A Drinks-Only Date

So, I went on a date Friday night, and let me tell you: it certainly did not go as I anticipated. At all.

I “matched” with this guy on Tinder, and we chatted for a bit and exchanged phone numbers. He invited me to come up to Indianapolis for their First Friday event in Fountain Square. He seemed nice, and it was something I’ve never done before, so I figured why not?

I knew within the first five or ten minutes that he was not someone I actually wanted to date. He reminded me of S.mouse, the rapper from Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys in just about every way: his mannerisms, the way he spoke, even if the way he dressed was more like the deadbeat dad (Blake Oakfield) who might’ve gone to jail after loaning his van to a friend. But he seemed like someone I could get along with even if I didn’t want to date him, so I stayed to hang out for a bit, explore Indianapolis, and then head home if I wasn’t able to meet up with my best friend who also lives in Indy.

S.mouse: Not exactly someone I want to date. Cover image from The Sydney Morning Herald.

 

Things were going decently at first: we had a couple of drinks, talked a lot, and checked out some art in the Murphy Arts Building. But then, it became apparent he was really just looking to buy drinks all night. I don’t really have a problem with getting drinks all night, but this was not really how the date was presented, and I’m not exactly someone who can go more than five or six hours without any food at all.

In hindsight, it was in this building where things started to go downhill because I was “too critical” of the art for questioning whether “Inkjet on Paper” really constituted art. It wasn’t clear if the artist had taken photos himself of the content in the prints, and I sort of wondered this out loud. This guy told me to stop being so critical, and I responded that “this is just what I do.” How do you just sort of blindly look at art, not really engaging or critiquing it? Why would you look at a painting on the wall without coming to some decision or thoughts about it? Not all of them were “I don’t consider this art,” but apparently doing anything beyond passively taking it in with a smile on my face was not okay.

After the art center, we headed down to the Mass Ave district because he wanted to check out some live music. This is where things got ugly.

He didn’t want to pay the cover, even though he didn’t even ask to see what it was. Instead, we left and he began a deluge of comments like “you aren’t having any fun.” First off, I was having a perfectly lovely time. Do I particularly like beer gardens and live music? No, not really. But I don’t hang out in Indy, and I was up for trying new things and having fun. I guess I was not having enough fun for him, though, and he decided the best way to handle that was to point it out to me. Second, I really dislike when other people tell me how I feel. I’m not exactly an “easy read” all the time, and sometimes I just like to quietly take things. That doesn’t mean I’m not having fun. But telling me that I’m not enjoying myself is a sure fire way to make me not enjoy myself.

As I’m now clearly on edge, he offers to drive me back to my car so we can go out separate ways without any animosity or hard feelings. But in the car, he started with this “maybe we should have stayed,” “it’s better we didn’t stay,” “I just want you to have fun” barrage of thoughts.

Sadly, things did get uglier.

He decided to show me his favorite bar, which I was fine with. But I had been drinking wine all night and this particular bar didn’t serve anything but those mini bottles of Sutter Homes that are good for, like, cooking and nothing else. This guy tried to push me to order a cocktail, but I just wasn’t feeling like it. Instead, I ordered and iced tea and planned to get something to eat because it was about 9:30, I’d been with him since about 4:30 and there was zero discussion of food, and I hadn’t eaten anything since about noon.

This is basically a lose-lose situation on a good day. And this was definitely not a good day.

So I ordered some fried mushrooms, sipped on my tea, and complimented the bar he took me to, which actually seemed pretty cool. He wanted to harp on how awful the date was going, and my attempts to change the subject only made things worse. I had asked him earlier what his favorite movie was, but he said there was too many to choose one. So, I tried again:

Me: So, you said you couldn’t pick a favorite movie, so what’s, like, the top ten?

Awful Date: That’s a bad question. Movies, music, there’s just so much you can’t have a favorite.

Me: Okay, so what’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?

Awful Date: That’s a WORSE question. A better question would be “what’s the last movie you’ve seen.”

Me (through gritted teeth): Fine. What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?

He promptly decided to start talking about his “need to salvage the night” and how I wasn’t anything like my profile and I need to “let loose.” He said “I didn’t bring you here for you to have iced tea and mushrooms.” My response was “Well, I’m perfectly satisfied by this iced tea and mushrooms, and I think that should be enough.”

Because he was clearly having an awful time and was very upset that I had decided to order mushrooms, I offered to pay for his drink. He replied with “you want to buy my beer?” and I responded, perhaps too quickly “Do you have a problem with that?”

Apparently, he was tired of my “smart ass comments” so I told him I would use the bathroom and then we could leave.

However, he decided that a better plan was for him to completely ditch me a mile from my car in an unfamiliar area of a city a rarely visit.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I’m so lucky that I had a friend nearby who I was able to call to come pick me up, even though I haven’t seen him in like three years.

Chris Lilley as Blake Oakfield in Angry Boys. Image from HBO.

It’s been a couple of days, and I’ve made a lot of fun of his comments, but I’m still pretty livid about what happened. What kind of asshole does that, even if they are having the absolute worst time of their lives? It would have taken seriously a five minute car ride, if that, to drop me off at my car and say “I don’t want to see you again,” even if that’s definitely not something that needed to be said because it was so painfully obvious.

I recognize that this night could have gone much worse: I could have been much further from my car, I could have been totally isolated from anyone I knew, I could have not been able to get ahold of either of my close friends in Indy and forced to walk back to my car. I’m not even upset about having had a shitty date.