When I was in the military, I met a guy in a port call at a club. We really hit it off that night. When I was back out to sea a few days later, he found my email address in the ship’s database, and started writing me. We talked for about a month via email, and he gave me the impression that he might want to date me. As soon as I mentioned this concept, he changed his tone. The next port call was coming up. I should have listened to my instinct. I agreed to go on a date even tough I could tell he wanted something impersonal.

I checked into my hotel room, got dressed to the nines, and waited on time in front of the club for him to show up. Time was rolling by, and I started to feel like an idiot standing out there by myself. An hour passed, and the guy still had not shown up. I finally gave up and went back to my hotel room deflated. I came out of the elevator, and looked out the long picture window lining the second floor where my room is. I noticed a line of guys walking up the sidewalk. All of them were stone cold drunk and stumbling. They stood in front of the club for two seconds, and just left.

When my ship left port a few days later, the guy wrote me wondering where I had been. Apparently he spent two hours beforehand making sure to get as drunk as possible with his friends, and then said to himself, “Screw it. I’ll bring my boys with me on my date.” What a waste of time. I would have appreciated it if he had just told me that he didn’t care about me.

I was 19 when I met R. R was cute, he seemed knowledgeable, and liked the same things I did. We started seeing each other, usually going to diners after I got off work at 2 A.M.

The week after we started seeing each other was when it all went downhill.

My friends and I were partying at a hotel (about 30 minutes from my house) for a concert. I kept texting R, to see if he was coming. He was being vague and flaky, saying he had something else to do.

When he came to the hotel, very late, he kept trying to be the center of attention. He grabbed my friend, who was in the Air Force, and grabbed him in a headlock. My Air Force friend managed to get out of it without hurting R, but things just kept getting weirder.

R asked to come up to my room with me, which I had opened to two other friends while the drummer of the band was downstairs hanging out with everyone. I agreed after he kept pressing, and we went upstairs. Now, I was drunk at this point, admittedly. I had some Jell-O shots, among other things that everyone had brought. R told me he wanted me to go home with him, that he wanted to go all the way. I was hesitant – I didn’t want to leave the festivities – but I agreed. I will state again that I was fairly drunk, and in my PAJAMAS!

So, the next morning I woke up in his bedroom. There were women’s clothing, pill bottles with a woman’s name, and jewelry boxes all over the place. When I finally woke up enough, I demanded to know what was going on. He explained to me that I met him at an awkward time, and that he was engaged to be married and she had just given birth to his child the day before he met me! The reason he could come out late to eat with me was because she was in the hospital, dying. She had less than a 50% chance of surviving, and that he would be all alone raising his newborn son. So, instead of being with HER while she was dying, he was out partying with me.

I pretended to be sympathetic so he would drive me back to the hotel, which he did. I got back to the hotel, and with my friends backing me up, I told him that under no circumstances did I want to continue seeing him. He left, and I went to change and wait for the hotel shuttle for the venue.

We got to the show, and guess who was there – waiting to “surprise me?” I reiterated that I didn’t want to see him. He claimed that he would win me back, no matter what.

So as I was standing with my friends, enjoying one of my favorite bands, R came up to us, beer in hand. He took the beer cap – I have NO idea how he got it at the venue, since they took the caps off of all their beers – in his palm. He then grabbed my arm, with the beer cap in his palm, trying to force me to come with him – using the beer cap to dig into my skin, leaving a scratch and an imprint. My friend C (Air Force friend) grabbed my other arm and led me away, telling R to buzz off. This just enraged R and he kept following me and C. C has ZERO interest in me, but R kept provoking him. C kept his cool, we listened to the show, and we all went back to the hotel after it was over. C kept playing bodyguard, for which I was grateful.

We were all hanging out in my room (we reserved an entire floor) playing music and singing. A few of us had gone to bed, but the rest of us were up and enjoying some drinks and some good food. Suddenly, R walked in and sat down like he belonged there. C quietly got up and asked R to leave. R refused, because this was his “girlfriend’s room.”

As C was about to drag R out for a brawl, I loudly announced that I was going to call the hospital and let the woman whose name was on the pill bottles know that her son’s father was cheating on her while she was dying. R freaked out, because apparently his mother was spending every single second there with his fiancee and his son. C escorted him out, and the next two days were spent lounging around the hotel with my friends.

It’s not the last I saw of R, because he keeps injecting himself in my life.

MVWD happened near the end of my senior year of high school and was entirely my fault. Let me preface by saying I never talk on the phone, if/when I do, I end up spacing out and get easily confused. One Friday one of the guys in my group of friends, let’s call him Adam, calls me up and asks if I want to go see a movie. I say yes thinking it’s a group thing as we have all gone to see movies together before.  He tells me he’ll pick me up around 8:30, and I get ready.

Warning 1:  Adam came to my door to pick me up.  This has never happened before!  He always calls me from the the car when he’s picking me up to hang out with friends.  I recognized the weirdness, but I chose to ignore it.

