Simply Golden
I was on a long cross-country trip with a relative one summer when this guy, M., who’d found me online somewhere and started writing to me. I had sort of a mentor-ly feeling toward him as he seemed somewhat inexperienced. He apparently felt more of an attraction to me and since he seemed nice, I agreed to go out with him when I got home. He seemed especially excited when I half-joked about never missing “The Golden Girls” on Lifetime. Perhaps he was hoping to demonstrate some gay street cred.
I had arranged for us to go to a moderately nice restaurant, so I was bemused upon climbing into his ratty, fry grease-smelling car to find that he was dressed in a stained t-shirt and shorts. He also hadn’t seemed to have showered for a week. He acted extremely happy to be out with me, judging from his breathless, awkward attempts at witty repartee. I tried to reply politely, but I was distracted when he reached around to the back seat and put his cavernous, hairy crack in full view. At dinner, he ordered chicken fingers off the kids’ menu and loudly dropped F-bombs into conversation as often as possible, despite the presence of actual kids at nearby tables. I ordered a couple daquiris to help see me through that and the movie afterward.
Despite having grated my teeth down to nubs by the end, I was unfortunately not stern enough when he made his next suggestion – he’d took my comments from the other day as an invitation to go back to my place to watch “Golden Girls”. So there we were, him with his smelly arm around my shoulder in my place. I was just too nice a guy to tell him to get the hell out, but at least the antics of Sophia et al served to stifle conversation and whatever “moves” he may have planned to make.
Then, the cable went out. I had to endure the next 20 minutes with him snuggling up to me—literally rubbing his head against my shoulder like a cat—cooing that he’d never done this before and how great it was to finally “be with a guy.” The cable finally came back, the Girls finished their adventure, and I pleaded tiredness in order to shoo him away. I accept part of the blame for my awful night—I’ve learned my lesson and will be much more direct the next time I’m stuck with a horrible date!
