A guy I was just getting to know invited me over to his house to watch a movie. As he gave me a tour of his home, I noticed some odd things. First, was the two-foot by two-foot wooden box with several live rattlesnakes in it. Then, there was the small animal skeleton. I couldn’t help asking about the animal skeleton. The guy told me that it was an owl and described the work that went into mounting it onto a board. I must have appeared interested, because he became very excited and decided to show me his real treasure: a bag full of animal skulls that he kept in his closet.
The animals included a raccoon, squirrel, cat, opossum, rat and several others. He explained to me that he didn’t kill the animals himself, just merely found them on the side of the road, took them home, boiled the flesh off of them and bleached them. Oh, well then that’s perfectly normal.
I excused myself and didn’t stay for the movie.
At 14, I went to a cousin’s Bar Mitzvah and sat at the table with the other awkward teens. Being the chatty kid that I was, I began talking to some of the other kids at the table. Hours later my Aunt informs me that one of the other teens, B.B., at the table thinks I am cute and wants to know if I would go on a date with him. As I had never been on a date before, I asked my parents, who at this point were talking with BB’s parents and they agree it’s okay because he seems like a “nice young Jewish man.”
After a few short phone calls with B.B. he agreed to pick me up at my house. I got all dolled up and nervously stepped into his car. Within minutes he lit a cigarette and asked if I want one too.
“No thanks,” I said.
He proceeded to ask me if I “smoke anything” and went down the list of possibly every illegal drug, telling me he had done them all. I was already dumb founded, but continued to go to the restaurant. As he ate his food with a spoon he began telling me about his acting career and how he won an Academy Award last year, clearly trying to impress me with his “Hollywood lifestyle.” Dinner was over and although I was ready to go home, he was enjoying his time and began laying the compliments on thick.
Being 14, and naive, he was able to easily convince me to go for a walk…in a park…in the dark. We walked around the park and he led me to a bench near the front of the new carousel.
We sat down and he asked me, “Do you want to do it sitting up or lying down?”
I was confused as to what he wanted to do and asked him for clarification.
“It..sex. Should we move to the back of the carousel so no one can see us?” he asked.
I told him we weren’t having sex and he got upset. “Then what are we going to do? You’re so uptight.”
Not knowing what to do and realizing that I was in a park at night with a horny guy I feigned illness and told him my stomach hurt and I needed to go home now. He dropped me off and although I never heard from him, I did have the joy of seeing him at various family events. I later found out he told his parents that I was a “fast girl” and he didn’t want to see me anymore because I was “too aggressive.”
I met this guy at a Target where we talked for a moment and about a month later, he found me on MySpace and sent me a message. Out of boredom, I gave him my cell number and we talked. For some bizarre reason, even though he was completely not my type, I agreed to go out with him on the Fourth of July. He told me he was a cop and a firefighter. The day before we were supposed to meet, he called and said that on our date he would have to “run a sting” on a drug dealer. I told him I definitely didn’t want to be involved in that. Then the day of the date he called and said, “I’m in New York right now, but I’m flying back this afternoon. Can you pick me up at the airport?”
My first instinct was to say heck no and end things there. But I’m one of those jaded, bitter women who don’t believe in romance, so I wanted to be something different this time around. So I said okay and made the hour drive to the airport, all dressed up and girly-looking. It took him an hour and half after his flight landed to walk out of the airport. He was twitchy and he flashed this wad of cash at me and said an undercover met him in the terminal and gave it to him so he could “run the sting.” I told him then that we were not doing that and especially not in my car.
So when we got back into town, he kept asking me to stop at convenient stores and finally his friend’s apartment. After that, he asked me to drive him to crack-town motel, where he claimed he had to stay because it was a safe house. He got really, really sick, so when he went up to the room and didn’t come down for an hour, I waited because I didn’t want the guy to have died. Right about the time I was going to call 911 and book it, he came down. We’d already missed the fireworks and our dinner reservations. I told him I was tired and going home and he got all whiny and begged for one more chance. I was hungry, so I said okay, and I drove us to a restaurant that was still open down the street. I had to pee and I made sure that I had my purse when I left the table.
Unfortunately, I’d left my keys on the table. When I came back, my keys and my car were gone! After four and a half hours the cops finally showed up. Turns out, the guy was a crackhead, and this was his routine. When they found my car the next day, it was a disgusting mess. They arrested him, he got out on bail and then did it again to another woman!
