Baaaaaad Date

So, I've been sort of synthesizing this experience, and I think I have it in hand enough to actually write about it here. So here's the deal. A little over a week ago, I got an e-mail from someone on Hurry Date, which has an online component something like that of Match, in addition to the parties. I was surprised, because it wasn't a profile I'd put a lot of work into, and didn't really take it that seriously, because I figured I would be meeting people in person before they actually looked at the profile itself. But anyway, this guy contacted me through the system, and I took a look at his profile and was like, well, okay. I'll give it a try. So we e-mailed back and forth for a few days, and then we agreed to meet up on the following Tuesday. He sent me his phone number and said, well, give me a call this weekend and we'll set it up. So I called him on Sunday afternoon, and discovered that he was in Pennsylvania, and he had terrible reception on his phone. So he says, Call me on Monday. Now, I personally felt that my phone call obligation was fulfilled by calling him on Sunday, but fine. So I called him on Monday around lunchtime and left a message that said, essentially, Hey, I'm calling to set something up for tomorrow night, give me call back. I have a meeting at around 2pm, but just leave a message. And I heard...nothing. No acknowledgement, no phone call, no e-mail, nothing. So I was...annoyed. Because this was ridiculous. On Thursday I got an e-mail titled "Your Back", and in the message it said, well, you came back, so drop me an e-mail. To which my reaction was....what? Back? From where? What did I say that made him think I was leaving town? And furthermore, there is a grammatical error in the title of the e-mail.

I, of course, immediately told all my friends, who were like, what a jackass. I discarded it and was like, whatever.

Fast forward to Saturday morning, when I am lying in bed reading becase, frankly, 10 am is too early for me to get up (shut up. Like you're not slothful on Saturdays if you can be.), and my cell phone rang. I, foolishly, picked it up, and yep. You guessed it. It's the guy. So I told him that I didn't think that I was ever going to hear from him again, given that he'd blown me off, and that this was not a great first impression I had of him. So he apologized, and I felt sort of bad, and, well, I thought it would be nice to go out, so I agreed to meet up with him at the Continental (only an awesome pool hall down in Rosslyn, which I love).

So, I show up for the evening, wearing jeans and a black button down shirt. He is wearing...a giant yellow t-shirt and cargo shorts. Way to look nice there, Skippy. Makes a girl feel special. So I get up to the bar, and got some water and a cider, he's pretty much sticking to water. So we chat, and get some food, and whatever, normal early first date stuff. And then he's done drinking water, and he's ready to start drinking for real.

And he commences to drink. And drink. And drink. I'm talking, he had about four or five vodka and fill-in-the-mixer-heres. And it's getting late at this point, and he asks if I want to see a movie. And I was like, well, okay, that might be fun. So we decide to go see The Wedding Crashers (I'll sideline here to say that it is a very funny movie, and that I enjoyed it, and it's not nearly as raunchy as it was made out to be). But we have to sort of wait around a little bit before it's worth it to go over to the movie theater. In that time he manages to suck down a couple more drinks, having switched to Long Island Ice Teas (which makes me think of the Sex in the City episode where Miranda brings Staten Island Ice Teas, sips it, and declares, "Hello, I'm drunk."). So we settle up the bill, and he says, hey, can you contribute to this? I was like okay, well, I did have three drinks and some chicken tenders, so I threw in twenty bucks.

So we head over to the Georgetown theatres, and we see the movie. After the movie, he's like, Let's go over to Chadwick's. I was like, man, I'm really tired. I'd like to head back. He totally overruled me, and dragged me into Chadwick's. Where I ordered a Diet Coke, and he ordered a vodka and cranberry. And he turned into the obnoxious drunk guy who randomly strikes up conversations with strangers, asking them totally inappropriate questions, harrassing the bartender and being really annoying. It is at this point that I am getting sympathetic looks from other people at the bar, and I start to feel desperate. Like, I really need to go home. Now.

It is at this point that I turn into someone I don't like, and this person is called Bitchy Girl, who looks on everything the guy does with a disapproving look, says in a bitchy and sort of whiny tone of voice that she's ready to go, and puts on an air of infinite patience when the guy she's with turns around and asks a random girl, "Where are you going now?"

Did I mention that in the course of forty minutes he drank four cranberry and vodkas? And not just rail vodka, oh no. Grey Goose vodka.

Closing time comes, and he throws his money on the counter and announces, "I don't have enough money, you have to pitch in." Well, before he said this he yelled at the bartender for charging us for the Diet Coke (because, yeah, $1.95 was going to make all the difference), and tried to say that he didn't have enough and could the guy help him out. Klassy. So I'm like, well, I can see that I'm going to chipping in here, too, so I throw down another twenty dollars, and we leave.

Outside he randomly introduces himself to two other people, and says I'm English, and one of the guys tries to be all British to me, and I'm like, "Yeah, I'm not British." We find a cab, which I'm pretty sure isn't supposed to be picking us up, because it's a Virginia cab. There's some altercation with the people getting out, where they try to short the cabbie, so that takes some time to straighten out, and we get in the cab and go back to Virginia. I ended up just giving the cabbie my last twenty and sent the guy home, because, at that point, I would have paid any amount of money to go home.

And, astoundingly, he thought it went really well, and called me the next day. So I ended up writing him an e-mail telling him that I didn't think we should pursue it.

Really, just one of the worst nights I've ever endured. I mean, I can drink, and I've hung out with people who can put it away, but I don't think I have ever been with someone who sucked down that much alcohol in that short a period of time and got that drunk. I mean, what was he thinking?