But he was a Bad Blind Date. Such that The Project Manager pulled me aside mid-course, during intermission, to provide the disclaimer: “I don’t know what my friend sees in him that he thought I would actually find this asshole attractive.”
I nodded.
“I mean, he hasn’t said one word to me all night long, but he’s managed to talk to everyone else.”
I sipped my cocktail as The Project Manager excused himself to order another round for the group of friends we were with.
The Bad Blind Date approached me.
“Do you need a ride home? I can give you a ride home,” he said, his voice deep and gravely, the outcome of two daily packs for decades. His salt and pepper hair combined with his leathery face that reflected the age of a continuously good time. His presence was playful, the depth of his wrinkles containing the memories of yesterday’s parties. A designer shirt and designer jeans hung on his body oddly, as if he was more about brands than fit.
“I live two blocks from here; I don’t need a ride,” I said.
He cupped his hand around an electronic cigarette and took a draw; the LED-tip glowed.
“It’s water vapor. With nicotine. I don’t smoke anymore.”
“I see.”
“So let me give you a ride home.”
“I can walk, it’s just two blocks.”
“Please. You’re adorable, and this guy, I mean, please, save me. You’ve got to save me. Please don’t let me get to the point where I have to give him a ride home.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
* * *
And that is how we met, while he was my friend’s Bad Blind Date. He started calling me every couple days, suggesting we should meet for a drink. Pointing out he has a summer home in Indiana, that it’s being highlighted in Country Living magazine, and I should come to see how beautiful it is. I managed to dodge his invitations for two weeks, until he called with an offer I couldn’t refuse: he was invited to a cocktail party in a Ravenswood loft and he wanted me to come along.
“The psychic said to accept every party invitation,” my friend Yoga Girl reminded me. “You never know who you’re going to meet, and it’s his karma coming back to him. I think you can go safely with him and meet other people.”
Yoga Girl was right. The psychic had instilled me with the wisdom of not passing up an invite, and it seemed karmically relevant that I could use Bad Blind Date as a conduit to new social circles.
I said yes, and he suggested that after work I hop off the train on my way back into town, driving us both to the party.
“You won’t be offended,” Bad Blind Date asked on the phone, “if my car is a mess, will you?”
“A mess? What do you mean?”
“Well, like I have McDonald’s bags in my car.”
“McDonald’s bags?”
“Seriously? You’d be offended?”
“Are you trying to impress me?”
“I just haven’t had the chance to...”
“Listen,” I cut him off. “Every time you put gas in that car you are standing three feet away from a garbage can. There is absolutely no reason a McDonald’s bag should be living in your car.”
He was silent.
“You have four hours. You can get the car clean before you pick me up.”
* * *
I hopped off the train in Winnetka, a northern suburb in between where I work and the City. Bad Blind Date pulled up to the train station driving a black Mercedes convertible. I opened the door and hopped in.
No McDonald’s bags. But the back seat was filled with clothes, hangers, shoes, a random flip-flop, and a shopping bag of kitchen tile samples.
“I got the car cleaned for you.”
“Oh?” The car was quite possibly the messiest Mercedes I’ve seen—soda pop stains in the carpet, and on the dash. Grit covering the console. It was kind of gross, the way you might expect a sixteen-year-old boy to keep his 1998 Pontiac Grand Am he bought from his grandmother.
“Well, I didn’t clean it, clean it.”
“Obviously.”
We stopped at a traffic light. The afternoon was sweltering and sweat was still beading from my forehead. I grabbed a tissue from my backpack and wiped my brow, turning to look at him. We lock our gaze on each other. He smiled.
"I like to save the McDonald's cups in case I have to go pee."
"Seriously?" I ask. I put my sweaty tissue down.
"Yes."
"That's supposed to impress me?"
“Well, no. It’s a cup. It’s not like it’s a bottle.” Bad Blind Date smiled and laughed; the sixteen-year-old boy just made a pee joke.
“I throw them out after I pee. Really.”
