Tag: nisei lounge

Jesus, take the wheel…

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Surprisingly, I was dateless on a Thursday night, so I went to my neighborhood bar for a drink after work. It was charity night with guest bartenders which sounds great but I usually dread it because I prefer my dive bar to be empty besides a handful of my closest alcoholic friends who are also regulars. I spotted two of them this night and plopped my ass right beside them. Bartender Doug slid my drink down before I even got settled and the guys and I started talking. Babes with Blades Theater Company was throwing the event for the night and had temporary tattoos for us to fuck around with. We made friends with Annie who was guest bartending and she and I talked about an old dive called the Oasis in Rogers Park and the badass woman named GiGi who has worked there for decades. One drink turns to two drinks and a shot and the boys and I chat back and forth about online dating while encouraging Annie to drink more Malort. We notice our beloved dive bar now is lacking their gorgeous 100 bottle Malort shrine and they’ve replaced it with a 20 bottle mystery shot shelf. (Not quite as impressive, Pat! Still cool though.) 20170526_235647167_iOS.jpg

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Vik asks us which bottle appeals to us most based on appearance and number. All of the bottles are covered in brown paper bags and numbered 1-20. Immediately I compare it to online dating. I tell them it’s similar to all of the dating apps because you have to just pick a random and hope for the best. You’re going in blind really. All you know is you’re not picking the short, fat bottle because it looks dangerous, just like you’re not picking the short, fat guy because EW. We come up with our own ideas for dating apps that we think would be better than Tinder and Bumble and all the others. “Jesus Take the Wheel” was the name Vik gave to our app idea that you’re not allowed to swipe on at all. It’s guided and directed by your friends and family only. We plan to market that one in the Bible Belt first, of course. I’m not expecting that one to do as well in Chicago to start.

Then, Vik drops some life-changing truth on us:

Women are the gate-keepers to sex. Men are the gate-keepers to commitment.

This explains why he swipes right on everyone and waits to see which fish bite. The more chances of getting laid, the better! But he’s right, unless GHB is involved. (Sorry. Not funny. True though!) Women decide who they want to have a second date with usually or who they want to go on a date with in the first place. At least I do. When I left my husband I lined up dates every night. Mostly because I knew I had no idea what I was doing on dates. I’ve been in non-stop relationships since I was 24 pretty much. As soon as I’d lose a guy, another would steal me and keep me a while before he did something awful and we split up. I needed to practice and get good at this dating thing again. Out of all the dates I’ve been on the past few months, few have ended in a second date and, obviously, fewer have ended in sex. I AM the gate-keeper!!! (Of sex, at least.) Most of the guys I had dates with wanted to see me again which means they had a strong interest in penetration as well. Duh. I controlled the outcome.

Men are the controllers of commitment and relationships though. Once you’ve dated for a while and you’re in a sexual relationship with someone, it means (usually) that the woman has decided she likes you enough to have a relationship. What it means to guys is, “Fuck, yeah! I bang this chick!” And he probably bangs a few others as well. Guys have the ball on this one though. They decide if it’s a green light or red on being committed most of the time. I’m currently waiting for the light to change with the guy I’m dating. It’s been two months. I’m stuck at yellow. I’m impatient though and I want to know where this is going, like yesterday!

In the meantime, I’ll get the Jesus Take the Wheel app going and pray to Malort that my friends and family can choose my match better than I can if this gate-keeper of commitment gives me the red light.

My First Bumble Nightmare cont…

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Ok, so it was the Grand Lux Café, the “upscale” Cheesecake Factory… Still bad! The host takes us to a table and I get my ass halfway into the seat before I hear this guy requesting different spot. “No, this table simply will not do. As you can see, I’m on a date with a beautiful lady,” he said, gesturing toward me as the look of shock and mortification swept my face, I’m sure. The host looked at me, back at my elf-sized, morphed Mr. Potato Head and went to consult with his colleague. He came back and dragged us over to a table by a window instead. At least we had a nice view at a dirty table with sticky menus!

If you’ve never been to The Cheesecake Factory or Grand Lux Café, let me tell you that their menus are as big as a bible. They have a lot of shit. The entire time I’m trying to read this menu and get this date over with, hobbit boy is asking me a million questions. Each time I try to answer he interrupts to tell me how adorable I am. I’m called a lot of things but adorable is definitely not a descriptive word I hear often because I’m far from it. I finally stopped him and somehow managed to politely tell him to shut the fuck up for 30 seconds so I could read, we could order and I could bail. Meanwhile, I’m live-texting my friends in a group chat to try and get advice on how to ditch this guy since he had grand plans of us going bowling afterward! I agreed to dinner! That’s it, buddy! I don’t know you or like you enough to spend my entire night with you! My friends, rather than help me come up with an exit strategy, laughed at my pain and begged for more updates. Bitches.

