Worst Date Ever...

It's no secret that a lot of the posts I put up here are inspired by my own personal experiences with guys. Good or bad, I'm not afraid to share them with you all. What is a secret however, is which exact ones are based on my life and which ones are not, that I like to keep to myself. But for this one, I'm going to get personal, not because I suddenly feel closer to all of you (sorry), but because one of you has asked me this question directly, so of course, I will do my best to answer... plus, it's a decent story so why not.

You know that feeling you get when you know someone is staring at you in that creepy, interested, I-purposely-didn't-bring-a-pen-so-that-I-can-ask-her-for-one kinda way, but you don't want to look them directly in the face for fear of them thinking that you're reciprocating so you just ignore them in hopes of coming off cold and hope they get the point? Well, that's pretty much the pretext of this story. A whole semester of it. Eventually both the staring and the semester ended, but not before I got depressed about my 'singlehood' and somewhat of a 'loner' status. Next thing I knew it was winter break, I was lonely, and new to facebook... so I got to stalking.

Long story short, saw the guy from class on FB, couldn't remember if he was cute or not - since I never really got to look at him with all the avoiding I was doing - so I took a chance and started talking to him. He was actually really nice, and we soon became good "friends". Then he asked me out and, in the spirit of putting myself out there, I said why not.

You know that feeling you get when you've realized that you've made a stupid decision and you start trying really hard to either turn back, or push forward the dials on your watch through an intense, focused concentration of your mind, but then realize that you are in fact, only human, and will therefore have to suffer through the consequences? Well, that's what I felt the moment I got off the bus and saw him. 5'7 (...I'm 5'9), baggy jeans covered in what I believe were various iron-on patches of NBA teams, and a limp that would put my grandmother to shame. Instantly I shut off. It was like my brain just checked out for the night, not even interested in the events to come for humour's sake. Needless to say, everything after that point was a disaster.

First of all, the plan was that I was picking-up the movie, and he was picking-up dinner. Not only did I not get a say in which movie we would get to watch because he had seen just about every movie there is and just "hates watching the same movie twice", but his taste in film happened to be shit as well and we ended up with this terrible Justin Timberlake movie, Alpha Dog. Mhmm. Then, for dinner, he offers me a bunch of take-out flyers. Being a gentleman, according to him, meant letting me choose the $8 meal of my liking. Obviously, I was very impressed. Not. When the food arrived I noticed two things: first, the delivery guy was Arab, which meant my Chinese food couldn't possibly be all that Chinesy (yet another let down to the evening), and second, for some strange reason, both the delivery guy and my date were looking over at me after the total amount due was announced. That's right, I was paying.

If my brain checked out earlier, then this was the point where the rest of body followed suit. The remainder of the evening was more or less of a blur to tell you the truth. We took the elevator back up, ate the food (which was, as predicted, absolutely terrible), and watched the movie, all of it, in absolute silence. He tried to get close, tried to get me to talk and loosen up a little, stroking my leg and trying to cuddle up, but I wasn't having any of it. I remember making up some excuse about needing to meet up with my sister in order to get out of there asap. I still saw him around school for the next year or so after that, but it was on more of a "hi" and "bye" basis.

Was it fair that I wrote him off almost instantly based on his appearance? Maybe not. Was I right to? Most definitely. So there.