The Bad Date Chronicles – Roofie Guy Edition

It would not have surprised me in the least if this had actually been him

Unlike some of the other stories, this one has a “happy” ending.  Get your minds out of the proverbial gutter folks, not THAT kind of happy ending!  Ok, so it did eventually and indirectly result in THAT kind of happy ending, but on with my tale.

It was an honest mistake. Because these dudes are ELECTRIC! Get it, electric? See what I did there?

I met Roofie Guy via HowAboutWe.  I must admit that I wasn’t really that

interested based on his picture and/or profile, but the date suggestion, go to a Burlesque Show, was  intriguing and way more creative than some of the other ones out there (I’m looking  at you “Let’s do it” and “Let’s go to a bar”.  Get with it guys!).   I should have known I was in for a Bad Date Chronicles kind of evening when his first email in response to mine talked about the favorable proximity of his residence in relation to the club we would be seeing the show at as well as the status of the bar in his living room (fully stocked, including absinthe no less).  Against my better judgement, and because I was honestly excited about seeing a real-live burlesque show I ignored that massive red flag and went ahead with the planning.  There was also an awkward email exchange about Tesla in which I thought we were discussing the heavy metal band and he thought we were discussing the father of commercial electricity.  Really this thing was doomed from the start now, wasn’t it?

There was an hour or so to kill before the show started, so I bellied up to the bar and ordered myself a drink.  Little did I know that I would be, more willingly than ever, buying all of my own drinks that evening.  He arrived just as I was draining my first cocktail and upon first glance I thought he looked like Patton Oswalt.  In other words – he looked a lot like I was expecting him to look based on his profile, but I actually have a soft spot for quirky looking dudes so this was far from a dealbreaker.  That’s where the similarities ended.  This dude was dead SERIOUS.  I guess growing up a bit short, pudgy and liberal in the Bible Belt will do that to a fella.  By the time he started telling me about how he was really from outer space, I had checked out and decided, as I am wont to do, to try to enjoy the evening anyway.  So I didn’t even blink when he asked me if I did drugs.

“No” I replied as he started to rattle off every substance known to man and how much he enjoyed/didn’t enjoy each of them.  For the sake of conversation, I admitted that I had always been curious to try X but had been just too much of a chicken shit to try it.  That’s when, gleeful smile spreading across his face, he pulled a small airline-sized bottle of vodka out of his pocket.  He announced that its contents were vodka mixed with X.  Well now, I’ve just hit the jackpot I can see him thinking.  I am not exactly a drug expert but luckily have watched enough 20/20 and after-school specials to know that when a man pulls a vial of liquid out of his pocket it usually means one thing and one thing only –  roofies.  This was confirmed for me when I asked some friends with more, ahem, experience with this sort of thing if it was possible for one to mix X with alcohol and they looked at me with horror.  Apparently X is not water-soluble so the alcohol would have rendered it inert.  Or something like that.

Just before the show started, I ordered myself another drink (Ok, I did it while he was in the bathroom just to avoid the “can I buy you a drink” conversation) and settled in for the show, which was FANTASTIC.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  During the performance, he mentioned no less than 3 times the fact that he lived just blocks away from where we were and that we could very easily head over to his place after the show.  I guess my half-smile, nod, change-the-subject maneuver didn’t convey my meaning well enough because afterwards, he brought it up yet again.  At this point, I was tired and hungry and more than a little bit creeped out and just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.  I thanked him for a lovely evening, gave him a hug and then experienced what can only be described by watching this (warning – you will never be able to erase this from your memory).  I will say no more about that.

I’m ashamed to say, in the haze of post-kiss awkwardness and just general I-can’t-fucking-believe-this-ness, I told him I had fun and to call me.  Yes, I know, I know that was so wrong of me.  But my goodness, the dude was practically BEAMING and I could tell that he thought he had knocked this one out of the park.  A few days went by and I thought I was out of the woods, meaning he was going to pull “the fade” but the emails and texts began coming in earnest.  Just one, then another and then another until I finally had to email him back with the got-back-together-with my ex excuse.

He seemed fairly devastated, and asked me what he had done wrong.  I guess the last 2 dates he had ended exactly the same way – with the girl going back to her ex.  Kudos for him on picking up on the fact that he may be doings something wrong.  Note to self – come up with more plausible excuse for not going out with someone again, like, oh I don’t know, the truth!  I admitted that the multiple attempts to get me back to his place starting with the INITIAL email put me off  (which he denied doing, by the way) but didn’t mention the fact that I was fairly certain he was going to drug me.  We traded a few emails more back and forth and wished each other luck.

So what’s the happy ending?  Well I didn’t get roofied and wake up in a sex dungeon for one.  Two – it was my initiation into the wonderful world of burlesque and the great neo-burlesque scene happening in and around San Francisco.  It’s a world that I have fully embraced and become a part of.  Plus, I met Mr. Monogamist at a burlesque show (as well as this guy, which is its own deliciously awkward story) so there have been many, MANY happy endings as a result of this edition of the Bad Date Chronicles.