Chapter 6: The Wedding Guy

A few months had passed since my last date and I was feeling ready to get back into the idea of meeting someone.  I don’t really like meeting guys at bars for two reasons. Reason #1: the odds of meeting a quality person there are slim at best. Reason 2: it’s really hard to concentrate on what the other person is saying with music blasting, half a beer spilled on their shirt, and the ever zealous mating call of the drunk people in the background.  So, I went for the online dating thing again.  A couple of interesting guys had taken the time to email me and I thought I would take the time to meet each one and see if we had anything in common.  This first guy was very successful in what he did, in fact he was pretty renowned in the area and he sent me many links so I could view his work that had been in local publications.  He seemed intelligent and really proud of his accomplishments and went on and on about his business.  He appeared to enjoy what he did and seemed passionate about it which I found attractive.  I hesitate to say what he did since he’s well known in the community, but we’ll just say his work is related to weddings.   


We’d been talking for about a week when we decided to meet up at a restaurant in Northgate.   We struck up a quick conversation when he asked me “do you want to do me a huge favor?”  I raised an eyebrow… “maybe…what is it?”  He laughed and said, “nothing too major, but I promised one of my ‘brides’ that I would show up at her birthday party at a casino, do you want to be my date?”  I shrugged my shoulders in indifference which he took for a “yes”.  “Great!” He replied.  “You’ll really like them, they’re awesome people, I just LOVE my ‘couples’ ”.  We hadn’t been at the restaurant for more than 15 minutes, but I was starting to notice very effeminate qualities to his voice and mannerisms.  He rolled his eyes and flicked his hands a lot and caught himself talking in a higher pitch and would quickly clear his throat and talk an octave (or two) lower.  But, I am aware that there are some men that are more manly than others and it doesn’t have anything to do with their sexual orientation.  Still, it was in the back of my mind that it may be an issue.  Don’t get me wrong, I love gay men, I just prefer not to date them.   


I tried to dismiss this thought thinking that maybe I was being too judgmental.  At any rate we head down to the casino and we’re getting along pretty well.  When the conversation took a quiet dip, he looked at me and said “Can I ask you a question?”  Again, the eyebrows lift.  “Sure,” I reply.  “Do you get a sort of…gay vibe from me?” He asks.  Startled and then realizing it must not just be me, that other women must have picked up on this too, I replied “No!  Huh uh…Not at all!”  I cringed as I realized that maybe the third “No” was overdoing it and he may have caught on to the fact that I was lying.  He proceeded to tell me that he had three sisters and was home schooled and so he spent a lot of time around women and that’s where he’d picked up the mannerisms.  It sounded like a well-rehearsed speech.  “Possibly,” I thought to myself, “but that doesn’t explain the keen sense of fashion.”  He had on a canary yellow shirt with great buttoned cuffs, a Burberry scarf, and a nice pair of brown suede shoes.  Also, a few minutes earlier he had taken the time to notice the only piece of jewelry worth any value that I currently own, my right hand ring.  It is a very intricate design with many tiny diamonds in three rows that sparkles in the light.  When he saw my ring, he gushed.  “I love it!  It’s a lot like mine!”   He proceeded to hold out his right hand and had a glowing white gold ring with even more sparkle on it than mine had.  Now, I’m not an expert, but I know a ton of guyfriends and just the idea of a plain gold ring when they get married sometimes seems to feminine to them, let alone one adorned with so many tiny diamonds that it resembled the sparkly glow of a disco ball.  “Okay,” I thought, “so this probably isn’t the guy for you, but he’s nice enough so let’s go to the casino, say hi to his friends and hightail it out of there.”   


