First Date

The story of my first date is wildly uncomfortable, so brace yourselves.

The first awkward detail I can think to introduce is the fact that I was 17, an age where most American males have probably had sex, or at the very least seen a female naked on something other than a computer or television screen. Not me. My romantic history from middle school to date 1 reads like a Jane Austen novel, in the sense that there a lot of emotions and nothing really interesting ever happens. From date 1 onward, it reads like a comedy of errors.

In sixth grade I had my first official girlfriend. Her name was Shelly, and she was two years older. Shelly and I engaged in many awkward phone conversations where the average silence to speaking ratio was 10:1. Luckily, we never communicated in person. Sometimes her outgoing friend Valerie would deliver a message like "Shelly thinks you're cute," and on Valentine's Day I bought her a greeting card. It took me about two hours to pick the right one, and the stress involved almost put me over the edge. After long deliberation inside Newberry's, I chose a blank with just hearts. Inside, I wrote "Happy Valentine's Day, Love, Me." The interesting part there is that I felt enough intimacy with her to write a cutesy "me," something I'd probably learned from reading holiday cards between my mom and step-dad.

In the winter, before classes started, the middle school opened up the auditorium on very cold days. Ten years ago in Saranac Lake, that was pretty much every day. On the fourteenth, I had the card in hand, and was shaking from nerves at the prospect of handing it over. I briefly considered using Valerie as a messenger, but finally gathered the courage to take it over myself. I hitched up my backpack and started side-stepping through the rows of orange seats. Her friends spotted me immediately and began giggling. By the time I reached the gaggle, they were stifling, and my face had actually gone beyond a blush into something scientists call "The Bloodrose Effect." Shelly, who was even more painfully shy than myself, accepted the card and my mumbled "Happy Valentine's Day" without looking up. After the transaction, I ran away, and I think later that month our 'relationship' ended, though it's hard to be sure since we never spoke. Perhaps I detected a slightly colder half-stare when we passed in the hallway.

This raises an interesting point. For some reason, starting in sixth grade, the girls I date tend to be very shy. While I'm not necessarily a bashful person, my pervasive social awkwardness should not be paired with anything but absolute charm in a female counterpart. This might explain why why my relationships to date haven't fared well; the common bond seems to be an overriding unease with the idea of human interaction.

Wow, I didn't even come close to talking about my first date. I promise to broach that subject next week.







DUSTIN: He still has not updated his blog (http://magomra.blogspot.com) since January 21st, which is two weeks ago. You can go read back entries to pass the time, but please leave him a gentle reminder in the comments section that he's being a negligent dick.

Dustin fact of the day: Dustin and I annoy the shit out of everyone in the world by constantly referencing people from high school. When I say "referencing," I just mean "saying their name in the middle of other people's conversations based on a loose association from a word we probably misheard." The gimmick stopped being funny to everyone else about four months ago, when it first started. It's especially unamusing to people who didn't go to our high school. But unlike Courtney Miller when she's holding a beaker of acid, we're not gonna drop it.