A Narrow Escape

Have you ever been on a date where you're on one page, and you suddenly reach this realization that the person you're with is in a completely different chapter? I've been dating for a while now, and I've encountered a few of these circumstances. Very high on my list would be my date with a man that can really only be described as an enormous black man. By enormous I do not mean fat. I had no interest in this man, but I really wanted to go out with him just because I thought we made such a strange match. I was not at all disappointed. We were a total freak show. I think he was 6'7", and probably on steroids. The looks we got walking along the HB Pier with his arm around me were priceless. He was wearing a wife beater to show off his bicep tattoos. "Jesus" on one arm and "Christ" on the other. How much do I wish I had wired myself up with a video camera that day... It was pretty great. He asked me if I would like to join him in LA that night to watch he and his buddies cage fight. For obvious reasons I felt that it would be best to let him know that wasn't really my scene and decline the offer. It was all a good time until the very end of the date when he unexpectedly went in for a kiss. I think he caught half of my mouth, because I couldn't quite dodge him fast enough. That's when I realized that he was actually on the date because he liked me, not because we looked like freaks together. Bad move on my part I guess.

My date in San Diego this weekend was a pasty white, nerdy BYU grad, who seemed relatively intelligent, and I thought he actually showed some lasting potential. I probably would have been better off with the enormous black man. First of all I agreed to skip watching the BYU game in order to go to the SD zoo with this person. I did not want to miss the game, but my roommate had just given me this little pep-talk about about not letting football get in the way of my social life. So I felt like I was doing the responsible thing. Never again.

Actually I love the zoo, so I have no complaints about that, and the guy was pretty decent company. However, after the zoo he invited me to come to his house and watch one of the evening football games with him. So there we were, me on one couch cushion, him on the other, and his roommate Bob in a little arm chair off to the side. After a while Bob had to rush off to some ward activity, and I began to notice that my date was creeping closer and closer to the edge of his cushion. Suddenly, without any kind of warning at all he was not only sharing my cushion, but had his arm around me too. That seemed weird. Weird, but harmless, so I figured I could roll with it. Then right there in the middle of me watching football I feel his 5 o'clock shadow on my cheek, while he rubbed my shoulder. I had admittedly been paying a lot more attention to the game than I was him, so I'm positive that I did nothing to encourage that. I didn't really know what to do, so I just stayed focused on the game and prayed for a hasty retreat. It was not as hasty as I had hoped, and I do not have words to adequately describe the awkwardness of the situation. After what felt like forever, he got discouraged and went in the kitchen to rustle up some food.

He returned to the couch a few minutes later, and another roommate trailed in behind him and hung out for a bit, but when the roommate left again, my date got up and turned off the light. I should have just left right there, but for some weird reason I was worried about offending him. So instead I immediately excused myself to use the restroom where I prayed for deliverance. Deliverance came in the form of his roommate returning to the room, to watch the rest of the game with us. Of course the roommate wasn't around for the awkward door scene, but I managed to get through that without incident. I just had to deliver one of those hugs where you stand two feet back, and sort of pat their shoulders, effectively eliminating any full body contact.

The whole thing was so odd. I couldn't figure out what he was thinking, or why he thought I was going to just put out like that. I'm not going to claim that I've never kissed on the first date, but only once, and it was a long distance situation, so we were working under some time constraints. I don't feel that San Diego really qualifies as a distance situation, and even if it did, he wasn't convincing enough to warrant that kind of action. If it's not a good time, it's a good story.