We walked into the casino and saw the bride’s family and the couple eating at the seafood buffet.  As we approached the table, she recognized him and got up to him for a hug.  “Hi!”  She said, but with a slightly awkward undertone. “How are you?  I haven’t seen you since the wedding!”  They exchanged pleasantries and I gathered from the conversation that he wasn’t exactly “invited” per say to the birthday event.  It was a blanket facebook invite that he had responded to, and he handed her a $10 Starbucks giftcard.  Now, to be fair, I have done this one time as well.  Randomly shown up at someone’s birthday that was just a public post on facebook.  But, that is a whole other story!  Anyway, so he says hi to the family who look quite surprised to see him there, and even more so when he introduces me.  “Hi everyone, good to see you again.  This is my date, Kasey”.  The table went quiet and they all had some variation of the “huh?” face.  I was beginning to feel like I was a beard.  (If you don’t know the term, look it up on the urban dictionary, and don’t worry, it’s not bad. )  So we stand there uncomfortably hanging over their meal and then he says “well, we’ll be around so call me on my cell when you’re done and we’ll meet up.”  And with that, we headed out.   


On the way back I mentioned that I was quite tired, but he said “let me make this up to you, it’s been kind of an odd date and I’d like to buy you a drink.”  “Okay,” I said “Follow me and we’ll go to a little hole in the wall up in Pinehurst”.  I picked this place because I’d been there before and it was a few blocks from my house so that I could be home shortly after this was over.  We hadn’t had anything to drink up until this point, but halfway through his Washington Apple, he pushed his drink my way and said “I’m getting a little tipsy, I’d better stop drinking this or I might make a move on you.”  Okay, I thought, THAT seals it.  I really need to go home.   


We said our goodbyes and I headed to my place. I decided to look at his facebook to see if there were any more clues.  There were many.  Some in the form of pictures posed with his hands on his hips with other half naked men in togas.  Some in the form of posts exclaiming at his excitement of shopping.  (I.E. an actual post: I love Chicago, can you say BLOOMINGDALES!!!)  He sent me a couple of texts and facebook messages after that.  Conveniently I was in a wedding shortly thereafter and just kept making excuses that I was too busy with the upcoming event.  “It’s better this way,” I thought, “I could never keep up with his sense of style.” 

Chapter 5: The Renegade Singer

I met this guy out one night with a friend of mine, his name was Andrew.  We talked a bit and he kept looking over to our table at Ozzies.  I was singing a few songs and we were chatting  We'd been hanging out for half the night and the other half I would catch him looking at me.  So, when my friend's cab arrived to take us home, I went up to his table to say goodbye.  His friends said "You can't leave yet, he finally signed up for a song!"  I made my apologies and said I had to go, but I slipped him my number on a napkin and told him to call me. 

He was tall and had dark hair and light blue eyes.  He invited me out to dinner the following Friday.  On my way to meet him for dinner, he called me three whole times to change the venue.  I wasn't familiar with the area he picked out, and every time I would start getting close to the ending destination on my GPS of the place he picked, he would call me and say “Change of plans”.  When he did this for the third time I said “okay this is the last one you get so make it a good one!”  So finally, he picked a small Italian restaurant with nice décor and low lighting.  It was going well I thought.  I wasn’t sure if he was my type because he didn't seem to be displaying too much evidence of a sense of humor.  I kept dropping my best witty banter throughout the conversation but he didn't catch on.  He was definitely educated and well spoken, so I thought, “hey, why not give this a minute and see what he’s all about.”  

We ordered a couple of drinks, he got a beer and I got a glass of wine and the conversation starts flowing.  We got to talking about things we like to do around Seattle.  I mentioned going to movies, trivia nights, dive bars and of course my number one activity…karaoke.  He stopped and got this very serious look on his face.  “OH yeah, YOU like karaoke!"He exclaimed as his expression changed to far too much joy on his face.  He asked me what I liked to sing and I rattled off a few of my go-to songs: “Well I like Nancy Sinatra ‘These boots are made for walking’, Blondie ‘One way or another’, and of course the crowd pleaser of Four Non Blondes ‘What’s Up’.”  He grinned from ear to ear and began what would be the most excruciating and uncomfortable 4 minutes of a first date in history.  He proudly began singing the last song of the list, “What’s Up.”  He started softly then gained momentum as well as decibels as he continued singing and belted out this song.  At last he ended with the chorus of “And I said Hey, yay yay yea-ah Hey, yay yay.  I said Hey!  What’s going on?”  I looked around the restaurant and saw all the people in the room looking our way.  One man at a table in the dimly lit corner behind us had a fork full of linguini already wrapped and suspended in air approximately 4 inches from his mouth but he was not moving it.  My guess is he was frozen by the ethereal voice of my date.   

