Of Red Bulls and Assholes.

Call it a woman’s intuition, but sometimes you look at a man and immediately, instinctively know that person is not the one:

Caption not necessary.

But all Nugent aside, sometimes there are other, more obvious indications that a man is not a potential sperm donor. For instance, when a man is tattooed from his neck to his toes, you have to stop and ask yourself the following questions: “What is this person overcompensating for”, “Will they ever hold a real job”, and "Are these mystical gypsy tattoos that predict the future”?

Answer Key:  1.) A LACK OF PERSONALITY, 2.) NO, THEY WILL RESORT TO BANK ROBBERY, 3.) and SEE BELOW.

As I watched my date stomp into the bar, proceed to stomp passed my table and then stomp directly into a wall, I did ask myself these questions three. But I give people the benefit of the doubt now. It’s, like, a new thing that I do, because I'm tired of pop psychology telling me how ruthlessly judgmental and unfair I am to the human race. Dr. Phil would call my behavior overly critical. I have always thought of myself as being discerning. But in the effort to score some free drinks, let's do things your way, Dr. Phil.

I did mention that he walked INTO THE BAR, right? That’s not even the punch line.

When my gentleman caller sat down across from me at the table, he was holding an open, half-full (or is it half-empty?) Red Bull--the other half of which he was wearing all over the front of his sweatshirt. He then handed it to me to hide for him, after quipping about the inappropriateness of this fact, to which I replied, “What kind of classless nincompoop brings an open drink into an alcohol serving establishment? But, hey, it’s good to finally meet you too.” 

A little back story for your consideration: I “met” this guy through Okcupid, which, in my experience, is about %15 effective for finding suitable mates, but %100 effective for finding socially inept douche bags with aberrant sexual proclivities. Anyway, I agreed to the date because we had been chatting back and forth for a few days, maintained a good rapport for the duration of that time, and, thus having been satisfied with the quality and content of our text exchange, I accepted his invitation to go on a date despite his physical and financial shortcomings. I was going into this with my Red Bull half-full.

But back to the story. My date was clearly perturbed as he pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and stared vacantly at the menu for much longer than necessary. Relevant fact: it was over 80 degrees that day. As I watched him squirm in his seat like a toddler in a highchair, it suddenly dawned on me: this man was on drugs. I would conjecture some persuasion of methamphetamine, but really it's anybody's guess. And while this fact alone should have inspired me to walk out and stick him with the bill for my over-priced, under-boozed margarita, all I could do was sit there watching his tattooed fingers frantically shred every single paper napkin on the table. Eventually he noticed where my gaze was fixed and when he did, he froze.

“Are you reading my tattoos?” He asked, equally incredulous and indignant, like it was some grievous insult that I would dare look upon the letters that he carefully chose and paid dearly to have indelibly inscribed on some of the most visible parts of his anatomy. Slowly, he withdrew both of his hands from my line of vision. How dare I look.
I might have retorted with an equally indignant tone: “Were you just looking at my face? MY FACE???” but I chose diet sarcasm instead.
“No, I was looking at your most excellent cuticles." Of course I was looking at your tattoos, dickweed. "But since we're on the subject, what do they say?” Feigned interest.
“Why does everyone try to read my tattoos?”
“I surmise it has something to do with the fact that A.) they are words, B.) they are on your hands, and C.) you have them.”
“It’s just so stupid.”
“Getting finger tattoos prior to being accepted into a motorcycle gang? Absolutely.”
“No, that people always try to read them.”
“Look, we’re passed that. Just tell me what they say.”
In a begrudging and melodramatic gesture (that I have since humorously adopted), he puts both of his fists together like he’s plugging in the city’s Christmas tree. And you know what? It was both DAZZLING and ILLUMINATING.

This Red Bull, ladies and gentlemen,  is most definitely half-empty.

Um, yeah.
Funny thing about hopelessness--it tastes like tequila and sour mix with a salt rim. I promptly drained the rather substantial remainder of my margarita, while signaling the bartender for another. I made absolutely certain that my eye contact with said bartender was desperate enough to result in my next drink having three times the tequila and five times the sympathy. When it arrived, I drained that one too. The sympathy made the hopelessness go down easy.

