Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places (And Does It Hurt To Get Clocked With a Prehistoric Flounder?)
There’s no debating that dating is grating, deflating, irritating and infuriating. And here’s your education on graduation from the agitation.
To say I’ve had interesting dating experiences is like saying Bernie Madoff had interesting investment opportunities.
Sure, a few girls were great but the rest were bad, worse and even worse than that. And if there’s one piece of wisdom I can impart to you in this short lifetime it’s this subtle gem:
If your first date ends with a phone call to the 9th Precinct, do not pursue that relationship any further.
He Totally Took the "Fun" Out of "Fund".
(Photo: Politico.com)
You might also want to pass on making life plans with the girl who:
* Tries to jump out of your car at 50 mph
* Accidentally shatters your living room window by opening and closing it so many times because she doesn’t want you to know that she’s smoking pot while you’re at work
* Confesses that she will probably soon be going to jail for statutory rape
* Loudly scolds you for eating an apple out-of-season because of the carbon footprint left by its transport
* Brags about being extremely wealthy to the woman giving her a manicure (just to make that woman feel bad about herself) then leaves a sub-standard tip, so the woman will feel even angrier
* Seriously—yes, seriously—threatens to beat you up because you whitened your teeth which makes you a “fake, phony” [made all the more funny by the fact that this girl dyed her hair, spray tanned and was a make-up artist]
* Has a Brooklyn-accent so profound it sounds like Joe Pesci is sticking his tongue in your ear. And after hearing her speak on the phone one time, your inner voice will calmly say: “I don’t care if she looks like Cindy Crawford and teaches Superstring theory at MIT….that voice is not going to be the mother of my children”.
So congratulations to me on all of these dating accomplishments (and we haven’t even gotten to 9th Precinct Nicki yet).
Sure, I could chalk up this Parade of Horribles to bad luck, but let’s dig deeper for a moment.
It's Horrible That My Parades Never Include Giant Inflatable Latina Child Explorers Who Crush Underpaid Musicians.
(Photo: Accuweather.com)
Have you ever been in a relationship where things are just truly difficult?
You know, a coupling with constant fireworks—good and bad—and then as you get further into the relationship, just bad? Where some part of you knows you are not right for each other (although I can almost guarantee your friends knew all along!), yet you stay in that relationship and even dig in your heels when things get worse?
Why do we hang on in those instances?
Well, when you’ve devoted time and emotion to a relationship—even a bad one— you feel justified in fighting for it to work. And the longer you are in that bad relationship, the more you find yourself fighting for it, fighting with the other person and fighting with yourself to stay or go.
And when we refuse to give up, it’s simply our old friend Human Nature paying a visit.
[Editor’s Note: Mr. Lavallo once tore a tendon in his finger opening a jar of Whole Foods Salsa because he refused to let it “defeat him”. Dummy.]
The Lyrics: "If I Stay There Will Be Trouble. But If I Go It Will Be Double."
Um, Didn’t You Just Answer Your Own Musical Question Right There? Dummy.
(Photo: Epic Records/Sony Music)
My college roommate (we’ll call him Dr.) is about as smart and sensible a person as you could hope to meet. He had some advice for me when I was on the relationship treadmill.
“Dr.”, I asked exasperated at the end of yet another bad relationship experience, “how do I keep finding all these crazy girls?”.
Dr. said that I was the common denominator in my previous relationships and if I found the “wrong” woman, then I was responsible for choosing them. And a responsible person needs to recognize patterns and warning signs, and then stop making the same bad choices.
Damnit. Why can’t I just call upon my good pal Human Nature and stick the blame on someone else?!?
The Next Time Human Nature Pays a Visit, Tell Him to Beat It. And to Please Never Wear a Yellow Vest with Rhinestones.
(Photo: Epic Records/Sony Music)
As I processed Dr.’s words, I resolved to take his advice, which was pretty much like riding a bike up a mountain versus coasting down a San Francisco hill. But I scrutinized and questioned and challenged and worked my way out of the relationship black hole to (finally) make sound decisions.
