Dinner Crimes

Every girl has an insatiable desire to be pampered. One of the many surefire ways to impress a woman is took cook her dinner. The romance of a candlelit dinner and knowing your man slaved away on a stove or an oven for a while just to impress you is a surefire "win" for most guys.

But if you're going to go for it, you have to proceed carefully.

Most likely, if you burn the dinner or otherwise make it inedible, girls will forgive you. It's the effort that counts truly. We'll also likely never ask you to cook again if you royally screw it up badly enough, and we'll offer to cook from then on. We're ok with you attempting stuffed mushrooms or almond-crusted tuna steaks - whether you actually succeed or not. (Obviously infinitely more impressive if you pull it off, but I digress.)

A truly heinous offense, more-so than the failure to pull off a delicious almond-crusted tuna steak, and one for which you will not be forgiven, is making a huge fuss over a dinner that a.) you can't possibly screw up and b.) took hardly any effort over a monkey's capabilities.

We'll forgive you if you screw up something that took effort or was even remotely challenging. We'll sing your praises for trying to do something sweet, no matter the outcome. But if you come in saying you'll make us dinner, we expect a little effort... or if you're not going to really even try, humility.

Let me explain...

Berkley was a fast-talker. He was suave and smooth, but he definitely thought more of himself than I did in the end. One night, he announced, "Baby, I'm gonna make you dinner tomorrow night. How about some fish and pasta?"

Sounds wonderful, right? Fish is a challenging dish to prepare since its so easy to overcook, and pasta, while not exactly the most difficult entree to prepare, takes at least some degree of knowledge on how to cook. Score, a man willing to cook for me!

I was in for a disappointing surprise. I arrived just in time to see him in the midst of his meal preparation. The oven was on, and he was already cooking the pasta in the pot of boiling water... all seemed well.

Then I noticed the Kraft macaroni and cheese box... extra cheesy. I made this crap in middle school. Kids watched the blue box commercials when I was younger. This was not the pasta I was expecting.

But wait, it gets better.

I was sort of hoping against hope that the fish would be a little more high quality than mac and cheese from a box. Maybe he just didn't know any other way to make pasta, and I was more than willing to throw that in the "its the thought that counts" category.

He opened the oven to retrieve the fish... sticks. He made fishsticks. The kind you buy precooked and just set in the oven for 8 minutes or so.

I'm willing to let it slide if a man cannot cook. But bachelor food when you make a big fuss about cooking me dinner is absolutely unacceptable. This is the kind of "dinner" you make for kids you're babysitting because its the only thing they'll eat without crying for mommy. This is not something you play up for your girlfriend as a real San Francisco treat and then spend all of a middle-school amount of effort preparing.

Needless to say, I tried to pretend I was pleased. But Berkley's plan to impress truly fell flat. I would much rather he attempted a recipe with some degree of risk and fail miserably rather than pick something that pleases the under-age-10 crowd.

Fishsticks and Kraft macaroni and cheese = Dinner FAIL.

Cracker, Please

I don't eat many snacks. Usually, a box of cookies lasts about six weeks in my apartment (they usually get thrown out from being stale before they get eaten).

I was grocery shopping with Fred one day and decided that I wanted to get some crackers to keep at his place. I was over often and he did not have the most appealing food options (see also: six month old petrified chicken kabob).

Anyway, two days after I had purchased the crackers, I got a rare snack craving while at Fred's apartment and started searching his kitchen for my crackers. They were no where to be found. So, I asked Fred about them and he told me that he had no idea what happened to them and that one of his roommates probably took them.

I was a little pissed that his roommates would knowingly eat someone else's food, but I never said anything. Two weeks later, I brought TWO new boxes of crackers over to Fred's apartment. This time, I opted to keep them on a shelf in Fred's room instead of in the kitchen where they could be stolen by roommates. That night, I fell asleep after some studying. Apparently Fred stayed up a little later.

The next morning, I looked at the shelf and saw that both boxes of crackers were gone. I was furious. I opened a drawer in Fred's desk, and there were three empty boxes of crackers. The previous night, he had eaten both boxes of crackers. Two weeks prior, he had eaten my crackers, then blamed it on someone else, rather than choosing to fess up and buy me new crackers.

But honesty issues aside, who the hell eats two entire boxes of crackers in one night? I looked up the nutrition facts on these crackers and it works out to 2520 calories. In one night. And this was in addition to eating a full breakfast, lunch, dinner and other assorted snacks.

But, the worst part was that he didn't even throw away his trash. He kept it safely in his desk for those two weeks. And probably would have kept it all year if I hadn't found it. Disgusting!

Five. Five Dollar. Five Dollar...Ribs?

Meeting your significant other's parents for the first time totally sucks. Meeting them subsequent times also totally sucks. There is a great deal of pressure to seem responsible, but not controlling. To be polite, but not stuffy. To be fun, but not obnoxious. As if that's not enough, the odds are stacked against you from the beginning because every parent is convinced that no person in the world is worthy of dating their little snowflake.

