My 50 Dates

So, this new girl and I had decided to get together… she wanted to buy a new used car and wanted to go with someone to the lot for a second opinion. Her current car was too expensive and too fancy and with the cost of gas as it is, it wasn’t economical. Having worked at an auto garage in my youth, I obliged.

So, we agreed to meet at a Sky Train station where she’d pick me up and we’d would head over to the lot to check the car out. I get to the 22nd st station and waited for a bit while she found her way there. It was a pretty fancy car… we chit chatted for a bit. She looked good… I mean, she was good looking, but she was dressed like one of the ladies from the Golden Girls. She gives me the directions she wrote down on a piece of paper. She didn’t know the area that well and she wanted me to navigate while she drove…. and I don’t know the area either because I don’t go there. We were in New West and the dealership was somewhere on Lougheed.

I look at the directions and they are written like so:

• L onto Jamison St
• R onto 4th Ave
• L onto 17th Street
• L onto Smith

Which is great…. if you start off on a street that’s connected to Jamison, otherwise they are pretty much useless. So, I asked her if she knew where Jamison was.. and shes like “No.. I thought you might”. Good times. She said she could figure her way to Lougheed as she’s been here for work before.

After driving for about 20 minutes, she had to stop off at a gas station to get some better directions.

So, we’re driving and getting to know each other.. and she loves to talk… a lot…. about herself. She tells me about this new car she currently has, and she bought it because it looked really nice, and she looked really nice in it. Then she shows me the navigational system it has… at the push of a button, a computer monitor slowly pops up on the dash and using GPS it shows you exactly where you are and where you are going. You can even put your destination in and it’ll tell you what turns to make to get there. Pretty sweet eh? Now, why wouldn’t one use that…. why would one write directions like she had on a notebook instead of using the GPS system? Gooood question.

As we’re driving along in Brentwood, she decides to call up the dealership just to make sure we’re going in the proper direction. She’s talking to the receptionist and tells her we’re going on Lougheed and are passing by an Ikea and a mall with a restaurant in it. Dude… I didn’t see an Ikea, nor a mall. So I said “Umm.. there is no Ikea.” She gives me the hand and commences to talk to the receptionist. The receptionist didn’t know where we were.. and this girl.. hey, we haven’t given her a name… let’s call her Crazy Bitch.. so Crazy Bitch starts getting mad at the receptionist for not knowing which way we should be going. I mean, Crazy Bitch called the receptionist stupid.

I was taken aback. Crazy Bitch tells the receptionist that she wants to talk to her manager… and the receptionist gets Crazy Bitch’s number so that the manager can call her back. I was kind of silent because the situation didn’t really make sense to me. How can you get mad at someone for not knowing where you are and give you proper directions… when you write the directions in a notebook starting off at a location you don’t know where it is… and all the time having a play by play GPS system in your car? Crazy Bitch starts telling me how dumb the receptionist is, and that they should fire her.. I said “How can you say that? The lady is just doing the best she can.. and I don’t see an Ikea or a Mall”. Crazy Bitch said that she knew they were coming up and we’d get to them eventually. Wow. Just Wow.

So, the Manager calls and Crazy Bitch tells him how dumb his receptionist is and that she is a potential paying customer and how is it that they are so incompetent that they can’t give her proper directions to their place of business. Oh my. So, we’re on Lougheed mall and she’s trying to tell him where exactly we are - the Manager determines that we are going on the opposite direction and that we should turn around. Although, being on a highway, it’s difficult to do so… at which point Crazy Bitch spots an exit into Surrey.. we are in the right most lane, and the exit is off of the left most lane. Crazy Bitch asks the Manager if she should take the exit… the Manager wasn’t sure where the exit went, or if we took the exit, that it would be easy to turn around. Crazy Bitch starts shouting at him, saying he had to make a decision because we had to either take it or not as it was coming up.

I was still mortified that someone could treat a complete stranger in this manner. Especially when they are doing their best to help you out. Like seriously.. I was afraid my own moms was going give me a lesson or two just associating with someone who treats another person with such disrespect.

