The awkwardness of running into someone you dated

Two weekends ago I agreed to be the designated driver for the Racine, WI beer festival.  CP and I headed up with some of his work friends and one of their wives.  I saw a total of two other pregnant women there and it just felt weird to be there (even though I was clearly drinking only water the whole day).  

For anyone who hasn't been to a beer festival, it is vitally important to make and wear a pretzel necklace (something that we learned by going to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver).  Not only are pretzels good for snacking on during the festival but they are a good palate-cleanser.  I wore a necklace, but realized early on that it was too hot and sunny to eat too many lest I get too swollen from the salt!!  People can go all out when making the necklaces and it is possible to get pretzel envy when faced with a necklace full of really large pretzels.  This guy took the biggest pretzel prize of the day though- our whole group had pretzel necklace envy!!

In my mind, this was the best beer brand name of the day.  CP and the rest of the crew even said that the beer was pretty good (although it was at least an hour into the festival so they may not have been tasting too much at that point!).

Funny story from the end of the festival.  There was a brass band that walked around the festival and was fairly good.  My feet got tired towards the end of the festival, so I sat down while CP went to the porta potty and others got their last beer.  One of the guys from the band came up to me and said, "Is your name Non Sequitur Chica?  Hey, it's Dave."  I immediately thought, "oh sh*t this is going to be awkward."  

You see, Dave and I went on a couple of dates when I lived in Chicago the year before I moved out west for law school. He was a nice enough guy and frankly, I was sort of bored.  I didn't date a lot that year, partly because I was out all of the time with friends having too much fun to date.  But I was still trying to get over this guy whose phone calls had started up again, so I thought, why not?  We went out on a couple of dates, but while talking to a friend one day that also knew him, I realized that I was not excited in the least bit to go on our date that night.  That's when I knew that I had to break it off.  I felt bad because he was surprised, but it was also sort of awkward because it's hard to tell someone that while they are nice enough, you just aren't that into them (plus I am super awkward with these types of conversations).  

Here I thought that I would never see the guy again and now almost 8 years later he comes up to me at the beer festival while I am clearly pregnant.  We started to make small talk when of course CP comes back from the bathroom.  One of his work friends jokes that some stranger is hitting on his pregnant wife and I just thought, this is going to go downhill.  Since I was completely sober, I thought it might be a good idea to gracefully end the conversation with Dave and instead get back to CP because he was starting to make loud jokes behind me (ahhhhh drunk husbands).  

(Before anyone freaks out, CP is NOT a hugely jealous guy but it's always hard to think completely straight when you are drunk.  Plus I don't mind him being a little protective of me.  :-)  )

We started to walk out of the festival and CP asked who the guy was.  I told him that Dave was someone that I went on a couple of dates with when I last lived in Chicago.  He wasn't extremely excited about that, but ummm, obviously I am married to YOU and I'm PREGNANT with your child so you have nothing to worry about.  LOL.  

Mostly I just felt bad for CP.  This is now the THIRD guy that I dated before meeting him that we have randomly run into.  The first two were out west- one at an NFL game (seriously?  The stadium holds THOUSANDS of people and I run into one of the two guys I dated before CP?) and one at a grocery store (I ran away from this encounter instead of talking to the guy- YES I AM 13).  Thankfully we have never run into my long term boyfriend from college or the guy from the link above that would continue to call me despite knowing that I had started to date CP.  Especially meeting the latter guy?  Might not go so well.

Have you ever run into someone you dated with your spouse right next to you?  

Magic Mike

Last Friday a couple friends and I went to see the movie Magic Mike.  When I first read an article about the movie, I thought to myself, “why in the world would anyone want to see that movie???”  Then I read a few more articles and heard that the movie actually had a plot PLUS gyrating men.  Why not check it out after a few drinks?

The movie was actually pretty good.  Channing Tatum is HOT and so is Joe Manganiello (also in True Blood).  The “skits” that they do onstage brought me back to many a bachelorette party.

My friend’s bachelorette party right after college was my first time going to a male strip show.  The night before my long-term college boyfriend and I got into a huge fight where he accused me of cheating (something I have never done to any boyfriend) and we broke up.*  The break up was traumatic for a night, and then I quickly got over it because I had been ready to break up with him for a while.  So the next night we headed into Philly to go to The Cave.**  We had a fantastic time at the show and then headed over to a nearby night club to go dancing.  Little did I know, one of the male strippers followed us to the club in order to find me and ask for my number.  And ummm I had been drinking a bunch at that point, but he was HOT and had a fantastic body (his day job- personal trainer).

I ended up dancing with him all night and gave him my number (!) not thinking about it until the next day.  Sure enough a few days later he calls and wants to go out on a date.  Ha!  I think that we ended up talking for a while, but I was cagey about getting together.  I mean, sure it is fun to say that a stripper wanted to go on a date with you, but actually going on a date with a stripper was just not for me.

