The 'Perfect' Date

As stylish diners stream in through the entryway, the overly perky hostess promptly escorts them two-by-two to candlelit tables. With each jaunt to the dining room, her arms laden with menus, she scrutinizes a pretty young woman anxiously tapping her toes on the hardwood floor who appears to be perched precariously close to the edge of the my-date-is-late bench. The I’m-probably-getting-stood-up bench. The this-is-so-embarrassing bench.

Alana repeatedly checks her watch, expectantly awaiting her date, who is now more than ten minutes late. Her head snaps toward the door each time it opens, to no avail.

Tonight is to be their inaugural meeting – their debut. Ben has selected one of the finest restaurants in town for this auspicious occasion and Alana has been wild with anticipation for days. This wasn’t going to be just any old twenty-minute coffee date. Ben was committing to an hour, maybe an hour and a half, not to mention a pricey dinner tab. Alana was certain it was a good omen.

Throughout that week, rapid-fire emails flew back-and-forth between Alana and Ben, and they quickly discovered they had many shared hobbies and interests.

And he had such a way with the written word! He was ever-so-slightly poetic, but not too poetic. Just the right amount of poetic. There’s nothing Alana hated more than excessive, sappy poetry.

Through his writing, Ben seemed, in a word…perfect.

Finally. There he is. Alana’s heart skips a beat. She glances at her watch one last time. Fourteen minutes late. She breathes a sigh of relief. At least he hasn’t stood her up. Then she notices his aesthetic and her heart immediately drops. He’s wearing a fleece jacket with pill balls all over it, wrinkled khaki pants, and muddy hiking boots. After her initial smile of recognition, the corners of her mouth drop. She takes a deep breath, forces a little wave, and lifts herself from the bench onto her 4” high sandals only to discover the top of Ben’s head is at least four (if not five or six) inches below hers.

She leans down to give him a perfunctory hug, immediately noting that the scent wafting from his fleece jacket would indicate it had not been washed in a very long time, if ever.

Then, unexpectedly, rather than offer a greeting or compliment, Ben sarcastically spews, with a frown, “I thought you were going to do something about those heels.”

Shocked and taken aback, Alana freezes and stares at him for several seconds. She had thought, and hoped, that some form of compliment might be in the offing when Ben first set eyes upon her. She’d spent more than an hour and a half on her hair and makeup, selected just the right (brand-new) dress, and had gotten a spray tan just enough days prior that it had settled down from tangerine into a nice fresh shade of not orange. But no. It was becoming crystal clear there wouldn’t be any compliments tonight. Nor would there be any mention of, or apology for, his tardiness.

While Alana was initially stymied by his comment, it slowly came to her. It was her online profile, where she’d written, “I’m tall, but a man’s height doesn’t matter. I can wear flats.” It was banter. She was bantering. If she wanted to look particularly sexy on any given day, she absolutely would wear high heels regardless of a man’s feelings about his height or hers.

Since they hadn’t met in-person before, and he’d never mentioned it, Alana had no inkling about Ben’s height or his deep-seated insecurities about it. Yet, he was apparently deeply offended that Alana hadn’t anticipated his stature and dressed accordingly. “Interesting. Ok. Check. Got it. But do I look pretty?” she wonders. She’ll never know.

Ever the optimist, Alana carries on and follows Ben and the hostess to a window table, noting he walks ahead of her rather than behind her, as she would have expected a gentleman to do. But by God, she was committed at this point, and she was at least going to get a nice dinner out of this night.

“How much worse can this possibly get?” she thought to herself.

After they settle into their seats, she quickly finds out. The timbre of Ben’s voice is so nasally she finds it as unpleasant as fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. And his perception of what comprises a conversation is talking, ad nauseum, about himself, while not exhibiting any desire to learn anything whatsoever about her. It’s not that she didn’t try to interject her thoughts and ideas into the conversation. It’s just that he stared at her, then immediately resumed talking about himself.

Eventually Alana is no longer listening to whatever Ben is droning on about, but instead focuses on and considers how it would be to hear that voice were they to share any future private intimate moments together.

She found herself stifling back shudders (and nausea), shoving large chunks of filet mignon into her mouth, chewing rapidly, and chugging huge gulps of wine to choke it down so she could end this nightmare as quickly as humanly possible.

An hour and a half later, Ben is still lingering over his meal, and so thoroughly enjoying talking about himself, he tells Alana he’d like to prolong the date even further by ordering another glass of wine and the one dessert that would take the kitchen more than thirty minutes to prepare.

“That’s it,” she realizes. There could only be one possible appropriate course of action. She promptly excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room. Luckily, she always carries a large bag chock-full of all the accoutrements a girl might need out in the wild.

She rummages through her bag and pulls out the long black cardigan she always hauls around with her in case she gets cold. She slips her arms into it, then slides the belt off her dress and wraps it around the sweater to ensure it stays in place, entirely covering her dress.

Next, she forages for a hair tie and pins, then braids her long hair and wraps it in a circle, pinning it up into a tight bun.

And as luck (and irony) would have it, she had a pair of flats she’d thrown into her bag earlier that week in case her feet started hurting at work, so she swaps her sparkly sandals out for boring black flats.

Well-aware that a full disguise was paramount, she also pulls out her black-framed driving glasses, hoping she’d be able to walk properly even while everything near her would be exceedingly blurry. “I’ll just look straight off into the distance,” she whispers.

She stuffs everything unneeded back into her bag, steps back, and glances up at the mirror. “Voila. I’m a librarian!”

She steps out of the ladies’ room, marches to the front of the restaurant, slips out the door, and heads, with all the nonchalance she can muster, down the street.

Ben was seated facing a window and Alana knew she would have to walk right by where he was seated. And she can’t help herself – she does a quick side-eye glance to see if there’s any chance he’s noticed that anything was amiss. But he’s completely oblivious, smiling and chatting up the pretty waitress who has just delivered his third glass of teeth-reddening Cabernet. “I’m sure she’s as fascinated as I was in hearing his life story,” Alana thought to herself.

Ten steps later she raises a fist into the air and blurts out, “I’m free! Free at last!” a little louder than she intended to, resulting in stares and laughter from pedestrians she passes on the sidewalk. She smiles back at them with glee at her wildly successful coups de grâce.

She pulls out her mobile and calls her best friend Nikki, who has been waiting for her at a bar down the street for an in-person debrief after the date. Nikki is a realist and had been much more skeptical that Ben was, in fact, going to be Alana’s perfect man.

Alana steps into the bar, seating herself on the stool Nikki had been saving for her. Nikki looks her up and down then proceeds to laugh so hard she nearly falls off her bar stool. “That’s what you wear on a first date?” she asks incredulously.

Alana simply holds up an index finger signaling Nikki to pause and refrain from any further comments, then yanks off her glasses and sweater, readjusts the belt around her dress, pulls down the bun, unbraids her hair, does a quick little hair flip with her now wavy hair, switches back to her sparkly sandals and signals the bartender to bring her a very stiff drink – straight up. Then she regales Nikki with all the blow-by-blow details of the date, which Nikki finds much more hilarious in the telling than obviously Alana had found in the doing.

Nikki responds simply, “Have I taught you nothing? Never, ever, EVER commit to anything longer than a cup of coffee for a first date. They are NEVER how they appear online. Ninety-nine percent of the time a first date is going to be a meet, greet, and delete!”

Wiser words were never spoken. Alana reached for her phone, opened the dating app, and deleted Ben from her life forever.