breathe in, laugh out

I went on a first date last night.  Come to think of it, it’s the first-first date I’ve been on in quite a while.  That’s not counting the random guys from Tinder who have come to meet up at a bar with our groups of friends, talking for 10 minutes, and then dismissing each other.   I mean an actual first date: the kind where someone invites you out for a specific time and place, you meet them there alone wondering if you’re going to get murdered,  you send your friends your location on Google Maps once you get there, and then are stuck with that person for an  amount of time you both deem appropriate without being  rude.  That’s the kind of first date I went on last night.

The guy was from Tinder.  He had the perfect amount of pictures to see his face at different angles, mouth smiling, teeth showing, no hat, no sunglasses, and his full-body… without the photos being obnoxious, inappropriate or God-forbid:  selfies.  There was also a link to his Instagram page which I obviously stalked beforehand.  I decided there was no way this guy wasn’t hot.  Like hot, hot.  Like I felt insecure going to meet him hot, because he was out of my league, hot.  The only red-flag off the bat was that during my stalkage I discovered he’s a triathlete.  Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but from my experience they just seem to have obsessive personalities.  Like obsessive about what they eat, when they eat it, how they work out, etc etc, and have no room in their brains for anything else.  Am I generalizing?  Yes, obviously.  But that seemed to be the only possible flag, besides his hottness factor seeming way higher than mine.

In any case, we were texting while I was on my way back from Palm Springs yesterday for work.  He mentioned he was in North Park, which is supposedly a pretty cool neighborhood of San Diego.  I said:

“I haven’t been to North Park yet.”

He texted, “What are you doing tonight?”

Me:  “No plans.”

Him:  “North Park?”

Me:  “Ok.”

That was easy.  He asked if I liked beer, and I obviously responded “yes,” and he asked me to meet him at a new brewery.  We arrived around the same time, parked and texted our locations.  I told him I’d wait outside since I had gotten a spot right out front.  He informed me he’d be the one in the navy chucks.  I told him I was wearing grey.

As I stood waiting, staring at everyone’s feet, I finally spotted his.  My eyes traveled upwards… to his face… and…. ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  I got catfished.  Okay, no that’s mean.  I didn’t get completely catfished… but MANNNNN did this guy know how to choose his photos appropriately!!!!  It was obviously him, yet a skinnier version.  Even his face was skinnier.  His eyes were REALLY bloodshot and watery, and he had tiny little wrinkles under both of his eyes that sort of made him look like a drug addict (I know he doesn’t do drugs, as he made a point to bring up that fact during a previous conversation).  He’s 33, but I thought he looked about 10 years older than all of his photos.

I decided not to dwell on his less-hot-than-expected appearance.  I hoped he didn’t notice my disappointment.  Everything started out fine;  he was a talker, so there were no awkward silences, and he was really into craft beer, so I got a lesson on the different types… including the difference between using CO2 vs. Nitro [don’t care, don’t care, don’t care…but at least now I know?]

When dating here, two of my major red-flags are:

1.  Only children

2.  San Diego natives

Strike one… strike two.

I literally talked to myself in my head several times, telling myself to keep an open mind, not to generalize, and focus on the good.  I talked myself into enjoying my time with him, even though he wasn’t exactly what I expected.  We had some interesting conversations, and I didn’t realize how funny the date really was, until my sister stopped by this morning before work to pick something up, and asked how my date was.  After I explained some of the conversations, and we both started laughing so hard, I said I didn’t even realize how douchey much of the evening was until I actually was repeating it out loud.  To summarize, here were just a few of the things that came out of his mouth.

Him:  I have really nice thighs.

Me:  They look skinny.

Him:  No, they’re really nice… especially for a triathlete.

——————

Him:  I have REALLY nice calves.  I wore pants tonight to be more formal for you, but they look great in shorts.

——————

Him:  I’m in my fat cycle.  I’ve been trying to get really fat.

Me:  Yeah, you’re huge.

Him:  This weekend I ate:  [lists like 45 nasty foods], and I was really excited, because I gained a quarter of a pound!

Me:  A QUARTER of a pound??  I could gain more than that sniffing a chicken nugget.

Him:  Where would you get a chicken nugget??

Me:  I don’t know….?  McDonalds?

Him:   Ew.  Thats disgusting.

——————-

Him:  I have a freakishly large wingspan.

Me:  How are your nail-beds?

Him:  I don’t know about my nail-beds, but my fingers are reallllly long.

Me:  Cool

———————

Him:  There’s this really awesome picture of me outside the Guinness factory in Ireland.  I’m facing away from the camera with my arms outstretched like THIS, and since my wingspan is so huge, it looks awesome… and then there was this beam of light shining perfectly down on me.  Hold on, let me try to find it.  [Goes through phone for 5 minutes].  Can’t find it.  But there’s the SAME picture of me doing the SAME pose in the mountains in Colorado.  Awesome.

Me:  Cool.

———————-

Him:  I have a really good butt.

Me:  Let me see.  [He turns around, I squeeze it].  It’s really small.

Him:  It’s a biker’s butt.  It’s really good.

————————-

Him:  [while turned away from me]  I have a really skinny waist but veryyyyy broad shoulders.

Me:  That’s really, really great.

————————-

Are we seeing a pattern here?  I tried to distract him from conversation surrounding his body parts by challenging him to darts.  First of all, he didn’t know what Cricket was.  Secondly, I beat him by two bulls-eyes.  And I’m not good enough for that to be acceptable.  But I think it took him down a notch.

This date wasn’t too awful, really.  I highlighted the douchey parts, obviously.  It just wasn’t any sort of real connection.  When we left a bit later, I asked him if he wanted a ride to his car because he had parked several blocks away.  He accepted my offer.  I plugged my phone in, as always, and drove him around the block 4 times because he forgot where his car was (really, dude?  you had like 2.5 beers).  As he was about to get out, he heard the song that was playing and asked,

“Who is this?”

I stared for a second, wondering if he was joking and replied, “Meatloaf.”

“Oh, I don’t know them.”

Well… that was it, right there.  Deal.Breaker.  Please get out of my car.

We exchanged a few post-date friendly texts, but I’m thinking that will be all of him.

Tata for now….

xoxo Gossip Girl