Our server asks if we want drinks besides water. In my head I’m thinking, “Tequila. All of it. Bring a bottle.” He ordered a mango smoothie though and I sat there angrily sipping water. When his smoothie came he repeatedly insisted I try it. After saying, “No, thank you” twenty something times, I finally tried it so he’d shut the hell up. Then he asks if I have herpes. WHAT!? Wouldn’t that be asked PRIOR to insisting a stranger drink from your straw if you’re so concerned about it?? For the love of dogs, I KNOW this guy is a virgin now. I wasn’t entirely sure initially when I smelled him and saw his ill-fitting, stained clothing. NOW I was sure.

I think this guy has Asberger Syndrome now. When our server asks us what we want, he asked her which salmon dish he liked. Huh? She looked at me and I just shrugged. I don’t fucking know this guy. She then reads to him directly from the menu so he knew what everything was. He’s still not sure. He knows he likes one of the salmon dishes and he does not like the other. He can’t. Figure. This out. Pick one!!! Fucking pick! He finally picks one and when it gets to the table he realizes it’s NOT the one he likes so he eats only the top of the salmon and explains that he does eat anything green. I can’t. I’m done. Throwin’ in the napkin now.

“Oh, darn,” he says, after checking a message on his phone. “I’m on-call for work today and they need me to do something. Want to come to my place and watch me nerd-out before we go bowling?” Fuck no, pal. I have to get the hell out of here. Now my brain is working and I use his being 45 minutes late for our date as my out. “Oh, shoot! As fabulous as that sounds, I promised my friends I was going to meet them later. Too bad you were so late for this awesome date. Gotta go!”

He pays. We leave. He tries to kiss me. I cringe and pull away FAST. I was beyond ready for a shot and a beer. My friend who initially told me to abort this mission before I even ventured to Dave and Buster’s was bartending at my neighborhood bar, where I’ve been way too regular for way too long. I hopped in a cab and told him to speed and get me there. Before I even got to the bar this guy was texting me about another date. When you sit across from someone for over an hour and they never smile once, do you really think anything is going well enough for date #2??

When I walked (clumsily ran) into Nisei Lounge, my friend looked like an alcohol angel, bathed in the pink light from the neon sign on the cooler behind her. I made it. I was in heaven. I went through hell to get there but being there now was all that mattered.

 

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My alcohol angel

 

 

My First Bumble Nightmare

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Immediately after leaving my husband I started swiping. I could not WAIT to get Tinder! I wanted it my whole life! The night I moved out I sat, surrounded by my suitcases in my best friend’s condo and she and I swiped and giggled while drinking wine until the wee hours of the morn’. ( Well, until maybe 11 pm. She has an infant so bedtime is early for parents apparently.)

That night I felt free. Granted, I was homeless and without my dogs but free nonetheless! I matched with a guy who was the opposite of my type – computer engineer by day and actor by night, short guy with long, wild hair. We messaged back and forth until messaging turned to texting and that turned into late night phone calls. We finally decided to meet. He wanted to take me to a “fancy” restaurant which was his favorite place in the city. I was pumped! My first date!

That Sunday while shopping with my friend, he texted and asked if I wanted to meet at Dave and Buster’s. Dave and mother fucking Buster’s?! Not the fancy place I was expecting but I was going with it. My friend immediately insisted I abort this mission because the loser vibes instantly hit her. She’s far more perceptive than I am.

I got dressed but not overdressed and ventured to our meeting point, as awful as it seemed. The floor was sticky, children were running amuck and I felt like Zsa Zsa Gabor if she were to walk into an unkempt barn surrounded by wild chickens and pigs, flinging horse shit onto her Dior gown. I was in actual hell. “Fuck it,” I thought, “man up and do the damn thing.” So I did. I ordered a beer from the sweatiest human being I’ve ever laid eyes on. I sat and nursed that beer for 45 full fucking minutes waiting on this asshole. Just as I was leaving, I was hugged by a smelly imp. He looked like a warped version of his pictures. He looked like my Mr. Potato Head after my younger siblings rearranged the eyes, nose and mouth to piss me off. My excitement for my first date waned substantially after the whole Dave and Buster’s thing but now it was drained entirely. Gone. It would never return and my head was spinning, trying to think of ways to get out of this ghastly situation. This was my first date though and I had ZERO plan here and no idea what to do.

He ordered a Sprite which was delivered to him in a bucket-sized plastic cup. He slurped it down and we made small talk. He kept smiling and touching my knee and I stared at him in horror and repeatedly moved his hand to his own knee. “Let’s get out of here and get dinner” he said. Fuck yes. The sooner we do that, the sooner I get out of here. He doesn’t have Lyft or Uber on his phone yet, he explained to me, because he just moved to the city from the suburbs six months ago. WHAT!? I didn’t even want to ask and hear an explanation of why he hasn’t taken 10 seconds to download a stupid app so I just got in the cab with him and prayed to dogs that this would all be over soon.

We arrived at our destination. Our fancy restaurant. The BEST in the city. The Cheesecake Factory.