This Wasn't a Date

Six or seven years ago, when I was living in the East Bay—before I met my wife—I was dating a lot. One Friday night, I got home from dinner and immediately turned on a camera because I needed evidence that the evening had happened.

Not proof for anyone else—proof for me. I needed something I could watch later and say: Yes, this was real. You did not slip into a parallel dimension. A woman really invited you to dinner, and the evening turned into something I still don't have a clean name for.

A few days earlier, I went to an event where people were spinning poi and doing the sort of things people do when they are more coordinated and interesting than I am.

Out front, a woman struck up a conversation with me. She told me she was from Canada, had been in the area for about a year, and still hadn't built much of a social circle. She was looking to meet people. I was, too. The conversation was easy.

Then she asked if she could give me her number—and then asked me out for coffee. Holy shit. This was apparently a parallel universe where women approached me and made plans. I had no training for this. She was cute, so I said yes.

The next day, we texted. Coffee became dinner after work on Friday. This felt like an upgrade. I spent the next few days assuming I had correctly identified a date—which would turn out to be the evening's first and most forgivable mistake.

Friday morning, I texted to make sure we were still on. Nothing. The hours passed without an answer. By the end of the day, she finally replied: yes, we were on. She was heading over.

Then, two seconds later:

I'm bringing Angela.

Angela was the friend I had briefly met at the event—not someone I knew well enough to ask whether she had always been part of the plan or whether the plan had suddenly changed shape around her.

Fine. Weird, but fine. Maybe Angela was a chaperone. Maybe she was there to make sure I wasn't a serial killer. Maybe this was a gentle way of telling me it wasn't a date. I didn't know. I was already on my way, so I went to the restaurant and tried to act like this was a normal thing that happened to normal people.

Angela got there first.

We made small talk for ten minutes, then ran out of small talk and moved on to the quieter, more desperate kind. We got a table and sat down. I kept expecting the woman who had invited me to appear any second, turning the strange opening act back into a normal dinner.

The woman who had invited me was twenty minutes late. Angela did not warn me. I want that noted for the record. I started to wonder whether I had misunderstood the invitation, the restaurant, or the entire category of human interaction known as “making plans.”

Finally, the woman walked in, and she wasn't alone. A man came in with her. She introduced him as Bob. That was all the context I got.

Now there were four of us at the table: the woman who had asked me to dinner, her friend, a man named Bob, and me—the only person who had apparently not received the meeting agenda. I tried to recalculate. Maybe I had misread the whole thing. Maybe this was never a date. Maybe it was just a social gathering for people who wanted to meet new people. Fine. I can be social. I have, on occasion, spoken to several humans in one evening.

Then, with no context and no warm-up, she looked at me and said:

I don't want to fuck you.

I said, "Okay."

She pointed at the man beside her.

This is my husband. I like to fuck him.

Excellent. Scoreboard updated. Everyone knew where they stood.

She explained that when she told her husband she had invited a man to dinner, he asked a reasonable question: "Does he think it's a date?" She had said she didn't know.

At that point, a normal person might have texted me. Something simple: "Hey, just so you know, this isn't a date." Eight words.

Instead, she brought a friend and her husband to the restaurant and announced her sexual preferences at dinner volume.

Everyone at the table understood what had happened. Her husband understood. Angela understood. I understood. There had been a misunderstanding. It was uncomfortable, but survivable.

I could have left. I should have left. I could have stood up, said, "Well, good day," and walked out with everyone's dignity mostly intact. But I am a nice person, which is a thing I say when I mean I have terrible boundaries.

I didn't want to embarrass her or make the evening worse. I decided we could still hang out, meet new people, and have a normal dinner.

This was the evening's second mistake.

No one knew what to say, so I tried to start a conversation about local events. I mentioned Tourette's Without Regrets, a variety show I liked. She asked if it was for people with Tourette's. I said no, it was a performance show, and mentioned Jamie DeWolf and his family connection to L. Ron Hubbard. Her husband explained that Hubbard founded Scientology.

That was enough. She informed me she wasn't "getting pulled into my cult bullshit" and would not be attending my Scientology event. It was not a Scientology event. I said this. It did not matter.

The conversation died. We sat quietly for a while, and then I tried again. There were burlesque shows in the area, I said. Hubba Hubba Revue was fun.

"Burlesque?" she said. Then: "You mean whores."

I did not mean whores. I tried to explain that it was dancing, comedy, performance, body positivity. She cut me off. They were whores. They were sluts. They were exploiting men and only doing it for money. I told her men performed too, which genuinely shocked her.

"Are you fucking serious?" she asked. I was. She thought about this new information and revised her position: "Well, I guess they're male whores."

At this point, I stopped suggesting activities.

She looked at me and said I seemed like quite a catch, then asked why I wasn't married. I told her I had been married and was divorced. She wanted to know what happened. I said it didn't work out. She wanted details. I offered "irreconcilable differences." She wanted better details, so I said we were young and had problems communicating.

She immediately turned to her husband. "Communication. You hear that? Communication. You're supposed to talk." Her husband looked deeply uncomfortable.

Thankfully, the food arrived. For a few minutes, we could all stare at our plates. Forks clinked. No one spoke. It was the most peaceful part of the evening.

I ate my burger and considered leaving again. Instead, because apparently one bad decision deserves company, I tried talking to the husband. He was cool. He talked to me like a normal human being for five minutes. Dinner almost became dinner.

Then she started over. The entire speech.

She did not want to fuck me. She wanted to fuck her husband. She had not meant to invite me on a date. It was not a date. She walked through the whole explanation again, nearly word for word, as if the problem with the first delivery had been insufficient penetration.

Everyone became uncomfortable again. I looked at my phone. No messages. No missed calls. It was ominously silent. So I looked at the dark screen and said, "Oh, my roommate needs a ride. I have to go."

I asked for a separate check, handed over my card, and left a thirty-dollar tip because I no longer cared about anything except getting out.

I told everyone it had been lovely to meet them. Before I could stand up, she announced that Angela was going through a divorce. Angela had not volunteered this information. Apparently, after spending the entire dinner making sure I understood that she did not want me, she had decided to offer me to her friend. She suggested Angela and I hang out.

I was trying to leave, but I asked Angela if she wanted my number. She said sure. I gave it to her. Then I escaped, walking toward my car laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

I couldn't believe this was my life. I couldn't believe this weird parallel universe had chosen me. It was too perfectly awful to be upsetting anymore.

It was comedy. It was a sketch. It was a story I couldn't have written because, if I had, someone would have told me to make it more believable.

So I got home, sat down while it was still fresh, and recorded the whole thing. For the record, she did not want to fuck me. I remain less certain about her husband.

She ended the night by saying we should keep in touch. I wanted to print her phone number onto paper, fold it into an origami swan, and burn it so the number could go directly to hell. I did not keep in touch.

Honestly, I could have had a boring date. We could have had coffee, made small talk, pretended to be interested, and gone home. Instead, I got a story so perfectly awful that I had to turn on a camera the moment I got home.

It was the worst date of my life. Once I was safely in my car, it was also the best.