For guys, there's the added pressure of what to do when the check comes. If you offer to pay, does it look like you're implying that the parents can't afford to? Does it send the message that you are trying to buy their daughter off of them? If you don't offer to pay, do you look cheap? While I would usually advise offering, I would say that depending on the situation, either could be the right answer to the check conundrum.

Then there is that hidden third route which is never the right answer. That is the one which Fred chose to take.

Fred came to visit me at my parents' house. Since he only packed jorts, this limited our dining options, but my parents still wanted to take us out to dinner. So, we went to a casual restaurant which served mainly burgers and such. My parents ordered wraps (they're health-conscious) and I ordered a burger (I am not so health-conscious). Fred decided that he just couldn't resist ordering ribs.

This was a little annoying to me since it is such a fussy and messy meal and no one else was eating it. I was a little shocked that he wanted to eat something that was so sloppy in front of my parents. But, I didn't say anything. I didn't even give him a dirty look when he proceeded to get barbecue sauce and bits of meat all over his face and his ugly ass Hawaiian shirt.

When the check came, Fred decided that he should offer to pay. But rather than offer to split the bill with my parents, he presented them with a barbecue sauce soaked five dollar bill. Why? Because he figured his meal was about five dollars more than everyone else's. I wish I were joking about this.

I can understand that he would not offer to pay for everyone's meal. He was 22 and at 22, taking four people out to dinner, even to a burger joint, is a big investment.

However, given that he had chosen to offer to pay part of the check, I feel like the minimum offer he should have made would have been for his full meal. The preferred would have been to just split the damn check -- maybe offering to throw in a few extra bucks if he were truly concerned about his meal costing more.

But just paying the difference between his meal and the table average? How did this seem like a good idea? I tried to whisper discreetly to him to just not offer at all. This would have been a lot less awkward than offering up five dollars.

My parents were confused and annoyed by the offer and politely refused. But they never let me forget it, despite my attempts to block that night out of my memory.

He's a Caaaaaniac, CAAAAAANIAC!

It's a little weird how much of my relationship with Fred revolved around chicken.

The night after I had discussed the chicken wings incident with Fred, we went to Raising Canes. Since Fred had already eaten one dinner and I am hardly the type of girl who can pack a continuous stream of chicken wings for three hours (sorry, I love my size 2 ass too much), we decieded to split a Caniac (which I paid for).

For those of you out of the loop, this includes 6 chicken fingers, some fries and two pieces of toast (this is important).

Well, since Fred was too busying blowing on a conch shell (insert phallic reference here), I went ahead and seperated the chicken fingers, removing three for myself. Well, this did not go over well. He threw a hissy fit (seriously, a fucking hissy fit) that I was trying to eat his food.

Um, wow. Didn't know he was so protective over it (just kidding, his fat ass and matching beer gut was a dead giveaway that he never let one morsel of food escape his claws).

Also, as a math major, he really should have realized that removing three chicken fingers from a six chicken finger meal is, in fact, taking half of it. But apparently he was blinded by the idea of being potentially denied a chicken finger.

In his fit, he claimed that I was trying to take his food from him. Apparently he believed this to be an ongoing problem. This was weird to me because we were about the same height, but I was half his weight. He was clearly not missing out on any food.

Anyway, I finally got my act together and and dumped him after this...I just wish I hadn't taken him back a few weeks later. D'oh!

Drink it up

Soda molds. I didn't realize this right away. I suppose it ought to be intuitively obvious – it is wet and sugary. But, I think I had always kept urban legends in the back of my mind about how Coke's acidity makes it a great car battery/highway/toilet/grease cleaner. I realize that none of these are true, but the idea still must have stuck on some level.

Also, there was the fact that prior to dating Shrek, I had never seen, or heard of, a soda molding. Like 99% of the population, after opening a soda, I reseal it, consume it, or dispose of it within an hour. Aside from not wanting to attract flies, there is the issue of a half-empty can of soda being a spilling hazard. Being clumsy, I make a point to not leave anything around that could potentially be knocked-over and create a mess. Shrek did not share my diligence in soda management.

Shrek drank more soda than anyone I have ever met (a combination of this and poor oral hygiene contributed to his nasty-ass teeth, but that is another story). He went through 3 cases of it a week. And this is not counting the sodas he bought from the machines in the dorms, the food court on campus or at Burger King. Shrek was also not known for his cleanliness. His dorm was always messy and dirty.

One day, he had gotten stuck working at the front desk of the building for a lot longer than expected (the person with the shift after him decided to leave town without bothering to tell anyone). I felt a little bad for him and decided to do his laundry since I knew he had planned to when he was done with work. I gathered up about 8 loads worth of dirty clothes (it had been a while) and took over the entire laundry room.