When I was sure I could not have sunk any lower in my chair and donning a crazy awkward smile on my face (my eyes were bulging from embarrassment), finally the torture came to an end.  He wrapped up his best female vocalist of the ‘90s impersonation and smiled at his accomplishment, apparently sure I would be very impressed that he knew all the words.  Impressed I was not.  But he must have mistaken my horror for happiness because it was at this time that he informed me of his affinity for Neil Diamond songs.  He then began to sing again doing his best to mimic the pop icon with his own personal rendition of “We’re coming to America!”  I decided then and there to stop moving or even breathing, thinking maybe he was like a T-Rex and if I held perfectly still he would forget I was there and leave.  Alas, this did not work.  I got my phone out of my purse, and feigned concern.  I quickly took the last sip of my glass of wine, made my apologies and said I “Have to run, but it was sooooo nice to meet you!”  I walked - slash - sprinted out of that Italian restaurant and never looked back.  Now that's "What's Up!"

Chapter 4: The Southern Gentlemen

After the holidays were over and Spring rolled around, I realized I hadn’t been on a date in months and I wanted to try the Match thing again.  I went online and met a nice guy a couple of years older than me.  He had a good job and was pretty cute, but most importantly he was hilarious!  His emails and phone calls almost always had me in fits of laughter, and if there’s one thing that I have a hard time resisting it’s a great sense of humor.  So he decided to take me to Jillians (which on a side note quickly became my FAVORITE spot in Seattle).  We play some pool, I kick his ass at Guitar Hero (on expert baby!) and we have a really good time.  I do notice that while his hilarity continued, a new feature of his personality started to show up.  He kept leaning in close to me and asking quietly and very seriously, “so how do you think the date is going so far?  What do you think of me?”  After the first time, it was cute.  After the third or fourth time, it was a tad annoying.  I thought insecurity was a girl thing? 

After a few rounds of pool, we decided to head over to Ozzies as we both really enjoy some karaoke, and I usually have a great time there.  Now, on a side note my friend Leo lives a few blocks away and we have frequented Ozzies many times.  This will come into play later.  So, as the night is progressing it’s going really well.  I learn he’s from Texas and has a lot of that “Southern Gentlemen” thing to him.  He pays for all my drinks opens doors, pulls out chairs, the works.  He tells me he thinks I’m great, that I have beautiful eyes, and he’s been looking for someone just like me, yada yada yada.  “Okay dude,”  I thought to myself, “cool it a little, coming on a tad strong”.  But in my slightly fuzzy redbull and vodka haze (I was on my second one) I decided to let it slide.  About 10 minutes later he informed me that he had to go to the bathroom.  He offered to get me another drink because  he was going to get one on his way back while we waited for our song to be called.  I decline because I know I’ll be driving in a couple of hours and I decided it was a bad idea.  He leaves for the restroom and I sit there by myself.  After a few minutes I think “hmmm, it’s been a while.”  After 20 minutes I was starting to get irritated.  At a half an hour past his exit for the crapper, I decide to go look in the line for drinks to see if he was over there.  I look all around Ozzies and can’t find him, so I head for the door to leave.  He finds me just as I’m about to go outside and says “I’ve been looking all over for you, where have you been?”  “Ummmm at the table?”  I replied.  Weird, but whatever. 

So we sit back down and our songs are called one by one.  At this time I notice he is plastered.  He’s singing a song by the great Johnny Cash and apparently couldn’t read the screen or was speaking in Yugoslavian because only about a third of the words coming out of his mouth made sense.  I didn’t know Cash had renamed his big hit “Folosolumn prissson” Irritated, I texted my friend Leo to see if they were nearby so I could ditch this date.  I get a text back from him almost immediately.  “We’re at Ozzies by the dance floor”.  Really?!  That's great, they're here too!  I was so ecstatic, it appeared my luck was turning around.  I head over to where Leo had said he was, and my date drunkenly follows me along.  The goofy grin from ear to ear on my date's face disappears as we reach the table where my friend is sitting with two pretty girls.  “Hey!”  One of the girls says addressing my date “you’re back?  Are you…on…a date?”  “Umm…who is she and why would she care?” I thought.  After this weird exchange, my date pulls me onto the dance floor and we cut a rug for a few songs but I decide to call it a night.  He walks me to my car and keeps trying to kiss me and ask me if I will be his girlfriend, to both things I declined.  Girlfriend?  I just met this guy two hours ago!  We part ways and I say goodnight, hoping he’ll sleep it off.  “It’s not going so well at this point, but maybe he was nervous” I thought to myself. 

