Seeing as it’s Thursday, I thought a nice throwback story was necessary. This one is for Ayns. It takes place in 2011, in the horrible era of our online dating careers. After trying out a few Plenty of Fish dates alone, we decided it was much more entertaining to do a double blind date so at least we could get drunk together if our dates were awful.
So one night, we arrange two POF dates to meet us at this dive karaoke bar downtown in Calgary. Aynsley’s date shows up first. It is obvious he is disappointed that Aynsley is not a man. He doesn’t order a drink and proceeds to tell us how he is very health conscious so he never drinks. Being sober in a shitty karaoke bar does not sit well with me. We order beers while he tells us about his major in Music and how he loves coming to karaoke to sing. I am kicking Ayns under the table trying no to laugh at her. So I text my date who is supposed to arrive soon and tell him there maaaaay be a change of plans tonight. Then I slam back my beer and tell Ayns that my..er… brother is outside and needs to see me right away (because THAT makes sense) and I grab my purse.. and jacket… and leave knowing that she is going to kill me 🙂
Outside, I immediately run into my date. I know it’s him because he is bigger than a fucking house and has a remarkably square head as I recalled from the pictures on his online profile. I grab him and pull him behind a truck and ask him to wait for a second. He is really confused and also incredibly nervous and awkward but I ignore it and watch the front door of the bar. Sure enough, Ayns come bolting out of the doors and sees us crouching behind a truck and starts running towards the corner of the building. We follow and are immediately laughing about her date in front of my bewildered date. *MEANGIRLS*. We decide to walk down the street to another bar and continue our weird threesome date. When we get inside, suddenly Sid (his name was Sid) remembers that he “left his jeep running in the parking lot of the karaoke bar”. Translation: you bitches are crazy and I want nothing to do with you. We laugh and say YA OK and he leaves. We are pretty much dying and order drinks and decide to have a good night just the two of us. No.. he was serious. He comes back and explains that he was so nervous he just got out of his jeep and left it running and actually had to walk back and drive it to our new bar. Ayns then decides to call this guy from Cal Tire that she met earlier that day while getting her car serviced… because he managed to pick her up with a line about her braces and how he has a gap in his teeth too.. So this is hilarious and he arrives and is like 40 years old. Night goes on and was surprisingly fun once Sid loosened up and Aynsley’s date remembered how to hang out with 20 somethings.
STRATHHHMORRRREEEE
Flash forward to the next weekend. A few of my friends and their boyfriends decide to go to this Halloween Haunted House event that’s put on every year. I do not have a date, as per usual, so I invite Sid because why the hell not. He is a massive human. I will make him go into the houses first, right? Done.
Sid shows up and it’s clear he has a cold. He is also a driller and his job is blah blah something about drill mud so he is constantly congested, according to him. I’m like EW. Thanks for sharing. So off we go and he is popping fisherman’s friends. After I notice him popping another few I start to take a mental note of this guys addiction to these gross licorice tasting throat cough drops. It’s like clockwork. Eats one, pops another, eats one, pops another.
Now I knew that he was a really shy guy and we are now with all my friends so he is rather nervous once again. My friends are all trying to talk to him and ask him questions and he is just stone faced and fidgeting and not saying much. It’s super awkward. I try to ignore it because I feel bad for him because I know what it’s like to be shy and we are also in huge line-ups to get into the haunted houses, so who knows? Maybe he doesn’t like crowds and we have something in common?
So we finish going through all the houses and he is sort of laughing but still looks uncomfortable. We call it a night and get in the jeep to drive home. As we are driving (and note that we are on the absolute opposite side of the city from where I live and we have to go into the downtown core to drop Aynsley off at home), he leans over and whispers “I don’t feel very good”. I swear in my head the first thing I thought was “You mean like you’re going to shit yourself?” but instead I showed concern and was like Oh no! What’s wrong? And he keeps saying “How far away is your house? Are we close? I REALLY don’t feel good”.
This is foreshadowing as to how my night is going to end. I can take a hint. I have pulled the “I don’t feel good, I think I am just going to head home” card before. So I sort of just stop listening to him. He continues to lean over and whisper how awful he feels and I start to feel bad because now that I am watching him, he really is squirming and looks like absolute hell and I start to wonder if he is going to throw up on me. I briefly reminisce about other POF dates and conclude that even if he threw up on me, it still wouldn’t be the WORST online date I’ve been on.
So we get dropped off at my place and he looks temporarily relieved (that he didn’t puke on me perhaps) and I stand awkwardly in my condo parking lot waiting for him to drop the “I’m just going to leave” card. Instead, he is like “Can I come in?”. And I’m like “Um.. ya.. I guess so?” even though by this point I have made up my mind that he is totally weird and socially retarded.
I walk towards the elevator in the lobby and he looks at me and says “How many floors up are you?”. I think it was THAT MOMENT that I realized what was about to happen. We get up to my floor and it was quite a walk from the elevator down the hall. He is pale and sweaty. I open the door to my beautifully decorated and lavishly furnished condo and before I even turn on my hallway light he says “CAN I USE YOUR BATHROOM?”
