Week Seven - Another's Perspective

I was very picky with meeting men, so it had been hard for me to find someone I was really interested in. My friends kept harassing me to go to Yahoo Personals and set up an ad, saying I was bound to meet some decent guys there. But I wasn't looking for decent. I was looking for great. I'm a single, attractive white guy and why should I settle for less?

Well, the first guy I went out on a date with was just not the one. For some reason, I've always been attracted to black guys, so when I saw in this one black guy's ad that he was intelligent, forty and was going to school to get his degree, I thought “cool, a guy going to get another degree”. Little did I know, it was his first degree. The guy had never graduated college! At 40 years old!

Well, I found that out over dinner. We had agreed to meet at The Cheesecake Factory, so I drove up and parked my Mercedes in the valet area and waited patiently for him, checking out my appearance in the glass revolving doors at the entrance. The black Armani blazer I had on fit perfectly and I was ready for a nice evening. My workout at the gym had left me feeling exhilarated.

Finally, he drove up in an older model Toyota 4Runner, which looked as if it had seen better days. It had to have been at least ten years old. That did not look too promising. Once he got out and walked over to me, I noticed he was tall, which the ad had promised, and relatively good looking. He was wearing jeans and a blue polo shirt and looked a little too casual for my taste. The sneakers he was wearing looked far from new and were a bit, shall I say, “run down”. I almost made up an excuse right then and there to leave, but I had promised my friends that I would at least give it a shot.

Once we were seated, I ordered a nice, healthy salad and a Perrier. He, of course, ordered what seemed like a whole side of beef and a beer. I rarely eat meat and I don't drink, so this was definitely not a good sign. By the time he was on his third bottle of beer, I knew this was not going to work. I didn't really understand his sense of humor and when he talked, something kept drawing my eyes to that gap he had between his top two front teeth. I instantly appreciated the years I spent wearing braces.

I didn't find his conversation all that great either. When I mentioned how I thought Britney Spears was a joke and should be mentally institutionalized, he said that he felt sorry for her and wished people would just leave her alone. Ugh.

I did like the fact that he seemed very comfortable with himself, but whatever the cologne was that he was wearing smelled like it cost less than the meals we were eating. At some point, I blatantly kept looking at my watch, and he asked, jokingly I would surmise, if there was somewhere I needed to be. I quickly jumped on the opportunity to escape and explained that I had just remembered I needed to go pick up a new suit I had been having tailored. The way he smiled and looked at me, saying “OK, cool,” let me know that he really didn't believe a word I was saying. But, I didn't care. I wanted out of there. I hadn't paid $150.00 for a haircut to be sitting here with some guy who laughed at his own “jokes”, called himself “silly” and never even finished college.

After we split the check and were out standing in front of the restaurant, I plastered a smile on my face and reached out to shake his hand. He chuckled as if he had just heard something funny, shook my hand, and said “It was nice to meet you.” I said the feeling was mutual. He turned, shaking his head, and said “You take care,” and walked off. The nerve of some people!