On my drive home he calls me again “hey, where did you go?  You should have told me it was the end of the night?”  What?!?!?!  This guy is nuts, what was he talking about?!  I thought the walk to my car and me saying “goodnight” sort of took care of that?  Not sure what else I could have done aside from hold up a black and white checkered flag to signify the night was over.  What was going on?  I got my explanation the next morning from Leo.  Turns out that while I waited at our table for half an hour, my date had spotted Leo’s friend at the table and chatted her up for a while, flirting heavily and getting her number, the whole time unaware that I was friends with one of the people at the table.   Apparently after about 30 minutes he remembered he was on a date because he told her that he had to find his “buddy” and he’d be back later. Then as he saw me looking for him he acted as if he had been looking for me all along.  He meant to call the other girl and ask her where she went after I said goodbye.  Really?!  Talk about ridiculous.  The next morning he called me and asked me if he could take me out to dinner that Tuesday night.  “You’ve got to be kidding right?”  I asked him.  “Do you remember anything about last night?  You left me at the table for 30 minutes to hit on someone else who happened to be there with one of MY friends.  I think we’re done here.”  I said as I hung up the phone.  Guess he wasn’t such a “Southern Gentlemen” after all. 

Chapter 3: The Surprise Christmas Guest

Late in November, fed up with liars and wanting to find someone to really hang out with, I gave in to the online dating craze.  I signed up for a free membership on Match.com and it was pretty interesting.  I got a ton of emails and I thought “this is great!  I can weed through a bunch of people and try to find someone who has a stable life and a lot in common with me.  This is SURE to work…right?”  Well it didn’t start off too bad, got to talking to a few people and I really enjoyed just chatting and taking time to get to know someone before meeting them in person.  So I started talking to a guy on there who was my age.  He had a degree in Marketing from a good college and seemed pretty together.  We emailed for about a week but couldn’t really find time to meet up that worked for both of us and it kind of fizzled out as quickly as it began.  I thought, “I’ll never have to see him so who cares?  Not a big deal, right?”  Wrong.  


About a month later and it’s Christmas time.  I haven’t really been dating anyone and not really talking to guys either.  I just sort of mellowed out for the holidays.  Here it was Christmas Eve and I was making some Hollandaise sauce on my Mom’s stove waiting for the rest of the family to arrive.  My mom mentions to me that my Uncle is bringing a friend to dinner who recently moved here from out of state and is my age.  Apparently my uncle sold him a car at the Toyota dealership and they struck up a friendship and hung out quite a bit.  Since this guy didn’t know too many people around here, my Uncle invited him to Christmas dinner.  Cool, no big deal, I set an extra place setting.  So as I get back to stirring the sauce, the doorbell rings and my mom answers it.  In walks my uncle with this shorter, very built blonde guy and I can’t put my finger on it but I recognized him from somewhere….hhhmmm……then it HIT me!  It was the guy from Match.  Really?  Of all the homes in the great state of Washington, why did THIS guy have to buy a car from MY uncle, become his friend, and show up for Christmas dinner at my mom’s house?  Did I murder someone in a past life?  


I looked down at the sauce which I had (in my moment of realization) whipped into submission by a frenzy of fast hand rotations while my mind reeled.  “Put the whisk down slowly” I thought to myself.  Crap crap crap!  How was I going to get out of this one?  I just didn’t want my family to know that I had signed up for online dating yet and Christmas Eve at my mom’s house was supposed to be a date free “safe zone”.  I quickly looked at my reflection on the oven door and realized I looked like a maniac, with flour on my face and my hair a mess.  I didn’t exactly dress to impress and anyways it just seemed awkward to me from the get go.  So I quickly excuse myself to the bathroom and I try to clean up.  If he realizes who I am, I want to at least look presentable.  I realize it’s a lost cause and rest all my hope on the chance that he doesn’t recognize me.  


