I figured this time I would do “worst first dates,” though this one was bad more in the “I’m so mortified” way rather than the “oh my goodness that person was a total freakbag” way.
A few months ago when I was home sick with bronchitis – right after getting over pneumonia – I was browsing around my favorite dating/quiz site when I got a message from a relatively sane-sounding woman. It’s not very often I get messages from 1) women, 2) women over the age of 22, 3) women without boyfriend/husband looking for “fun times,” 4) someone listed as “single,” or 5) anyone who sounds reasonably intelligent, so I gave her my contact info and hoped for the best.
We chatted on the phone for a couple weeks before deciding to have a date. In my infinite wisdom (the wisdom that has caused many a comedy of errors in my life) I invited her to my house for dinner and – don’t laugh – a night of watching “The L Word.” Seriously, it was going to be the lezziest first date EVER.
The night of The Big Dinner I was getting ready by furiously cleaning my messy house before she came over. At about an hour before she was to arrive, I took a quick shower and just threw on pajamas because it gets very hot in my kitchen, and I wanted to wait until I had everything cooking and she was just about to arrive to get dressed. I realized I should put a load of dishes in the dishwasher before starting cooking, so was running around the house gathering up the 20 water glasses I had managed to scatter everywhere when I remembered there were wine glasses on my balcony from having friends over the night before.
I ran out onto my balcony – in a pair of boxer shorts and wife beater – closing the sliding glass door behind me so I wouldn’t have to round the cats up and chase them back inside when I heard a loud *thump* and turned around.
That’s right. The cats had raced after me in the hopes of going outside, and had stopped at the last minute, sliding on my wood floors and pushing the security board into the tracks of my sliding glass door.
I was stranded on my balcony with no cell phone and no clothes on.
And my date was going to arrive at my condo in 45 minutes.
First I looked over the edge to see if I could manage the jump. It’s only about eight feet off the ground (I’m on the first floor, but the building is on a hill and the basement has an entrance right below my balcony) but I figured if I were to jump, I would inevitably twist/break something and then be lying in pain in the mud with no cell phone locked out of my building. So I waited. And waited. And waited. And for the first time since I lived there, half an hour went by with NO ONE either walking through the parking lot, or driving by my balcony. Finally a woman walked by and I tried to call to her that I needed help, but she flicked me off and kept walking…nice.
Finally I see my date pull in – I think to myself, awesome! there is a parking spot RIGHT BELOW ME she will have to walk by and I can tell her to go grab my neighbor and have her let me in. Does she park in that first, easily-accessible parking spot? No. She drives all the way around the building to park on the total opposite side from where I am standing – and does not see my waving my broom around trying to grab her attention.
At this point, I realized I was hosed. I could hear her buzzing my unit, and then I heard my cell phone ringing, and I really didn’t want her to think I had just stood her up like that (at my house, no less!) so I climbed over the railing and jumped off the damn balcony.
And landed in a giant puddle of mud, right on my ass.
Her first impression of me? Boxer shorts, wife beater, out of breath, covered in mud, talking quickly explaining what happened as I led her to my neighbor’s house to flag her down and let us in the building.
Thank goodness my condo door wasn’t locked.