Warning 2:  The entire car ride there, Adam would not speak. I have had many great conversations with him before, but this time it seemed like he was paying too much attention to me.  ny time I said something, he responded with a one syllable sound that was grunt-like but obviously meant, “Look at me I’m listening to you so much more intently than I usually do!”

Warning 3:  Once we got to the theatre, I pulled out my wallet to pay for my ticket when Adam said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got it.” To which I replied that I wanted to pay for my own ticket.  After going back and forth over who was paying at least five times, I finally said (loudly and awkwardly) “I JUST GOT PAID TODAY, I WANT TO SPEND THE MONEY!”  (Quite the excuse, if I do say so myself.)

We finally got into the theatre and sat through the movie tensely.  I sat plastered to the far side of my seat so I wouldn’t have to worry about that awkward shared arm rest. The movie was Bruno, so there were lots of penis shots, which is really not what I wanted to see while I was in this situation.

The drive back home was about 50 times as awkward as the drive there, and I couldn’t get out of his car fast enough.  The second he pulled up to my house I was all, “Cool, thanks for the ride, see you later, bye!” And I ran into my house. Just as I started to explain to my mom that Adam had actually asked me out (which I probably should have caught on to during that very first phone call), there was a knock on the door.  It was Adam.

He came to my door to apologize for such an awkward night telling me that we were both going off to college soon and he just wanted his one shot.  He didn’t want it to be awkward between us.  I apologized because I felt that it was totally my fault for not even catching on until too late, and assured him that it wouldn’t be awkward in the future.  Adam and I are still great friends and we have put this whole awkward situation behind us.

Our first Broadcastr audio: My Very Worst Attempt at a Date can be heard here.

I was introduced to my date by a mutual friend.  After a few months of talking, we decided to go on a hike in a nearby state park as our first date.  I guess I’ll enumerate all the things that went wrong, which on their own wouldn’t be so bad, but combined made for a disaster (in my mind).

1) We got stuck in horrible traffic (2 hours’ worth) getting to the trailhead, which was already an hour’s drive from where we lived.

2) We had to drive on some curvy roads to get to our destination.  I got horribly car sick and we had to stop every few miles for me to vomit up my breakfast…

3) Even though I was a seasoned hiker and knew better, I wanted to look “hot” so I wore super tight black pants and a tight black blouse.  In the desert. In the summer. So instead of looking sexy, I was sporting some nasty B.O., very visible sweat stains under my boobs, and foundation and mascara melting off my face.

4) I discovered a stash of really really nasty porn in the back seat of his car.  Um, wouldn’t you at least try to hide that kind of thing on your first date?

5) I saw a “Native American heritage” trail listed on our map and was convinced it was a hike I’d taken before and had seen some cool petroglyphs and stuff on.  I hyped it up the entire day.  Then we went on the broiling 5-mile hike and it turned out there were only a few scritch scratch marks high up on a canyon wall.  Guess I remembered wrong!

6) On the way back over the curvy mountain pass 14 hours later, my date got distracted talking to me and we nearly careened off the edge of a cliff.  And then I puked again, this time *in* the car.

This was one of my worst dates but it was also the best. In the insanely long traffic jam, we got to talking and discovered we had a lot in common. On my puking spree, my date wasn’t  fazed at all and kindly held my hair for me. Although my pants were so tight I couldn’t lift my leg to climb over a boulder, he was very chivalrous and lifted or pulled me over every obstacle on the trail (let me remind you that I was pretty rank at that point, too). It turned out his hoopty had broken down the day before and the car was borrowed from a friend who is a pornaholic. And as for the nearly getting hurled off a cliff and walking five miles through the desert for nothing….well, it makes for a good story.

In the end, we went on many more dates and now we are engaged.  My really bad memory and Mary Katherine Gallagher brand of sexy and his general bumbling have become common (and comical) themes in our relationship. We were lucky that our chemistry was enough to overcome a series of unfortunate events. And it ended up making for a sweet story that I got to share with you!

College in the 80s was more a series of hookups than relationships so when I was asked out by BP after a class, in the daylight, totally sober, on a real date, I was thrilled and flattered. He admitted that he had been watching me for close to a year and had wanted to ask me out but every time he worked up the nerve his ex-girlfriend would reappear and they would get back together. After three months of dating without her reappearance, I was pretty confident that she was gone for good.

I felt we were ready to get really serious with each other as Valentine’s Day approached. We made plans to meet at the local hot spot with other couple friends when he got off work. I went a little early with the girls dressed to kill with my hair just the way he liked it, the perfume he loved, ready to be in love on Valentine’s Day for the first time ever. I saw his truck pull into the parking lot and got myself ready for some lip smacking.

He walked in with….insert drum roll here…..with the ex-girlfriend on his arm. She had shown up at the game he was reffing and she decided that they should get back together. What a great guy to “tell” me in public, in front of all our friends, at a place I loved, on Valentine’s Day, that I was dumped! I now wear a black armband on Valentine’s Day every year.