Hello dating, I give up!

So to celebrate my departure from the land of the dead, a friend of mine dragged me kicking and screaming, forced, convinced me with blackmail, threatened me with violence , set me up on a blind date the weekend just past.

This is the problem when all of your female friends are in loving, stable monogamous relationships. They often see you as someone they can pass off their single female friends to, when she first brought this up I wasn’t looking forward to it. Suffice to say I should have listened to my instincts. But alas, my positive outlook on everything since getting well again won.

So, Sunday came, and the optimist in me (may he die a thousand deaths via paper-cut) came to the fore, and I began to actually look forward to the date.

“How bad could it be?” he said.

“If it all goes banana shaped, you’ll just make a new friend, right?” he said.

“And who knows, this could turn out to be the girl of your dreams even!” he said.

So with a jaunty step, I traveled into the City for the date.

It started off well. We found each other easily enough. Both of us were on time. I liked the cut of her jib. And I saw no visible cringe from her when I walked up and flashed her a smile. Her returning smile was actually quite adorable.

So far so good. Maybe this will be a good day.

But oh, I was wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.

We engaged in some light small talk, until the waitress came over to serve us. The waitress was a chirpy young lass, bright and bubbly. It was a pleasant change from the sour faced harridans you sometimes get in these places. She smiled at us, handed us our menus and asked if we wanted any drinks to start off with. It was a warm day so I was looking for something an iced coffee, maybe an orange juice, I hadn’t yet decided, so I gestured to my date that she should go first. And thus I heard the first faint splashes of waves against the iceberg that was to sink this Captain Sweatpant SS Dating Life Titanic.

Crazy Date Girl: “Orange Juice and don’t take forever about it. And none of that bottled stuff. Freshly squeezed.”

I glanced up, eyebrow raised at the rudeness of the order, looking for some hint that she was being ironical in her rudeness. A smile. A big grin. A poker face, then breaking out into a belly laugh and then apologising to the waitress for odd sense of humour.

Nothing.

She just sat there glaring at the waitress.

The waitress, of course immediately went into professional mode, and said that she’s bring it out straight away, smile gone. She turned to me and asked what I was after.

Me: “Iced coffee, please.” I said pointing to the menu, and the waitress bent down to see what I was pointing at, “And we’ll have a look through the menus and we should be ready when the drinks come, thanks” I said, with an apologetic smile.

She smiled back, seeming to understand that this was a blind date. And told us she’d be back shortly with our drinks.

As soon as the waitress had turned her back, I hear the sudden crash of the iceberg ripping through starboard side of the date, it came in the form of this:

Crazy Date Girl: “Did you see that little slut flirting with you?!?!” 

Me: “Errr.”

Crazy Date Girl: “What a whore, we’re obviously on a date and she goes and hits on you right in front of me.”

Me: “I don’t think she was hitting on me… I think she’s just doing her job. You know, customer service and all that…” I say trying to keep the peace, and save as many women and children that I could on the lifeboats. But they were doomed. They were all of them, doomed.

Crazy Date Girl: “Yeah right, I work in customer service. But I would never be all over a guy who was obviously on a date with another girl. That’s just disgusting. Girls like her give ALL girls a bad name.”

Me: “Ummm... wha? When was she all over me?” I ask completely confused. Unless I had suddenly gotten one of those viral meningitis brain blanks right at the time this waitress was supposedly giving me a lap dance, I had no clue what she was talking about.

Crazy Date Girl: “When she was leaning all over you, pretending to look at what you were pointing at on the menu. She might as well have shoved her tits in your face. But you’re such a gentleman you didn’t even look. That’s why *insert-friends-name-who-I-am-going-to-kill here*  knew we would get along so well.”

Craaassshhhhhhh! Iceberg dead ahead!!!

I try and steer the conversation to less troubled waters but to no avail. For the next five minutes I am provided a non-stop hypothetical rant of the sluttiness of our waitress. I sit there, aghast. I’m sure my friend is about to jump out of the bushes and tell me I’ve been punk’d. I’m sure of it. Surely no one is actually like this woman in real life. I try to glance around surreptitiously for a camera, surreptitiously because I don’t want this harpy to think I may be checking out other females.

Our drinks finally arrive, and the optimist in me thinks maybe this can still be salvageable.

Again, he was wrong. So terribly wrong.

Crazy Date Girl: “This has pulp in it. I asked for no pulp. Are you stupid?” I hear her say.

The waitress again in total professional mode, has her smile frozen in place apologises and tells her that she’ll bring another glass straight away.

Crazy Date Girl: “Good. And stop flirting with my boyfriend as well.” 

Well, that was the final bulkhead to collapse and flood the inner compartments with the frigid cold waters of the Northern Atlantic.

Me: “Okay. Stop right there. You did not ask for “no pulp” in your orange juice, you asked for freshly squeezed orange juice. And in the rudest way possible. You do not treat people this way. I don’t care if you’ve been having a bad day, week, month, year, life… you just don’t! And dear god, I am not your boyfriend, I met you 10 minutes ago!”

By the time that last line was delivered I was standing, and had raised my voice a tad. I’m not one for public outbursts, so I felt hugely awkward.

I took a $20 note out of my wallet handed it to the waitress, apologised and told her to keep the change. I turned to my date, told her this isn’t going to work out. And walked off.

And to tell you the truth it was a relief. Not getting out of that date, but okay that was a relief too. But the relief came more because, that was the last straw, in regards to putting up with bad dates. Somewhere along that rant, I had made a decision that I was no longer going to put myself through these ghastly things, looking for that one glimmer of humanity, in the ever increasing amount of douchiness out there. The realisation that I was actually happier being single and not at all looking for a relationship, than I was being single and constantly searching for “the one”. That I would be gloriously ecstatic being single and alone for all of eternity, than being stuck with Crazy Date Girl for the rest of my life.

And thus, I bid farewell to SS Dating Life Titanic. May you sink to the deep dark depths of the Atlantic and slowly rust into oblivion.

Until James Cameron makes a movie about you that is.

And frankly that would be the scariest disaster movie evvveerrrrrrr.