I also had another reason for choosing the path of much-more-resistance; I finally saw my dating ridiculousness through the eyes of friends, nearly all of whom made very good relationship decisions in their lives.
The wake-up call occurred at a summer get-together. Friends of mine have been throwing a December holiday party for roughly two decades and one year decided to hold a bash in June.
At the summer party, the girl I brought told me she just had the oddest conversation with another guest, whom she had just met. The guest was asking my girlfriend what it was like to be a musician, was it scary to play in front of all those people, how much she practices, etc. This would have been fine except that my girlfriend was an environmental engineer.
The guest thought she was speaking with the girl I had brought to the holiday party 6 months earlier, who actually was in a band. Translation: I was bringing a different girl to almost every yearly party.
Who did I think I was...Hugh Hefner? Dummy.
Hef is Responsible for More Empty Cribs than a Babies ‘R Us Showroom.
(Photo: thisorthat.com)
Alas, this story would be incomplete without the requisite psycho online dating experience, which will sound like fiction but I don’t write fiction yet.
Without further adieu, I present "The Tale of 9th Precinct Nicki".
Nicki looked like Scary Spice, which was the only enjoyable part of this one-time encounter. Even that aesthetic would be rendered quickly irrelevant.
When I arrived, she invited me up to her apartment before our planned excursion into Manhattan. Odd, I thought, because who invites a stranger into their home the first time you meet, let alone one you’ve met online two days before? I mean, what if I was a raving lunatic?
It turns out Nicki was far closer than me to storing body parts in a basement freezer.
As I entered her abode, the first thing I noticed was she had pictures covering her entire living room wall, floor-to-ceiling. All the pictures were of Nicki. My only thought: “My God…she’s stalking… HERSELF”.
As I visually drank in this stunning monument to Nicki-dom, I felt her grab me from behind. I’m sure for a thousandth of a second I thought she was going to kill me but instead, she pushed me down on her couch, danced around the room in a circle, clapped her hands, pumped her arms to the ceiling and yelled:
“WOO-WOO!!”
The only music playing was in her head.
Quizzically stunned at this point, I managed to open my mouth to softly mutter the question “woo…woo?”. Her response was a just-as-energetic-as-the-first-time:
“WOO-WOO!!”
Yes, that did seem to be the only plausible response to my ignorant inquiry.
Suddenly, Nicki managed to do something I would never have expected from a girl I’d known for all of eight minutes. She jumped on the coach, landed on top of my thighs with her knees and began to dance.
And of course, even in that awkward position, she managed to clap, pump her arms and once again release her now-famous battle cry:
“WOO-WOO!!”
Amazingly, a photo of that very moment wound up online:
(Photo: electwellness.com)
A few seconds after beginning her welcome ritual, Nicki’s phone rang. To her credit, she stopped dancing to answer it. Her only words spoken:
“Hello [pause]. I can’t talk right now. My boyfriend is waiting.”
I got a promotion! How exciting. I felt like Fred Flintstone getting a 3-clam raise from Mr. Slate. And to celebrate my newfound riches, I awkwardly lifted Nicki off, stood up and said “why don’t we go now?”.
I’m not sure why I didn’t make like a plastic cup and go Solo at that point, but perhaps I was still enjoying the fact that she looked like a Spice Girl. I mean, who didn’t get nostalgic for the 90’s by 2002?
"I swear to God, Fred, if you “Yabba Dabba Woo-Woo” one more time, I’m gonna clock you with a flounder."
(Photo: Hanna-Barbera/Warner Bros. Animation)
As we left her apartment, she casually mentioned she had several vodka shots and 4 beers before I arrived (yet hadn’t eaten any food). Nicki was tiny and razor thin, so it probably didn’t take much to get her drunk. I’m guessing a few drops of vanilla extract in her pancakes would have done the trick. But at least I now had some context for the cornucopia of crazy.