Do you have any funny stripper stories?  Have you seen Magic Mike or do you plan on seeing the movie?

*I think that he was feeling guilty because he flirted and/or hooked up with a girl earlier that week, had been drinking, and wanted to blame me for something.  Two weeks after we broke up they started dating and within a few months she was pregnant!

**If you are in the Philly area I would HIGHLY recommend this place for a birthday or bachelorette party.

Dating Disaster #5

An occasional series of some of the worst dates in my life and/or general disasters with the opposite sex. I am what you would call a “serial monogamist” so I didn’t go on tons of dates, instead choosing the people that I wanted to date carefully and generally dating them for a while. It’s the guys that didn’t last very long that provide the best material (or the ones that I drunkenly kissed).

Dating Disaster #5

After college I moved down to Philadelphia and in addition to working a 40 hour a week desk job, I became a promotional brand model two to three nights a week. It was a chance for me to make some extra money ($17/ hour) and head out to clubs and bars. My usual brand happened to be Marlboro which was especially frustrating because I had to talk to smokers who would automatically assume that you also smoked (I didn’t), and then proceed to blow it in your face.

Anyway, we generally went back to the same 5 bars or so every couple of weeks so some of the staff and I got to know the bartenders and bouncers fairly well since by the end of the night, we were the only sober people left in the building. That is how I met Rob (I don’t actually remember his name).

Rob was a bouncer at one of the clubs we worked and he was a cute, brown hair, tall and in-shape guy. We flirted back and forth for a while before he finally asked for my number. We talked a bit on the phone and then decided to meet up at a club in Philly on a Sunday night. I am not a club-type person, but I do like to dance every now and then (mainly when I am NOT sober) so I agreed to meet him there. Turns out that night was 18+ because the next day was a day off for high schoolers. GREEEEAT. Despite the annoying young kids that kept sweating on me, I remember having a fun time at the club with Rob. A good enough time to continue talking with him over IM and the phone.

I’m not sure if I have explained this yet, but I was very careful about who I slept with and who I hooked up with. Kissing? I would kiss almost anybody. But anything else? That was a different story- no matter how drunk I was. This attitude occasionally frustrated guys because I wanted to be in a relationship with someone if we were hooking up- nothing casual. I wasn’t planning on getting an STD from anyone! I’m not sure that is what Rob wanted. Other than the club date, I only remember us going on one other date….it ended in disaster when my purse got stolen and we had to call the management company to open my apartment to get my extra set of keys so that we could head back and grab my car. Ahhhh South Street in Philly.

So imagine my surprise when one day WHILE I AM AT WORK, Rob IMed me and wrote “So when are we going to f*ck?” I quickly shut down the window and immediately yelled at Rob for writing such a thing while I was at work. Anyone could have passed my desk and seen that message.

Needless to say, that IM ended our brief affair. He wasn’t someone that I would have considered having a long term relationship anyways….

Dating disaster #4

An occasional series of some of the worst dates in my life and/or general disasters with the opposite sex. I am what you would call a “serial monogamist” so I didn’t go on tons of dates, instead choosing the people that I wanted to date carefully and generally dating them for a while. It’s the guys that didn’t last very long that provide the best material (or the ones that I drunkenly kissed).

Dating Disaster #4

This guy was someone I met on a pub crawl after first starting law school. It was early on first semester, I was completely stressed and needed to knock a few back. A few bars into the crawl, I started to get drunk and talk to some of the guys. I’m not sure what attracted me to the guy that I ended up talking to, but he was tall and seemed interested.

We ended up hanging out throughout the rest of the crawl. The last bar happened to be near my house so I invited him back, making sure to tell him that nothing would happen.* We kissed a bit before passing out.

The next morning, we were both terribly hungover. As soon as he woke up, he asked me to rub his back because he wasn’t feeling well. WTF? Really? I’m not your girlfriend or your mother so what makes you think that I am going to rub your back?

I most certainly did not rub his back, but did feel bad enough to drive him back to his house. At some point on the crawl I must have given him my phone number as he called a few days later inviting me out to dinner. I guess I wanted to give him a chance so I agreed to a date at a nice Italian restaurant.

He picked me up in his sporty expensive car and I automatically thought that he was overcompensating for something (or lack thereof). He was a lot dorkier than I remembered. Damn beer goggles!

Dinner was nice, but there was no connection on my end. I’m not the type of girl that is all about looks, but I do have some standards.

Needless to say, I didn’t return any more of his phone calls as I met CP for the first time soon after and was a smitten-kitten. About two years later I was at our local grocery store and saw him in the aisle. Because I am super mature, I ran away instead of having a possibly-awkward encounter with him (if he would even still remember me!).