Suddenly, Crazy Bitch yanks the steering wheel to the left and we cross 3 lanes of traffic to take the exit. Cars are honking at us as we cut them off, and we take the exit. She gets mad at the Manager saying that we’ve now taken the exit, and it’s his job to figure out how we get to his dealership. The Manager says he’ll have to consult a map and get back to her. We’re now heading into Surrey. It’s now just under 2 hours later, I’m looking at the traffic going the other way, because at some point we’ll have to turn around… and the traffic is backed up and slow. My truck is at the Sky Train station like 15 minutes away from where we were.. and truthfully, I just wanted to get away from her. So, I asked her if she could drop me off at the Sky Train station so I could go home, because I don’t have another 2 hours to spare. (I haven’t had food in 3 hours)

My gosh. That was a mistake, she started to drive really fast and started to get mad at me. She said that she was counting on me and that if I didn’t have the time I should have told her so that she didn’t waste her time with me. I tried to diffuse the situation by saying that we can go another time, I still would like to help her out, it’s just that I’m pretty much back home right now and I don’t feel like trekking back and forth all over again. She suggested that we could go check the car out and then go for dinner. Hell No I thought.. I don’t want to have dinner with this chick.. I just want to get as far away from her as I could. So, I said No Thanks. She was driving all erratically because she was upset and I seriously, was scared we were going to hit something. I looked over at her and she had the look of Murder in her eyes. I couldn’t stop smiling. The situation just made no sense. You had to be there. It was too comical to be real.

I told her to get into the left hand lane because the turn off to the sky train station was coming up, and I told her where to turn left. So, she’s in the left hand lane about to turn left… but then she says “You know, how about I just drop you off at the other Sky Train station and then you can take the Sky Train station back to your truck”. WTF? So, she gets out of the left hand turn lane and starts to go strait. Dude, I can see the station where my truck is and she’s taking me elsewhere so that it’s on her terms.

I was like screw this, I can make a dash for it now.. we were in the middle of the intersection to turn left. And I got out of the car and told her to have a nice day. Cars were honking, but I didn’t care. I got out and walked back to my truck.

She sped off.

Never saw her again. But I kept her phone number on my phone under ‘Crazy Bitch’. When I’m having a really bad day or just want to vent… I’ll call her number and hang up when she answers, just to piss her off.

A friend suggested I go out with one of her acquaintances. So, I said sure. We talked on the phone for a bit. Let’s call her J. J seemed nice, but we didn’t talk too much on the phone. The conversations just did not flow, but she lived like two blocks away so we made plans to meet.

I was actually having lunch with a friend in White Rock on a fine Saturday afternoon and he had driven. We were walking the strip he saw one if his old buddies with his daughter having lunch and wanted to spend some time with them, but I was supposed to meet J so he told me just to take his car and that I can drop it off later (my truck was at his house). He’s got a really sweet ride and has put quite a bit of money into it.

So, I went to meet J at Starbucks (I’m really starting to hate that place). I went inside to wait and after about 10 minutes I called her… and she was standing outside the whole time towards the entrance to the mall. Anyways, we walked around for a bit, but there’s nothing like walking around a parking lot to vibe with someone, so I suggested we just goto the park and walk. J said sure. So we hopped in my friends Lexus and went to the park.

There we walked and talked and sat and talked and it was nice. She seemed nice. She was going through a divorce at the moment, but still she seemed simple and nice. She works as an insurance person at ICBC (I hate ICBC) but didn’t seem too smart really. She didn’t really know how to use a cell phone other than to answer calls and dial out. Even after, when we used to talk on the phone, there wasn’t too much to talk about and when she’d leave messages, every time she left a message she would leave her phone number… as if, after a month I still didn’t know it. Maybe I’m being too hard… but I just don’t get that.

Anyways, we met a second time after that for ice cream in the mall and then went to White Rock. It was then I decided it wasn’t really going to go anywhere because the conversations were not great, but rather mundane and really boring. Plus, during that time, she kept repeating the same stories over and over.