Next, we drove into the City. I tried to make conversation by asking her about her last relationship but this triggered a serious reaction that made her cry profusely. She said she was “completely heartbroken” and still trying to cope with the pain. I tried to calm her down with empathy and gently asked how long they’d been together.
Her answer?
TWO WEEKS.
At this point, I was looking back to see if Ashton Kutcher was going to pop out of my trunk and yell “PUNK’D!”.
We arrived at a loud and crowded lower-eastside club. I bought her a beer (and myself a water, as I don’t drink), pointed to a small table in the back, took her by the hand and began to move through the crowd.
Quite suddenly, she ran past me and started to spin around with arms extended—Wonder-Woman-style—to clear a small circle for herself on the floor. And Lord I swear, the moment she did that, I just knew what was coming next:
“WOO-WOO!!”
Nicki screamed the words as if she were attending a casting call for Braveheart.
The sad part here is other people started mimicking her. Now, all sorts of people were woo-woo-ing and lifting their palms-up toward an imaginary sky.
Who knew Nicki would be creating the next hot dance sensation right before my eyes. She was like a nutty-and-slutty Chubby Checker.
I rolled my eyes, shook my head and grabbed the table. In the next fifteen minutes or so—in between bouts of woo-woo-ing—Nicki came back over to the table, to take sips of her beer and chat. And she seemed relatively tame for a short while.
Now, at this point, by my count, she had had five beers, no food and numerous vodka shots. I had to drive her home and I didn’t want her getting sick in my car. So I cut her off. I knew she couldn’t buy another drink herself because she told me she had less than $2 in her pocket.
And when I refused to buy her another beer, the needle moved right on back to crazy.
She left our table, walked across the floor and picked up beer bottles from other people’s tables and drank them! At least now I had an official reason for not offering up a good night kiss.
They May Take Our Lives But They’ll Never Take Our Woo's!
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)
And now my breaking point was reached. I walked up to her and said “It’s time to go”.
Maybe it was my serious tone relaying that the night was ending. Maybe it was the liquor store she had consumed. Or maybe it was the stark realization that she had woo'd her last woo. But suddenly, Nicki could barely stand and had become a sloppy drunk.
As we made our way to the exit, a guy stuck out his arm to block us from leaving, as if he expected us to pay a toll. Then he smiled, pointed at Nicki, raised his palms toward the ceiling and shouted:
“WOO-WOO!!”
Since my only thought now was getting this girl home without her getting sick in my car, I decided to buy her something to eat.
We sat outside a pizza joint on St. Mark’s Place. To her credit, Nicki had the chewing part down cold; I’ll give her that. But for some reason she either didn’t have the energy, ability or knowledge that she needed to actually swallow her food.
I watched as every chewed bite fell out of the other side of her mouth.
Time to get the car!
I told her I’d be back in 5 minutes. I even asked if she understood what I said (she said she did). I returned as promised but Nicki was nowhere to be found. She had no money. She could barely walk. C’mon, how far could a Crazy Spice really get under those circs?
Yet I spent the next several hours driving, walking and searching Manhattan streets for this lunatic.
At approximately 4AM, I phoned the 9th Precinct to alert them that a girl I met that evening was drunk and missing. Yes, I was concerned about her, but this was probably a self-preservation move; if Nicki was found dead on the street, I didn’t want to be a suspect.
I was told there was nothing I could do. So I drove home.
Exhausted and exasperated, I left Nicki a final message. I told her that I hope she’s ok and that I searched the East Village for hours looking for her. And that this was the worst date I could possibly imagine.
At 11am the next morning, my phone rang. I saw it was Nicki and picked up. She thought I abandoned her at the pizzeria and got in a cab to go home (and at that point I wasn’t curious enough to ask how she paid for it).
She gushed about how wonderful I was to look for her, how I was the greatest gentleman in history and to make it up to me, she invited me over for a special breakfast.
I could never be that hungry.
And I would be very suspicious of any Spice she used.
Pepsi. The Official Soft Drink of ABSOLUTELY F*#CKING CRAZY.
(Photo: Posh24.com)
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