The evening wore on. Actually about ten minutes passed as my date occupied the waiter with inane but overly emphatic questions about entree portion sizes ("Like, dude, I want something HUGE. Is the quesadilla HUGE? How HUGE is it? Show me with your hands.") but it seemed so much longer. We eventually managed to land on topics of conversation that didn’t involve Draw Something. For example, his job:

“So… you deliver beer for a living.”
“Yup.”
“Fascinating. I’m literally seconds away from cracking a joke so hackneyed that it is guaranteed to piss you off.”
“Hackneyed?”
“You know, trite.”
Quizzical expression.
“Banal.”
Same look.
“Commonplace…  Like you’ve heard it a million times.”

Sigh.

“Oh, you mean, ‘Could you make your next delivery to my house’?”
“Bingo. So, there must be something about it that you enjoy. Autonomy? The open road? Dare I say, the pay?”
“No. It all sucks. I’d be better off robbing a bank in Saugus.”
“How… droll.”
“What?”
“Quietly amusing. And how queerly... specific.”
He laughed.

It was a weird laugh.

We went on to discuss more intriguing topics, such as how much he wants to bang the girls from Jersey Shore, how Barack Obama has ruined his life, how Mexicans impede his job advancement, why society sucks, why life is unfair, and why he would be better off dead.

Actually, it was less of a discussion and more like a bastardized version of Hamlet's soliloquy delivered by Mark Wahlberg, and out of all these topics, we only seemed to agree on the last one.
Say hello to your mother for me. In HELL.
Forsooth.

Needless to say, after about 15 more agonizing, soul-shredding minutes of this, I pulled the plug on this Christmas tree and decided to stealthily ditch the half-empty Red Bull into the booth crevasse. I don't even remember what my excuse was to end the night. But it was cool, because he was going to have a "real big day" tomorrow. Upon uttering those cryptic words, he disappeared into the lavatory conveniently long enough to skip out on paying, but for the first and only time in my life, I was okay with this. I was hoping to quietly pay and slip out unnoticed, but as I got up and gazelled for the door, he had somehow managed to bamf himself, Nightcrawler-style, directly into my escape route, to my supreme dismay. And then, just when I thought the night couldn't get worse, he offered me a ride home.
The shock/rage combo struck me dumb for an embarrassingly long time.

After mentally floundering about in a sea of ways to say NO, I accepted the ride home from this man. In hindsight, it was not the most astute thing to do. However, in my defense, getting brutally murdered would have actually been the high point of the evening. Amazingly enough, even though he was personally a trash bag, his silver Mazda shined like a crazy diamond--almost as if he had driven it off the dealer's lot 40 minutes ago. It was pristine. Sliding into the passenger seat, I was issued the following warning:

"Don't TOUCH anything."

I nodded in mute astonishment as I pulled the seat belt across my chest.

"I SAID DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING."

I froze in the middle of buckling up and let the seat belt slide back through my fingers, silently wishing I had reserved that Red Bull to *accidentally* dump all over his upholstery. I was about to say that buckling up was THE LAW, SIR, or something to that effect, but decided against it. I was done conversing with this person, forever. Effective immediately.

The following day, I went out with my sassy gay friend to seek the balmy consolation of a plate of nachos. Upon relating this tale, we agreed that my love life is, indeed:

Oh irony of dramatic ironies.

As we tucked into the magical healing pile of corn chips, chortling about the train wreck that is my life, he gets a text from his aunt: (Insert breaking news music here) "Bank robbed in Saugus. Assailants fled in a silver getaway car. Now there's a hostage situation happening in Malden. Crazy!"

Yeah, whoa. That is crazy.
Wait a minute...

NAH!

EPILOGUE:
Despite the preponderance of circumstantial evidence pointing to the fact that my date was a bank robber, turns out he was not involved. He was such a supreme loser, that he couldn't even bring himself to do something even remotely bad ass, like rob a bank. He did conveniently move to Framingham, where there just happens to be a STATE PRISON.
Magical.