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What Was The Worst Date of Your Life?
It was the summer before my sophomore year in college. I had just gotten my own studio apartment, even though I lived in the same city as my parents (dorms weren’t for me). We were members of the Raleigh Country Club (but not the 1%!), and the house I grew up in was situated on the golf course. Needless to say, I spent many summers at the pool, and this summer was no exception. One day, I went to the pool, and things happened.
Her name was Susan. I first saw her stretched out poolside, the suntan lotion on her long, lean body reeking of coconut oil (must have been that Hawaiian Tropic stuff). She was tall, had curly auburn hair, and sent my hormones into overdrive.
I approached her, struck up a conversation, and learned she was a new club member, 18 years old, and a senior in high school. “Yes!” I thought to myself. What high school chick doesn’t want to brag she has a boyfriend who goes to college?
I asked her out and she said yes. My best laid plans (soon to come to ruin – that’s called “foreshadowing”) was to take her to a movie, then retire to my apartment for – ahem – an intellectual discussion on wave-particle duality (hey, I was a physics major!). I picked her up, went to the theater just up the street from my place (aren’t I clever?), and bought tickets for some movie with a title I didn’t recognize. The theater was surprisingly empty and we soon learned why.
The movie was awful. Nothing in the first five minutes made any sense, and the first big scene involved a woman being sexually assaulted. Oh great, I thought, not what I wanted on my date’s mind.
“Let’s leave and go to your place,” she said. “This movie is awful.” I was glad she agreed with me, and also pleased that she acknowledged my apartment was our next destination.
I figured I could recover from the bad movie by at least being sympathetic and hospitable. We got to my place, I gave her a beer (drinking age was 18 back then), and showed her around. Being a studio apartment, it only took two minutes. Once done with the tour, we sat on the bed, I kissed her, and she kissed me back. Things are going great, I thought, but then she sat bolt upright. That’s when the nightmare began.
Without saying a word, she got up and went to the bathroom. A minute later, she came out, a concerned look on her face.
“I started,” she said.
“Started what?” I said.
“Started it!” she replied.
“What do you mean by ‘it’?” I asked politely.
She then unleashed a stream of expletives that ended with the word “period.” (Not unlike “If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it. Period.”)
I guess the dumb look on my face told her she needed to explain more, so she told me we had to go to the nearest store and buy . . . a feminine hygiene product. That’s when I started to scream inside.
We got into my car, and we drove to the convenience store up the street. She gave me instructions, but my brain had already shut down. I had never bought this stuff before, so what the heck was I to do? I walked up and down the aisles, then I finally found the right place. I remembered she was tall (5′ 11″, just as tall as my first wife – but that’s another story), so I figured that the box marked “Super” was what she needed. I went to the checkout, saw my date in my car, and held the box up so she could acknowledge with a nod that I bought the right thing. Instead, she sank in her seat, covering her face with her hands. Ignoring the smirk from the guy behind the counter, I bought the box, took Susan back to my place, and she disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged, she said “Take me home.” I did. No words were exchanged on the ride back.
The next day, I went to the pool, and she was there. I approached her, ready to offer an apology for how bad the evening went. She looked at me, shook her head, and that was all I needed to know. We never spoke again.
For the record, my wife (Neutral Observer) and I have swapped “worst date” stories.
Okay, Ricochetti, let’s hear what you have to say. Remember: No guts, no glory!
Published in General
Never had one; I’ve been known to excuse myself in the first 60 seconds of any encounter I intuited wasn’t going to go well.
If you have had a finite number of dates, you have had a worst date.
To never have had a worst date means that, however bad one date went, you can always think of another one that went worse, and then another one , and another one, ad infinitum.
Even if all your dates had been exactly the same on the quality scale, you’d have had a worst date – they’d all qualify for your worst date, as well as your best date.
On the bright side, you describe Susan as telegraphing signals that she was easy, so had nature not intervened, you probably would have got lucky.
A girl wouldn’t invite herself to your apartment or tell you about her period like that if she was planning to avoid sex.
MFR, the question was not “What was your least fabulous date?” :)
Your least fabulous date is also your worst one, even if it’s not at all bad ;-)
One thing I didn’t add was she had mis-timed her . . . uh . . . whatever.
I chose to interpret the author’s subliminal point as “Describe the biggest dating disaster in your life.” :)
“Worst” is up to your interpretation . . .
This one is a meetup special, so a few of you who’ve attended Ricochet gatherings in the past have heard it (I know it holds a special place in Fred Cole’s heart).
I once briefly dated a woman who lived just a few miles away from me and also happened to work across the street from my office, about 35 miles away. We’d only gone on a couple of dates, but, given that we had virtually identical commutes, I offered to come pick her up one morning so that we could drive in together.
