The Perfect First Date

Dog and Pony Show.

Dating is ridiculous.  It’s such a farce:  Take a shower.  Shave your legs.  Do your hair.  Get dressed.  Put on too much makeup.   Check your cleavage…Sexy or slutty?  Ok.  Sexy.  Unless slutty is better.  Change clothes. Reevaluate cleavage.   Check your hair.  Hate your hair.  Tell yourself that your hair is going to ruin the rest of your life.  After all, everyone knows that hair is what makes or breaks relationships.  It’s just common knowledge, people.  Everyone also knows that we participate in the dog and pony show that is more acceptably referred to as “dating” for one reason:  to find companionship.  Maybe it’ll only be for the night.  Maybe it’ll be for the rest of your life.  But the truth is that we only do it to escape loneliness, even if only for an unspecified amount of time.  And as payment for that escape, we are forced to make a production out of it.  We spend hours trying to cover our physical defects, only to spend several more hours covering our character defects.    

Much Ado about Nothing. 

Nothing.  That’s generally what first dates amount to.  All of the anticipation and preparation and facade, and if you are lucky, you might get a dinner or a beer out of it.  If the planets have aligned, you might even get laid.  But normally, first dates only serve as a reminder that people are bizarre, and pretty scary.  It also reminds us that filling the emptiness with wine is usually better than filling it with marginal company and uncomfortable conversation. 

(Also, wine doesn’t ever judge your hair or jump to unintended conclusions about how much cleavage you show.)

The Perfect First Date.

After all of this talk about how awful dating is, would you believe it if I told you that I once had the perfect first date?  I know there seems to be some disparity here, but it actually happened.  Once. 

It’s been so long now, that I sometimes don’t remember the difference between what was real and what I fabricated to immortalize the memory.  But every time I revisit that warm, mid-September evening in the East Bay, I am overcome with evocative sensation.  It was so very simple, but it was also very intricate.  The stars aligned.  Even if only for one night. 

Fireworks.

There are two things in this world that leave me speechless regardless of how often I encounter them:  1.)  Dolphins.  2.)  Fireworks.  It doesn’t matter how many times I see them, fireworks and dolphins always calm my  crazy.  Always. 

Ok, back to the perfect first date.  I had completed all of the first date protocol.  I showered, shaved, dressed, makeup-ed, haired.  I even hid the crazy.  First date checklist was complete.  Then I got in the car at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon and drove from my home in the North Bay to Oakland.  It’s normally a 50 minute drive.  And by normally, I mean in the middle of the night.  It is never a 50 minute drive, otherwise.  And most certainly, it is NOT a 50 minute drive on a Friday afternoon.  There are bridges and interchanges and traffic and stuff.  It’s a mess.  Everyone knows I do not tolerate stuff very well.  So, as you can imagine, while I sat in all of that stuff for two and a half hours, I got a little anxious.  And by anxious, I mean hysterical.  On my way to a date.  Which made me even more hysterical.  There was no possible way that I could hide all of the crazy.  It only got worse as I pulled into the parking lot at the coliseum.  If it had have been a normal year, it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but the A’s were WINNING.  And they were a viable post-season prospect.  WTF was I thinking.  I agreed to drive through Bay Area traffic on a Friday, to see a winning baseball team play with a guy I hadn’t seen in months…Sweet Baby Jesus…I’m hyperventilating just remembering it. Why would I commit to this????

Homerun.

That’s why.  It was a homerun.  I didn’t know it was going to be when I left the house.  I definitely didn’t know it was going to be when I was sitting in 2 hours of Bay Area traffic.  And I absolutely reconsidered the decision as I pulled into the packed Coliseum parking lot.  But the night would be a homerun.  When I met him outside the gate, my worries began to subside.  Then as we walked to our seats on the First Base line, I decided against the xanex.  As  we sipped beer and made snarky comments about the people around us and laughed a little, it all seemed less uncomfortable. 

And then, as if the universe knew that we were finally comfortable, he looked at me at the bottom of the forth and said “Cespedas is gonna hit the fence in left field.”  I giggled and rolled my eyes.  When I finally looked back down at the game, there was a ball bouncing off the left field wall. He called it.  And I was enamored.  And then there were fireworks…the real kind and the metaphoric kind.  It was Friday night at the Coliseum.  There're  always some sort fireworks.   That’s when I knew that night was a homerun. 

2^nd Base.

Even though the night was a homerun, I, personally, only made it to second base.  I was OK with that, though.  Because the game wasn’t over.  We’re still in extra innings.   But that guy taught me about what a first date should be.  He also taught me a lot about being comfortable with only having  one good first date.   Being able to accept that takes a lot of inner peas. 

And, for the record, I did eventually hit a homer off of that guy.