When I went back to his room to put his detergent away, I noticed that his room was really gross. Not wanting to bring clean clothes into a dirty room, I decided to throw away some of the trash lying around. I put all the paper plates and candy bar wrappers sitting around in a trash bag. I then went to round up the 20-some soda cans sitting throughout his room and realized that many of them still had soda inside.

So, I took as many as I could carry (4 – I have small hands) across the hall to the bathroom so I could empty them out in the sink. I poured out the first one. Out came some flat Cherry Coke…and a small white mass.

I assumed it must have been something other than mold. I mean really, who leaves soda cans sitting out long enough to mold?

I poured out the next can and even more white stuff came out. At this point I realized what was going on. I was totally grossed-out by the idea of dumping moldy soda in the sink. But, I was even more grossed out by the thought of Shrek just ignoring them for the rest of the year. So, I opted to continue with my plan of emptying all the soda cans and disposing of them.
Out of all the cans in his room, there were three that had no visible traces of mold inside. Three. I have no idea how long it takes a soda to mold to the degree that some of these had, but I am guessing it is a few months.

The worst part was, even after having a talk about the moldy soda, he did not get any better about cleaning up. The next time I was over (a few days later), there were 6 new open cans sitting on his desk.

Follow Your Nose

Sometimes when you need to blow your nose, a box of tissues is just not close by. I understand this. In college, I would only buy tissues if I had gotten sick enough to go through them in a few hours. The rest of the time, I used toilet paper. Sometimes even napkins. I am not ashamed to admit my gross habits (for the record though, I have gotten past this and currently have three boxes of tissues on my desk ... but that is only because work pays for them since they are office supplies).

When tissues are unavailable, there are alternatives, some better than others. If I had to rank the alternatives, I would put toilet paper at the top of that list, followed by cheap napkins (softer than the nice ones), then nice napkins, then paper towels, and then...creative options. Thankfully, I have never gotten to the creative options. Fred, on the other hand, has.

One night I was at his apartment making enchiladas and he decided that he absolutely had to blow his nose immediately. Sure, there were napkins and paper towels in the kitchen. And there was toilet paper in the bathroom. If he were truly a purist, I am sure his anal-retentive roommate had some tissues to spare (Actual real tissues! What a concept!). But Fred opted for the creative option. His choice? A corn tortilla. I'm sure his inner monolouge was something like "I'm such a rebel, I am blowing my nose with food!"

I can't even begin to describe how nauseating it is to see someone blow their nose into the food you are cooking, but trust me, it was not a good time.

I was completely appalled that he decided to use a corn tortilla to blow his nose out of some sick interest rather than out of necessity. Furthermore, an unfried corn tortilla is actually kind of crumbly and not really a good material for this, ergo, it did not exactly work out the way he had hoped. Not to mention, they were much more expensive than any other option and they were what I was fucking cooking for dinner.

I don't know if he thought he was being innovative, funny or both. I found his display to be none of the above. And he was making his own dinner for a very long time after that.

It's Peanut Butter and Jelly Time!

Drunk dialing is not necessarily the greatest idea... ever. While you certainly can get things off your chest that in other circumstances you may not be able to properly put into words (even though you could avoid slurring if you did so without drinking beforehand), phoning exes, currents, or aquaintances is about as immature as you can get. There is simply nothing that can't wait till you're sober that you need to get done. Unless of course, it's for a midnight rendezvous of somesort - then you better not be so drunk it's... how do I put this delicately?... not worth it.

Drunk dialing you may remember in the morning. But there's something worse, and though most people still categorize it as drunk dialing, I think there's such thing as wasted dialing. If you're competely wasted, there's a high probability that you should not be using your phone, period, as you will not recognize how drunk you are when you make the call.

I got a call from an ex - who will now be referred to as "PBJ" after this story - late on a saturday night after he and I had gone out with different sets of friends. He wanted to meet up. Not thinking much of this phone call, and under the impression it was a drunk dial not a wasted call.

I arrived at his place after only having two drinks over the night myself since I had my car. I walked in to a darkened apartment. I saw PBJ sitting on his couch, in the dark, with his poor dog looking quizzically at him for not petting her. He stood to greet me... or perhaps more wobbled to greet me.

He leaned in. "Heeey therrrrrre. Howzit goeeeeen." Yowza - beer breath. But there was some other smell I couldn't quite put my finger on before I stepped back.

"Hey. Wow you must have drank a lot tonight."

"Yeeeeaaaah. But that'z ook."

Then he leans in for a kiss. Now I figure out what that other smell is. Peanut Butter.

"Did you have any peanut butter before I came over?"

Instead of answering like a human being, he lunges in and kisses me. When he steps back again, there is a smearing of peanut butter across my face. The sticky substance is all over my face. Gross.

His next statement: "Owwwwwwwwwww." Turns out he had a cut on his tongue. First he blamed me, but considering he hadn't gotten that far, I knew it had nothing to do with me.

I go into the kitchen in search of a paper towel or something to wipe the mess off of me and to grab some ice for his tongue to help stop the bleeding.