As we were making the commute, I got cut off on the freeway by a Volkswagen, at which point I made some throwaway reference to my irritation being compounded by the fact that I had suffered this indignity at the hands of Hitler’s automobile of choice.
Without any sense of irony — or the slightest sense that what she said might be controversial — she proceeded to launch into a monologue about how Hitler had been misunderstood and had acted out of a legitimate fear of Jewish power. I didn’t even react at first, convinced that this had to be an elaborate piece of performance art.
Turns out it wasn’t.
The relationship was over before I took the keys out of the ignition.
I haven’t had a bad date per se. But I did have an STD scare after a one night stand with a jewish girl.
The “you might want to get yourself tested” phone call is not the one you WANT to get from a reasonably attractive girl. But she did bring me soup when I was sick once, it was basically a chicken breast boiled in water. Bless her heart, at least she tried.
If it had been GOOD chicken soup, maybe the whole herpes thing would have gone down better.
PSA: Promiscuity rarely works out well.
Is it better to have the scare from a reasonably unattractive girl?
I don’t think the attractiveness of the young lady changes the desirability of herpes.
@Stad: I’m afraid your thread may have been hijacked by comment #9. No one else could possibly compete with that story! (With the exception, perhaps, of DocJay.)
Do first dates that include bail qualify ?
I was 24(?) and on an adventure in Las Vegas. I met a lovely Lady and had an enjoyable evening with Her.
A couple of days later She called and asked if I wanted to go to Her Home after work. “[Absolutely!] Sure, I’ll see You then.”
I knocked on the door and She welcomed Me with a bourbon on the rocks. [Awesome!]
After I sat down She gave Me a present (it was My birthday and the only way for Her to know that would have been to contact My employer). I opened it, told Her how nice it was, and I appreciate it…. etc….
Then! She went to a room and began to bring out an arm full of presents of differing sizes and different wrapping paper…. and another arm full… then another… and said,”I got You a present for every year I missed.”
I got up and said,”I’m leaving, Psycho.”
“What! Wait! But! What am I gonna….”
“Move!”
I was outta there.
Stad, I think I feel more sorry for her than for you. Wonder if this story is her answer to the “worst date” question?
The worst date I feel like talking about did involve some physics.
Though I belonged to a Lutheran church at the time, one spring mid-way through college I attended Easter Vigil services at the local Greek Orthodox Church. Because of physics classes and an ear for language, I could approximately read the Greek along with the congregation and got mistaken for a nice Greek girl (or a naughty one, since my ineligibility for communion would suggest substantial unconfessed sin in my past had I really been Greek Orthodox).
The most gorgeous Greek post-doc in physics asked me out after the vigil. Made Troy Senik look like Quasimodo. Gorgeous and a nerd? Wow!
Things were going fine till he learned I was Lutheran. Once he learned that, we argued pleasantly about religion for a while. Then he told me, quite cheerfully, “You know that, because you’re Lutheran, you’re going to Hell.” I tried to talk him out of this judgment, but he was adamant.
That so injured my pride I refused to see him again. In retrospect, I think my refusal was a mistake, which is why it’s the worst date (I’ll talk about).
Yer bail or His?
It could very well be. If she’s a member of Ricochet, I’m doomed . . .
Not really a “date” per se, but I was stood up at my Senior Prom.
My date’s mom felt bad for me and gave me a $20 bill (for some reason). I went to prom anyway, got in a fight. Good times.
In my misspent youth, I chased after a girl of dubious morality. We were in New Orleans with friends for Jazzfest, and while everyone else was getting breakfast at a diner, she decided it was too hot in there and went in search of someplace with air conditioning. After stopping at the goth shop and perusing through their selection of spiked collars, leashes, and bondage crosses, we found a bar open with A/C.
It was late morning, so there were only a couple of other people there. We’d had a few rounds waiting for our friends to finish so I headed for the restroom. There was only one. The lights were off, but the door was open so doing what guys do, didn’t bother fumbling for the light switch. It was only after I was done that I noticed I wasn’t alone in the bathroom. There were others (two…I hope) that I caught moving out of the corner of my eye now that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Without looking their way, I strolled out into the bar and took a good look at the place for the first time. (Cont.)
Somehow, I had failed to notice the dozen monitors playing Madonna videos everywhere, as well as countless pictures of debatable taste which would mortify Freddie Mercury. When I asked the bartender exactly what I had walked in on, she laughed uproariously and said she was wondering when I would notice. However, she said we were obviously tourists so the locals wouldn’t bother us unless we were there that night. And that’s how I got hammered in a gay bar on Bourbon Street.
