First Date Story

I had a coffee date tonight with “the propositioner.”  I was jazzed about this date.  I never would have gone on it until I caught the adventure bug.  There is a story behind every person and I needed to know his story.  Who is that person who innocently, if abruptly, asks you out for coffee.  And then the next day send you this: 

 If you're not interested in getting to know me, would you be interested in hooking up?

Normally I would have just told all my friends about the emails and not dignified him with a response.  This time I went on the date and now I am telling all of you about it. 

I expect that the people nearby have a good story to tell their friends tonight too.  My table selection was poorly done.  We were surrounded by individuals on their laptops.  I can just picture their IM conversations.  I can only hope they were kinder than I would have been in their position. 

The plan was to be bold with my questions, what were you thinking to proposition me, a total stranger?! Have you done this before?!  Does it actually work?!  Does your mother know you do this?!  I could just picture him throwing his coffee in my lap and storming out, so this date started off pretty typical.  If what followed is a classic date, I’d rather stick a teacup in my eye. 

He was good at asking me questions, so I told him a little about my job and asked what he did.  “Well, I’m an operations manager for a small company.  It’s called xxx.  Basically I pick up dog poop.  It’s weird to say that that is my job, but I really like it.  I get to drive around all day and play with dogs and shit.”  I waited to see if he would catch the irony in that statement.  Don’t think he did. 

We chatted about his sleeve of tattoos, the importance of family, his dog, my cat, a traumatic experience he went through a few years ago and how that changed him, local theatre, best horror movies (sorry I cannot remember what he recommended as the best one), and then we stumbled on THE TOPIC. 

He started it by asking, mid-date, if I would be interested in hanging out again.  Side note: Do not do that.  It just makes it weird when the date continues for another thirty minutes and both of us know (or hope) we will never see each other again.  Unless I get a dog and need some help with the doggie clean-up.  I digress.  I admitted that the only reason I was there was because of the  very forward email.  I said that I was so surprised at it and wanted to see who would send something like that. The guys face started turning pink and his eyes went blank like he was trying to remember or forget that he had sent that message.  “um, yeah.  I’m not very good at meeting people out, sooo….”   And then I caved.  I started to understand the appeal of cyber bullying.  I should have sent him a strongly worded email. Calling someone out face to face is hard and I could not do it.  I gave him an out with “does it go both ways, have you gotten this aggressive emails too?” he dodged the question a little bit and we moved on to talking about how messy his roommate is. 

I did leave feeling like maybe he had been shamed into realizing that there is a real person behind the profile and it is not nice, nor an effective pick up tool, to so boldly proposition someone.

An hour later I checked my email.  This is what I got:

 I was in the middle of vacuuming and mopping my apartment, and I had a thought. I did have a good time with you, but I think we both know that we didn't have any heavy sparks between us. But I am very attracted to you. If you feel the same way, would you be interested in trying a physical relationship. May be thought of as a friends with benefits. Help each other out. This may be a bit out of line. If not, that is perfectly fine. I just thought I'd be honest.

 

I’ve created and fed the monster.  I am so sorry to the other ladies out there on the internet.

So now I need to know, do I sent him the strongly worded email?  Or just this blog post. 

Final Summary:  Never again.

Tips for him:  Dude.  I cannot help you.