On the counter sits the jar of peanut butter with the knife still sticking out of it. Because I'm civil and a nice person, I decide to try to clean up his drunken snack. Removing the knife from the peanut butter jar, I discover that it's the sharpest knife he had, serated, and HUGE. And there are obviously tounge streaks still on the knife. PBJ had licked the knife during his binge.

Meanwhile, PBJ starts snoring in the living room. I had been there for ten minutes.

Ridiculous.

It wasn't so much that he passed out, nor was it the peanut butter alone. If he had just been ready to pass out, that's fine. No biggie. And some might argue that peanut butter can be... interesting... in certain situations. Perhaps. But if you invite me to come over before you pass out, proceed to make a pass at me, and then still fall asleep... we have a problem. In this situation, it is niether cuddly nor kinky.

And it's definitely not cute.

Lesson to other boys - be very careful when you make midnight treats after a night of drinking. If it is a snack over which you have very little control that may end up all over your face or with which you can somehow manage to hurt yourself - do not invite a girl over. She will leave. And she will be mad you made her smell like peanut butter and gave her nothing in return.

Da Da Dadadadada Da Da Dadadadada (The Chicken Dance)

The thing I hated most about Fred was the fact that he was completely incapable of not making a total ass of himself. I truly dreaded introducing him to anyone I knew, and hated going anywhere in public with him.

He had a way of embarrassing the hell out of me anywhere we went. I truly mean anywhere. The sorority formal where he decided to loudly announce that another girl looked like a man; the brunch where he was too stupid to figure out a prix fixe menu; my coworker's party where he decided it was appropriate walk around with his pants around his ankles because he was proud of his Nintendo boxers; the release party of a documentary where he decided to pick a fight with some reporters from a national news magazine and the infamous jorts incident are just a few of the times I found myself thoroughly humiliated because of him.

One of the more embarrassing incidents was the first time I introduced Fred to CCG and Dum Dum. Now, Dum Dum was a little special himself, so I figured that nothing Fred could do would be any worse than whatever tricks Dum Dum had up his sleeve that day. I really expected Dum Dum's shenanigans to outshine Fred's. But, I was in for a surprise.

The first time I took Fred to meet CCG and Dum Dum, we went to a local bar for happy hour. In addition to a few beers, we ordered some hummus, potato skins and buffalo wings. As soon as the snacks arrived, Fred wasted no time diving into the buffalo wings. He quickly devoured a couple of them and then...put his chewed-on chicken bones back on the plate with the rest of the wings. Disgusting!

Now, before I say anything else about this, I would like to mention that Fred insists there were no extra plates to put food on. All other people involved remember there being plates (perhaps Fred was too busy stuffing his face to notice). Even if this had been the case, Fred could have either asked for a plate (the bar was not busy), or put the bones on his napkin.

Plates or no plates, it was disgusting. CCG and Dum Dum were both totally grossed-out by this display. Yes, Dum Dum, the loser who had been traipsing around the city all day in high top black sneakers, shorts and no socks was disgusted by something my boyfriend did. That's damning. I was absolutely mortified by this experience.

But, the worst part was the fact that Fred was oblivious to their reactions just as he was oblivious to the fact that no one else touched the buffalo wings.

Since this was early on in the relationship and I hadn’t given up hope that I could mold him into someone who didn’t humiliate me, I mentioned the incident to him a few weeks later. Rather than consider my comment, he immediately got defensive and insisted that there were no plates and that CCG and Dum Dum had no grounds to think he behavior was inappropriate. I told him in the future to just use a plate and let the issue go.

Fred did not, however, let it go. It apparently bothered him enough that he brought this story up to all of his friends until he finally got some girl* to agree with him that he behaved appropriately in this situation. This really pisses me off.

I know this girl knew better than that. I don’t even know this girl, but hell, Dum Dum knew better! Look, I know that people often choose being nice over being honest, but seriously, there is a point where being nice does more harm than good. Fred did something inappropriate and by telling him it was acceptable, this chick is contributing to his behavior. Women like her are the reason there are so many men so set in their inappropriate ways.

* My note to this girl: I sincerely hope that your future husband gets belligerently drunk at your wedding and decides it is appropriate (because some girl told him so) to start stripping while you’re dancing with your father.

They saw him rollin', they hatin'

Shrek drove the ugliest car. Bright teal circa 1990 station wagon. Yuck! To make matters worse, he never cleaned his car. It was filled to the brim with fast food bags and half-eaten food. There were soda spills all over the seats and every surface was sticky, squishy, slimy, or otherwise sickening. The worst part of all was the foul stench that hit me like a brick wall every time I opened the car door. I can’t even begin to describe what it smelled like – it is unlike anything I have ever encountered.