So we get through dinner and the night goes off without too much of a hitch.  I think to myself that I’ve made it through, he has no idea who I am and I can leave it at that.  At that moment Kami (who is about 17 months old at the time) walks straight over to the Christmas Guest and with both arms held straight up toward him she loudly proclaims “Daddy!”  At that moment I realize there is quite the strong resemblance between this guy and my ex.  In embarrassment he kind of looks over at me.  “No no, Kami, this is not daddy…” I say awkwardly and mouth “I’m so sorry” silently as I pull her off of him.  After we opened our white elephant presents and a new pair of Christmas pajamas for Kami, I get her changed and off to bed in my parent’s guest room where we had a crib set up for her.  At this point, my cousins and my brother want to go out for a drink.  I tell them I’ll drive my brother since I didn’t want to drink too much anyways as I had to get up early the next morning with Kamryn for Christmas presents and “Santa” with my parents.  We agree to meet up at a dive down the road. My uncle and his friend decide to join us, which I was okay with until I realized that the Christmas Guest had indeed recognized who I was and spilled the beans on the way to the pub.  “So Kay, you’re on Match.com huh?”  Ugh…I sigh a sigh of defeat and die a little inside of complete embarassment, my secret was out!  “Yep, I am.”  I quietly admit.  I decided that I wasn’t going to let this ruin my night as there was a karaoke stand with my name on it and I really wanted to have a good holiday.  I signed up for some songs and sang them as they came up.  My uncle went home and I ended up driving said Match guy to his apartment before my brother and I returned to my parents’ house.  A short while later, I found out that he already had a girlfriend back home and they were getting engaged.  I thought Match.com was supposed to be a “singles” dating site?  I guess he didn’t get the memo.

Chapter 2: The Business Analyst

About six weeks after the Lumberjack fiasco, I was warily considering dipping my toe into the dating pool once again. I had recovered from the events of the recent past and was beginning to regain my faith in men. So I decide to go out one Saturday night with my friend Shelby. We wanted to go to the Parlor in downtown Bellevue as they have it all: Drinks, Pool and Dancing. It was a fun night, we each grab a drink and start walking over to the dance floor. On the way, we ran into a group of people that we went to high school with. It was some girl’s birthday party, she was fun and kept asking us to dance. Amongst this group were a few guys we didn’t know. And one of them honed in on me.


He introduced himself and told me he had just moved here from Arizona. He mentioned he was a business analyst, he owned his own business, and he had just gotten a 3 bedroom condo in Bellevue. Why this was some of the first information he offered up to me, I’m not sure. Maybe it was to impress me, I don’t know. Either way, we start talking and really hit it off. He was very sweet and kept complimenting me to the point where I was even embarrassed. He came outside with me to have a smoke and asked me if he could take me out sometime. I thought this sounded like a great idea. He told me that he wanted to take me to El Goucho downtown, a fairly reputable place in Belltown that a few of my friends had told me about but I’d never been. He mentioned that his friend’s family owned and ran the place and that he could get us in with no reservations. I told him that sounded nice, but we didn’t have to go someplace so fancy. Still, he insisted. So, the Parlor was starting to get crowded and that group wanted to move up to Bothell to Bert’s Tavern where they knew the bartender (who also happened to be someone we knew from high school). We all hop in our respective cars and head up North. We hang out for most of the evening, but come about 2AM Shelby and I decide to go. We exchanged numbers and I was excited about the potential there. “Well that was a nice surprise for the evening!” I said to Shelby. We both thought he was an ideal guy and it was lucky that we met. So, the very next day he texted me and thus struck up our conversations. We ended up hanging out the next weekend at his step brother's house (which was actually his step-grandmother's house where a few of my of friends used to hang out in high school which was giving me flashbacks!). It was yet another person's birthday and they decided to all go out with a group of people. It was going well...I thought.


