 |
|
|
|
My Date with the Win A Date with T. Mike Contest Winner(s)
by T. Mike
Oh brother. Okay, here's how this fiasco went down. That's right, I said fiasco. You might think that I would be so grateful for any date I could get, that even if Miss Atilla the Hun spent the evening decapitating me, I'd still try to get her number. Well, okay, maybe the date wasn't that bad, but Lord knows it wasn't good. Let me start at the beginning...
We ran this contest and got a surprisingly large number of entries (more than none), and a surprisingly large number of earnest, serious-minded entries from actual, real-live women (as far as we could tell). Voting was difficult, but of the narrowed-down list of candidates, I felt assured that any one of them would be a pretty good date. How wrong I was. We selected "Miss X" (not her real name, she didn't sign the wavier, so we can't use it). Miss X seemed to have many fine qualities, and as a bonus was located right here in town! Miss X was contacted by email, whereupon we learned that Miss X's application had been forged by two of her co-workers, whom we'll refer to as Miss Y and Miss Z (no, they wouldn't sign the frigging wavier either). And Miss X had a current boyfriend, too boot. Well this certainly threw a monkey wrench into the plans! At this point, had any of the Van Gogh-Goghs been thinking clearly, the candidate would have been disqualified and the runner up chosen. However, no Van Gogh-Gogh ever thinks clearly. Period. So, we thought it would be a terrific idea to have the forgers Miss Y and Miss Z win the contest, on the logic that they actually crafted the winning entry. Miss X, not to be left out, would be invited along as a chaperone. We also thought it hilarious that I would be dating two women at the same time. It was not hilarious. It was so not hilarious that I am STILL celibate. Okay, maybe I would have been celibate anyway. Wait, does uh, you know... count? Okay, forget about the celibacy thing.
Anyway, the women were contacted, and surprisingly, all AGREED to our, in hindsight, idiotic and poorly thought out plan. The evening's schedule was chosen from a selection suggested by Miss Y and Miss Z themselves: Dinner at Encounter, the fabulously kitschy restaurant high above the L.A. Airport and afterwards, something called black light bowling.
At the beginning of the evening I met up with my own chaperone, Galen; an ideal chaperone as not only is he happily married, but also he is the one Van Gogh-Gogh who can't outshine me. He also has a much, much nicer car than me, which he allowed to be used for the date. He is also a professional video camera operator, and had agreed to videotape the date, in the unlikely event anything worth taping should occur. So, my stomach full of butterflies, we set off to pick up my dates.
Now, you should know that we Van Gogh-Goghs fully ran through a gamut of wacky, wacky things we could engineer on the date. All kinds of elaborate schemes and nutty tomfoolery passed through our minds. In the end, we decided to take the high road and just play it straight. We owed it to the dates. We owed it to me. And also we Van Gogh-Goghs couldn't get our act together to actually do any of the stuff we thought of.
We meet them, and after a few quick pictures to immortalize our mutual humiliation, we're off! At the restaurant, the food is fabulous. However, I quickly learn the mistake of dating two women at once. My witty repartee comes off only half as good, as I have to divide it between two people. Worse, while one date is chewing, the other is questioning me. So I got double teamed by these two very inquisitive women. I felt buffeted, hounded, needled and barraged. They kept me on the defensive. I responded by trying to play it cool and be diplomatic, but I came off as withdrawn and glib and they nailed me to the wall for it. Now, I'm not saying that buying a lady an expensive dinner (with TWO bottles of wine) entitles me to get into their pants, much less a hot threeway with some lesbo action on the side, but I would have hoped it would prevent some kind of Spanish Inquisition.
Worse, they were deliberately provocative. They demanded to know if I was having a good time so often that I quickly wasn't. They sidetracked me with serious questions and demanded serious answers. Somehow, and I'm still not sure how, Miss Y managed to drag me into a serious, awkward, and painful discussion about my relationship with my father, which, to Miss Y, was insufficiently chummy. They demanded to know which one of them I liked better, a minefield I refused to stomple through, which irritated them more than if I HAD chose one of them. Well ladies, I would have chosen the CHAPERONE, MISS X! Her quiet perseverance and unflagging good humor in the face of adversity and Miss Y and Miss Z badmouthing her to her face, was an inspiration.
On top of it all, while lovely Miss X was delightfully normal, Miss Y and Miss Z were some kind of weirdos. My proof? Miss Y hated to be on camera. Loathed it. Every time Galen (in his brave attempts to record the farce that was my date) brought the camera anywhere near Miss Y, she would put her napkin in front of her face. And not in a joking, "Oh, get that camera off me, you big silly" kind of way. More in a odd "Hey jerk, don't you know those things steal people's souls?" kind of way. As for Miss Z, later, at the bowling alley, she excused herself to go to the bathroom and came back revealing that her hideous hairdo was in fact merely a hideous wig. Why? I don't know. I guess they sure put one over on me! Ha! Ha! Heh... ho... hum.
Things were a little better at the bowling alley, partly because I switched from wine to harder mixed drinks and partly because the demands of bowling activity took some of the pressure off me. It was also harder to talk, thank God, because of the nature of black light bowling, which is bowling with loud blaring dance music, fog machine fog and yes indeed, black lights. It's a very bizarre attempt to graft "cool" onto "square." And like my date, it only semi-succeeded.
Later we were told that Miss Y and Miss Z thought they were being utterly, utterly hilarious during the entire date. I'm sure for them it was. For myself, I swear I will never, ever, date two women at the same time ever again. And I don't care if they're Barbi twins.
Back to the Archive
|
|
|
|