It was our sixth or seventh date, dinner with his best friend and best friend’s girl. We chose a local German restaurant renowned for its splendid décor and exhaustive selection of Bavarian beer. Seated in the middle of the crowded restaurant, the four of us were finishing our sauerbraten, wiener schnitzel, smoked bratwurst, pickled beets, sauerkraut and second round of Berliner Weiss beer, when I suddenly realized that my date, who rarely stopped talking, had stopped talking. He sat silent, elbows on the table and head bowed down.
I leaned over and asked, “Are you okay?”
He raised his head. His cheeks began to inflate. A torrent of partially-digested beer, sauerkraut, pickled beets, smoked bratwurst, wiener schnitzel and sauerbraten burst from his mouth, accompanied by noisy, violent retching. It splattered his plate, covered the utensils and gushed all over the white table cloth. All conversation in the restaurant stopped. Other diners froze in mid-bite, forks poised in the air.
Just as I was about to whisk him off to the men’s room, his cheeks inflated again and he let loose with another round — this time less violent but way more plentiful. It spilled onto the table and spread in gentle rivulets. This episode seemed to last forever, since a captive audience of 50 horrified diners cringed in our direction until it stopped. His friend finally swept him off to the bathroom. The friend’s girlfriend, showing a fine knack for disappearing in a crisis, disappeared.
I was left sitting alone amid the acrid-smelling, gag-inducing mess. Our dirndl-clad waitress stood ten feet away, not moving, glaring at me with Teutonic disgust. I piled the plates and glasses into the middle of our table, gathered the four corners of the table cloth together, then hoisted and handed the vile clattering bundle to the waitress, who begrudgingly took possession and carried it away. My date’s friend returned after depositing my queasy beau outside for some fresh air. We emptied our wallets onto the table without waiting for the check and fled.
Did I eventually forgive my date for this mortifying spectacle? Reader, I married him.
My second year in university I was single, but shy, so I took to meeting guys online. One day I started chatting with a seemingly nice guy, who was a personal trainer and attending college for police foundations. He was cute and fun, so I agreed to a date. He suggested grabbing dinner and movie. For dinner he took us to Tim Hortons, which fellow Canadians know is the largest coffee chain in our nation, and might be the cheapest food around. I am not one to judge someone for being on a budget, but we were downtown, with a plethora of alternative cheap tasty options. In the coffee shop he whipped out a container of cottage cheese and chicken and explained that I could go grab whatever I would like, but he was on a special diet for his training and only eats cottage cheese and chicken every three hours. Again, I just tried not to judge.
We were walking distance from two theatres and a quick subway ride away from a couple other theatres, but he would only go to his favorite movie theatre, which he had been to once, many years ago. This movie theatre in particular was about 45 minutes from my apartment by car. He drove and it took us over an hour and half to get there, as he repeatedly got lost and went on rants about what a “hellhole” this particular area was. By the time we arrived, the only movie playing was the weirdest damn remake of Beowulf I have ever seen, complete with Southern accents and weird sex scenes. At this point in the date it was late, I was tired and unimpressed and wanted to go home. When heading home he asked if I liked trance music and I politely explained that it wasn’t really my scene.
My date promptly said, “That is just because you have never really experienced it. Let me show you how.”
I protested, but he continued to drive me to an abandoned parking lot, pumped the music on full blast and told me to close my eyes and let it wash over me. At this point I was praying that he wasn’t a serial killer who had taken me to said abandoned parking lot to butcher me. Out of nowhere he then explained that he was a tiger lover, in that he was obsessed with tigers and considered them a spiritual manifestation of his soul. He pointed out all the hidden tiger paraphernalia in his car and whipped out his camera to show me pictures of his tiger bed spread, pillows and closet full of tiger plushes. He asked me if I too felt that I might be a tiger? I said no and asked again to go home since I was now quite freaked out. He said he would take me home, but only if I would let “the tiger nibble.” He proceeded to chew on my arm, as a tiger, while the music “washed over” us. At this point I had decided that I was more than okay with judging him as damn weird and creepy.
When I finally got dropped off at home he told me that he had a present for me. He gifted me what was clearly a used children’s stuffed animal complete with sticky stains all over it. Oddly enough it wasn’t a tiger, but an odd looking caterpillar. He told me he hoped I would use to keep warm at night and think of him. After that date I decided it was safer to just buck up and start meeting guys in person.