Really nice girl. Not much chemistry between us.

I really want a Lexus.

SG is from Winnipeg and we’d been talking a bit here and there. She’s funny, is some type of network IT person, has lots of drive and lots of goals, but you know… most of those goals are personal individual goals and seem like she wants a guy who will suplicate to her needs.

Anyways, being that she is so far away it’s kinda hard to get together, but as luck would have it, she was going to go on course to LA then Seattle. So, she decided to redirect her flight back to Winnipeg through Vancouver so that we could meet.

We talked a lot on MSN during that time, as much as one can I guess… I mean, they are only words and adjectives and one can only ‘lol’ so much.

So, that weekend came and we was supposed to getogether at the airport at 10am, but I had lots of family down that weekend and when I awoke on Sunday, there was nobody home but me and our guests.. and I couldn’t exactally leave home thereby leaving our guests home alone. So when she called I explained the situation and told her I’d do my best. She said that my voice sounds deep, scruffy and sounds like I just woke up. Instead of having a conversation with me, she was fixiated on my vocal qualities. :S

Finally someone came home and I could leave… so I started driving out to the airport in the miserable rain. But as my luck would have it, there was a security breach at the airport. SG called me and said that she could not get out and further I could not get in… so she went ahead and got the pre-booking done for her flight back to Winnipeg, meaning that she was through the gates and could not get out.

Ah yes. Great. SG and I still talk on MSN a lot though. Dang, and I’m talking to her now.. I got back from Cowtown last night, but she thought I was going next weekend and said she will be there to next weekend… confused smiley.

So, instead of having coffee with SG that afternoon, I called up Date #5 and spend the day with her.

RS had contacted me saying she liked my pic and my profile and wanted to get a little taste of India itself. So I obliged and we started talking on the phone. We talked for about a week more or less every night until 1 or 2 am. She had an awesome voice and an awesome personality. She seemed really down to earth, grounded, smart and had a direction in her life - even though at the moment she was not working.

The reason she was off work, is because (pretty much like all the other girls) she was a registered nurse, and due to her grandmother passing away she had taken time off of work to deal with the situation. Such is life. She is Hindu-Punjabi which means she’s kinda the same indian, but not quite; though close enough as far as the sub continent itself is concerned. 5′5 “slim” with curves. Nice.

So, as the week went on and we talked more, she was dying to meet. However, since there was a death in the family I didn’t want to meet until she had finished that business.. know what I mean? On a thursday as I was driving home she had called saying that she was in Surrey at her parents (she lives in another municaplity on her own) and had wanted to get together, but, holy cow since the funeral was on Saturday I felt as though she should probably wait till after that. So, eventually she came around and felt the same.

So, Saturday came and she called me at 2pm saying that the funeral was over and she wanted to get together.. dang, I mean, why not take the time to let things settle? Spend time with family during such a time? But she said that she needed comfort and wanted a hug…. so.. how could I say no?

We got together that afternoon.

She was really short, pretty cute and all dressed in funeral clothes. We drove down to white rock and sat on a bench to watch the water and the sunset. I can’t remember what we were talking about, because after a while, she started kissing my neck. Weird. So, anyways, that as a bit of a turn off. It started getting dark, so we walked back up to her car and she dropped me off to where my truck was.

She had another week off at work due the family death, and we didn’t get a chance to see each other. She started work the next week and due to her having shift work, we basically just talked on the phone now and then… but the weird thing is that I’d leave a message, and wouldn’t hear from her for a few days. After a while, I just started bailing on her when she wanted to get togehter because this relationship had lost steam.

After about a month and a half of not being able to hook up I just lost interest. Her and I still talk a lot, and have been talking more latley, but it turns out, that she was talking to this guy from the States during that whole time too - which is why she never answered my call right away. So, we decided to be friends, and are good friends. But it’s pretty apparent that she’s into this dude from the states. The funniest thing is that, he is shady, he’s got her believing he’s some sort of secret service guy and he “can’t tell her what he does because it would compromise the security of his job and perhaps even jeapordize her saftey.” So, on the weekends he doens’t answer her calls, and calls her back days later when he has time… and this really works her up, and all she does is think about him all the time.

