A VWD Two For One
About two years ago a friend of mine told me she wanted to set me up with her friend, we’ll call him Nick. I was wary of going out with him, but seeing how my friend was in a successful relationship with a great guy, I figured I would at least get to know him a little. So Nick and I talked for about a month on Facebook and then decided that we were finally going to go to dinner at Olive Garden (a classy place for broke college students) and then see where the night went from there. We had planned to meet at the restaurant, and he was 30 minutes late, but not being known for my punctuality, I decided to let it slide. When he finally showed up, he was about six inches shorter than the 6’1″ he had claimed. I’m 5’9″ and have dated shorter guys before so I didn’t really care. After a short, very awkward wait we were seated at a booth, and within moments of sitting down he proceeded to complain about the table, the lighting, the cheap wine glasses, the other diners and everything else he could think of, even though he picked the restaurant.
When the waitress came to take our orders, he decided he was going to order for me. He ordered both of us the largest steaks on the menu, even though I had told him in earlier conversations that I am a vegetarian. I politely told the waitress that I was a vegetarian and would like the spaghetti with marinara sauce instead. Nick immediately shot me a look of disgust and started inhaling his salad and bread sticks as if to silence himself. As soon as the waitress left, I was told that vegetarians were dumb because he, “got to the top of the food chain for a reason” and he wasn’t “going to just sit on top and eat rabbit food, he was going to eat the rabbit.” After this every word that came out of my mouth lost its credibility because I was a “left-wing-vegetarian-nut-job,” and was immediately challenged by his “superior know-how.” At this point, I was thoroughly disgusted by his behavior, and was dying for him to hurry up and eat so we could pay and I could get the hell out of there.
I was nearly finished with my food, when he decided I “ate a lot for a girl” and that he “didn’t know vegetarians actually ate that much food.” At this point, I was pissed off to say the least and I politely excused myself from the table to use the restroom. The bathrooms are right by the entrance and exit doors of the restaurant, so I decided I was just going to leave. I found my waitress, paid my part of the bill, and left.
But sadly that wasn’t even MVWD…
A year later after my first dating mishap, another friend told me she wanted to hook me up with her friend who had just moved back to town. Being jaded by my previous set-up, it took a lot of convincing and the promise that she would take me out for a night on the town, on her, if the date went sour. My date’s name was Nick (I figured it couldn’t be the same guy) and he was 15 minutes late, which I chalked it up to him being lost since he had just moved back into town. So when he finally arrived, I was floored when in walked the Nick from my first date, wearing a black dress shirt unbuttoned so you could see his chest hair (ew) and chunky gold jewelry, all while sporting a HUGE blowout haircut. I wanted to run away, but he had already spotted me. We sat at the bar and ordered our drinks, I said, “So Nick, how have you—” and was immediately cut off by him saying, “I don’t go by Nick anymore, its Epic.” I rolled my eyes and said, “Okay, so Epic, how have you been?” I got this long-winded story about all of his trips that he had been taking. He had been backpacking across Europe, he had been to Spain, Portugal, India (not in Europe, but i didn’t say anything), and North Korea.
I corrected him, “You mean South Korea?” but I was told that no, he had in fact been in North Korea. He then pulled out a cheap digital camera and showed me pictures from his trips that were obviously pictures taken of pictures from National Geographic Magazines and computers (the tell tale black stripes were on the pictures, he told me they were from his “crappy digital camera”). Some of the pictures even had the edges of text boxes in them. I was so thoroughly repulsed and completely annoyed that I told him I had to go because I had to be somewhere early the next morning and went to grab the bartenders attention so I could close my tab. He grabbed me by the arms, looked at me very seriously, and said, “Wait, you cant go. You left me the last time and since we’ve been set up twice, it must mean we’re soul mates! You and I, we belong together. So at least, take me home with you so I can show you why they call me Epic.” After two completely terrible dates, this guy thought we were soul mates. I laughed out loud and walked away. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was probably more of an Epic Fail than an Epic Night.
My friend bought me drinks that night at the bar, her boyfriend brought a friend with him named Bryan. That was a year ago, I’m still with Bryan, and my night with Epic Fail was completely worth it after meeting him.