I loathed riding in the nasty-wagon. It was repulsive on the inside, and humiliating on the outside. At a school where everyone drove a nice car, the teal nasty-wagon stuck-out like a sore thumb. I would never want Shrek to drive me and my friends anywhere in the nasty thing (side note: it was his mother’s old car, and she gave it to him because she bought a newer model of the same station wagon in the same color – how tasteful). I would suck it up and call a cab before I would ask him for a ride.

After we broke up, I would start to feel nauseous every time I saw the nasty-wagon. Partly because I remembered how sickeningly filthy it was and partly because the thought of Shrek made me sick to my stomach (really gross psychosomatic problem I had for a bit).

Given my situation, you can imagine how thrilled I was when I got word that Shrek was leaving school. I could walk to class and not worry about running into him and having to awkwardly avert my eyes and hope he didn’t try to talk to me. I could eat in the dining hall and not look up to see that he was sitting at the next table. I didn’t avoid bars that I thought he would go to, I didn’t get nervous every time I walked past his frat house.

Three weeks after his departure, I was the happiest I had been in years. To celebrate, I had a me party with some girlfriends at the usual bar. On the way back home, I looked out the window of the cab as we came around the corner of fraternity row. From a few blocks away, I could see the nasty-wagon parked out in front of his frat house under a street light. I started to feel dizzy and short of breath. Then, as we were right in front of it, I noticed that it appeared to have been in a pretty bad accident.

As soon as I got back, I made everyone go back over to look at it some more. Sure enough, the front end of it was smashed. I assume that he could not afford to get it fixed to go home, so he left it at school. Or maybe it was totaled and he just didn’t have time to go through the whole insurance thing (how could he not have time? It’s not like he had a job or class or anything…).

Over the next few weeks, I made a point to walk a little slower when I passed by the nasty-wagon and laugh.

Apparently, others (I later found out, others = his own fraternity brothers, but that is another loser-ex worthy story that I won’t go in to right now) shared my contempt for Shrek.* During the rest of my time in college, I saw the gradual evidence that his car was the target of someone’s on-going vandalism project.

Each window had been smashed out, tires: slashed, headlights: busted, several vulgarities scratched and/or painted over the bright teal body, insides: destroyed. The grand finale was the morning I walked by his car and saw that the hood and the area around the car was black like someone had finally decided to blow it up. Who knew his own frat brothers would go all Carrie Underwood on his ass?

As much as I disapprove of such acts, I have to admit seeing his car in this shape made me feel a little better every time I walked by.

I would imagine that it is no longer there.

* His fraternity brothers couldn’t stand him anymore by the time he left and made this no secret to the rest of campus. The best part about this is the pledge class he wasn’t there to meet (rush was during the time he was leaving) all know him as “Shrek: the asshole.” It makes me almost not hate his fraternity anymore. Almost.

What's cooking?

One of my favorite restaurants in college was a little dive on the side of the highway. They have the most amazing pizza and Mexican food (random, right?) ever. It is totally the best PMS food in the world. Shrek would never take me there though because he knew I liked it. He was a dick that way. He made-up some lame excuse about how he was allergic to everything on the menu. He had a lot of made-up allergies which only remembered he had if it meant ruining something I wanted to do. Honestly, if he were actually allergic to half the things he claimed to be allergic to, he would have to live in a bubble and only eat rice cakes. But this entry is not about Shrek or his apparent allergies to everything.

Ok, so, the restaurant. Love it. Didn't go there much while I was dating Shrek. He was a jerk.

When I started dating Fred, I suggested that we go there for dinner one night. Not being a crappy person, he agreed to try it out. He even managed to find something on the menu that he was willing to eat (have I mentioned he's a really picky eater?). Since Fred insisted on getting an appetizer, I was full before I finished my enchiladas, so I got the remainder of them boxed-up.

We ended up going home after dinner and spent the night drinking and playing video games. Around 3am, I was still up and starving. Knowing that I still had my leftovers in the fridge, I asked Fredto go to the kitchen and heat them up for me.

Now, I knew that Fred couldn't cook, but I figured it doesn't take a rocket scientist (ha!) put an enchilada in the oven. I told him just to set the oven to warm, and put the enchilada on a pan and leave it in there for a few minutes. He disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, then came back and we played some more video games.

A few minutes later, I told him it was probably time to take it out, so we went back to the kitchen. As soon as we stepped into the hall, I smelled something completely foul coming from the kitchen. It only got worse as we approached.

I opened the oven and saw sitting inside a half-melted Styrofoam box on a cookie sheet with my enchilada peeking out through a hole that was burned through. Disgusting.

The melted box was all over my food and I couldn't eat it. Not to mention, it was probably toxic. I should probably say at this point, Fred was 21 years old. TWENTY-ONE FRICKIN' YEARS OLD AND HE DIDN'T KNOW STYROFOAM MELTS IN THE OVEN! Furthermore, it wasn't like he was an English or Phys Ed major--he majored in a science so there is no excuse.

