Bad dates - Part 1

So this is the first, of probably many posts on past bad dates...  Getting them out here, in no particular order...

 

"Manhattan Doctor" emailed me through match.com.  Cute face showing his black and white picture, and though he wasn't looking directly at the camera, you could tell that he was hot (first mistake here -- never trust a black & white picture!  Specially one where the guy is sort of looking towards the side).

 

We exchanged a bunch of witty emails, but hadn't made a plan on meeting yet.  Friend bails on me 2 days before the Guns n Roses concert (yeah, GNR with only Axl Rose, but whatever).  I email the cute doctor and ask him if he's a fan.  He is.  Wanna come?  Yep, he's up for it.  The way I see it, I'm there to see the concert.  If he turns out to be awful, who cares, I'm there for the concert anyway, right?  (Another mistake here.  Never assume a date can't possibly be that bad!)

I was 24, he was 28.  "Dark brown hair, green eyes, 6', fit body" or so his profile says.  I haven't even talked to him on the phone yet, but his emails are pretty interesting.  Plus he was going to Brazil in a couple of months and at the very least we could talk about that.

 

I leave my job on 5th Avenue, and walk through a snowstorm down to the Starbucks by Madison Square Garden to meet him.  First floor is packed, I make my way to the 2nd floor.  He calls saying he's running late.  Hmmm, he sounded weird on the phone, very awkward.  It makes me nervous.

 

A little while later I see an ugly pimply faced guy, about 6' but with a skinny underdeveloped body of a 16 year-old walking towards me.  I freak.  Oh, my god, that really is him.  Fucking black & white picture!!  Ok, ok, make the best out of this -- just because he's not your type even if the survival of the human species depended on you two shagging, doesn't mean the night can't be salvaged.  Just chitchat you can still have a good time.  Right?  RIGHT??

 

He's going to get himself a coffee, offers me one, I tell him I'll grab one when he comes back, as I don't know what I want yet.  When I go downstairs to buy my coffee I call my friend K desperately and get her voice mail.  "OMG, K, HE'S HORRENDOUS!!!"  (Apparently my desperation made her laugh out loud when she heard my message.)

 

I go back to the table with my caramel frappuccino.  I try to make conversation.  Notice he also has really bad teeth.  Make the best of it, make the best of it...  Keep trying to make conversation.  I can talk to a brick wall and still have better conversation than that.  I soooo tried to make it better, but the guy wouldn't talk.  Not nervousness, not lack of interest, just lack of social skills.

 

So off we went to the concert.  While we were there waiting for the opening band he awkwardly starts to talk, asking me for tips about Rio.  Then when he was mid-sentence this girl flashes her boob to the big screen, he just stares.  I'm not dumb -- any guy would look at it, but most would at least be more discreet about it, when they have a girl next to them.  He just stared.  Totally stopped mid-sentence, didn't say anything more.  He was staring for a good 2 minutes, in silence, at the big screen (yes, the girl was flashing for that long).

 

I stopped feeling bad about thinking the worse of this guy, because I thought the blatantly staring at the boobs was totally disrespectful.  So I excused myself to the bathroom, and proceeded to walk around MSG looking at the cute guys and just distracting myself.  The opening act was a DJ playing techno.  So not my thing.  The guy was still not talking.  I excused myself another 10 times to the bathroom before GNR came on stage.  He probably thought I had diarrhea.

 

GNR was great, but he didn't know any words of any of the songs.  So right there I knew he lied.  Not only was he not a fan but he obviously wasn't even familiar with their songs (come on, not know any words to Paradise City?  Sweet Child of Mine?  You Could Be Mine?  November Rain?).  The idiot lied.

 

Concert ended, we got out of MSG, he started moving for a kiss (SERIOUSLY?!?), I turned around, said I needed to catch my bus and literally ran up 8th Av.

 

When I got home I had a ticket on my windshield because there was "no parking when snow covered" -- really??  I parked at 8am, it started snowing at 3pm, you ticket me at 3:30pm, knowing that me and everyone else parked on the street is still out in the city working?

 

Next day GNR canceled the rest of their tour.  At least I got to see chubby Axl Rose blasting some tunes from back in the day -- the concert in itself kicked ass.  But the date?  Never trust a black & white picture and never ever meet a guy you haven't talked to in the phone yet.