I was living in a smallish town where if you wanted to date, well, beggars can’t be choosers. I was set up with this guy who played hockey and was pretty popular in town, although now I can’t comprehend why…but you can make your own opinions after listening to this dating disaster. Try not to cringe as you listen to my first date gone wrong…oh, so terribly wrong.
I had just read a really good book on the Vietnam War, and raved about it, chapter by chapter, for the duration of our second date. Ugh, cringe. He could not have been more bored. So yes, here we were, two people who wanted things to work out, but we were pretty much like oil and water.
Before the date started I was pretty convinced that “tonight’s the night,” so naturally, I wore a bra that was pretty, but massively uncomfortable. We stop at restaurant and I decide to totally change my game – now I let him do all the talking (what little there was), and basically just fawn over him all night. I lean forward, feel a sharp twinge, but ignore it.
After a while, my side feels cold, and I notice his sentences start to come out even more slowly (amazingly enough) and he has a very awkward to him. FIFTEEN minutes later a server comes up to me and says, “oh my god, are you okay??” I look down, and the right side of my blouse is seeping with blood. Hockey bro had just watched in awkward silence (for however long) as strips of blood formed around his date’s rib cage, and didn’t say one word.
The under wire of this expensive bra snapped at such an angle that it pierced my skin. It didn’t hurt, but just bled like the dickens. I have no idea how it drew the amount of blood that it did. It looked like I had been knifed. I kept laughing it off, and was making jokes, desperately hoping someone would laugh along. Nope. Just horrified, awkward stares. I had to take the under wire out in the bathroom, so I exited the restaurant with clumps of bloody paper towels and two very differently supported boobs. I’m a keeper.
Hockey guy drives me to the quick care medical center, says he’s parking the car… aaand never comes back. Seriously. He abandoned me in a DIFFERENT city, 11 PM at night. (He later said he came back but couldn’t find me in the waiting room. I don’t buy it.) So a few hours later, I’m bandaged up after a whopping one stitch, abandoned with no cellphone. So I’m sitting in the waiting room, by the pay phone, flipping through the white pages wondering who on earth am I going to call, still in my bloody shirt with injured people giving me weirded-out side glances. Finally this guy offers to let me use Google Maps on his smartphone.
I had one friend in the area, and I knew where she lived from visiting before, but I didn’t know her number offhand. (I was just hoping she’d let me crash at her place for the night.) I write down the Google Maps route, and I run out to catch the last bus of the evening. I catch it, fortunately (thank God I had change that night, I never do), and I get off at the right stop and walk the rest if the way. It’s in the suburbs on the edge of the city. So I’m walking, walking, walking, all the streets look safe, but then the streetlights appear less and less and suddenly I’m really at the edge of the (urbanized) city.
What I didn’t know, beforehand, was that Google Maps will use trails and pathways and all kinds of nature’s little shortcuts as a route option. So here I am, at like 1 AM, walking through this pitch-black HIKING TRAIL through the woods, with just the moon, the stars, and surprisingly bright-white plane contrails for light, as I am hyperventilating thinking “this is how women get murdered, this is how women get murdered.” I see some lights in the distance, and that’s when I realize there could very well be coyotes out here.
That’s when I hear a whine. About 15 feet away from me in the brush. I knew that there were houses under the hills, but that whine sure as fuck sounded right there in front of me. It was so comical. The timing was movie-perfect. I immediately sprint like a bat out of hell, towards the lights. And I’m no runner, so my wee little heart is just givin’ her all. I break through the trees, and up ahead, amid darkened auto shop buildings and industrial factories, was the beaming glow of a 24 Hour Tim Horton’s.
All of it, the whole night, was just hysterical to me. I stumbled inside, the poor cashiers just blinked at me. I looked like I had been assaulted and left for dead. I straightened myself out, told the story, and we all had a good laugh. I ended up staying most of the night, sipping hot chocolate, totally unwilling to go outside again.
So to sum up this date gone wrong, so completely wrong: No more hockey players for me.
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