To make matters worse, he was a typical man so all he had to eat in his house was beer, generic slim jims and a three-month-old petrified piece of teriyaki chicken that he called "Sparky." So I was sitting there in the middle of the night, starving and suffocated by the stench of Styrofoam enchiladas.

Needless to say, his inability to heat an enchilada made for a bad night for all parties involved.

Old MacDonald had a farm...

There is a Mexican restaurant on the Hill that I frequent, not because it is particularly good but because it is cheap (when I was an intern they had 10 cent wings and 25 cent beers on Wednesdays), centrally-located and known by everyone in Washington, including cabbies (this is important because I never know addresses of places I want to go, just names and general locations).

No longer an intern, I usually visit this place during the week for lunch between meetings but Saturdays are all-you-can-eat chicken fajitas for $9 day and so in the past year I have been twice on a Saturday when I was craving fajitas. Both times I went with my boyfriend at the time (two different men). Both times I was horrendously embarrassed.

The first time I visited this restaurant, my date was going through this weird phase where he liked to eat everything Mongolian barbecue style: everything mixed together in a bowl. He would do this with everything: bacon and eggs, filet and mashed potatoes, the insides of a turkey sandwich--it was a weird phase for him. Anyways, I figured this behavior was reserved to our at-home dining and assumed he'd be fine in a restaurant.

Then he ordered.

"I'll have the fajitas. No tortillas though and can you bring me a really big bowl?"

My recount of this story does not do it justice, but he took all of the meat and vegetables on his skillet and dumped them in the bowl and then dumbed the pico and guacamole on top and then drowned everything in queso dip. And he ordered three more orders of fajitas. It was one of the grossest displays I have ever seen.

The waitress looked at us like we had been raised in a barn.

The next time I went to fajita night things went great until my date noticed I had eaten my last tortilla and interrupted the waitress while she was talking to another table to tell her I needed more tortillas. Chivalrous? Perhaps. Except for the fact that I had finished the rest of my food and really had no use for three more tortillas.

This fact was not lost on the waitress. She gave me my tortillas, which of course I could not eat, and spent the rest of our visit pointedly looking at them whenever she walked past. I almost wanted to put the tortillas in my purse so that I was no longer subject to her wrath.

Of course, the date was oblivious the dirty looks because she wasn't directing them at him. She had assumed (like a rational person) that he wasn't a complete caveman and that I had directed him to order me more tortillas as if it were entertaining for me to watch both of them dance. So he was fine sitting there for the next 30 minutes nursing his beer.

I have stopped eating at this restaurant until their staff changes or they take the poster with my picture and a big red x through it off the wall. Whichever comes first.

Adventures in Etiquette Part Deux

As trivial as it seems, every time I think about this story I get angry. The one time I tried to tell this story to someone, I couldn't keep from yelling and cursing at the end of it. It just pisses me off that much. The thing is, I never made a big deal about it at the time. Maybe I did. I think I have tried to block anything pertaining to it out of my mind.

Sure, Fred had disappointed me in the past, but I was sure that on this day, he wouldn't. It was the best time of year in the best city in the world. We were going out to brunch, which is the best meal ever. This should have been perfect. Everything was lined-up so that a screw-up seemed impossible. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

We arrived at the small historic hotel where I had enjoyed many a brunch in the past. We were seated at an outside table with a prime view. Fred was even dressed reasonably well (could have been better, but I was willing to take what I could get). Everything was going so well. Then, fate threw Fred a curve ball.

The menu had been changed from à la carte to prix fixe. Fred did not have nice things growing up, so an unfamiliar menu with some fancy French words at the top really confused the hell out of him. I could see this would end horribly, so I explained to him what "prix fixe" means, and even went through with him and picked out what he would order. Crisis averted. Except, not really. Oh, I wish it had been that simple.

The waitress returned to take our order and Fred began. He picked his appetizer. So far so good. Perhaps Fred was going to actually go a day without embarassing himself as well as those around him. He chose his salad. Ok, still good.

That's included in the $49.99, I presume?

Wait, what? Did he really just ask that? I was mortified. Yes, dumbass, FRICKING FIXED PRICE!!! HOW HARD IS THAT TO UNDERSTAND?!?! IT EVEN SAYS 'SELECT ONE' UNDER EACH DAMN HEADING!!!!! AAAAHHHHH!!! Sorry. I told you this story really makes me angry.

How the hell could he have screwed this up? Everytime I imagine him saying this, I want to punch someone. Not only that, but he said it in the most pompous voice ever. Fred had this habit of ordering his food in a really pompous manner (think sterotypical butler voice). I think he thought it made him sound classy. Except it really just made him sound even trashier. Fred had a way of handling every situation without showing one iota of class. There was no changing this; he was completely hell-bent on looking like a tool.

But really, was he not listening to any of the past 10 minutes I spent explaining the menu to him? Or was he just too much of a douche to believe anything I told him? Why the hell did he not trust what I had told him? I was beyond offended that he wouldn't listen to me (but not nearly as offended as I was humiliated by his behavior).

