I was driven to online dating by equal parts loneliness and desperation. Working long hours for the first time had finally given me an excuse for why I hadn't met anyone. I chose OkCupid because it was free and I hadn't been employed that long.
After exchanging countless messages and several actual phone calls, we decided to meet. She was able to craft complete sentences and sounded surprisingly normal, so I deemed her a safe enough Internet stranger. The only hitch was that I had to meet her in New Jersey, far away from the comforts of my tiny studio apartment in Manhattan.
So there I was, in New Jersey by my own free will, standing outside in the cold, worried about my hair (it gets too poofy), when she pulls up in a sedan so beaten down that I was unable to discern its brand. She was very pretty, with long brown hair, blue eyes, and a memorable smile. She looked just like she did in her pictures.
Car rides are usually boring—most people listen to music, the radio, maybe make small talk.
My date for the evening liked talking about one thing: her history of car accidents.
Clutching my seat, I tried to assure her that we probably wouldn't die, to which she replied, "YOU DON'T KNOW." I laughed, but she wasn't joking.
I've never been happier to get to a bar and I'm a fan of bars. It was a dive bar, country music playing, and all four televisions turned to Fox News. We sat down and ordered a pitcher of Busch Light, because that was all they had on tap.
Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, she pulls out a notebook and starts asking me questions. Questions like how many serious girlfriends have I had, how many sexual partners, if I had a good relationship with my parents, all posed rapid fire.
Suddenly she pauses, then asks, “Have you ever been punched in the face?"
I say, “No," and she pauses again, even stops writing in her notebook.
Then she punches me in the face.
Like a real punch. And she was wearing a ring. I'm not sure if she said anything else right then, I was pretty focused on having been punched in the face. I remember saying, “You just punched me in the face." She laughed, then started crying. Instead of asking her what was wrong (could have taken a while), I went to the bathroom to check my face.
On my walk to the restroom, it struck me nobody in the bar even flinched when I was flat out punched in the face by the young woman I came in with. Either that was a frequent occurrence there, or just her regular thing. And there was a mark. Not a black eye, but definitely a noticeable bruise on the upper side of my face, my favorite section.
So I sit back down, another bad decision in a series of bad decisions. As she told me something about working on a clothing line for some vape company, I couldn't stop thinking about how my mother always called me a "nice boy." I could see my mother standing next to her, shaking her finger, saying, "He's a nice boy. You shouldn't punch him in the face." I don't often think about my mother on dates, but I did that time. I did pay for her drinks though. She had already punched me in the face once.
After expressing my desire to go home, I made my worst decision of the night: I got back in her car.
You should never drive or be driven by someone under the influence of anything really. Alcohol is a bad one. It's especially bad when the driver has a history of serious car accidents and needs a GPS to navigate the neighborhood she's lived in all her life.
As we approached the highway I realized two things. First, I did not want this girl driving me to the train station. Second, I did not want to die. So I said something like, "Right here's good." I had sustained enough injuries for the night.
I expected her to pull over so I could get out, but instead she sped into an alley and said something like, "You want me to leave you right here, in this alley?" I've never nodded so hard in my life. I may have emitted a gleeful squeal when the car finally came to a complete stop. After screaming, "YES PLEASE," I got out of the car and as she drove away I couldn't help but tell myself, "I'm a nice boy."
On the cab ride home, which I was happy to get ripped off for, I tried to focus on what I could have done differently. First off, online dating wasn't for me. Also, try not to go to New Jersey. And lastly, if somebody asks you if you've ever been punched in the face, say yes.