We dated for a few more weeks and slowly but surely the “ideal” factor was peeled away like an onion, one layer at a time. The following week he invited me over. "Great!"  I told him, "What's your address?" He said, "you know, you were just here last weekend." I was? "The yellow house in Bothell." My stomach turns as I realize he's referring to his step grandmother's house. I am confused and decided to head over his way to see what's going on. Turns out he didn’t have a three bedroom condo, of which I could have cared less but come on, why lie about it? The bad part was, instead he was living in his step-grandmother’s basement. Yeah… BUT he said it was because he had just moved a few weeks ago from another state and hadn’t gotten settled, he was in the process of getting his own place, blah blah blah. “Okay” I thought, “don’t be shallow. Give him time to get his stuff together, otherwise he seems like a great guy.” So I did.


A couple of more weeks passed with us going out about once a week. The big test of hanging out with my friends and going out comes around and he passes with flying colors apart from a few minor details. Now, one of my biggest pet peeves is a guy being consistently late. I’m not talking 10 or even 20 minutes, I’m talking at least an hour. Every time. Really. I get all dressed up and excited to go out, get my coat on and my purse in hand and sit on the edge of my seat on the couch. Cut to about 90 minutes later and I'm slumped on my couch, arms crossed, tapping my feet against the coffee table in irritation. FINALLY I head out to my car with my mind made up that I'm leaving without him. Just then he pulls up. Okay, so he was over an hour late, but he offered to be the designated driver so I didn’t have to be which was a nice change of pace from said previous relationship (See chapter 1). So we pick up my friend Tami (my partner in crime!) and head over to our friend Leo’s apartment. We all go out for a night of dancing at the Frontier Room in Belltown. My date was fun, personable and sang openly with me in the car which I LOVE! (Yes, I’m a bit of a karaoke freak, holler!) And it doesn’t hurt that he was very VERY easy on the eyes which is never a requirement for me to date someone, but let’s face it…it doesn’t hurt!


So the night goes well, and for the first time since we’d been hanging out he actually bought me a drink. I had paid my own way for everything prior to this night when we were together, which I really REALLY do not mind because I think it’s old fashioned for guys to pay for everything anyways. But this time it was all on him, even drinks for my friend. As the night ends, he hops in the driver's seat of my car and we head out to leave. We get halfway to my place to drop me off. He all of a sudden starts freaking out. He had forgotten his debit card. We were almost back to my place and I told him he should just go pick it up first thing tomorrow. “You don’t understand” he said, “It is my grandmother’s card…” So, he had to go back and get said card. He said she let him borrow it for groceries and stuff and it wasn’t a big deal. Not sure if she would have seen it that way though, if she wouldn’t mind then why was he so worried about getting it back that same night? I asked him why he would need to use hers, and he said it was because he hadn't found a job yet. When I asked him what was up with his business and the whole "business analyst" thing he acted surprised. "I never said that! I used to clean pools in Arizona." Great. He was a liar and worse than that, he couldn't even remember WHAT he had lied about. Fantastic. We pull back up to the bar, he hops in and gets his grandmother's credit card and gets back into the car. A real winner, I was thinking to myself.  Now I understood why we never made it out to El Goucho.


Anyways, cut to about a week later. We previously had plans to hang out but I had gotten really sick and to be honest I had turned a corner on how I felt about this guy (can't imagine why). He came over for a few minutes and said he had a favor to ask. He needed to borrow $100 and he would pay me back tomorrow. He had some long drawn out story that I neither remember nor care about.  It sounded like he was in a real pinch and he swore up and down that he had a check for $100 that he would cash the next day and give to me. Not sure why I did it, maybe it was the fever making me delirious, maybe because he just looked so very sad sitting on my couch and begging me for money, but I agreed. To his credit, he did come back the next day to drop off some money, but he had “accidentally” spent some of it and he asked me “is that okay?” IS THAT OKAY? Is that a question? I’ve been dating this guy for a month and a half and discovered he was not the man he presented. Instead of a business analyst who had a three bedroom condo in Bellevue and owned his own business, he was an unemployed pool boy from Arizona living in his grandmother's basement. He had fraudulently used his Grandmother's card to finance a night on the town, borrowed money from me, and then spent some of the money he was supposed to pay me back with, and he asks “is that okay?!” No. It was not. I gave him an earful and he acted remorseful, but there really was no coming back from all of this. It was apparent that this was not going to work, and it didn’t take being an Analyst to figure it out.