The brother has skills.

Well. Sandy doesn’t really count as a date, but I figure she is worth an honorable mention and hence she makes it onto the list. Sandy and I first got in contact mid summer, we emailed a bit, then talked a lot bit. She was short, cute, had a good head on her shoulders, seemed grounded, was into sports and could empathize with others. She was a registered nurse, was the oldest in her family.. and for some weird reason was still single. Good for me I guess.

The weird thing is that I really liked her without having met her. She had all the qualities I liked in a woman, she knew what she wanted, saw the underlying reality of life, could understand what others were going through, and had passion… except for the fact that instead of calling me, she would text message instead. We tried to get together a total of 5 times but the first time she had flaked on me for some reason that I now forget. The second time I flaked on her because I was out with Aman (see date #2) the third time she flaked on me, the fourth and fifth time she also flaked on me, but in all fairness, the fifth time I had gone out drinking with my friends and got up late that day even though we were supposed to meet around 10@Metrotown, she had left a text message saying that she “had to goto the temple with her family”. And since I woke up at 12pm I had felt bad that is, until I read her text.

I can’t believe that after all this time she was still just texting me. Honestly now, how hard is it to call someone? Sometimes it’s nice just to hear a familiar voice, even it’s for a few seconds, and even if it’s bad news, than to get a bunch of alphabets. Folks, the truth is, that is this life.. the only thing we can take with us is the relationships we form with people. The conversations, the laughs, the tears, the TIME we spend with people. Everything else is worthless, and we can’t take them with us should we pass. The time we spend with each other is priceless. That’s the lesson learned via Sandy.

So time went on, and she had to goto India because of a family issues. So that’s cool, one should put family over anything else. I kinda thought she had made that up, but what do I know? After she got back two weeks later she called me up to say that she was back. She told me that she got an offer in India for marriage.. and the guy had had 4 cows. Wow.. four cows! That must mean I’m worth at least 5 cows. Dang, awesome. Anyways so the following week I ended up going to toronto which had exhausted a week. I got back and got an email from her saying that she was no longer interested because she had called me and texted me and I never responded… so she’s out. But you know… I never got anything from her during that time - I got messages, voice mails and calls from good friends, but nothing from her.

So, what can one do? I took that to mean that she had found someone, but the truth is it would be nice if someone was honest about such things… to say that she is no longer interested, rather than to blame me for not calling her. Because it wasn’t my fault even though she laid it on me. Dang women.

So, that’s that.

Ahh yes. Third time’s the charm isn’t it? One of my friends always says that good things come in threes. One day, out of boredom, I had gone on the site, browsing profiles and came across this gem. Her profile was short, to the point and her pictures made my heart leap out of the prison of my chest. There was one in particular where she was at a wedding in an indian suit and the picture was taken without her knowing; it in she was laughing. I’ve never seen a more innocent, vulnerable yet beautiful picture in such a great time. So I sent her a message saying I wanted to get to know her better. The same day she replied saying she too felt the same. The next day we were talking.

And holy cow did we talk. Every day we talked at least three or four times. She would call me on her breaks from work and I would call at night. We clicked instantly, had much to share about everything, and in every conversation we laughed a lot. Over the span of the weekend we must have talked a good three or four hours a day. It was great. It was like a dream… alas; the nightmare was just about to begin!

So, we decided to get together on the Monday, as we had been talking for about three days, she had Monday off and could come downtown. Now, I’m kinda old fashioned.. comming from a small town. It kinda bugged me that she was comming to pick me up, rather than I picking her up. But… what can one do?

Sunday night I had trouble falling asleep.. I’ve always been a night owl and started to get used to getting up before 6am, but since we had been talking till 3am every night, I had trouble falling asleep and probably only got 2 hours of sleep that night. Waking up Monday, I felt exhausted. On top of that, the weather turned sour as well and it had been raining all day. I had the blues man… the last thing I wanted was to go out with someone.

