DATING #1

Last weekend, I went on a date with my mother to a Planned Parenthood party. Whenever she gets invited to these types of fundraisers, I jump to include myself. She doesn’t understand why I would want to hangout with sad middle-aged women, converse in name-tag-based chitchat, and eat tiny, triangle sandwiches.

These events are truly the highlight of my life. I just like to watch how the women age. I like to catalog it, and compare from soccer mom to soccer mom. Even dressing up for these nights, something I generally despise, is exciting. I like to look a little out of place, wearing something seemingly average, but then upon a second look, ill fitting and bizarre... such as my Anita dress from my high school production of West Side Story. Stuff I’d wear to a salsa club and never get asked to dance, except by older, Asian men. NOTE TO READERS: Do not salsa dance with older, Asian men. They take it very seriously and you will end up throwing up afterwards while standing in front of a fan- causing it to whip coolly back into your face. “SPIN SPIN ha HA! Spin Girl!”

Enough said: I love fundraisers. (But only Rich ones. Poor-people ones are sad. Aw, theatre company fundraisers… so depressing. Their malnourished, vagrant four year olds running around high on sugar, because they’ve never seen this many donated ‘potluck’ cut n’ bake Pillsbury cookies in their lives. I don’t wish that life for any child…)

So I went in with my mother, received my golden nametag, and entered the mansion party. Boy was I wrong. Old-money Pasadena Democrats know how to get crunk. Wine spills everywhere. There are like, ten different catering companies each with barrels and barrels of booze.
Some spirited, hopeful woman high-up in the Planned Parenthood world cornered me and ranted about how “YOU YOUNG PEOPLE ARE THE FUTURE!! YOU’RE AN ARTIST!!! YOU’RE THE FUTURE OF YOUNG ARTISTS!!” She’s great. She got Chardonnay all over me, but she’s just great.
I think we invented a new chapter of PP for young people together… it had a really catchy name…it was like…Tap on TAP! Or something. Like a monthly tap-dancing show…at a bar….for YOUNG PEOPLE….that fundraised and spread awareness for planned parenthood? Tap for TAP! Something like that. I think I told her I’d get a band together for it. Maybe I said I was in a band? I don’t know, we were trashed.

The point of this, was that I was going to say that I met this guy there my age who I thought was really good looking and really gay. I was hitting on him all night, even though I knew he was gay. Once again, I’m not sure why. I probably thought it was funny. Or I wanted him to give me something? Who knows. Oh yeah! It was then that I learned he’s a painter. (YOU’RE THE FUTURE OF ARTISTS!) I think I wanted to get the gay guy to become attracted to me so he would paint my portrait. Yep. That was it. I vaguely remember that thought process.

Anyway, somehow I got home, after endless Morning-After-Pill jokes. Isn’t that the end of every story? But wait, there’s more. Actually the rest was the point of me writing this, because it’s supposed to be a blog about dating. But the back story involving the criz-AY-Zay liberals residing in the hills of Pasadena paints a nice picture.

So a week later, said Planned Parenthood gay guy, let’s call him Chris, no wait, that’s his name. Let’s call him Peter (pronounced the German way, “Pay-ter”) calls and asks me to get dinner with him. Sure.
He rings my doorbell, opens the car door for me, and fuck. Planned Parenthood must have gotten me trashed. Peter is incredibly straight and not good-looking in the least bit, and we were definitely on a date. How did I confuse the two most important elements!?

Long story short: he has a five-head. That’s all you really need to know. Five-head sense of humor, five-head relationship with his brother, five-head type of painter … a five-head guy. Sigh. Oh well.

At the muy authentico Mexican restaurant, I lead the small talk and acted like I owned the place. I was making really weird comments like, “That sign… that sign’s been there…all my life.” And then I’d breathe out a deep sigh that suggested a point of view I didn’t have.

He didn’t respond. Not like he needed to; all my comments were neither interesting nor impressive… yet I still feel I was the wild card out of the two of us. Geez, this guys’s lucky to be hanging out with super-cool me. My body language suggests I could care less about this blossoming into a nurturing relationship. God, I’m so the ideal woman…

After dinner, I accompanied him to his apartment. It was close. You’re supposed to go to two places on a date, right? One isn’t enough? I don’t know. So I went to his abode, not in hopes of sex, but in hopes that he’d ask to paint my portrait. Yeah, that was still in the cards for me.

I smoked a cigarette on his back porch half-leaning on the wall all B.A. like Ryder Strong in Boy Meets World. I have the same pack of cigarettes that have been in my purse for three months that I whip out for moments like this.

It’s odd, because the less interested I am in a guy I’m on a date with, the more I try to impress him. But I’m not sure whose “sake” I’m doing this for? Certainly not his, because I don’t quite care what this person I’ll hopefully never see again thinks about me. Yet I find myself acting like this more and more the older I get…

Maybe I just really hate dating. My idea of a perfect way to gradually fall in love with someone is for, let’s say, Jeff Goldbloom to ask me if I want a ride to the grocery store. And then maybe, just maybe, he comes in with me because I can’t reach the chickens. And then we bone. Yeaah… Goldbloom. Mmm, I’ll take you with or without that broken leg from the jaws of a raptor.

The moral of the story is, don’t go on dates with guys you meet when you’re drunk at a fundraiser with your mom. It ultimately won’t go how you had foreseen it, and you’ll just end up accidentally being mean by commenting that his art is “awesome.” But somehow, that one single world blew your cover by sounding extremely patronizing and sarcastic, and you end the night, both deciding you’re a giant Bitch.