Chapter 1: The Lumberjack

Don’t you just hate it when you have a 30 year old man chasing after your car at 1:30 in morning out in the pouring rain with only his boxers on as you’re peeling out of his apartment parking lot?  No?  Maybe I should back up a little bit (insert old school tape rewind sound here).  It all started the summer after my divorce.  I had gone through a long and difficult process and it was finalized in May.  My daughter was about a year old at this point, and I was starting to get used to the idea of starting over.  My best friend’s boyfriend mentioned that he had a co-worker who had seen my picture and wanted to meet me, and at first I wasn’t sure if I was ready to start dating again.  Eventually though, the meeting was set up and we all went out on a date together.  It was a really good time.  Things went like that for a while, we would meet up at our mutual friends’ house and all go out on Saturday night.  It was a nice set up because I’d never had “couple friends” before.  We dated for a while, he even helped me move into my new apartment.  It was going great.  


After about 4 weeks, he started dropping the “L” bomb.  Now, I know there are some people who just fall madly in love very quickly and that’s just great for them, but that’s not me.  I’ve only said “I love you” to two guys in my life that I wasn’t related to, and one of those guys I was married to for 4 years (together for 7)!  It has a lot of meaning to me so it’s not a phrase I just throw around.  However, this was not the case for the lumberjack.  The first two times he said it to me, he was drunk (which became a reoccurring theme with him).  I started to notice that after a while I was always the one driving or we would cab it everywhere, and I began to wonder what his obsession with big gulps was…?  Hmmmm…. Anyways, getting off track.  So after about 3 months of dating, we decided to make it official: I had a boyfriend.  He was cute, tall, somewhat athletic with blondish hair.  He had good manners and would pull out my chair and open doors, and was just an all around good guy. He had a cute personality, good job, and a really nice apartment on Mercer Island.   It was even decorated nicely; still manly but put together.  He was even really funny and always trying to impress me in cute ways.  He invited me over for a dinner one night so he could “cook for me”.  He made this delicious stuffed chicken with feta and calamata olives and I was thoroughly impressed…until I found out it was a premade meal from Trader Joes from a friend of mine.  Then I found it adorable.   I thought to myself “not too shabby for the first boyfriend out of the gate!  This may even really turn into something…”  If I had the capability to go back in time and tell myself two words they would be thus: Wishful Thinking.  


Things started to fall apart when we would go out to the casino.  Turns out he liked to gamble…A LOT…and I’ll leave it at that.  And usually, with the gambling came a few beverages and a few sometimes for him turned into a lot.  But when he got drunk, he got kind of rude.  Not mean spirited, it was just like every thought in his head would come out with no filter!  We’d all be talking in a group and out of nowhere (and in the middle of a random sentence someone else was saying) he would say “This is SO BORING!”  Yeah.  Rude.  The nail in the coffin came late that September.  The site of the relationship slaying?  Puylallup Fair.  Yes those grand flashing lights and big rides are now the resting grounds of my rebound relationship.  We were supposed to have another double date with our mutual friends, and they were heading down to the fair at 2PM.  I was heading down at 3 after my doctor's appointment.  He wanted me to drive all the way down there by myself, which I was pretty irritated by since he just had to wait an hour and he's the one who asked me to go.  But after he saw I was mad he agreed to wait and go down with me, big gulp in hand.  (note: the reason why I didn’t want to drive down by myself is that it can take two hours to get down there and I really didn’t want to sit in traffic for 2 hours by myself to do something that wasn’t even my idea.)  


