Worst Date Ever
I didn’t date in high school, not really anyway. I went to a tiny, conservative, and for the most part homogenous school in Savannah . I had a boyfriend for a maybe month before I dumped him, while sobbing (I was a drama queen) over the phone. There were four hundred students in my high school, only sixty in my graduating class. There just wasn’t a whole lot to choose from. To borrow a southern phrase it was “slim pickins”.
During my senior year I made some friends from a different school. Through them I met Brent. He was not the most attractive guy: overweight with a huge afro of tight blond curls and the usual teenage acne. But, he had bright blue eyes, a warm smile and he was funny from what I could tell. So when he romantically asked me if I “wanted to do something sometime”, I accepted.
The date started off well, he picked me up at my front door (a must, especially if you are raised in the south) and we went to diner at a local Japanese restaurant. Ironically this was the restaurant I went there a few times with my previous boyfriend. It was also the place that you would see someone you knew any night of the week, Savannah is a small town. I don’t remember, but I’m sure I ran into someone I knew that night and I’m sure while I said hello they sized up my date. Our dinner was your typical teenage event, mostly we talked about people we knew and what was happening that weekend. I remember that he tried really hard to be charming, but in an awkward kind of way. He laughed at odd moments, throwing back his head and tossing his hair around like a girl. He gazed at me intently while slurping his Miso soup. When he started sucking on his chopsticks a little too long I knew I had made a mistake.
After dinner we were off to the Wind-Song Cinema to see Shakespeare in Love. We had arrived early, so we decided to hang out in the lobby for a while. We sat down on a bench near the arcade. He kept hugging me in the not so subtle “I’m sexually frustrated because it’s been a long time” or most likely in his case, “I’m still a virgin, but maybe you can help me out” kind of way. I released myself from his tentacle grasp and suggested we go into the movie. I really want to get a good seat I called over my shoulder as I flew ahead of him into the theater. All throughout the movie whenever there was a cheesy line or a love scene he would give me a meaningful stare and a suggestive smile. In return I would cringe and hope that I was giving him “let’s be friends” signals. I had my eyes on the screen, my legs crossed and both hands clinging to my coke the entire time.
At the end of the night he drove me home and immediately lunged for a kiss (I will say he was persistent). I dodged him, (it was a good thing that I was so athletic back then) let myself out of the car, thanked him for a nice time, and secretly hoped that he would never call me again! Judging by the look on his face and the way his car peeled out of my drive way I didn’t think he would.
The NEXT day I he called. He said it was cool that I didn’t want to “make out”, but the way he sees it I owe him twenty bucks! That indeed was the cost of my shrimp fried rice and awkward experience! Clearly this guy thought I was easy, like some prostitute: a cheap one at that! I went from shocked to embarrassed to enraged. When I told my brother about it (while sobbing) he wanted to know his name so he could “beat the crap out of him”. I declined this chivalrous offer and waited for my wounded pride to heal.
It did. The next week I started dating one of his friends.
