Walking Disaster

I am not sure if it’s obvious or not, but my life is a sitcom. Not one with happiness, bright lighting and the budget for multiple cameras, but a satire with handheld cameras that’s actually much darker than it seems. This has only gotten worse with my stupid New Year’s Resolution to say ‘yes’ to more things…so when my friend invited me to join her at a single’s mixer, I figured it wouldn’t be too bad of an idea. 

Wrong. So fucking wrong. It’s a war zone out there ladies. I guess assuming hygiene would be taken into account during a night dedicated to finding a romantic partner was my own fault. I really should’ve managed my already low expectations. And look, I’m sorry that I’m shallow, but it’s one thing to realize I’m surrounded by men shorter than me, with less shower time than me, but I decided in the first few seconds that I wasn’t going to find anyone here. Mainly because of the main character, Maverick, but we’ll come back to that. 

After a short amount of time hiding in the bathroom and telling the bartenders my safe word (neon), I tried to venture out with my friend who treats finding a husband like it’s job hunting. What I thought was going to be a fun girl’s night boy-shopping abruptly ended when I realized she had parked herself with a future ghost and now I had to waste a couple of hours because I never leave a fellow soldier behind. The best options were two lawyers, even though they seemed like estate attorneys, or maybe divorce attorneys, basically they seemed like they had the douchiest speciality. I also didn’t bother to ask what their specialty actually was, but they had a good banter to roast ratio and they didn’t try to talk to me about rennaissance fairs. However, no matter what I did, Maverick was still there…looming. 

Maverick was the first dude there. He was also the tallest, but for once that doesn’t matter. I am not giving this name as protection by the way (I think I proved that I don’t do that with Matt the Wine Guy), that was legitimately the name he chose to write with his own hands on his name tag. His constant hovering, bizarre touching, and receding hairline were nearly as much of a turn on as his fake Dutch accent?! Was it Dutch, or Scandinavian or something else? All I knew was that it changed too much to be believable. And Maverick is just not a real name. 

So after about three-ish drinks, a deep breath, and one more unwarranted leg touch, I invited Maverick to sit. He may have expected flirting, not the cross examination he deserved. The conversation went as follows: 

"What is your name?" "Maverick"
"Where are Goose and Iceman?" "I don’t understand that reference." 
*Cue massive eye roll*
"What is your name?" *Points to name tag.*
"Good God! What is your name?" "You Americans cannot read? It says Maverick."
"What is your fucking name?! And cards on the table, I’m not going to believe Maverick, and I’m not going to believe your accent, and I don’t believe anything that you say."

Now he starts physically moving away from me, and I am the queen of petty so I point out that he’s enacting defensive maneuvers, and he’s been annoying me all night so he has nowhere to go…I realize that now I have become the predator to a clearly uncomfortable person…I see why guys like it so much. 

When he started trying to have me guess his country of origin and occupation, I knew he was looking for an exit strategy. No guy uses the word “guess” unless he’s preparing a lie. I wouldn’t stop pressing and not guessing until he claimed he was a couple’s therapist specializing in S&M – would I like to try? EW. EW. ABORT. This went from stupid moron to potential serial killer really fast. It’s remarkable how short that pipeline actually is. At this point, I went full blown, Leo, fuck you energy and started aggressively pointing. I believe my exact words were, “This is such bullshit. You are such bullshit. Give me your ID.” 

I think he thought I was joking, fighting, bartering, or flirting, but once the demand for license and registration came out, he got the picture. Then I was the creep for continuing when he was trying to find an out, which I’m kind of okay with. But these single events, and different apps and modern dating bullshit is just the same thing over and over. People claiming to be someone else until the object of their affection is hooked. Obviously this is an egregious example so hopefully it’s not usually to this extent, but unless you can get in front of the person and let your intuition take the wheel, you’re never going to know for sure. And obviously little white lies are fine, such as, “yes, family is super important to me too,” or, “ no it takes a lot to make me crazy,” or my favorite, “it’s okay, I suck at texting too!” Those are all normal. But don’t let your lie-o-meter get into the red, because then you’re setting yourself up for nonsense. 

And by the way, Maverick from Denmark or Belgium is actually Brandon from Minnesota. And he can eat a dick.