*I’m not sure why I used to do this. Maybe I thought that because we were at my place I would be okay?

Dating Disasters #3

An occasional series of some of the worst dates in my life and/or general disasters with the opposite sex. I am what you would call a “serial monogamist” so I didn’t go on tons of dates, instead choosing the people that I wanted to date carefully and generally dating them for a while. It’s the guys that didn’t last very long that provide the best material (or the ones that I drunkenly kissed).

Dating disaster #3:

My time time on match.com was when I lived in Philadelphia. I didn't tell anyone that I went on the site. One of my first dates was with a guy who said that he was in med school. I didn't actually believe that he was a doctor, but went on the date anyway. During our lunch together, he said that he wanted to go into plastic surgery.

We can go into my views on plastic surgery on another day (and how I was banned from watching Extreme Makeover), but frankly I think that people should work with what they already have. So needless to say, the fact that he wanted to make it his life's work giving people bigger boobs and doing lipo? Didn't make him all that attractive to me.

The icing on the cake? As we parted, we both knew that it would be our one and only date. In the parking lot outside the restaurant, he asked if he could feel my boobs. I refused, incredulous that he would even ask. He went in for the boob feel anyway!!!!!! What a jerk.

Dating Disasters #2

An occasional series of some of the worst dates in my life and/or general disasters with the opposite sex. I am what you would call a “serial monogamist” so I didn’t go on tons of dates, instead choosing the people that I wanted to date carefully and generally dating them for a while. It’s the guys that didn’t last very long that provide the best material (or the ones that I drunkenly kissed).

Dating disaster #2- a gem from high school:

Andrew was the new guy in school. I don't think that he was the same year as me, but somehow we got to talking- sadly enough, I think that it was about Great America (a Six Flags theme park in IL). Anyway, I guess that he picked up on the "ask me out" hints that I was sending and we made a date.

In high school, the cool place to go was the Olive Garden (ha ha ha). I don't remember much about our conversation, but at some point, it turned into Andrew talking about wanting to go into the military. He then said, "If a grenade was to fall into the Olive Garden right now, I would jump on it to save you."

Ummm huh? Why would a grenade fall into an Olive Garden in the suburbs of Chicago? And why would you jump on it to save me, someone that you barely know? In my mind, if this was Andrew's idea of "romance" then there was no need for a second date....

Have you ever had a guy say something he thought was romantic, but something that totally turned you off??

Dating disasters #1

An occasional series of some of the worst dates in my life and/or general disasters with the opposite sex. I am what you would call a “serial monogamist” so I didn’t go on tons of dates, instead choosing the people that I wanted to date carefully and generally dating them for a while. It’s the guys that didn’t last very long that provide the best material (or the ones that I drunkenly kissed).

Dating Disaster #1

Case in point: one summer when I was living in Philadelphia I went to a downtown bar with two of my friends. For those of you not on the east coast, most people flee for the Jersey shore almost every weekend. So, the bar was pretty dead. We had a great time at the bar that night- the bartender gave us tons of free shots and we basically hung out with him all night.

I had a BRILLIANT idea to invite the cute bartender and the bouncer back to my place in order to continue the party. After they got off their shift, they came by and we played some drinking games. Sooner or later, the bouncer ended up in my bed (we just kissed and then passed out) and the bartender ended up hooking up with my friend on the couch in the living room.

Although I was pretty drunk, I woke up to the sound of someone peeing….but it sounded a lot closer than the bathroom. Why? BECAUSE THE BOUNCER WAS PEEING INTO AN OPEN DRESSER DRAWER ALL OVER MY BRAS. Oh yes, I bring the classy ones home!!! I asked what he was doing and in a clearly put-out voice, he replied that he was peeing. I then yelled, “but you are not in the bathroom!!”

The guy had the nerve to finish up what he started in the bathroom and then get back in bed with me to try to continue to sleep. WHAT???? THE???? HELL????

For some reason, I couldn’t handle kicking him out myself, so I walked into the other room and woke up my friends and the bartender.

“CS, the bouncer just peed in my dresser drawer instead of the toilet.”

“WHAT?? Do you want me to kick him out?”

“Uh huh.”

CS then went into the bedroom, threw off the sheets and said, “Alright piss boy! Time to get out of here!”

The bartender kept apologizing profusely for his coworker, while the bouncer just seemed dazed and unapologetic. We think that the bouncer might not have been 21 at the time and maybe didn’t know how to handle his liquor??

Regardless, I had to wash everything in my dresser drawer and try to clean the wood as much as possible. At the time, I was in a really low-paying job and could barely afford rent and expenses so I wasn’t able to buy a new dresser. Ewwwwwwwwwww.