* * *
It’s hard to follow someone’s pee proclamation, so I spent most of the ride listening. He’s one of nine children born to devout Catholic parents. He used to work as a trader, but now he does some trading at home. He’s been single for four years, but that was after a six-year relationship, which he tried to get out of for three years, but the guy would never leave. He felt the guy took complete advantage of him and was just a using social climber. He has the country home in Indiana, and recently bought a place in the city that he is renovating before moving from his place in Winnetka, which explained why he had the back seat filled with kitchen tile. No explanation on the flip-flop, though.
“I have lots of friends and I’m a really nice guy,” he said.
“How do you know the people who are hosting the party?”
“I know them through friends. I don’t know.”
“So you had an affair with one of the hosts years ago, but now you just go to their cocktail parties?”
Bad Blind Date laughed. His vague answers signaled a lack of attention to the details of his life, as if a soda-stained dashboard was not clue enough.
“I like you,” he said.
“You like me?”
“Yeah, I find you interesting.”
It seemed recklessly quick to arrive at that conclusion, but I relaxed into the unknown and decided, with a sense of adventure, to see where this journey might take me. We arrived at the address in the city and I found myself instructing him on how to pay the parking meter with a credit card.
* * *
After Bad Blind Date took us to the fifth floor, then the fourth floor, before finally arriving on the seventh floor completely confused as to which apartment we were headed, our host for the evening was waiting in the hallway for us, wondering where we had disappeared between being buzzed into the building and arriving at the door.
“So sorry,” I explained. “He had to pee in a garbage can.”
Our host laughed at the absurdity, while Bad Blind Date’s giggle of guilt. I handed him the bottle of Pinot Noir Bad Blind Date had brought along, and our host led us into an expansive loft, on the top floor facing to the north. The summer sky was a brilliant blue, and what humidity was in the air collected in puffy pillowy clouds dancing over the north side skyline as the mid-summer sun began to set upon the evening.
A terrace, littered with lawn furniture, spanned the entire width of the unit, but the sun was still blazing afternoon heat, so the few guests who had arrived were clustered in the kitchen around a full spread of alcohol.
Bad Blind Date mixed himself vodka lemonade while I opened his bottle of Pinot Noir. We grazed for a moment on a spread of cheese and crackers, with prosciutto and grapes.
“Hi, I’m Joe.” A tall man with broad shoulders extended his hand. He had the soft, freckled glowing skin of an Irish-Catholic, his auburn hair playing off his freckles, igniting his electric blue eyes.
I covered my mouth, finished chewing a grape.
“Lovely to meet you, Joe.”
Bad Blind Date introduced himself.
“Are you from Chicago?”
“No, I grew up in Oregon, then went to school here in Chicago. After graduating, I moved to Atlanta for ten years before moving back here in 2004.”
“Wow. So you’ve lived all over.”
“I have. And as a result, I don’t know how to pronounce anything.”
Joe chuckled while Bad Blind Date looked on.
“It doesn’t sound like you have an accent.”
“Only when I trip over my tongue, which happens quite often these days.”
Bad Blind Date stepped forward.
“See, I didn’t know any of this,” he said.
“You didn’t ask,” I explained, as he looked on with fascination.
"I've had my uvula removed."
Joe and I turned to look at Bad Blind Date. I cocked my head, I suppose out of surprise, but then, upon a moment a reflection not surprise at all.
"The thing that dangles in the back of your throat?" I asked.
Joe’s mouth had dropped open.
“Yeah. See, I have a really big tongue.” He stuck his tongue out, as if to demonstrate. But rather than see the gargantuan nature of his tongue – which could be open for debate – our gaze was stuck on the half-chewed bits of gourmet cheeses and crackers that clung to his tongue as if an allergic reaction to adult cocktail conversation.
“They took it out because they thought I was going to choke on my tongue. They thought it would give my throat more room.”
"Wow, so you have a really large tongue?" Joe said.
“Yeah.” He stuck his tongue out again, this time, while smiling, exposing the food stuck between his teeth and his receding gum line.
