customers were walking between us. It made our already uncomfortable conversation a bit more difficult. My "So, how was your day?" was misheard as "So, what was your name?" Awesome. "Weren't you taller?" Yes, I shrank between yesterday and today. Different shoes, genius. "So, what do you think?" "Uh, about what?" "Anything." Wtf? Is that supposed to go somewhere? Does that work with anyone, ever?

Seemingly unsuspecting staff members came by and were asked probing questions that weren't all received well. 'Did Nina get all of her stuff out of your apartment yet; are you guys still sleeping together; how are your kids, did the one finally graduate high school? Hahaha. Ahh.' 'Where is so-and-so?' 'Oh, she got fired for stealing.' 'Your brother still smoke crack?' Then I had the privilege of hearing all of the restaurant gossip which included the owner nailing all of the jailbait hostesses.

I feel like I should mention that I was sober and this somewhat frightening individual was drinking, but unless there was some pre-gaming that I am not aware of, this was all happening on the first out of maybe four or five drinks.

After what seemed like a recap of a season or two of "Passions," we made it to a table, right next to a couple that sounded like they were on a date somewhere within the first three, and seemed to be hitting it off. Within five minutes, we somehow landed on the subject of politics. My eyes glazed over and I started giving non-committal "active listening" answers like mm-hmm, I've considered that, that's interesting; and getting my smile and nod on. I started ear hustling the couple next to us, listening to the girl laugh too hard at his cheesy jokes. Dating is an arduous task. I got to hear about Hillary having been the best candidate for President and how she and Michelle are way smarter than Barack, how Palin is a tard-on-wheels, Obama is not going to be re-elected, our economy will never recover, we're going to end up like the UK with taxes on everything, yak, yak, yakkity-blah, I'm the most opinionated person ever and appear to have no facts to back up these opinions.

Holy shit. No comment on any of that, but why in the bright blue fuck would you think it was okay to say things like that to someone you barely know on a first date? If I was less patient and feeling rowdy, or drunk or something, political shit talking like that could have very well gotten that little table flipped and some 'bows thrown. Then, can you guess what the next topic was? Yep, it was religion. Mind you, I tried to gracefully redirect the conversation repeatedly, even receiving a fake phone call so that I could leave the table and come back in hopes that the distraction would help. Not so much. When my polite attempts to change the subject failed, I changed my approach and told a couple of terrible, disgusting, inappropriate jokes. I'm not above saying things that are completely bizarre or gross, I just tend to keep them in my back pocket with new people. As I was hoping, this was a bit stunning, and gave me some reprieve and a chance to control the conversation for a little while. We got on the topic of how people tend to bring the subject of conversation back to themselves a lot, and I started talk about why that happens, and how self-centeredness changes with emotional maturity...but I kept getting interrupted so he could tell me about how "I used to do that, but then I discovered there are so many other things to talk about...for me...now I...Yeah, well I--" etc. Then siblings were mentioned in some context, which is when I lost the upper hand again.

I got way too much background on the extended family. Way. Too much. Over sharing session from hell. I got to hear about my date's little sister, what a selfish bitch she is, and how she's sucking their mother dry with the help of her good for nothing husband. The children are being told that grandma is mean and is going to take the house away, but they should really be told that their mother is a worthless whore who won't work. I learned that something terrible happens to their mother about every ten years but she is always happy anyway. Then I got a detailed list, which included breast cancer, lymphoma, a broken arm, and more! The most unsettling bit of information of the evening: how she lost her husband. Their house was robbed while he was at home and he was murdered in the process. The robbers slit his throat. Oh, my god, dude. You know how someone starts talking about something, and they get really heated and into it and turn red, and go into a serious rant? That is what happened. I started feeling like a therapist. I'm pretty sure I should have been handsomely compensated for this dinner.

After the throat slitting came up once, every single thing we talked about came back to it. I don't even know how someone does that.
"I had a hamburger last night."
"Yeah...they get hamburgers from cows. You know how they kill cows? They slit their throats! Just like they did to my FAAATHEEERR AGGHHH!!!"

I can only imagine what my face looked like when that info was initially dropped. And then repeated. And repeated. It was some sort of apparently offensive mystery (Aren't you hungry?!) why I couldn't manage to finish my pumpkin ravioli. It was really good, but for some strange reason my appetite was not that great.

Another highlight was that it apparently didn't register that I was totally uncomfortable the entire time. I am not exactly well known for having a poker face in situations like this. I can't imagine how anyone would not figure it out. Someone didn't seem to notice, because I was invited back to his place to "watch a movie or something."

This is not my first barbecue, I know what that means. Having the nerve to ask that? Truly remarkable. That, or a definitive sign of complete insanity. As if the aforementioned events weren't already a solid case. Those are just the things I thought other people might think were funny, I'm not even giving a play by play.

I rarely have nightmares that are spurred by something that happened in a given day, but people were getting their throats slit in my nightmares last night. I don't think I am going to be going on another date any time in the near future.