Date #13—Tom, Rain Man as a Monkey

My oh my, what a hellish mistake this was.  A text message in the middle of the date hell, pleading for some kind of family emergency.  I suppose I shouldn’t be that hard on Tom, since, after all, it is mostly my fault that I found myself in this miserable predicament, but, let’s be honest—it’s never truly my fault.

I made the mistake of going out with Tom without ever having talked to him on the phone.  I have done this before, but from hereon in, I will never do it again.  We had several interesting conversations on Messenger, exchanging anecdotes and photos, lamenting the profusion of cars in the city and death of good cycling routes.  He was an illustrator, who wanted to move into doing children’s books, but found that encyclopedias and illustrated bibles did a better job of paying his rent.  He typed in complete sentences, and generally avoided common grammar errors, something I appreciated.  Overall, entirely capable of carrying on a lucid conversation.  We made plans for an impromptu meeting, as we were both at home without plans on a Thursday night, really, the new Friday.  We met at a pub, about midway between our neighbourhoods.  It was immediately when I walked in that I wanted to turn around and walk right back out, but he spotted me.  There, bouncing back and forth at the bar, was my unwashed date.  I mean, really greasy, and disheveled.  Needed a hairbrush, cut and shave, and some clothes that hadn’t made their third time through a local vintage store.  He laughed nervously and waved, and as soon as he spoke my first thought was “Oh my god, he’s retarded.”  I know, I know… not nice.  But I can’t help these things some times.

We sat down and I ordered a drink.  He seemed to be half in the bag already, although it could have just been the way he was.  He couldn’t focus on any one thing, nor complete a sentence.  He was constantly at a loss for words, simple words that most people have ready access to he thought for belaboured minutes trying to construct.  My guess is that he was autistic, and highly socially stunted.  He kept making monkey faces, which he thought was funny, but I thought was creepy.  He would blow out his lips and widen his eyes, and then laugh hysterically.  He embraced his monkey nature, something I did not.  To make matters worse, he was incredibly boring.  He had never traveled, had no firm opinions about anything, and, since he couldn’t finish his sentences, decided that point form was often an acceptable was of order spoken thoughts.  It was painful.  His Rain Man-esque demeanour got worse as he drank, and I, thankfully, could manufacture an early class the following day to get out of it.  I craved a conversation, not a long series of awkward giggles on his part while he patted down his hair.  Evolution, indeed.