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Disappointed
I’ve never been a big dater, and in my early 20′s, my only relationship was through a mutual friend/matchmaker. I never experienced the awkward discomfort of a date with a stranger, until this one.
I arranged to meet with Steve, whom I met on a college dating site. This was around the time Spiderman 2 came out, so we made plans to see the movie. I arrived at our meeting spot directly from work, and wound up waiting over an hour in a very sketchy neighborhood. His height and lateness are immaterial to the story (he was shorter than he said he was) but what should have been a red flag was his comment after I told him I came directly from from my job, “Oh, I thought you were going to go home first and freshen up.”
On our way to the theatre, he left me in the car while he stopped to get some gum “to get ready” and said that while in the store, he beamed over the fact that he had such a beautiful girl in his car. While driving and blasting industrial metal from the speakers of his convertible, he asked if it would be acceptable should he wish to hold my hands during the movie. I was ok with hand holding, or so I thought.
During the movie, he did in fact clasp my hand and looked in my direction in the hopes of getting some tongue action, but I panicked and let go of his hand, pretending to be focused on Tobey Maguire’s acting. As we walked to his car after the movie, he confronted me, wanting to know why I didn’t let him hold my hand. I was taken aback, apologized, and kept saying “I don’t know.” He wouldn’t relent. He mentioned how I agreed to holding his hand when we were in the car earlier, but during the movie, I pulled back, which made me a liar. Then he said “Whatever, want to go to the beach?” It was 10:30pm, my nerves were shot, I hadn’t eaten (we didn’t get popcorn) he was angry with me for being frigid, and he wanted to go to the beach? I said I wanted to go home.
After I opened the passenger side door, it started drizzling, then pouring. Steve cursed under his breath as he started to assemble the roof of his convertible. While he was at work, I mustered up a response as to why I didn’t hold his hand; said I was still not completely over my ex (I wasn’t lying here, my ex was my first love, despite it being unrequited). I offered to help him with the roof, but he barked out a “NO!”
Our drive on the expressway in the pouring rain couldn’t have been any more awkward. To mitigate this, Steve turned the volume all the way up on the car stereo, and started driving at dangerous speeds. At least we were finally on the same page in wanting this date to be over!
When we reached the bus stop where I’d earlier agreed to be dropped off, he said with as much bitterness as possible “I’m not going to be an $#@, I’ll drive you home.” I did not want this