The waitress made a face that said "who let you out of the trailer park?" as she rolled her eyes and sheepishly told him that each course is, in fact, included in the prix fixe menu.

CMS, I feel your pain. I never knew true humiliation until someone in the service industry looked at me with contempt.

On her first blind date...

Okay, I'm done with being reflective. Time for more stories:

Once in college I was set up on a blind date. This was particularly rare because practically everyone at my small college knew practically everyone else but my friend managed to find the one guy I didn't know and set us up. The date was very casual: the date and I, along with my friend and another friend (all girls except the date) were all going to go to see a college theater production and then have drinks at the local bar later that night. It was a Tuesday, which wasn't a big drinking night at my college so rowdiness was not on the menu.

So we all meet up and introductions were made and we went to the theater. Walking there, I discovered the date was a complete dud and he was ugly AND he was wearing sneakers at a school where no one wears sneakers* and so I thanked God that there would be entertainment and then alcohol later.

So we sit through the play (it was pretty good) and then walk to the bar, where we grab a booth in the restaurant portion of the bar. The other friend and I had already eaten--we had grabbed snack bar food before we all met up--so we just had the cheap draft beer on special ($2 pints). The date and my friend who had set us up had not eaten so they ordered from the menu. And not just buffalo wings--they ordered meals. And they ordered expensive import bottled beer. Which is fine--that's their perogative.

The date was completely boring. I think the only vaguely interesting thing he said was that he had never had whatever beer he was drinking before, as if this was supposed to make him adventurous or something...I don't know. Wednesdays were always super-busy for me in college so I was looking to cut the evening short anyways (I would have made an exception if he had been interesting--my first real date with my current was on a Tuesday night and we stayed up until 5 in the morning--well, he stayed up that late, around 3AM I demanded to watch Spiderman on DVD and then passed out within the first ten minutes).

The check comes and it's for like $60, once you add in tip. If we were going to divide it four ways, which we shouldn't have done because two people ate real meals and the other two drank two-dollar drafts, we'd each pay $15. So you would think he should AT LEAST toss in $15 for his quarter (which was less than what he actually ate and if he was expecting to leave with me he should have picked up my beer as well). He tossed in half of that. The friend who set us up tossed in $15, the other friend tossed in $15 and somehow I got the honor of paying nearly $30 for two dollars' worth of Bud Light.

I was left completely aghast by his lack of good manners. I understand the concept of going dutch--I think it's awful, but I get it--but to make your date pay for your meal as well??? That's just awful!

So we're all standing outside and he was like "should we go someplace else and have another drink?". He was clearly clueless about the major faux pas he had just committed and somehow still thought he had a snowball's chance in hell with me. I muttered something about having to get up early and spun around and practically ran away.

The next day, my friend IMs me and asks what I thought about him. "He's boring, ugly and cheap, no wonder he's the one guy on campus I don't know." She got the hint and kept him away from me for the rest of the semester (which obviously wasn't hard because I had already gone 3 years and never seen him).

*I have this thing about sneakers--if you wear sneakers inappropriately I will not date you. It's just one of those quirks of mine.

String me along

When I was younger, I absolutely loved pepperoni pizza lunchables. I don’t eat them anymore. There is something juvenile about the whole process of spreading sauce on the crackers, then putting the cheese and pepperoni-flavored sausage on top. I just can’t get past this.

Shrek had a similar problem with string cheese. I found this out one very tragic day. We were at the grocery store, and I was getting some snacks and sodas. When we walked past the yogurt aisle, he nearly wet his pants at the site of the string cheese. “Oh my gosh! I love string cheese!” he gushed. Being the nice person that I was, I offered to get him a package of it. It seemed like an odd food for him to jizz his pants over, but, hey, everyone likes at least one really strange food.

Well, when I got home, I found out that he was grossed out by the idea of pulling pieces of cheese off the main chunks in strings. Rather than resolve to eat a snack which disgusted him less, he just ate string cheese by eating it in two huge bites. And, he didn’t stop with one. In the time it took me to eat one string cheese, he had eaten the rest of the package. This ranks as one of the top 20 grossest things I have ever seen. Come to think of it, the other 19 grossest things I have ever seen also involved Shrek.

It blew my mind that he could eat a snack of 7 string cheeses, and then have the audacity to make a huge deal out of me eating too much. For the record, I was 5’8” and 110lbs (soaking wet) at the time, and he was 6’4” and 250lbs (and it sure as hell wasn’t muscle). I never made a big deal about this. I am only bringing it up now to point out that if one of us should have been concerned about the other overeating, it should have been me. I have never in my life had a weight problem (I am currently the biggest I have ever been, and that is a whopping size 4). He had always had a weight problem. He was the fat kid who was always the first one out in dodge ball. Granted, he was not morbidly obese, but he had a good deal of chub. I would never comment on his love handles though, because I felt it was not my place to criticize him for that. I honestly don’t know how much smaller he thought I should have been. I don't know how much smaller he thought I physically could have been. Unless he goes to a third world country and finds some emaciated woman on the brink of death, he will not find someone to date who was smaller than I was when I dated him.

