This date was SO SO SO BAD, it was comical!  It was on Aug. 23rd with Daniel, this guy who wrote to me on one of the speed-dating web sites.  We both arrived at the diner at exactly the same time, said hi, went inside.  My initial first-few-seconds impression was, "Great, he's cute, seems low-key in a good way."  Then we sat down, and he made the mistake of opening his mouth!  He was the most thoroughly negative guy I've ever been out with in my entire life.  He had mentioned in an e-mail to me that he'd just been on vacation in Vegas, so I asked him about it.  He proceeded to tell me about how he loves Jennifer Aniston -- I mean, he seriously LOVES her -- so while in Vegas he made his friends drive with him to Los Angeles for the weekend so he could go to this restaurant that he'd read on msn.com that Jennifer goes to every weekend.  He even asked a waiter when he got there, "Does Jennifer Aniston come here a lot?" to make sure he had the right place.  She never showed up, and he was devastated.  His frends went on a city tour the next day, but he was "so depressed" he hadn't seen Jennifer that he stayed in his hotel room (sulking, I guess), then finally just went shopping.  He made his friends go back to the same restaurant the NEXT night -- he treated so they all would go there again, even though it was a pretty expensive restaurant.  Still no Jennifer.  When he got home he read on msn.com that she and Courtney Cox had been on vacation in Hawaii that weekend, and he was so mad.

 

Next he proceeded to tell me he is also intensely in love with Gwen Stefani -- so much so that he went to three of her concerts in three different states in the same week.  He even held up a sign he'd made that read GWEN, I LOVE YOU, CALL ME, with his phone number on it.  "Um, isn't she seeing someone?" I asked.

 

"Oh yeah, she's married with a kid," he said matter-of-factly, as if that shouldn't make any difference at all.  "But what really gets me is, not only did Gwen not call me, no other woman in the audience did either!"

 

I was dumbfounded.  What woman in her right mind would call some random guy who held up a crazy sign at a concert?

 

THEN he said, "Don't even ask me about my vacation in January!"  Of course I took the bait and asked, so he told me about the singles cruise he took to South America.  They lost his luggage, they only gave him $100 to buy new clothes, and worst of all, it turned out to be two guys in their 20s, him (he's 32) -- and all these fifty and sixty-year-olds!  On their web site they said it was a singles cruise for "younger" singles and showed all these photos of twenty- and thirty-somethings, so he was outraged.  He told me about how he actually SUED them when he got home, but the suit got thrown out because nowhere in the fine print did it guarantee what age anyone would be.

 

And so it went from there.  I asked him about his job. His boss is terrible, he hates her, she hates him, he's been trying to find a new job in the city but can't find anything in his salary range.  I asked him about where he lives.  Well, it's SO overpriced, it's dead there, he hates it, but it's close to work.  I asked him if he has any siblings.  He has a sister, he said, but she's really arrogant and they don't get along.

 

But the best part was when I asked him how his speed-dating experience had been.  "Horrible!" he said (surprise, surprise).  He said the first one he went on, there were only four girls and 11 guys, and none of the girls were interested in him.  The company gave him a coupon to go to another speed-dating night for free.  At that one, he said he chose nine women -- and NONE of them picked him!  Gee, I wonder why???  "People are just too picky," he said authoritatively.  "Women want someone who's six feet tall, who makes six figures a year, and they just won't even look at anyone else."

 

It was so hard for me not to laugh!  I wanted so badly to say, Um. no, we just want someone who has a positive word to say once in a while!  And it was so awkward because he only asked me three questions about myself all night.  When I wasn't asking him about his depressing life, we would literally just sit there.  (At one point he said, "You look tired."  Yeah, of you!)

 

After the check came and he paid (thank goodness for small favors), I went to the restroom, checked my watch, and could not believe only an hour had passed.  It felt like three!!!

 

Then he walked me to the subway station.  I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a subway station in my life.  As soon as I spotted it, I said, "Well, this is me, thank you for dinner."

 

And HE said, "I'd really like to see you again!  You're fun!"

 

I thought, Of course you think I'm fun!  A lump of WAX is a barrel of laughs compared to you!!  I just mumbled something vague and escaped. 

Argggggh!!!