My first venture into those manatee-infested waters wasn’t exactly terrible, but it didn’t lead anywhere, as the girl I met up with was really only looking for friends and lived two hours away, and eventually moved even further away.
The second one was another story entirely, and here comes said story.
I’d received a response to the personal I’d placed – this was in the days where there were lots of free online personals that hadn’t been bought out by match.com and the other subscription-based services – from a woman named Ellie.
She seemed nice enough, and I tried my best not to be daunted by the fact that she had a kid, as even then I was constantly being told that I was “too picky.”
(If you’re at an all-you-can-eat buffet that has been picked clean and isn’t being re-stocked, does the fact that you come back with an empty plate make you too picky? The problem isn’t that I’m too picky, it’s that there is nothing to pick.)
So I’d arranged for us to meet at one of the bars in the bar sandwich, the one indicated by the “$$$” in my diagram.
Then, after the plans were made, she elected to e-mail me a picture of herself.
I’m not sure whether, in the conversation that we had about the picture, it was me or it was Eric who cleverly (and cruelly) concluded that “Ellie” must be short for “Elliephant,” but given that I’m the one telling the story, I’ll lay claim to it.
Regardless of my horrible play on words, I’m not a complete asshat, and so I resolved to go through with the date, as it was the right thing to do, and for all I knew it was entirely possible that she would have such a vivacious and engaging personality that I would be able to look past shallow considerations of appearance.
I wasn’t holding my breath on that score, though, and had arranged for Eric and our roommate Tim to swing by in the course of the date and bail me out.
At this point, Eric and I were looking to get into brewing our own beer, and had been to a meeting of a local brew club and been invited to their annual picnic.
In an instance of lousy timing, said picnic was the same day as my big (emphasis on big) date.
There was no way I was not going to the picnic, and, given the sheer volume of really good, lovingly-crafted beer that would present, there was no way that I wasn’t going to get shit-faced. Still, I thought that I could manage things so that I wouldn’t be completely tanked by the time I showed up for my date. After all, the picnic started at 11 AM, which meant that I could get loaded and have plenty of time to get home and take a nap and get at least somewhat sobered up.
Of course, after the picnic we stopped at our favorite bar (the “$” one) for happy hour, and beyond, and by the time I got home I barely had the opportunity to shower and change clothes, and had been drinking for pretty much the past 7 hours.
Admittedly, by that stage of my drinking career I had built up an impressive tolerance for alcohol, but even I had my limits, so I was several sheets to the wind by the time I arrived at the bar, and, with a sinking feeling, spotted Ellie.
When I was a drunk I was never blessed – or cursed – with the ability to put on “beer goggles,” so being tanked really didn’t help me at all in this instance.
To be fair to me, I don’t think that it makes me shallow to not be physically attracted to someone who was the equivalent of two and a half of me.
Still, I soldiered on, and joined her at the bar, and decided, “Well, maybe we could be friends.”
I soon learned that even this wasn’t possible, as she was a thoroughly unpleasant person who spent most of the evening telling me stories about all of the times she’d been beaten up by previous boyfriends. Naturally I felt bad for her, but come on, who does that? Why would you make that the primary topic of conversation?
And when I tried to talk she was constantly interrupting me, latching onto specific keywords in everything I said to go off on a tangent about a subject relating to those particular words – much like those in-text pop-up ads that seem to be springing up everywhere, and which Fred recently wrote about over at Slacktivist – and inevitably steering the conversation back to stories about her abusive boyfriends.
Per my request, Eric and Tim had showed up, but opted not to interrupt, choosing instead to watch me squirm while they waited for me to notice that they’d arrived.
Mercifully, the date came to an end, but as I walked her to her car she expressed her interest in seeing me again, and gave me her card with her home number written on it.
As she drove off, I waved to her with the hand holding her card, and, oops, wouldn’t you know, the card slipped out and fell into the gutter. Despite everything, I did feel kind of bad about turning into the jerk who says he’ll call – because he feels trapped and fears for his safety should he honestly state his lack of interest in a woman who is clearly unstable and is two and a half times his size – knowing full well that he never will.
And again, I suppose it’s possible that my rejection of a very large and annoying woman is somehow an indication that I’m “too picky,” but at the same time I know that all of the people who would accuse me of that are the same people who would make fun of me if I were to hook up with an elephant.
In the cold, brief light of sobriety the next day I realized that, besides her weight and annoying loquaciousness, another factor that made her so unappealing was the Groucho Factor, which is to say, “I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member.” I mean, how desperate and needy to you have to be to want to pursue a relationship with someone who showed up for a date with you in the middle of an all-day drunk? And who needs someone with that level of neediness and desperation in his life? Not this guy.
After sending a dismissive and non-committal reply to the e-mail that was waiting for me at work on Monday morning that said things like “I’m glad you had a good time,” she got the hint and I never heard from her again.
However, one Saturday night weeks later my friends and I were at the “$” bar, and when I returned to our table after getting drinks at the bar, my roommate Tim said, “Jon, guess who’s here?” I said, hopefully, “Tall Chick?” He shook his head, and I noted the barely-restrained glee on his face and said, weakly, “Ellie?”
With a spreading smile he nodded and indicated her position with an inclination of his head. “She was staring at you the whole time you were at the bar,” he said, giggling at my ever-increasing pallor.
I sighed and resolved to simply pretend that she wasn’t there, casting occasional furtive glances to check if she was still looking at me (she was).
Eventually I ran into an obstacle to my continuing attempts to pretend that I didn’t see her in that I’d been drinking for some time and my bladder was beginning to urgently insist on being emptied and Ellie was seated directly between me and the men’s room.
Eventually, with steely resolve, I stood up…and turned around and walked out the front door and over to the “$$$” bar to use their men’s room.
My ploy paid off, and by the time I returned to my friends after answering nature’s – and cowardice’s – call, she was gone, never to be seen or heard from again.
Okay, so I’ll admit it: I’m a horrible, shallow person.
But you can’t judge me because you never had to face down (or run away from) a raging Elliephant.
As a somewhat humiliating side note, I need to mention that at this time I was working for the commercial printing arm of a publishing company that owned several newspapers in the region. One day, prior to the date with Ellie, I had mentioned my date to a co-worker and was overheard by the Publisher, who took an interest because he’d been thinking about adding some online personals to the paper’s Web site and also a regular feature in the paper about dating and socializing in the area.
So on the Monday after the date he came around to ask me how it went.
(He actually said, very loudly, in the presence of everyone in the bullpen, “Super Jon!” which is what he usually called me, for whatever reason, “How’d the big date go?”)
It was a strange (and embarrassing) situation to be in, knowing that my abortive attempts at having a love life were potential fodder for featured articles and for making business decisions (and were being broadcast to everyone within earshot).
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