It’s Thursday again, my lovelies. It fills you with hope that the weekend is here soon. Let’s make these next two days go faster with a little truth or dare.
Truth: Tell us your favorite dating horror story. I’ve told this story on here before, but I once went on a date with a guy who called me by a different name the entire time because my name was the same as his sister’s.
Dare: Give someone an odd compliment. At the bar the other night, I complimented some dude’s ankles.
37 replies on “Lunchtime Poll: Truth or Dare”
GUYS MY VISA CAME. I can stay in the UK for another two years! MY LIFE IS AWESOME RIGHT NOW.
Sorry, I’m just too elated to talk about anything else. Believe me though, I have some horror stories for later.
BOOM: )
Man, we should totally have a UK P-Mag meetup. it would fucking rock.
I’m in Ireland but I do visit London/south of England reasonably frequently…
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere on here, but my story is about the first guy I dated. We dated about six months total before I broke up with him. Three months later he was dating my sister. They eloped a month after that. Good news is, I was able to forgive them after a year or two, and they just celebrated their seven year anniversary.
Ouch! That would be weird. I’m sorry! But I’m glad you were able to work through it!
The closest I came was having my high school boyfriend dating my neighbor the summer I was back from college, and it annoyed me SO MUCH to see his car 20 yards from my house at 7 AM when I was on my way to work. First love and all that, so it took awhile to totally get over.
Oh man, that would piss me off so much!! I also worked with an ex briefly and half of the time I wanted to punch him in the face while the other half of the time I was hoping he’d fall back in love with me! Hearts are tricky organs.
I haven’t been on many dates (not being particularly interested in that sort of thing) but I remember one date as being awkward in that awkward way that can only happen at that most awkward of ages – in my case, about 15 years old. It was New Year’s Eve and my parents had this long-standing tradition of inviting certain family friends to join us for an evening of dull small talk, some burnt steak cooked in the oven, and pink wine from boxes. The evening would always end promptly by about 10:30pm. This family had a daughter who was my age, and we grew up together although we were never particularly close. I’ll call the daughter C. So, C wanted to bring her boyfriend to the NYE’s get together at my house, and my parents said that was fine, because my boyfriend would be there too. My boyfriend shows up bearing flowers and gifts, decked out in a suit and tie (he was the old-fashioned type). C, her parents, and her boyfriend show up shortly thereafter. Us kids are all shooed down in the basement as we have been since time immemorial. Boyfriend and I had only been going out for maybe a few weeks, and we’re still in the shy “I’m-not-sure-if-it’s-ok-for-me-to-kiss-you” stage. But C and her boyfriend weren’t. Boyfriend and I were treated to close to four hours of the full-on make-out session of C and her boy, who were not shy at all about audible moans and heavy petting. Meanwhile, boyfriend and I sat almost frozen next to one another on the couch, trying to pretend that we were watching the movie I’d put on (Independence Day. It was the 90’s, ok?) and trying to ignore that there were two people our age practically having sex just ten feet from us on my mother’s floral print couch. It was just – oh, God. I don’t think more than 3 words were spoken between the four of us that evening. It still makes me cringe.
Oh man. That sounds so uncomfortable. It made me think of this episode of Freaks and Geeks!
Um- is it weird that I had ALMOST the same thing happen to me when I was 17? I was invited to a New Years party at a friend’s house whose parents were out of town and for some reason and I invited a boy who I’d grown up going to church with who went to a boy’s boarding school in my province (but would come home every weekend). I think we liked eachother but were both super socially awkward. I spent most of my teen years rather depressed (which totally killed my interest in getting physical) and that combined with lots of religious teaching about being chaste meant that nothing would have happened and my friend was awkward from never being around girls. Anyways, there were about 15 people at this party total, a couple was among them, who made out as intensely as people can while still having their clothing on for the entirety of the evening in the livingroom which was sort of the central area of the party. My male friend, who had (as he told me later) “never seen people do that” stared at them in shock and awe for the whole night while everyone else tried to carry on a conversation. Ah highschool, such a weird weird time.
Whoa, just now noticed the top of the page! Hells yeah!
