My Worst Date

I’ve been absolutely swamped with work and have had no time to do any writing for pleasure at all. But I feel bad that I’m neglecting my blog and my loyal readers, so I figured I’d just quickly pound out an amusing story, even though it has nothing to do with kink.

When I was in my mid-20s, I was pathetically single, having absolutely zero luck meeting anyone I might want to date. My housemate, B (a straight woman) felt bad for me. She had cute guys throwing themselves at herself right and left (she was quite the hottie back then and today, a quarter-century later, she’s still pretty damn hot but happily married). So when she started dating a new guy, A, who I sort of knew and thought was cute, she felt bad for me.

One day she tells me that she and A are going to a movie (Dragonheart, to be specific) and asks if I want to go along. I say sure, and when they pick me up, there’s another guy in the car with them. I can’t recall his name, so I’m just going to call him Guy. He is A’s gay best friend. We get to the theater and when we get seated, it winds up me, Guy, A, B.

I wondered why it wasn’t me, B, A, Guy–that way we’d all be seated next to the people we knew. And then partway through the film, it suddenly dawned on me that A and B were setting up Guy and me on a blind date. (The fact that it took me more than a hour to figure this out might be related to why I was so pathetically single in my 20s…)

After the movie we go to Denny’s to get something to eat. As we’re waiting for our food, B starts talking about her work for a Democratic Party organization, and Guy suddenly starts bitching up a storm about liberals, making snide remarks about the stuff B is talking about. A awkwardly changes the subject and when B offers an opinion, Guy just contradicts her in a really obnoxious way. This continues until our food arrives. Everything he says is an attack on B in some fashion. A and B are both so uncomfortable, neither one of them is talking, and Guy is just going on, ragging on B but in round-about ways.

It suddenly dawns on me that Guy has a crush on A and is jealous that he’s dating B because he wants to date A but A is straight. I could understand that–A was pretty hot in a early-20s athlete sort of way. I would absolutely have fucked him, but there was that awkward thing about him being totally straight. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let Guy keep ragging on my friend just because he can’t cope with his feelings for A.

The next time Guy pauses to take a breath, I leap into action.

“How many CIA agents does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to change the light bulb and one to confuse the facts.” (I love that joke…)

Before Guy can say anything, I continue. “How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to fill the bathtub with appliances and one to light the giraffes on fire. How many gay men does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to buy the Art Deco bulb and the other to shout ‘Fabulous, Steve!’ How many lesbians does it take to change a light bulb? Four. One to change the bulb and three to talk about how much more gratifying it is than a man could ever be. How many Freudian psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? So, tell me about your mother. How many anarchists does it take to change a light bulb?…”

You get the idea. I just refused to stop telling light bulb jokes. I made sure to time my bites of food to Guy’s, so that whenever he tried to speak, I could pre-empt him with another joke. They weren’t always great jokes, and in fact by the end of the meal I was scraping the bottom of my barrel of light bulb jokes (which is rare–I know a LOT of them), but the point was just to shut him the fuck up and make it clear I wasn’t going to let him say another word. A and B both looked very grateful and obligingly played along with the jokes.

We drove home in total silence, because thankfully, Guy had gotten the message. A dropped him off first, and then both A and B turned around and simultaneously said, “I AM SO SORRY!” B added, “I am never going to set another person up on a blind date ever again,” and as far as I know, she never did.

I, however, helped set her up with a guy I knew she’d like just a few months later (after A had had the shitty taste to dump her by phone on April Fools Day). I and another friend make a point of getting a really nice guy to come to a Halloween party she and I were throwing. It was a great party. By the end of the night, B was drunk off her ass, wandering through the house wearing nothing but a WWII officer’s jacket and cap, shouting “I’m looking for a few good men!” She wound up recruiting the nice guy for a date the next night and two years later they got married.

The moral of this story is never underestimate the power of light bulb jokes.