The day went on and by the time I got off work I was spent man. I just wanted to go home and sleep, but it would have been impolite to cancel on her. She called around 6pm as she was driving downtown (she lives in Van). So I gave her directions to get to the train station, but she got lost. So I waited in the rain till she found the place.

So, the initial meet is always awkward, because you feel like you know the person after talking to them soo much, but at the same time you still don’t. She didn’t really look like her picture, but she also kinda did; if that makes sense. No biggie though, she had a beautiful smile. I’m wondering if I look like myself in real life compared to my picture.

Anyhow we decided to goto Cactus Club for dinner and we parked on Robson pretty much right half a block away from the restaurant. Sat down, ordered…. aaaand… nothing. I couldn’t think of a thing to say or talk about. It was really weird. The stuff that came out of my mouth was pathetic and I after saying it I was like wtf? Did I really just say that? My 13 year old nephew has more game and more style than I did that day.

She was concerned that she hadn’t paid at the meter so I told her I’d go out and take care of it, mainly cuz I just wanted to get out of there to shake my head and take a break. I walked to her Jeep and tried to put money in the meter but the dang thing wouldn’t take my money. It had a number on it that  you can call to pay, but you need a credit card.. and I don’t have a credit card, but I called it anyways to try to talk to someone… the line was busy. On the other side of the street were some dudes wearing City of Vancouver vests so I asked them about the meter, but they didn’t know anything. Not much more I could do, so I walked back to the restaurant and told her, but due to the noise in the restaurant I guess she didn’t hear me, and I figured the way the night was going we’d probably be done dinner pretty quick.

Dinner was alright, it was hard to find something to converse about - maybe it was cuz we talked each others ears off the days previous, maybe it was cuz the day just wasn’t vibing, maybe it was cuz instead of looking into her big brown eyes and thinking about the future, I was thinking about my head laying upon my nice soft pillow. Such is life.

I paid for dinner thinking how I kinda felt bad for her as the date lacked spark and romance. We walked back to her Jeep and uuh… golly, there was a parking ticket. She looked at it funny and I tried to plead my case but I don’t think she was impressed. And honestly, at that point I didn’t really care.. cuz I thought it was pretty dang funny. So I laughed a little.. and dang, that really didn’t impress her. She called the number on the meter to try to resolve things saying that I had tried blah blah blah, but the person on the other end just said that she’d have to call the number on the ticket.

Sooo.. she went to drop me off at the Skytrain, but instead of hitting up Waterfront where she picked me up, she went to Burrard because it was closer, I presume because she was concerned about saving the environment and wasting gas… not cuz she was trying to get rid of me faster.

Aahh yes, I said goodbye, got on the train.. and midway on the ride home it dawned on me that I should have probably offered to pay for the ticket. Heh. Such is life.

We still talk now and then, but you know, if that initial chemistry is not there, it’s almost twice as hard, if not impossible to create it after the fact.

Live and learn.

Alright, so I met this girl named Aman (it’s generic enough to be anyone).. we talked on the phone a bunch of times and she seems kinda funny even though she talked really fast. I honestly didn’t really want to meet her as we didn’t seem to have too much in common. I had goals of becoming an astronaut and a ninja while she had goals of…. well.. finding a job. So, one Friday night, around midnight she gives me a call and says she’s coming over.. and since I have the social life of a senior, she came over. We talked for a bit and all was good in this world. As Doogie Howser would write, often perceptions can change.. what you think or believe one moment may not be what you think or believe in another.

So, as the days went by, we talked more on the phone. Actually, what that means is that she talked more and I listened more. I think by meeting, she felt safe and was comfortable opening up more. And what THAT means, is that she felt more comfortable telling me her life story and all the problems that her family has… and holy crap, they have issues. I felt really bad for her, because she was the oldest child and an east indian woman on top of that. Her family expects soooo much of her yet offers her little support in return. And on top of THAT, her mother is very very ill and her father is more a monkey than a man. It’s hard enough going through life with a lot to burden… it’s even harder when no one around you supports you, but expects support from you. I suspect if she walked into an abandoned building and spoke all her worries, all her griefs and all her sorrows, the walls would collapse under the pressure.