"So what you're saying," I said, "if I'm hearing you correctly, is that you could fellate a rhino?"
Joe laughed out loud. Bad Blind Date looked confused.
"No, I just have this large tongue."
For the third time that evening, we saw his tongue.
* * *
I moved to the terrace and sat down to enjoy the fading moments of daylight. Bad Blind Date sat down next to me.
“See, like, I didn’t know you where you grew up and stuff like that.”
“You didn’t ask,” I said.
“So, like, you grew up in Oregon?”
“Yes.”
“And your parents are still there?”
“Yes. They have a llama ranch in Oregon. Llama Rama Vista.”
“Llama Rama Vista? That’s the name of their ranch?”
“Yes. It’s just outside Portland in Estacada.”
The sky began to blaze with color as we made small chat, and for the first time, Bad Blind Date seemed genuinely interested in me.
We were joined by Jason, who lived in the unit next door. An attractive man with smooth, dark skin, he explained his father was German and his mother was Iranian. He had an easy softness to him that contrasted Bad Blind Date, and he was an attentive listener, as the three of us talked about jobs, where we grew up, and the eventual demise of Jason’s relationship.
“We had breakup sex on my balcony just last weekend. It was kind of hot,” Jason said. He brushed the rim of his beer bottle with a finger, slipping into the memory.
“Break up sex? Balcony?” A muscled boy in a tank top approached and stood right between the three us, filling the space with his presence.
“Hi, I’m Matt, and you must be my next ex-boyfriend.” He extended his hand for Jason to shake.
“I’m Jason.”
“Nice to meet you Jason. So, hot balcony sex? Tell me about it.”
I tapped Matt on the shoulder to get his attention. He turned, surprised. I flashed him a smile.
“Hi, I don’t think we’ve met yet.”
“Oh, right. Matt. Nice to meet you.”
“Jason was just telling us about his heartache. Maybe you missed that part of the story.”
“I heard hot balcony sex, and I thought to myself, I’ve got a balcony.” Matt rested his hand on the arm of Jason’s chair looking into his eyes. He laughed forcefully, unaware of Bad Blind Date and me. He took over, dominating our exchange at the expense of others in our conversation circle. He spewed from the mouth, an exhausting oral diarrhea of meaningless dribble.
I thought to myself that he seems to have forgotten he has his own space and as a result, is invading everyone else’s space, disguised as witty cocktail banter. But he was failing miserably. Rather than be annoyed by this, I fell back on my clairvoyant training, grounding and eliminating annoyance from my body. I imagined my own space, wrapping myself in protective bubble, bringing my aura in tightly. I breathed deeply and said hello to Matt’s energy.
Hello, Wild Energy all over the place. Hello.
I imagined a bubble around Matt, surrounding him with a light gold light.
Hello, Wild Energy. You have a space. Your own safe space.
The bubble of light was resisting, and it was taking a lot of effort to visualize this. I closed my eyes to concentrate for a moment.
When I opened my eyes, Matt had stopped talking and was staring at me.
“Are you falling asleep?”
“No.”
“What then?
“Just meditating.”
“Meditating me to go away?”
I shrugged my shoulders, smiling. I realized superficial connections were no longer entertaining in the slightest. More interesting is a deeper connection, beyond just the basic facts of the person next to me, but a true genuine interest in getting to know another, who they are, and why they are. That’s the interest I take in others, and it’s what I deserve from any boy worthy of my interest.
“Be a dear and will you please refill my wine?” I extended my arm, handing Bad Blind Date my empty wine glass.
"What?”
“Be a dear and will you please fill my wine?”
“No, see, I'm the one that gets served. My ex used to serve everyone all the time because he didn't want to talk. So he’d serve everyone because he couldn't. Because when he opened his mouth, he’d just look stupid."
"Huh? Do I look like your ex? Just, go fill my wine glass." I thrust my glass into his chest. He grabbed it, turned and walked to the kitchen.
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