First Date Hell - Wait...Who are You With?

I made the mistake of taking a woman to a bar for a first date. It didn't feel like a mistake at the time. I mean, alcohol is a social lubricant and having a few drinks is a good way to loosen up and get to know someone in a more relaxed frame of mind. The key word being a"few" drinks.

I have to mention that this is a bar that I go to often and know the owner and several of the employees. So, I can hardly go into this place unnoticed.

After a few drinks, my date begins to flirt with the bartender. At first, I thought she was trying to get my attention and make me a little jealous. When the harmless flirting wasn't getting his attention (and after even more drinks) she took it up a notch and began being more overt. She asked him what his name was and he jokingly said "Bob". His real name is Mike but she refused to believe me. I told her that I actually know this man but that didn't seem to matter to her.

A few drinks later and she was flirting to the point of vulgarity.She was leaning over the bar while yelling, "hey Bob" and rubbing her"A" cup breasts and then doing some thing with her tongue that made her look like the lead singers from Kiss. I'm telling you, this woman had no shame and probably would have had sex with him right on the bar if not for one small problem.

See, the problem is that this woman was pushing 40, had 3 kids and wasn't what you would call a perfect 10. Not even close. Now, Mike the bartender was the kind of guy who could have any woman that he wanted. He was young (around 25, I believe), charismatic, very cool and he worked at the hippest bar in town. If she had been paying more attention she may have noticed the entourage of drop dead gorgeous young women that were circling Mike like flies on a horse's ass.

After her shameless attempt at landing this man, which she thought went quite well, she excused herself to go “freshen up”. While she was gone, Mike apologized to me and told me that he was actually embarrassed for me. I seriously considered leaving cab fare and ditching her while she was in the restroom but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I ended up driving her home, ignoring her the entire way. When we pulled into her driveway, I didn't say a word or move at all. What seemed like an eternity went by and she wasn't getting out. I turned to tell her to exit my vehicle and I planned to use a few choice expletives but before I could even speak, she leaned in and kissed me. How could anyone possibly misread such clear body language or think that this was a date that went well?

First Date Hell - Being Frank

I once had a blind date with a man who led me to believe for an entire month via email that his name was Steve Warner. Then he called me and said, "This is Frank." When I questioned him about the name change, he said his middle name was Steve but his real name is Frank.

It wasn't the most charming first phone call, but considering that my online dating name is "LovelyBrunette" and I had only given him my first name and my cell number at that point, I didn't think I could make a big deal about it. After all, the guy seemed nice and he was being honest, or should I say--FRANK--with me, so who wasI to judge? We online daters must be careful, if nothing else.

After the date, which was fine, and in which he seemed reasonably normal, he sent me an email saying his name was neither Frank nor Steve, and in fact, his last name was not even Warner, but this was only because he is a "fiction writer" (he'd told me he was a nurse) and as a fiction writer, he uses several pen names for dating and writing. He signed the last email "S.F. Barack" and told me that I could now tell everyone that I'd been on a date with a guy named Barack.

While I am in no way opposed to fiction writing (it was my major in undergradl) I do require actual identities of my dates to not be fictional.

The irony (is it really irony?) is that I've now posted a real story about a guy using multiple fake names but I can't actually use the REAL fake names he has given me, because what if one of them is partially real? I have no way of knowing what was true and what was not. So I've changed all names (including mine) for anonymity purposes, but I kept the two that seemed important: Frank, and Barack.

Those names are the real fakes. I think.

We Are Not Alone

In setting up this blog, we discovered that there are a lot of people out there going through "dating hell" and writing about it. It was tough going to find a URL and email address with those words in it (and I'm pretty sure it only worked out in the end because no one wanted to spell out "anonymous" in a URL). Apparently, there's a lot of dating angst out there (which we're hoping you'll share with us as you experience it!) But there are a lot of other stories out there already, some funny, some frightening, and some the obvious product of a person who needed to vent just a little too much.

Here are a few that might be of interest to you if you've stumbled upon this site:

http://www.datingishell.net/

http://www.internetdatingstories.com/stories/index.php?category=3

http://www.trap17.com/index.php/Dating-Stories_f197.html

http://dating.about.com/od/datingissues/ss/datingdisasters.htm

Got more? Feel free to add in the comments. Relevant and reasonably tasteful links will not be deleted.

The Fine Line Between Working and Stalking

After a night of underage drinking in a dive bar in the city and crashing on a friend of a friend’s couch, I hopped a commuter train back home in the morning and called a cab to meet me at the train station. That’s the safe way to get smashed in your late teens, right? Maybe if you call the right cab.

The wild-haired driver invited me to sit in the front seat. Never having been in a cab alone before, I thought maybe that was normal procedure if there was only one passenger. At least, that’s what I thought for the first half mile or so. I started to doubt it when the driver said, “Do you mind if I just stare at you until I drop you off?”

I told him I’d rather he kept his eyes on the road, but apparently I’d been worried about nothing. He let me know that he was a very safe driver, and even reassured me that he wasn’t on any drugs. Seems he’d seen “too many drugs go through the streets and through his system” and that was why he “didn’t mess around with that many drugs anymore.”

It’s only a few miles from the train station to my house, but the ride seemed to take forever, and as the end neared he asked if he could call me some time. I told him that I thought he was too old for me (he’d shared that he was 28). “Hell,” he said, “age don’t mean nothing. My ex-wife was a lot younger than me.”

I’m sure it was just a coincidence that for weeks afterward, I’d see a cab parked across the street from my house late at night.

I'm a Cougar and I'm Not Even Good at It

So I'm 42 years old and I've spent the last five years hanging out with--and occasionally making out with--a man who just turned thirty. When we met, he was three years out of college and I was 37 and his boss; I'm the mother of a teenager who was born while he was still in high school.

And that's FINE, right? I mean, men have been doing it for generations. Why shouldn't a middle-aged woman who's worked hard for what she's achieved in life and gives so much to her family enjoy a little uncomplicated sex with a hot young man? Can't think of a reason in the world, can you? ME NEITHER.

Thing is, I got a few of the details wrong.For starters, this non-relationship was the most complicated relationship of my life (and I include in that comparison a man who wanted to take personality tests to determine why we weren't compatible after three months of dating, a man who asked out my sixteen year old sister after I turned him down in law school, two men who were roommates when I "dated" them, and one who tried to kill me). Okay, so maybe the whole "free and easy" thing wasn't exactly flowing for us, but at least he was young and...Well.

The truth is that I managed to find one of those rare men who had a seriously receding hairline by his mid-twenties. By thirty, he was nearly bald on the top of his head, and when we went out together I frequently got carded, but he never did.But looks aren't everything. Really, I think the whole older woman/younger man thing is more about virility than it is looks. I mean, "everyone knows" that women peak a lot later than men and that it takes a healthy young man to keep up with a middle-aged woman, right? It's just a biological fact.

I think.

I can't actually say for sure, since I somehow stumbled upon the last man in America who is saving himself for marriage. Five years. No sex. Very little hair. Lots of complications.

Somehow, it looks very different in the movies.