3/18/09 - Date Thirty Two: Sweet Lord

Please help me. Help me to understand how this person I met at one of my favorite bars could be so unattractive, socially awkward, boring, and STINKY. BO people. B to the O. A Big B to the disgusting O. I am thankful to say that everyone I've gone out with thus far has been moderately to incredibly clean. They usually smell good, have clean hands, face, fingernails. Tattoos in fact, revealed to me that dirty fingernails totally grossed him out and that he washed his hands multiple times per day. He seemed to regret having told me this, probably because he was concerned that I would think he was some OCD germophobe but it delighted me. A man who NEEDs to clean something?? It increased his attractiveness tenfold.

BO. This will be his name henceforth. However I hardly feel the need to name him since I have not heard from him and do not expect to. And f he contacts me, I fear that the email will come into view on my computer screen and I will not be able to help smelling the faint odor of his funk. It was so horrible, guys. In his defense, he is foreign. We all know that Europeans and others not born within the good ol' US of A have, shall we say, different hygiene habits than Americans. This is both a good and bad thing. Their skin is probably healthier, for example. But the stink. OMG. I could smell him almost before I could see him.

He strolled up to the table I'd chosen near the bar, stuck out his hand, and said a very muffled and garbled hello. He then introduced himself. All I could think of was how long I could stand to sit there across from this disgusting, vile person before I would not be able to take the stench any longer and would be forced to cast off all social norms and run screaming into the night. How long did I sit there, you ask? Exactly 38 minutes. Yep. As soon as I smelled him, I discreetly checked my phone and then checked it again when we went our separate ways outside the bar. Where, right there in the middle of the sidewalk amongst passersby, I took a nice, deep breath of city air. And it never smelled sweeter.

38 minutes. This has got to be some sort of record for shortest first date that did not involve violence, food borne illness, or death. Am I wrong? I'll check Guiness. I could not wait to get out of there. And to top off all of the above, he didn't talk. At all. I did my level best to hold up the conversation for the both of us so that we didn't just sit there, stagnating in his filth like two toads on a log in a swamp but it didn't matter. He basically did not engage. At all. Very upsetting.

And a very difficult challenge for me. But hey, the positive side: I weathered the BO, no talker storm and emerged better than I was before. And I got home in time to make a delicious dinner from scratch, respond to several emails, do a couple crosswords, and clean my bathroom. So, really thank you, BO/No talk, thank you. Thank you for being shining example of what every woman should avoid and what no woman deserves to ever be faced with. This experience was so significant that I spent the rest of the night thinking about him. Could he not smell himself? Did he forget the deo? Did he think that he was charming, suave, attractive or was he aware of the absolute heinousness of our social situation? How many other dates had this person been on? How many other dates lasted less than one and a half sitcoms? Seriously, it's taken me longer to drink a nice cup of coffee.

To wrap up: BO is bad. Talking is good. When he asked for the check, I almost stood up and cheered in unison with the screaming fans at the basketball game blasting from the TV.