I belonged to a ballroom dancing group and had met a nice gentleman. Terrific dancer. We had a very enjoyable evening, and he asked me to dinner. After placing our order, he became very quiet, and was staring at my necklace. Then he asked me if I was a Jew, and I acknowledge it being so, and let him have a better look at my Mogen Dovid . He never said a word but excused himself. I thought he was going to the gents.
After about 10 minutes, the waitress came to the table and asked me if I “still wanted my dinner?” I was a bit confused, then she explained the person had left the restaurant, and had driven away. I hadn’t seen this as I was in an area away from the entrance. I sat there stunned, then refused to be humiliated. I asked her to bring my dinner, and not to charge me for his.
The staff went out of their way to be gracious, didn’t say a word about the incident, so I tipped them generously. After that I always made sure before a date the person knew I was a Jew.
Take heart, Ben. During my junior year of high school, I asked a girl to the prom whom I had had a crush on for years — years, it should be noted, in which I barely had the nerve to speak to her. To my surprise, she said yes, at which point I assumed everything between that date and the wedding was a mere formality.
When the big night came … she spent the entire evening dancing with some other dude.
Crestfallen, I sat there in silence on the way back — until she started frantically insisting that the driver pull over. Within moments, she was vomiting in some random person’s front yard (a random person, we would later learn, who turned out, entirely by happenstance, to be a classmate). It was in that moment that I fully came to grips with the essential benevolence of God.
The best way to meet the oppo-gender in high school, for the nerd set, was speech-and-debate. Internecine relationships within the team were common, but best if you found someone outside the compound. So Fargo North High debaters were always keen to see who was on the Fargo South team, or even the Moorhead team across the river. I met a girl from the South team who was bright-eyed, button-cute, smart, verbal. All boxes checked, I asked her out, and out we went to a movie.
I’d just gotten my license. Driving the brown LTD Kojak car. About halfway through the movie I do the big yaaaaaawwnnnn and put an arm around her . . . and she shrinks. Like an X-Men mutant, she actually reduces her physical size by 25% so no part of my forearm is in contact with her shoulders. At this point I have three options: maintain arm position for a few minutes, then conjure up a coughing fit that requires my right hand; remove it immediately; sever it with a band-saw.
Me, driving home, slumped, humiliated: never date a South Side girl again. All high-hat money and doctors and lawyers. Stick to your own class, pal.
Flash-forward about 35 years; the stern of a ship after midnight in the Caribbean with a cigar in one hand and a snifter of cognac in the other: National Review cruise event. I’m having a conversation with a fellow who just . . . might . . . be reading this. Since I’d dropped some Yiddish in the conversation he wanted to know how a guy from Fargo should know from the lingo of the Tribe, and somewhere in the conversation I said that there were, you know, Jews in Fargo. In fact I dated one. I tell him the story and of course I note her name.
He stares at me. Repeats the name. From Fargo? Uh huh.
“She’s my urologist.”
It was a bad date, but for the snapback three decades later? Absolutely worth it.
PS Later he said he told her the story. She remembered. How I wish she hadn’t.
Under my own name and on the Main Feed? Not a chance.
Yeah – kind of changes the risk profile of posting doesn’t it.
All my dates seem to have been scripted by a collaboration of Robert Benchley and Franz Kafka.
In retrospect, one does stand out. Let’s just say that Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was not an ideal first date concert.
OK, you have to remember I was really shy, and had not had a lot (read zero there) in the way of dating experience. I had just started my Senior year in high school. My cousin across the river in Indiana worked at a Long John Silver’s with a cute girl. I ask her out. She says yes. We go to dinner. Then to a movie and then to a local fall festival for a while. My parents being older, and double standards being in effect, I had no set curfew time to be home. I take this cute girl to her home. During the course of the evening, I had learned that her parents were divorced and she lived with her sister and mother. I walk her to the door. She gives me my first French kiss and it curls my toes and makes my blood move faster. We go on like that for a couple minutes and then she asks if I want to come in. I ask if we won’t be disturbing her mom and sister. I’m told that they were gone for the night. At that point I became more scared than amorous. I stuttered out that I had to be home by 1:00 and left. I didn’t get 3 houses away before my testosterone kicks in and starts calling me every kind of chicken(CoC) fool. I asked her out again later that week. Determined to stay this time. But I never got the chance. She wouldn’t see me again.
Robert Benchley? Lucky you. (OK, the Kafka part’s not so nice.)
I’ve had several encounters with guys that could be described this way, but I don’t know if they were dates. In retrospect, perhaps the guys thought they were dates when I didn’t, and that’s why grim farce ensued.