Worst. Date. Ever.

I’ve been asked time and time again, so here it is. My worst date ever.

It all started off one innocent day on Match.com where I was desultorily perusing new matches and saw a pair of nice eyes smiling back to me from an out of state match. At the time, I wasn’t that interested in dating out-of-state, but his email opened with the tidbit that he was moving to my town in 2 weeks. Well, ok then. I’ll take a look. The profile: seemingly normal, nice guy looking for love. The pictures: nice. Not great, not bad, but nice enough. Red Flags? Hummm… not really. Email? No emoticon abuse, better than average grammar, reference to something I said in my profile and a non-cheesy compliment.

I replied.

He wrote back asking for a date when he was in town the next week.

Due to the number of emails I was averaging per contact, at the time, I decided to go ahead and skip all the back and forth and just meet the guy to see if there was any chemistry. I set the date at a little tex-mex place known for it’s great food if you can deal with the terrible service. I knew it’d be fairly empty for a mid-week, late lunch.

The week goes by with a few back and forth emails and the day arrives. I get to the restaurant and immediately spot Mr. Match. He looked like his pictures. Thumbs up!

That was the last positive thought I had for the next three hours.

I wove through the empty tables to say hello and as he stood up, he pulled a plastic grocery bag out from under the table and handed it to me. Ummm. Cool? I open it up and ceased to think “cool.” There were 3 items in the bag. A fantasy erotica book, a superwoman action figure and an old and beaten up copy of Dune. He provided explanations. Needless to say, the explanations didn’t go very far towards excusing the weird factor. Hello foreshadowing.

We sat down at the table and munched on chips and salsa while waiting for our oblivious server to take our order. As we waited, he chattered on about all kinds of interesting stuff. His ex wife, the terminally ill guy she brought to live with them in their 900 square foot apartment, the fact that she was having an affair with ill guy and decided to bail on BOTH of them — leaving my date to take care of the guy, the 13 animals that she also abandoned with him, some work problems he was having that were causing him to take the out-of-state job, the fact that he was moving into a place in the burbs and couldn’t wait to live where there were sidewalks, that he had a 12 step co-dependent recovery group that night… (at this point, if he’d bothered to take the pulse of my reaction, he would have had to revive me from my shocked stupor. All of this info in the first 30 minutes of the 1st date.)

The waitress finally came. With waters. I could have used something a bit stronger.

I could have left, but this was becoming a date for the record books. I took it to the next level. I notice tats peeking out from under his sleeves, so I thought I would ask what they were. Mistake. He stripped down to his wife beater so I could see the full sleeves of religiously inspired tats. Now, I am all for a little meaningful ink if that’s your thing. I could hardly have lived and worked in the places I have without being used to it by now. But this was over the top! We’re talking hands of hell reaching up to pull Jesus off the cross, a bloody thorn crown, the crucifixion (all 3 crosses depicted), etc. Like I said, full sleeves. Two arms of terror. I made polite noises about how he must be into pain and that yes indeed, blood is a very meaningful motif in the Bible. Yikes!

The food arrived. Thank you God! Literally.

As we are munching, I notice a plastic patch sticking out from under his shirt (yes, he put back on the button down to eat.) Thinking that maybe he was trying to quit smoking or something, I asked about it. (If you make one comment about me being the dumb blonde who goes up the stairs in a horror flick, so help me…) He proceeds to tell me that he’s been suffering migraines since he was a teen and the docs put him on a narcotic drip patch to manage the pain. Now, I’ve dealt with migraines and they are no laughing matter. But I’d never heard of a permanent narcotic drip patch. So I clarified, “You’re telling me you’ve been high since you were 17?” He laughed, “No, they maxed out the dose a few years ago so it doesn’t really make me high anymore. Unfortunately, that also means I feel all the migraines.” All of the sudden I was VERY glad that I had driven myself. Nothing like a perma-high for safe transportation.

As if there weren’t enough nails in the coffin of this lovely date, he then tells me about how he really has issues with contra-indications on his medicines for migraine and bi-polar and people he’s dated in the past had to take him to the ER.

By this time, the food has come and gone and I am trying to extricate myself from this fiasco without dislodging another nugget of TMI. I claim pressing work issues (after 3 hours — entirely plausible and don’t be haters — I wasn’t mature enough yet to just tell him I wasn’t digging him.) Dodging an attempted good bye kiss, I flee the scene.

When I get home, I am dumbfounded to see that he has emailed me already. He said that he had a great date and hoped we could do it again soon. Oh, and by the way… did I want to help him move next weekend?