A week or so had passed and we finally got together again in Richmond. Well, actually I had gone there to go shopping and she had gone clubbing the night before and drank too much and called me up the next day around 1pm to see what I was doing, then got ready to meet me at the mall an hour later.. hung over, but still she looked nice. That pretty much ended a few milliseconds after I met her. The rest of the day, she was complaining about everything… her family, her brother, her shoes, her ass, about how water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Honestly now! It’s okay to complain about stuffs, but there are things that one must learn to bear that one can’t change.

The rest of the day was a bit of a turn off because it felt like she should have been lying in a chair while I had held a pen and pad saying “MmmHmm, and how does that make YOU feel?”. Granted she was hung over and all, but she said a lot of things which were probably best left unsaid. If anything, I learned what not to do when meeting people.

After that day, I didn’t hang out with her, she called a number of times and we talked, but I felt like an emotional tampon to her. So, I ended all communication with her. I wish her all the best in life, and hope she finds happiness and peace wherever she may be, but, for me, it was too much.

Damn that Doogie Howser.

[Update: She still has no job, and complains a lot]

The first victim was a girl we shall call K. I forgot her last name, so we’ll just call her K. K and I had been talking on the phone for about a month or so.. the conversations were average in length and mostly around life, spirituality and pretty deep meaningful things. It was always nice chatting with her and on some days I looked forward to it… that is, until I heard her laugh. She had sent me a couple of pictures and in one of them she looked pretty damn fine. But it made no sense to me, how could someone who looks so fine have such a laugh like that. To me, a womans laugh is something I’d like to hear over and over, it’s the music that fills the air and warms the heart. But not K’s laugh. It was the difference between Steve Urkel and Stephan Urkel.. if you know what I’m talking about.

That was clue number one. Clue number two was her profession, she was a youth councilor at a school, whereby she helped troubled kids. So it kinda made sense that she’d be into spirituality, but little did I know, she was also into analyzing people and situations. So, for example, when I would say that I like to strum on the guitar which is a casual yet innocent hobby, she be trying to figure out if I was breast fed and perhaps I’m letting out some hidden aggression towards females in some artistic form by playing the guitar. In actuality I only picked up the guitar thinking it would help me pick up chicks.

So, the day came and we met. We decided to meet at a Starbucks and then take off from there to Spanish beach. So, I drove out to the mall, and was feeling kind of nervous as you never know what to expect meeting someone from the Internet. I partly think that it’s weirder if you’ve been talking on the phone for some time and kind of know each other, but have never hung out, because there is obviously some interest there but still some reservations.

I got to Starbucks and quickly and nervously looked around and couldn’t find her. So I figured she was probably late. I turn around and there she is! Smiling and standing tomboyishly. What the hell? She didn’t even look like her picture! But, at least she was a woman. So, we hugged, stood around awkwardkly for a bit and then decided to hit the beach up. [Mental Note: Not a good idea to meet at a coffee shop if you don't drink coffee.]

It was a beautiful day and the beach was really nice. We played frisbee and walked around and just talked. Mostly about life and stuff. She seems kind of lost in life.. like she’s still trying to figure out what she wants and reads a lot of self-help, discover your inner-indo-canadian-child type of books. One has to admire an individual that takes steps to better themselves in life, they’ve fallen a little but know that they can get back up, dust themselves off and try again.

But again, every time we would talk about something, and I’d mention something, she was go into councilor mode and try to examine me and that was very frustrating. It’s like we clicked, but she was trying to figure me out, when in all reality.. there’s nothing there to figure out. Absolutely nothing, I’m sorry. For my part, there wasn’t real great chemistry as there was a good friend who sought the deeper things in life but even in that, sometimes you have to stop seeking and just enjoy what it has to offer.

So, we called it a day, I dropped her off and came home. We talked a few days later and I said that there wasn’t a great strong romantic vibe, no great spark, so we decided just to be friends.

And that was that.