An uneventful beginning to my career of online dating catastrophies...

Gold Lame

I set up a date with a guy from Lake Arrowhead. He had a somewhat decent profile from what I can remember and one decent picture. “Gold Lame” was a doctor (I thought I’d hit pay dirt), said he drove a sports car (which didn’t make much sense considering he lived in the mountains) and had a daughter (could be worse. He could have had two). When he arrived at the restaurant it turned out that he was the shrink for a mental ward, drove a Mazda four-door and wasn’t yet “fully” divorced from the mother of his kid. Not that any of these points alone were bad (except for the not yet divorced part) but it just showed his propensity to stretch the truth. Add all this together and include him wearing a gold lame shirt to lunch and I’m sure you can see where this date was headed.

Now, I firmly believe you can pretty much decide within the first few minutes of meeting and talking with someone whether or not they are someone you would like to pursue further. I determined right away he was not of that sort. We swapped small talk and waited for our order to be taken. We weren’t waiting all that long before “Gold Lame” showed yet another red-flag. He became highly agitated and decided it was time for him to go hunt down the waiter. I’m not the most patient person in the world but even I wasn’t unhappy with the service. We really hadn’t been waiting all that long. He found the waiter and brought him back with him to our table. As the waiter took our order it was very clear how irritated with him he was. I’m 100% certain that there were a little more than carrots and dressing in our dinner salads that evening. My date’s clear lack of respect for people in the food service industry turned me off more than his wardrobe from 1984.

I figured the date would be over before I knew it so I just decided to ride it out. We received our DNA salads and the conversation lulled so we could eat. I looked up at “Gold Lame” just in time to see him shoving a huge forkful of lettuce into his mouth and a leaf falling out of it. I’m sure it was just bad timing as this guy didn’t seem like the sloppy type but he may as well have eaten a booger. In addition to his rudeness with the waiter and his wardrobe it was quite apparent to me that there would be no second date, at least as far as I was concerned.

Towards the end of our lunch though, he began referring to future events. He mentioned how he loved visiting Pasadena. Then, as if things couldn’t get more awkward for me he said we should continue hanging out all afternoon. He suggested us going for a walk through Old Town then actually getting dinner and having a few drinks. I didn’t want to spend another five minutes with this man let alone spend the whole day with him! I only hope I didn’t stutter too badly when I lied about meeting a friend later when all I really had planned was an evening of take-out and online soulmate searching.