So, on the way down there he starts asking me which holidays we’re going to spend with his family in Eastern Washington, and which holidays with my family.  I’m thinking to myself “you’re kidding right?  I have a one year old daughter and it's important to be with my family at this time.  I’m doing ALL holidays with my family, and we have only been a couple for about a week!”  He was being kind of rude again, you know with random thoughts that should really be kept to yourself, and half jokingly I asked him if he had been drinking, keeping in mind this is about 4PM.  He said “of course” and held up said big gulp.  "Of course" as if there was any other option, like I was silly for asking.  Ahhhhh…now it made sense!  Most of the time we had been hanging out, he was drinking!  And here I just thought he was a naturally thirsty individual.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around this fact when we park.  So we get to the fairgrounds and things are going…just ok.  I was a little irritated at the drunken state of my new boyfriend who was a little bit sloppy in the walking and talking department for this stage in the evening.  At one point while we were standing under the designated smoking area, he divulged some very personal and embarrassing information to a total stranger right in front of me!  Now I was starting to get pissed.  Here I was, stone cold sober while my drunk boyfriend stumbled around the fairgrounds telling perfect strangers about our “love life” and making a fool of himself.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I refer to as a huge RED FLAG.  


So, we leave the fairgrounds and he wants to go gamble.  No problem, I do enjoy a good casino from time to time myself so I was okay with it.  At the casino, however, he has to borrow money from his friend to gamble since the night before he had blown $300 (a minor detail he’d not previously shared with me).  So he promptly proceeds to squander the borrowed money as well putting him several hundred in the hole and sticking him with RED FLAG number two.  All of a sudden my very cute, very put together new boyfriend is looking neither cute nor put together.  The whole time we’re at the casino, he keeps shoving drinks in my face and telling me I should losen up and drink.  I kindly reminded him that I was driving his drunk ass around (I’m paraphrasing here) and I cannot partake of said alcoholic beverages as we are a good 45 minutes still from his place.  


Finally, we leave there too and go our separate ways from our friends.  We head back to his apartment and throw on a movie.  I was really irritated and wanted to go home but he begged me to just stay at his place and watch a movie.  So, I agreed.  While sitting on the couch I hear him banging and clanking things in the kitchen.  He drops a few pans and promptly says “I’ve got it!” fixes two drinks of straight whiskey and ice, and places one squarely in front of me.  As I sit there watching the condensation dripping down the front of the glass, I tell him I’m not drinking that night.  I wasn’t in a good mood and two drunk people arguing just didn’t sound like a great way to end the evening.  He keeps on insisting, at least four more times, and finally I just stop and look at him and say very firmly “I’m NOT drinking.”  He grabs the drink, heads to the kitchen and mutters under his breath “you don’t have to be a bitch”.  Ok, now that’s where I draw the line.  He’d been rude before, but never called me a bad name and I just could not handle that, drunk or not there's just no excuse for a guy acting that way.  So, not being a huge fan of yelling and screaming, I head over to my bag and start to gather my things. He sees me and tries to stop me, apologizing profusely and saying he didn’t mean that.  I tell him I’ll stay if we just go to sleep and we can discuss it in the morning.  He agrees and I think to myself, “Maybe I’ll just leave after he passes out.”  Again, note to my “back in time self”: no dice sister.  He wouldn’t go to sleep and kept wanting to talk about it and talk about it and I just wanted to leave.  He insisted repeatedly that I should just stay and drink with him.  I tell him that if he asks me to drink one more time I’m going to leave.  He reluctantly says “fine” and then stumbles off to the bathroom to change for sleep.  I think to myself, “why are you here?  This is so inappropriate, you should just go home.”  So, I did.  


While he was in the bathroom brushing his teeth I grabbed my already mostly packed bag of belongings and I headed out to my car.  I guess he heard the door close because as I reached my door to open it, he came running out into the cold September rain with no socks, no shoes, in fact no clothes of any kind whatsoever aside from a pair of boxer shorts.  I quickly threw my bag inside, hopped in and locked the door.   As I peeled away he was running after my car, arms waving wildly in the air and toothpaste still lining his mouth giving him the appearance of a rabid lumberjack.  I put the petal to the metal and drove away.  “Well” I thought to myself, “THAT’s a way to make an exit!” 


And that was the end of my 3.5 month rebound relationship.