I haven’t got any really good dating horror stories (I have a tendency to wind up dating those I’ve been friends with for a while), so I’m just going to have to give somebody a weird compliment today. PMag: making me a better person.
My worst date (courtesy of OKCupid) was when, after determining this guy was kind of a loser (which, seriously, I do not say lightly), I tried to be sympathetic to his 6 unproductive years in community college while working part time at Game Stop. I was like, “Oh! Yeah, I get that it’s really hard to work and go to school full time. I did it, but I was legitimately exhausted for a solid year and it definitely took a toll on my schoolwork.” And he was like, “Yeah, but you worked at a coffee place, [insert sneer]” (where I was full time, and a shift manager). “I had to unpack boxes late at night sometimes. It took forever.” I somehow managed to suppress the epic eyeroll that so badly wanted to come out, and nodded politely, resolving to please let this date end ASAP. He exclusively talked about himself and about how all his friends were “two-faced” and “shady” so he didn’t really have any anymore. Any time I talked about something I liked or was interested in, he was condescending and dismissive. So when it was over, I let him crawl back into his parents’ basement in the suburbs and figured the whole thing was overwith and that we mutually did not give one crap about one another.
A week later, he texted me asking me whether I thought the date was fun or awkward. I said a little of both (lie – it was awful, but this dude seemed like kind of a mess so I though I’d spare his feelings). He then asked if I was interested and I said no, not romatically interested, but thanks for the date (which he didn’t pay for, so really I had just bought myself some sushi and been forced to share a table with this douchenozzle, like some Benihana nightmare). He then asked if it was because of “something reasonable,” or was I just shallow? That ticked me off, so I told him it was reasonable, and that attitude was basically why. Then I got a “Whatever, you’re shallow, good luck in life with that attitude!” and he subsequently changed his dating profile to a bunch of crazy word vomit about how immature some people are.
Wonder if he’s still single?
“Good luck in life with that attitude” is just a long-winded way of saying “I’m a douche.” We all know this, ‘cuz I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard it.
How do people not notice when they are behaving like assholes? Should we be distributing behavioral assessment cards on these occasions? Because I could get behind that.
I like this idea! Fun story: my parents met while getting their PhDs in Psych at the same school, and mom apparently subjected dad to a shit-ton of tests before marrying him. Wait, does that count as a horrifying (even if not mine) dating story?
Ha! No, that is delightful. Given some past experiences, administering a depression scale or something during the courtship process doesn’t sound like the worse idea. “Hmm, anxiety is a little high, but you passed the sociopathy test with flying colors, so you’re through to the next round.”
Oh man, that sounds like a nightmare! No wonder he has no friends left!
I know! I sort of regret not saying something really cutting to that effect, but it’s better for my karma that I didn’t.
With any luck, it will eventually occur to him in a eureka moment. “Hey, maybe it isn’t the rest of the world that’s lame, maybe I’m just an asshole.” We can but hope.
“Oh, hey! I just realized that there’s a common variable here…”
I’m totally picturing the comic book guy from the Simpsons
i went on a date with a guy whose nickname was Twig. this was because he had apparently spent the entire night 25 feet up in a tree outside his fraternity. i really didn’t like him, but i was set up on a double date, so there really wasn’t much i could do to get out of it. so i took one for the team and had a really lousy time. then i made one of the worst decisions you can make when you’re on a bad date: seeing if it will get any better if you are hopelessly intoxicated. i ended up singing Janis Joplin to a room full of fraternity guys and making out with Twig – i think also in front of a room full of fraternity guys. once he realized i wasn’t going to put out (the only thing i did right that evening) he drug me back to my sorority. when i sobered up i did some checking up on this Twig fellow. turned out that he didn’t so much live at the fraternity anymore as he had graduated college and moved out some years previous. he was pushin’ 25 and i couldn’t have been over 20. none of the fraternity guys liked him and he was, in fact, the creepy old guy who still hung out at college parties. like mcconaughey in dazed and confused only unattractive, socially inept, and unwelcome . . . so not at all like mcconaughey in dazed and confused come to think of it.