I saw Aynsley’s face flash through my mind. She was laughing and pointing at me.
I said “Uh yea it’s in here” and went over to my bedroom. At the time, I was living with my buddy Mitch. It was a 2 bedroom condo with a main bathroom (that was declared Mitch’s bathroom) and then another en suite bathroom off of my bedroom (which was obviously my bathroom). So it was just sort of an unwritten rule that we use our own bathrooms because lets face it, boys and girls have different ideas of cleanliness when it comes to bathrooms.
Sid sees that I am leading him towards the en suite in my bedroom and says these words:
UH DO YOU HAVE A BATHROOM THAT’S NOT
ATTACHED TO YOUR BEDROOM?
I am basically like “WELP, there goes my normal evening!”
So I sort of laugh and am like “Ya sure! You can use Mitch’s bathroom!” His face goes an even more translucent shade of white as he inquires who Mitch is, because at this point, that’s all he needs is to come home to my place and find out I live with my husband and 9 kids. So I assure him Mitch is just my roommate and he enters his bathroom.
PHASE 1: THE MAIN EVENT
Do you ever have leftover chili and need to throw it out, but you can’t pour it down the drain and it’s too messy to pour into the garbage, so you take the pot and pour it into the toilet and flush it down? Can you remember what that sounds like? Now take that and multiply it by 10000 and play it on a loop for an hour. This is what I heard for the next horrifying hour of my life. Horrified doesn’t even come close to my reaction. It was like the first time I saw 2 girls and 1 cup (Mom, please don’t Google that). I had no idea what to do with myself as the condo was not very big and I couldn’t exactly leave the room so I went into my bedroom, shut the door, turned on my TV and blasted anything that was on, AND took out my laptop and put iTunes on. And then I just sat like that waiting for the inevitable moment when he would be finished his ungodly act and knock on my door and try to say something that would reverse all of what he just did. In retrospect, and trust me I have replayed this night in my head and to others man times, I always wondered why he didn’t just save himself the pain and humility and say goodnight and then get in his truck and rush to the nearest gas station to shit. Like if I had to have an awful dump and I was on a date, I would be out of there so soon. I don’t care if it was Brad Pitt or RyGos. I would exit as soon as humanly possible. Why didn’t he just leave? Did he think I was actually still going to be interested in him after that?
PHASE 2: HE FINISHES
I hear the toilet flush and put my phone away because I have been texting Mitch telling him that a random hero has been defecating in his bathroom for an hour and he should NOT bring any girls home tonight. I hear a little sound that is as light as a frozen pea falling off the counter and hitting the ground. It’s Sid knocking on my door. I tell him to come in and am sort of entertained at this point. He barely looks bothered by the situation and flops down casually on the bed beside me, as if we have been dating for years, and says “I feel WAY better now!”. I’m like “Oh ya? I bet…”
Then he nonchalantly is just like “Alright, well I’m going to go to sleep because I work tomorrow morning”. Then he falls asleep..and I am still in shock and awe and staring at this beast in my bed. But it gets better..
He starts to snore. No.. he starts air horning. It was so loud and sounded like he was snorting a gallon of snot every inhale. I honestly didn’t know what to do. At about 2:30 am I hear the front door open and Mitch comes in with some girls (atta boy). It was like my saving grace. I jumped out of bed and opened the door and shared my night with him and these girls. We were all dying, and the whole time all you can hear is this guy snoring. After a few drinks with Mitch and his guests, I decide I HAVE to go back in and deal with this bear.
PHASE 3: IT HAPPENED IN BED
I climb back into bed being as loud as I can, hoping that I will wake him up and disturb his snoring. No dice. I lied there for another two hours. WIDE AWAKE. Suddenly, I hear this large rumble, followed by this thick wet fart. My eye went wide and the sound of his own fart must have woken him up because he abruptly rolls over, which in turn, pulls the covers up and over my head and release the dutch oven right in my face. To say it smelled like a rotting racoon carcass would be insulting to racoon carcasses. I hear him sniff in the dark and then the room is silent. In his head, he now thinks that I have just let go this barbaric fart and HE is grossed out by ME. I lie there frozen for another 10 minutes and then he gets out of bed and grabs his wallet and keys and LEAVES. HE LEAVES! At 4 AM HE LEAVES MY PLACE!! He apparently had to work early that day and I couldn’t have been happier.
I roll over in disbelief and started laughing and fell asleep finally after a very long and fucking weird night. I wake up to this text:
“Sorry about last night, I was feeling really shitty..”
You couldn’t have said it better, brotha. Maybe lay off the 5 packs of fisherman’s friend. Just a thought..
Why I had even allowed him in my condo is still a mystery to me. I think I felt bad for him and was sort of shocked by the awkwardness and inappropriateness of the entire night.
For Christmas that year, Ayns bought me this gem to hang in my bedroom and to always remind me how lucky I am to have found Karlin, and how he released me from the horrors of online dating!
Crawly Land 