Last night I went on a mostly-blind date. (I admit, I cheated. I’m a visual person.) My date and I “met” when I posted a personal ad on craigslist. Her first email contained coherent sentences and more than one paragraph, which is somewhat of a novelty in online dating. I was pleasantly surprised and we exchanged several more emails before finalizing plans to meet in person.
She’d never been on a blind date before, so though I offered a picture, we/I decided not to send her one. Instead, I gave her a description of me, and what I was wearing that day. We met at a local wine bar at 5:30, after I got off work. I arrived early, as usual. I was taught through several jobs I held when I was younger that if you’re not 15 minutes early you’re late. While I waited for my date to show, I read about Beaujolais and the wines that come from the region in a wine atlas.
Once she arrived, I guided her to the five-dollar-a-glass happy hour wine rack and we both settled on the same wine, a blend from the R Collection. Two glasses of wine apiece and a small buffalo chicken flatbread later, we decided to go play some ping pong at a pub down the street. I paid for our wine and food, which is as it should be if a man invites a woman out. We then made our way to the other place.
She’d never been on a blind date before, so though I offered a picture, we/I decided not to send her one. Instead, I gave her a description of me, and what I was wearing that day. We met at a local wine bar at 5:30, after I got off work. I arrived early, as usual. I was taught through several jobs I held when I was younger that if you’re not 15 minutes early you’re late. While I waited for my date to show, I read about Beaujolais and the wines that come from the region in a wine atlas.
Once she arrived, I guided her to the five-dollar-a-glass happy hour wine rack and we both settled on the same wine, a blend from the R Collection. Two glasses of wine apiece and a small buffalo chicken flatbread later, we decided to go play some ping pong at a pub down the street. I paid for our wine and food, which is as it should be if a man invites a woman out. We then made our way to the other place.
Being me, I offered my arm on the way, which I think surprised her. I believe in what I call modern chivalry, which mostly translates to good manners. I’ll write about that another time.
The pub we went to is two stories, with the bar downstairs and a game room with a false fireplace upstairs. They have a ping pong table, shuffleboard, and darts. (The ping pong table actually rests on a pool table.) We had the entire upstairs to ourselves, but it was a Tuesday. I think Tuesday is a great night for a first date. There’s less pressure, an easy escape if the date isn’t going well and it’s easy to make plans for the coming weekend if you decide you want to.
Before we could start playing ping pong, she asked me if I was going to teach her to dance, so we spent some time with a quick lesson and a few dances. She had neither two left feet nor bad hand eye coordination as she claimed. Between the ping pong, the dancing and the conversation, we laughed a lot. Fair warning, don’t play ping pong with a cracked ping pong ball. It doesn’t work very well.
Three games later, (I won all three), we settled in and talked for a while longer. The conversation turned from light hearted banter to more serious subjects. We talked about life philosophy, the state of marriage, the horrible names a family she knew had given their children. Can you believe someone named their 14th child Aldon (all done) and then, when they had another the next year, they named her Su-prise. Awful.
When I finally looked at the time, it was 10:11. We both had work in the morning and it was time to call it a night. I walked her to her car, (again arm in arm), and she gave me a hug in which it was apparent she actually wanted to hug me. I did not kiss her goodnight, nor did I try. I’ve never been much for kissing on the first date, and I’ve finally figured out why: it’s not special. There’s nothing interesting, magical, or memorable about a first kiss right before she gets in her car and leaves. If there’s cause to remember it, I don’t want the story to go, “and then he kissed me and I left.”
It was a good ending to a great night. I’ll write more as more occurs. We’re going snowboarding/skiing on Sunday. It will be the first time I’ve done that as a date.
Au revoir,
M0RG4N
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