The Biker
I had, like so many 30-something professionals with no real spare time, turned to the internet in an attempt to find a half-way decent date. At first, my supposed matches were horrifying (in retrospect, most would have likely ended up as great fodder for this site), but within a couple of weeks I managed to have a few really great and interesting email exchanges with a seemingly hip guy. He was witty, used correct punctuation, liked many of the same bands as me, read books, had a professional job and seemed pretty grounded. Oh, and he was actually really quite cute, so I was looking forward to meeting him.
On the day of our date – we were meeting at a little cafe for dinner – he told me to “watch for the guy on the motorbike.” I was pretty surprised when he showed up on a baby blue electric bicycle. The ones that make whirring noises. Look, I’m not some motorcycle snob or anything and I really do love zipping around on a Vespa, but an electric bicycle is definitely *not* a motorbike. I chalked it up to him wanting to impress me and he filled out the motorcycle jacket pretty well, so I let it go.
Now, I can’t decide if the worst thing about the date was his nonstop boasting about knowing all there is to know about “real machines” like his electric bike, his constant interrupting to correct insignificant details (“actually, the actor you referred to as ‘that guy from Milk‘ has a name. It’s Sean Penn”), the fact that HE ORDERED MY FOOD FOR ME (I was so shocked that I just nodded at the waitress), his 20 minute monologue about having excessive tartar build-up that required monthly de-scaling at the dentist, his amazing ability to insert half a sandwich into his mouth (and continue talking), or his ‘helpful’ suggestion that I’d “look way hotter” if I cut my hair into a pixie-cut and bleached it “because Lori Petty from Tank Girl is every man’s fantasy.”
Not only did he holler at the waitress who was clear cross the restaurant to say “we’ll need separate bills because I’m not paying for her dinner” (which was so completely unnecessary because I always go dutch), he suggested that I was probably a “cheap tipper” because “all girls are cheap tippers” and that he’d cover my 10%. Wow, a whole ten percent! At this point, I was so shocked by how diametrically opposed he was from the dude I had been emailing all week that I got the giggles, which he apparently took as a good sign.
He grabbed my hand as I stood up to flee (after leaving my poor server 25%), pulled me within an inch of his face told me that I was the most amazing woman he’d ever met and that he was going to take me home with him to “end the night right” back at his place. I didn’t stick around to see if he was planning to ‘double’ me home.
I wrote a long comment & no one even acknowledged it 
