Sunday Bloody Sunday

Last night I had dinner (read: 6 bottles of wine) at a friend’s apartment.  She told me the tale of a man she knows who has two wives, one in the city and one in the Hamptons, meaning he’s essentially not legally married to either of them.  It was then I realized my own dating stories are bush league.  I apologize for that and plan to do better moving forward.   

So, ever the one to be cool as a cucumber and never overreact in a given situation, I took back to the internets to do a deeper dive into Mean Mike and IA’s alleged working relationship.  Naturally, I’d completely and unnecessarily overreacted at first.  They do not work together, nor did they ever even overlap.  The link was old and outdated as was easily verified by simply clicking on the current “Team” link for their company.  Game on.  A few flirty emails over the course of my raincation later, there was a date on the books.  

Day of, he asks me to meet him at The Wren on the Bowery for bloodys.  I’m in.  Maybe Mean Mike-who-hates-sports-and-TV-whose-father-grows-wine-grapes isn’t so bad after all.  He sends along his phone number (646…) for greater ease of communication.  I reciprocate.  A text pops up, “eww, I don’t talk to 917s!”  Excuse me?  Don’t push it.  You’ve already got two strikes with sports and entertainment and it is common knowledge that there’s a pecking order of NY area codes.  917 > 646 > 347.  In the eternal words of Bruce Hornsby and, well, 2PAC, that’s just the way it is.  

MM calls me while I’m getting ready, makes fun of me for living in Brooklyn, then insists he’s casually dressed and urges me not to wear pearls.  What?  You can’t throw out a hipster joke – especially when I’m nothing close to being one – and tell what I should or should not wear.  Also, don’t tell me how to dress, ever.  I’m perfectly capable of pulling together an appropriate ‘Sunday on the Bowery.’  He sounded fairly drunk, so I decided to wear, excuse my language, a fuck ton of sapphires and diamonds.  For good measure, I pour myself a greyhound “to take the edge off,” said alcoholics everywhere to enjoy while I finished frosting myself.  For better measure, I had a second.  What?  It’s refreshing.  And good thing I did, too, because MM was three sheets to the wind and loud as a marching band when he showed up.  The bartender and I make eye contact.  Collective eye roll.  BUT who am I to judge someone for being drunk on a Sunday afternoon?  Answer: no one.  Plus he was a lot cuter than his chosen photographs made him out to be.  

Within five minutes, we’d covered religion (also an atheist) politics (Libertarian) and sex.  The last one involved him asking what happens in 50 Shades (ummm) and what my chosen word would be for a see you next Tuesday.  What?!  Pass!!! I awkwardly sipped/inhaled my drink.  If that’s how this conversation is going to pan out, I needed to catch up and/or blackout.  It takes a lot to shock me, but I was not prepared to review preferred terminology for female anatomy in the first minutes of a first date.  

Somewhere between him blurting out James Brown lyrics at the top of his lungs as if he had some sort of musical tourettes (I know, I know – very PC of me) and mindless banter about what constitutes good, Irish whiskey, we had this conversation:

MM:      I feel like everyone always says they love to travel.

Me:        Well yeah, who doesn’t? 

MM:      starts to speak….

Me:        …cuts him off…. I mean, seriously, you’d have to have some sort of severe personality disorder to not love travel.   Don’t you think?  I understand that some people can’t afford it, and I’m sympathetic to that, but you’d have to be a real asshole to not have a sense of curiosity or desire to experience other places or at least want to travel.

MM:      I don’t like to travel.  I think it’s a big hassle.

Me:        Oh, well, er… sure, getting to NY airports could sometimes qualify as an entire leg of The Amazing Race, but it’s totally worth it once you arrive at your destination?  Oh, right, you don’t watch TV.  Well, it’s a multi-Emmy winning reality travel show on CBS.  So anyway, I need to run to the Ladies.

As I opened the restroom door to return to the bar, I saw him hand the signed check to the bartender and put his wallet back in his shorts.  (Shorts on a first date, really? At least they weren’t of the cargo nature.)  Anyhow, cheers to not being cheap, right? I think he also saw the writing on the wall with me, that someone who spends her weekends in the fall not only glued to college and NFL football, but plays out the screaming lunacy in color coordinated clothing and/or Super Bowl edition Cruz or Bavaro jerseys does not for him, a great love make.  More than fair and right back at you, MM, for not doing wanting to spend your precious few fall and early winter weekends doing exactly that.  At least now I can put this blog’s URL back in my Twitter profile, for I no longer care what he finds if and when he googles me.  

Until the next, failed social experiment, 

Vennifer.