I haven’t seen Shrek in nearly 2 years now. Where ever he is, I hope he is dating some fat chick.

Dum dum dum dum dum

I am going to break one of the cardinal unwritten rules of LoserEx by writing about another contributor’s ex. MEL dated ‘Craig’ a little while back, and found him to be a bit whiney and a bit clueless. I was fortunate enough to witness one of his moments.

We were all over at someone’s house one night drinking beer when Craig graced us with his vast knowledge of nutrition. Someone went to the kitchen to get some chips, and upon bringing them back, offered some to Craig. Craig declined, and remarked that he would not eat any chips because, beer has empty calories, and if he ate chips, they would become full calories, and he would gain weight. Dumbass honestly thought that he could drink himself silly every night, but if he did not eat during the time in which he was drunk, he would never gain weight from excess calorie consumption. We were all too dumbfounded by this to even bother correcting his logic. Needless to say, he went on to gain a bit of weight, which MEL can tell you all about.

Adventures in Etiquette

So, last October I went to visit Ex No. oh-I-don't-even-know-anymore who lived halfway across the country. I was really excited because it was my birthday and I hadn't seen him in about a month. So, obviously I was expecting something BIG--a grand gesture, if you will. Well, my birthday night started out really well. He had made reservations at a very nice restaurant on the beach. He had even called ahead to make sure that the restaurant served crème brulee--my favorite dessert. He was dressed nicely (I told him what to wear and he actually listened to me). Things were going great for a change.

Not for long. Well, we get to the restaurant (a little late, but that can't be blamed on him. Anyone who knows me knows that I am five minutes late for everything). We sit down--so far, so good. I had not been humiliated. Yet. We decide to order wine and that’s where things go wrong. The waiter brings out the wine and holds it out so the ex can see it. Well, the ex grabs the wine out of the waiter's hands, nods at him, and sets the wine down on the table. This is immediately followed by me saying "Oh my God *name withheld to protect me from lawsuits*" louder than I had intended and dropping my head into my hand. The waiter stared at us with absolute contempt. You have never experienced true humiliation until a waiter has looked at you as if you are PWT straight from the trailer park. Well, the waiter picks up the wine from the table and apparently decides to dispense with the whole ceremony. He just pours the wine and, I swear to God, he rolled his eyes as he walked away.

Maybe I could forgive the ex for this if he had a legitimate reason for not knowing the appropriate way to handle ordering wine at a nice restaurant--maybe if his family wasn't very affluent or he was from the middle of nowhere where Applebees is considered the height of class. But he's not. He's from a big city and his father is an absurdly successful doctor. I know that he has been to nice restaurants before. There is simply no excuse.

Look Ma! No hands!

My high school boyfriend was, among other things, a neurotic--to the point that he reminded me of my grandmother, who up until that point I thought was the most neurotic, anal person on the planet.

The ex had this bizarre quark: he refused to touch food with his hands. This includes fast food, french fries and other normal finger foods. I distinctly remember that during long road trips I would have to feed him his McDonald's french fries. It wasn't that he was afraid of germs or anything like that. He was just terrified of having grease or food residue on his fingers.

Weird, no?

First complaint

To kick this off, everyone is getting a complaint today, just some are cheeky and dumb, others are downright evil.

Ex 1 (We'll call him 'Boris' due to his thick Eastern European accent)- One time we went to a diner, and he ordered a hamburger with feta cheese. It was so damn gross. He even ate it with his mouth open, commenting that I should try it. Um, no thanks.

Ex 2 (to be known as 'Fruit Fly' due to the fact he plays for the other team now)- Was 18 and still did not have a driver's licence, ergo, I had to drive everywhere -- including taking him home from school everyday (which was so out of the way). When I needed gas, he would neither pay, nor get his butt out of the car and pump the gas.

Ex 3 (I will call him 'Shrek' because he was such an ogre)- Once the ogre I was dating lost his calculator before his econ final, and he pitched a fit to borrow mine. Since I had already taken my stats final, I let him use it. Well, the moron lost it, and promised to buy me a new one, since I had a math course starting in two weeks. Two weeks came and went, and when I asked him to buy my a calculator, he threw a fit at me. Well, idiot, I need it for class, and you shouldn't have lost it. So, I end up buying one, since, unlike nimcapoop, I actually give a hoot about my classes. So, point is: I was out $80 for his: a) feeble-mindedness in losing my calculator and b) his extreme cheapness (and a-holeness, and irresponsibleness, etc.) for not buying me one to replace the one which he lost. If anyone out there actually talks to this doofus, tell him he still owes me $80.

Well, I could go on forever, but I am going to stop there. More tomorrow!