Friday, February 02, 2007

Blinding Me With... (The Friday List)

I've got a blind date coming up next weekend, arranged by the fabulous H. Here's what I know: he's cute, he's supersmart (postdoc, I think), and he's from Australia. Oh, and he loves femmes. I'm thinking of calling him The Australian or The Theorist, but I think I'll know for sure once I meet him. (Of course, he may not even prove nickname-worthy, but I sure am hoping he is.)

Anyhoo, in honor of the impending commencement of what I hope will be my next dating adventure here in Guyville, I hereby proclaim this week's Friday List: Best and Worst Blind Date stories. You know you've got 'em. So spill 'em -- whatever happens with me and The Yet-To-Be-Named, I'm going to want to know how it all measures up!

4 comments:

Literary Auntie said...

Worst - We met each other for a few drinks. I nursed two drinks, he guzzled about eight or nine (maybe more, he drank so fast it was hard to count), while telling me that A) he's polyamorous, and I'd better be OK with that, B) he's always out of town with his job, and I'd better be OK with that, and C) he still lives with his mother, so I'd better be OK with that. Then he wanted to get something to eat, and I didn't want to be rude, so I went with him. He would say things that I REALLY didn't agree with, and I would argue with him (sort of playfully), and he would immediately change his position. After dinner, he wanted to go out drinking again. I wanted to go home, so I did. I mean, I'm all for honesty, but we were on a first date, and he just unloaded on me. And I can't respect someone who doesn't at least try to stick to their guns instead of acquiescing on every little thing.

I've never had a good blind date.

Anonymous said...

Well, I guess this is only an "almost blind date," but my mother tried to set me up on a date with a slightly crazy Russian stripper, once.

To her credit, I don't think she realized that the girl was slightly crazy or a stripper.

The worst: When I was in high-school, I had friends that lived about a half an hour away, and their homecoming was approaching. They said that I should take one of their friends to homecoming. There'd be no pressure, it would just be fun, and maybe we'd get along, etc. I said "Sure. Sounds like fun, but give me a call and let me know the details." This was about a month and a half/two months before the actual dance.
Anyway, I never heard back from them about it, and I sort of forgot about it. Time passes, and one day I come home around 8:30 from a marching band competition, and my mother asks me how it went. I start to tell her, and she interrupts me- "Oh, by the way. Were you supposed to take some poor girl to homecoming tonight?" By this time, I've pretty much forgotten about the homecoming thing, so there's this weird moment where I'm trying to figure out what she's talking about, and suddenly it clicks. It turns out that my friend called while I was at the competition, and that they were wondering when I was going to be there, and whether I was going to meet them for dinner, or at the dance. Of course, that was around 4:00 or so.
So, I run upstairs and change out of my uniform, grab a quick shower, and go flying out of the house. I drive out there, and spend about 20 minutes looking for the school (I'd never been to their school before). I get there, and, of course, they won't let me in the building. I don't go to the school, and I don't have a ticket. So, I have to sit outside and wait. I'm sort of looking through the windows, hoping to see one of the four people I actually know, so that I can get in.
Eventually, I did get inside, in time for two songs. The girl took it fine, and thought it was sort of funny, but I was mortified, and my friends were hyper-pissed.

Now that I think about it, that was actually one of the last times I heard from them.

Anonymous said...

i have some great blind date stories, but since one of the entanglements that sprung from a recent great blind date is currently collapsing even before it really started, i'm just gonna go with the worst. sorry, ladyred. you'll just have to take my word for it that i have met a lot of great people on blind dates.

my worst blind date (actually, i think this is my worst date, period), though, was a doozy. it was with a guy who was writing a novel, but also refused to read anything written after 1950, because he didn't want to waste his time reading anything that wasn't good. and he thought that the way to judge whether a book was good was to see if it had been stamped "good" by the culture at large. and 50-some-odd years was the amount of time he thought needed to pass before the cultural stamp of "good" could be considered durable and true. i was too stunned by the boneheadedness of this to ask him why anyone should ever take a chance on reading *his* book, then. but at least i did manage to engage him a little bit on the 50-years-cultural-metric insanity, not that it changed his perspective one iota.

he also said that he wouldn't read jane austen (one of my favorite authors) because she is "too girly." i seem to recall that he told me he formed this opinion because he read jane eyre once and didn't like it. leaving aside the whole bronte-sisters-totally-different-
from-austen issue, he knew when he made this comment that i do feminist things as a job and a labor of love--so i think he was also trying to piss me off in addition to just being an ass.

i didn't even wait for him to finish his beer before i stuck out my hand and said, "well, it's been nice to meet you, but i think it's time for me to go."

Anonymous said...

Best and Worst, for different reasons. The date was blind on my part, he had seen my picture. He was an older guy a friend of mine said I would "just love". He lives about an hour from me but happened to be driving through town one night. We had a few very sexually charged phone calls and decided to meet at the easiest place for him to find which happened to be the Holiday Inn Bar. He was a stunningly beautiful, corporate biker type with a mouth like Friggin' Brad Pitt. We didn't even have a drink, we went directly to the hotel room and barely spoke...well, in complete sentences, I mean. When he was through I thought my face was going to fall off...The Best. In the afterglow...or whatever....I ask him if he's tired and if he'd like me to leave, firmly believing he would laugh and say, "don't be silly, of course not". He said "yes"...The Worst. And then acted like he was interested in seeing me again while he walked me to my car....I've not seen him since. To all those who may date him I say, "Good Luck".