Ew! What did the date setter uppers have to say for themselves?
my friend still apologizes for that set up every time it comes up in conversation. every time she needs a favor, i ask if a twig is going to be involved – it’s become a joke with us now.
Truth: On an internet date/first meeting, I met a guy who got arrested while we were on our date/first meeting. This was way back in 1998 when Yahoo still had personals and they were still free – and you didn’t tell ANYONE you were using the internet to meet dates.
Fun times.
I will work on the dare!
hold the phone. i request additional information:
for what did he get arrested?
Seconded.
It’s a much funnier story told in person with hand gestures, etc., but the long and short of it is that he was separated (told me he was already divorced, which pissed me off the most because I do not date married men) and had broken into his not-exwife’s new apartment, stolen some stuff that he claimed belonged to him and supposedly wrecked the place, too. She pressed charges but he hadn’t been arrested and – voila! she was also eating dinner in the restaurant, too. (Hard Rock Cafe, Inner Harbor, Baltimore) So, when she saw him she called the cops, they showed up and had him spread-eagled on the floor when the two of them started arguing and he shoved the first cop who tried to put handcuffs on him.
And, I had to pay for his dinner, too.
(The next date I had from Yahoo was with a guy who showed up wearing Vulcan ears. And the next was with a guy who brought his grandmother (and her oxygen tank) along with him. And that’s when I took a break from internet dating!!)
I’m glad the next two dates were at least something of an improvement.
HOLY SHIT! you win – those are the three worst date stories I’ve ever heard!
i am laughing so hard right now, but i promise i’m not laughing at you. promise promise.
I actually ended up dating for a few months the guy who brought his grandmother. She was a hoot.
Ha! That .gif makes me giggle!
I unfucked my habitat today, and did all the things.
TEATIME, BISHES
The weirdest date I’ve ever had was my fault, though the worst part was actually the asking; I said “Really?” intermittently for FOUR HOURS before finally accepting that this person wasn’t trolling me.
Poor boy =/
One particularly bad date I went on with this guy who thought he’d have an ‘in’ with me by saying how he was super-close buds with John ‘Captain Jack’ Barrowman. When we went for dinner he told me a bit about their antics in college, which seemed a little off but nothing too out of the realm of possibility. He let it drop that he still kept in touch with him even, as they were thattight. He spent most of the night talking about him, which I found odd, but it seemed like he was just thinking he was talking about a good ‘mutual’ friend of sorts. For the record, I knew a lot of famous people growing up and don’t really mention them much (other than ‘I knew them’).
So, I asked if he’d known any of his boyfriends, and he seemed surprised to hear he was gay. I mean, really? And then went back and forth between trying to convince me that he really didn’t think he was gay and that John had hit on him all the time. After the date I looked up Barrowman and he didn’t go to that college at all. He’d made up this big ruse about John Barrowman for no reason, and didn’t even bother to find out a) where he actually went to college, or b) that he was gay.
Mind, boggle.
I knew a guy like that in high school. He made all these claims about being the inspiration for a Sugar Ray song, and how he’d worked with all these famous people and was friends with them, blah blah…except we were all 16 year olds smack dab in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest. His friends never seemed to care that he made these claims, which was good I guess, but I never knew whether to roll my eyes or just feel bad for him.
Where did you grow up that you knew a lot of famous people?
Yeah, it’s weird. My mother would do that sometimes too, but with weird things, like an actress in a TV ad. But then her story fell apart when that actress proved to be Angie Harmon. She’d tell stories of things she’d done and I’d think, wait, that was on [soap opera] last month. I never knew if she honestly got mixed up or just made it up for attention.
I grew up in the DC suburbs in VA, so I went to jr. high w/Jared Leto, met Dave Grohl when his mother (my English teacher) insisted I go see his band play, and Christina Hendricks went to my high school. Friends knew Patton Oswald so I met him once or twice, and I sort of remember Jason Thoreaux (? Jennifer Aniston’s boyfriend) from the clubs in DC. Not to mention all the musicians I met going to shows, and being interviewed with Liz Taylor at some fundraising thing when I was like 6. And, of course, lots of politicians and football players. It was pretty star-studded for a non-NY/non-LA place!