Freaky Friday: I believe the word “Trainwreck” would be the most eloquent way to describe it…

I’ve been on some bad dates.

And when I say this, I mean to say: I’ve been on some bad dates that you would never want to have been on. You wouldn’t hear about them and say, “Well, gee, I wouldn’t mind going on that date! It’d be kinda funny and entertaining and then I could blog about it, too!” No, dear reader, you couldn’t. One of my gifts in life is being able to take horrific personal events, find some type of ridiculous humor within, and then blog about them for your amusement. It’s like a barter system with God. He gets to continually squash any hopes that I may harbor for a functional, meaningful, and mature relationship, and I get to blog about it and have people tell me that I’m funny.

So this particular date on Wednesday evening came as somewhat of a surprise. I thought I’d seen it all: 10 years older than stated age and picture; a startling resemblance to Doc Brown in Back To The Future, an excruciating amount of crotch grabbing and belching; creepy pudgy forearms; insulting stories and anecdotes about how they are better than me in every way; extolling the virtues of dating younger women when you’re a senior citizen (but not, however, younger women who would have the nerve to order a six dollar glass of wine on a date…HE IS NOT MADE OF MONEY YOU KNOW!); already planning our holiday trips and how we’ll meet each others’ friends and family and dogs when we’ve only just started the first date; and a three hour tirade on Lance Armstrong, the Federal Reserve, and how America should just totally suck it.

And now this!

So we met on OkCupid.com. He had noticed that one of my photo captions mentions Hayward, WI, and messaged me to query about whether I had lived there or just visited on vacation. I told him that I had lived there in my early twenties, he tells me he grew up there, so great, we have something in common. From his pictures he looked like a cross between Carrot Top and Shaun White, which was actually kind of intriguing in a way. You ever meet someone that you, at first, think is really super ugly, and you’re like, “NO WAY”, but you keep an open mind because you dig the whole personality thing and you’re hoping that, in time, his face will grow on you? Yeah, that’s how I felt about my last boyfriend when I first met him.

And look where that got me.

So we’re exchanging messages and he tells me that his name is Timbre, and do I know what that name means? First off, don’t do this, guys. Don’t do the thing where you think you’re asking a fun and challenging question but only because it requires that she learn more about you. I understand that sometimes our childhoods were not that great, and that our moms didn’t always come up to our rooms at the end of the school day to sit on our bed and to listen to us talk about our 3rd grade hopes, dreams, and lunch table interactions, but if you feel like there’s not enough people in the world who are interested in who you are, start a blog and force it upon them. Don’t kill it before it’s even gotten out of the gate by making it clear that you only want to find someone to date so you can have someone with which to talk about yourself more.

So I write back and state the meaning of his name correctly and he offers to buy me a drink to reward me for my intelligence. I like it when people buy me drinks, so I say yes. We agree to meet up on Wednesday.

Wednesday rolls around, and while I’m at work I suddenly realize something: Do you know how Timbre is pronounced? According to the Webster’s Dictionary, Timbre is pronounced as “TAM-ber”. Hello. My name is Amber. So that means that TAMBER AND AMBER ARE GOING ON A DATE.

Here is how the date goes, in order of events:

1. He is 20 minutes late.

2. He calls me. I pick up, I can’t understand a word he says, and then I turn and look to see him walking towards me. Sidenote: I really, really hate it when people consider my cell phone to be a radar honing device. Open up your fucking eyes, walk around the place, and LOOK. It’s one of those seemingly small things that actually start to signify a lot.

3. He is super, super, super unattractive. Did you ever see the movie Mask? Not the one with Jim Carry, but the one with Eric Stoltz and Cher? He looked like that, only less physically deformed so I couldn’t even feel bad for him.

4. First topic of conversation: I Just Got Fired From My Job, But Surprise! It Wasn’t My Fault.

5. 2nd topic of conversation: I Hate My New Job and Have To Smoke A Lot of Pot Just To Get Through It.

6. 3rd topic of conversation: My Mom Was A Bitter Control Freak And My Dad Was An Abusive Alcoholic.

7. 4th topic of conversation: Two Years Ago I Dated A Girl Who Said She Was Divorced But She Was Really Only Separated. This includes the choice phrases: “She went away on a month-long trip to China with her estranged husband and his family, and when she came home she broke up with me because she said it wasn’t going to work out. No, it’s because you went to China and had sex with your husband for a month and now suddenly I’m not good enough for you.” and “Don’t lie to me. I don’t like liars.”

8. 5th topic of conversation: MCAD Sucks Because They Want You To Make The Art That They Want You To Make, Not The Kind of Art You Want To Make, But They’ll Give You D-’s Instead of F’s So They Can Pass You Onto The Next Course And Still Make Some Money Off Of You Because They Are Soulless, Barren, Blood-Sucking Dicks.

9. 6th topic of conversation: I Was Going To Go To UW-Superior To Finish Up College, But Then My Dad Hit Me Because He’s A Drunk And So I Moved Out And That Was The End of That. *Cue a couple minutes of awkward, horrified silence *

10. 7th topic of conversation: I’m Kind Of In The Middle, Because I’m Kind Of A Punk But I’m Also A Conservative, So My Punk Friends Get Really Mad At Me For Driving A Luxury Car And Liking Nice Things. But Whatever, Because Our Government Totally Sucks Anyway And Personally I’m My Own Person And I Don’t Identify With Just Any One Political Party. Sidenote: Gentlemen, has this worked for you in the past? Is this known as a tried-and-true routine in your dating report? Because I cannot tell you how many guys will state the whole “I don’t identify with just one party” line and then look over at me with a smug half-grin, as if expecting me to slam down my drink, grab him by the shirt collar and say, “You’re such a renegade. Let’s do this right here, right now.” Which I won’t do, because you saying that you don’t identify with just one party is pretty much akin to you saying that you think just like everyone else.

11. 8th topic of conversation: Oh, You Know Some Of The Guys I Went To School With? I Hated Them In High School. I Got Made Fun of A Lot In High School And People Picked On Me All The Time. Join the club, buddy. That’s why it’s called “High School.”

12. And this is where I bid him adieu, after paying for my own drink (no, he didn’t offer, even though he used it initially to get us to meet) and sending a panic-text to Ang to meet me at the nearest bar as soon as possible.

Total time of this date? One hour.

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