A Clean Getaway
I endured a bad date last night. I wasn’t looking forward to the night, I hadn’t really even thought about it ahead of time—All pre-date interaction led me to think that he was a very nice person, intelligent, and well-intentioned. So I agreed.
I made the mistake of running after work in the 90 degree heat. My standard four mile route took over 45 minutes, leaving me only 20 minutes to shower, stick some clothing to my sweaty torso, and hustle to the bar. I arrived with a red face and mop of hair, sweating like I’d just finished a series of interval sprints. Outside the bar, one of my acquaintances from the Brooklyn Inn pool table was having a beer, a man named Claude who is quite attractive despite a dead front tooth. We exchanged hellos and I resigned myself to head into the trenches.
The conversation was just fine, pleasant enough for a bar exchange. The discomfort creeped in when ten minutes into our beers he said, “So I hope you like this bar, I was hoping for somewhere romantic.” I cleared my throat, “Yeah sure, it’s very air conditioned.” I excused myself to the bathroom and when I returned my date had resettled himself in the corner of the couch where I had been sitting, his feet elevated on the chair he had formerly occupied, and his arm stretched over the top of the couch leaving me no place to sit but under it.
Simultaneously the bar’s “Singer/Songwriter” open mike began. A man started strumming and singing a song about a condom breaking. I attempted to hunch my back so that there was no chance of touching my date’s arm. To my right at the bar, a man was playing one of those nudie matching games where you have two photographs of semi-naked women side-by-side and you have to identify the small differences between the images by touching the screen. The nudie game blipped every once and a while and the singer held a long note “Laaaa-aaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaatex.” My date turned to me and muttered “So how do think this date is going so far.” I could see Claude outside talking to some people in a convertible. I wanted to sprint past him and hop in, Dukes of Hazard style, screaming “Let’s make a clean getaway.”
I managed to finally wiggle out of the evening at 11 pm when it was still about 115 degrees, and my date wanted to hit another bar and “maybe play a game of pool.” I thought to myself “no way, not at my Brooklyn Inn, what would all the contractors, ex navy-guys, alcoholic teachers, and aging hipsters think?” Instead I trotted home and collapsed on the couch.
All-in-all I really hadn’t felt like an interesting or pleasant date. My energy for conversation slowly leaked out, deflated by the heat, surroundings, and attention. I wasn’t sure why my companion wanted to continue the evening, to me it was clear that the thing called “chemistry” was buzzing no where near the air between us. As so many songs preach and women’s magazines try to advise, chemistry is indeed unexplainable. I suppose part of that unknown is quite exhilarating at times. Other times, I kind of wish we could devise a system where we hold up a score card like a figure skating judge. Earlier in the night, when my date was playing the air-drum to the condom song, I would have held up a 2 and he would have known that things were going downhill. He could have protected himself a little.
Maybe next time I’ll just perform the gesture of a knife cutting my throat and the boy will get the picture. Though on the other hand, maybe next time I’ll be the pushy romantic attempting to impress with a candlelit bar, big vocabulary, and experiments in performing arts. I guess you never know when you’ll pop up on one end of the see-saw or the other.
I made the mistake of running after work in the 90 degree heat. My standard four mile route took over 45 minutes, leaving me only 20 minutes to shower, stick some clothing to my sweaty torso, and hustle to the bar. I arrived with a red face and mop of hair, sweating like I’d just finished a series of interval sprints. Outside the bar, one of my acquaintances from the Brooklyn Inn pool table was having a beer, a man named Claude who is quite attractive despite a dead front tooth. We exchanged hellos and I resigned myself to head into the trenches.
The conversation was just fine, pleasant enough for a bar exchange. The discomfort creeped in when ten minutes into our beers he said, “So I hope you like this bar, I was hoping for somewhere romantic.” I cleared my throat, “Yeah sure, it’s very air conditioned.” I excused myself to the bathroom and when I returned my date had resettled himself in the corner of the couch where I had been sitting, his feet elevated on the chair he had formerly occupied, and his arm stretched over the top of the couch leaving me no place to sit but under it.
Simultaneously the bar’s “Singer/Songwriter” open mike began. A man started strumming and singing a song about a condom breaking. I attempted to hunch my back so that there was no chance of touching my date’s arm. To my right at the bar, a man was playing one of those nudie matching games where you have two photographs of semi-naked women side-by-side and you have to identify the small differences between the images by touching the screen. The nudie game blipped every once and a while and the singer held a long note “Laaaa-aaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaatex.” My date turned to me and muttered “So how do think this date is going so far.” I could see Claude outside talking to some people in a convertible. I wanted to sprint past him and hop in, Dukes of Hazard style, screaming “Let’s make a clean getaway.”
I managed to finally wiggle out of the evening at 11 pm when it was still about 115 degrees, and my date wanted to hit another bar and “maybe play a game of pool.” I thought to myself “no way, not at my Brooklyn Inn, what would all the contractors, ex navy-guys, alcoholic teachers, and aging hipsters think?” Instead I trotted home and collapsed on the couch.
All-in-all I really hadn’t felt like an interesting or pleasant date. My energy for conversation slowly leaked out, deflated by the heat, surroundings, and attention. I wasn’t sure why my companion wanted to continue the evening, to me it was clear that the thing called “chemistry” was buzzing no where near the air between us. As so many songs preach and women’s magazines try to advise, chemistry is indeed unexplainable. I suppose part of that unknown is quite exhilarating at times. Other times, I kind of wish we could devise a system where we hold up a score card like a figure skating judge. Earlier in the night, when my date was playing the air-drum to the condom song, I would have held up a 2 and he would have known that things were going downhill. He could have protected himself a little.
Maybe next time I’ll just perform the gesture of a knife cutting my throat and the boy will get the picture. Though on the other hand, maybe next time I’ll be the pushy romantic attempting to impress with a candlelit bar, big vocabulary, and experiments in performing arts. I guess you never know when you’ll pop up on one end of the see-saw or the other.
posted by Rebecca at 10:24 AM
1 Comments:
claude: strangely attractive because of (versus in spite of) the dead front tooth. and a damn fine pool player to boot.
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