Year: 2014
Scene of the Crime: Tripoli Tap
Time of Day: After Work
Moral of the Story: The logo for tinder is a flame because that's how their dates go... (down in flames)
Rating: 4 out of 5 goose bumps (the bad kind)
Earlier this fall, I went out with a guy "Byron" who I swiped right on Tinder. SMH Go ahead-judge on. Just like the saying "You get what you pay for." You get what you, swipe." He was 40 years old, had red hair and freckles* and seemed like a really fun guy. His 120 characters stated that he loved to make people laugh, so I assumed that he was funny or at the very least, sarcastic-a trait I often marvel over. Well, you know what they say when you ASS-U-ME...
From the minute he walked in, I knew this was going to be bad. I just had a gut feeling based on how we walked. Not just because of his disheveled appearance, but by his odd facial expression and posture. He was wearing tattered jeans, dirty sneakers and a stained thermal button up t-shirt. He claimed he had just come from volunteering at a soup kitchen with his female bestie. The bar was at the end of his street, so it didn’t make sense why he couldn’t swing home for 5 minutes and freshens up for a first date. Boys! I mention his female BFF, Krissy, because her name is brought up in just.about.every.single sentence.of.every.story. Why he didn't invite Krissy to have drinks-I will never understand.
After we say hello, he ushers me out to the back "patio" of this hellacious dive bar, where there are no heaters, lights or service and it's about 30 degrees and pitch black. It was here where I was sure I would be killed and never seen again. Murdered I was not, but ransacked by a rat the size of Texas-I was. I squealed, but Byron screamed like girl and threw his grown, husky man-legs onto my dress covered-lap for fear that rat would scurry across his feet and comprise his precious tennies.
I suggested we head back inside at which point he leaped to his feet and marched on ahead of me (very chivalrous, I know). Not even three steps inside the bar, his left arm sweeps upwards and his bottle of Bud Light goes thrashing 10 feet forward, towards the wall and shatters, spewing stale beer all across the already sticky floor. What happens next is appalling...
He keeps walking and does NOTHING! NOTHING! He proceeds to pull out a bar stool for himself and acts like nothing happened. Mind you-I was walking behind him, so I unfortunately witnessed the entire accident. I asked the bartender for towels to help clean up while he perused the beer taps. This bar is a one woman show, so the bartender is also the server, custodian and security. Her cleaning up his broken beer meant he had to wait for her to finish cleaning before he could order another one.
When she returned to the bar, he ordered another drink and started ranting about how he wants to breed feral cats to eradicate the rat problem on his street and is using his hands for emphasis.[Sidebar-forget the fact that I work for an animal shelter where breeding of anything is strongly discouraged, let alone stray cats.] During this display, I notice that his left, beer slinging hand has a tiny cut and he has a little (I stress little) bit of blood on it. He RUNS to the men's room and runs back out yelling at the "barkeep" to fetch him a first aid kit. She only has hydrogen peroxide, gauze and some tampons. He reaches for the tampons to "clot his deep wound" and request the hydrogen peroxide be poured on his index finger. I've had hang nails and paper cuts bleed more than this "wound." The barkeep looked at me, rolled her eyes and did as he asks. As I choked back my own vomit, I witnessed the world's most atrocious thing done on a wooden bar...blood dabbing. The "wound" doesn’t' even fizz, but he proceeded to dab his finger on a cocktail napkin until it was a red polka dot mess of his blood and bad memories of the slippery Bud Light. Instead of concealing the cut and downplaying it like any real man would do, he made it a focus of the night as if he just survived a death defying act of danger.
After about two hours of painfully cynical conversation, I made it clear that I do not want another drink and needed to get going. I didn't really, but I couldn't bare one more minute of his blood dabbing on the bar and negativity. I reached for a $5 to cover my drink and tip, and he reached over (with his right hand-thank god it wasn't his bloody left hand) and told that "I wanted to buy you A drink and there (pointed at my empty glass) it is. I'll pay for that." I never took that saying so literal, but was glad to save the $5 to put towards my Uber ride home, which brought us to our last topic of conversation for the evening-transportation. Every girl's hot button to romance.
He told me that Uber is a conspiracy set up by the government to alienate all of the illegal taxi drivers and drive (pardon the pun) them back to their country of origin. I told him that I had met the owners of Uber and they are young hip guys who turned a far-fetched idea into a bazillion bucks and assured him they weren't feds. Then I joked and said-"Ok, I'll take a Divvy bike**." I might as well have said that I hate rainbows and sunshine, because he was speechless and fuming mad. He went on to tell me that Divvy bikes are going to be the #1 cause of deaths in Chicago within the next and that riding one would be irresponsible as a pedestrian and citizen. He actually referred to it as bicycular homicide (which might be a thing, but I doubt it), meaning that these sturdy-framed bikes will be rode by thugs and vandals who will speed up and run pedestrians over, killing them at cross walks with their blunt force. I swear-I can't make this up. Apparently, his father was struck by an amateur assassin Divvy bike rider and hurt his toe, but it could have been much worse.
As you could have probably imagined, we never went out again and I never swiped right again.
*Disclaimer: I really like red hair and freckles, but not Byron's red hair or freckles.
**I don't ride bikes in the city. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade and even then, I had my fair shares of spills. I remember wiping out trying to turn a corner riding no handed and laying there for what felt like an hour for someone to save me. When no one came, I walked my sad bike home the 17 houses and cried the entire way. Partial tears of pain, but mostly my hurt pride. I bought a bike 2 years ago to ride on the lake path and took it out for exactly one spin, before never riding it again. I, as you can imagine, made a huge geek out of myself by riding as crooked as possible. One would have thought I was being chased by an alligator with my path and my knees managed to point directly out, making it appear as though my bike had wings.
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