incognito first date

My man-shopping friend (see her blog in my links) has asked me to type up a story of my worst first date.  To be fair, there are several contenders, but I will stick to that which she specifically requested.

The date I didn’t know I was on.

My parents have lived in Europe for eleven years, which made Thanksgiving in college a bit of a homesick nightmare.  In November of my junior year, I lived with some interesting characters (see my posts on roommates and neighboring potheads for further info), one of whom was nice enough to invite me to Thanksgiving dinner at his parents house so that I wouldn’t be alone on the holiday.  An extremely kind gesture on his part, and one that I happily accepted.  I piled into the car with him that Thursday morning, and the two of us drove outside Seattle to get some good old fashioned holiday yumminess.

Little did I know he had told his parents we were dating.

I was not even remotely attracted to this guy.  He took pride in not cleaning his bathroom and referred to the unholy build-up in his toilet as ‘Barnacle Bill”.  He was as opposite my type as a guy can get.  He constantly referred to myself and one other roommate as ‘the artists’ of the flat, and periodically made snide comments under his breath about our contribution to society (or lack thereof).  Until that day I was under the impression we tolerated one another for rents sake, but nothing more.

And then I met his parents.

They asked me over the course of the evening to tell them how we had met, and what our first date had been like.  Needless to say, it was a tad uncomfortable.  I didn’t know how to react to them, so I instead focused on shoving mouthfuls of delicious stuffing and potatoes into my mouth.  His grandmother was also present, and during a board game at the end of the evening I was asked to write down which magazine I would like to be on the cover of-SHE looked at her grandson and made the remark:

‘Now now, we all know you want to say Playboy-let her answer though’.

Ummmmmm…….what?  The whole affair lasted about six hours.  Six hours of his family being under the misguided impression that I was his girlfriend when in fact I was his very uncomfortable, very unavailable (as far as he was concerned) roommate.

On the way back to the apartment WE SHARED, I stared out the window in total uncomfortable silence.  I mean really, what on Earth could I say?!

Three months later he told one of our other roommates that I had been ‘inviting him to my bed’ and that he ‘knew it was only a matter of time’.

Seriously.  We never dated, but I’m not sure his parents believe that.