All Kinds of Awkward and Venturing in Vegas

Worst Date – Entry 13 

I met a super tall guy the first week in Spanish 101 class my freshman year at BYU-Idaho. We did a partner assignment in class one day and that night I got an e-mail from him in very poor Spanish: "Hi. Usted es muy bonito. ¿Usted irá con mí a la cena, o un festival? -Adán" He had looked me up in the directory to find my e-mail address, phone number, and apartment address. I responded with a peppy e-mail: "Hola, Sí! Me gusta tacos, enchiladas, chimichungas, burritos, y fiestas o festivales. Hasta Mañana!" The following day he walked me to my next class and the next one and the next. Minor stalking? He asked me out that Friday night to play ping-pong and have dinner... at the school cafeteria. I'm not a snob, but guys, the school cafeteria is not really date material if your parents pay for your meal plan. 

I met him at "The Galley" aka cafeteria at 4:30 p.m. (crazy early time) to have dinner. Dinner was good, but there were a few moments of awkwardness, like when he stared at me eating my first plate of food after he had polished off three. And then when he showed me his cow milking/doughnut making arm muscles, making me feel them. While we were eating he also told me stories about how he used to be an epileptic. A little too much information for the first date.

My date didn’t have a car, so after dinner we walked to his apartment in 6 inches of snow and 15 degree weather (oh Rexburg!). We played ping-pong for almost two hours in the commons room of the apartment complex. Ping Pong is fun but two hours is far too long when you aren’t any good at it like me, and when I spend the majority of the time getting the ball from underneath couches and chairs and always losing.

After Ping Pong is when the date started to go downhill, a slippery slope of no return. He brought me to his apartment and we sat down on the couch and then he said that he would like to get to know me better. I panicked a little but he ended up just asking me harmless questions like what my favorite color was, what classes I was taking, and what kind of music I listened to. I answered his questions and then asked him what he liked to listen to. He told me he played the electric guitar and liked progressive rock. I had never heard of it before so he brought out a DVD performance of U3. My impression from this DVD was that progressive rock is screeching electric guitar music being played by old men in tight neon pink leather pants. He finally turned it off…but only after a half hour of torture to my ears and eyes.

To get on a safer subject, I asked him about his major. He was a 2D art major and he showed me some of his sketches and projects. Then he brought out a biography-type book on his favorite artist. He flipped through the book which was full of bare-chested women. Awkward to the max. I couldn't take it anymore so I lied and said that I was really tired so I was going to go home. He was confused but asked if he could walk me home. It was only 8:30 p.m. when we walked back to my dorm.

 I had spent three and half hours with this guy and was totally weirded out by him. On the way back it got just a little worse. He told me that I was "the most aesthetic date" he had ever been on. He told me that aesthetic to him was "stimulating the senses." He then talked about his old girlfriends and told me that I was the tallest girl that he had ever dated. He also asked me to rate our date on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the best. I sidestepped the question by asking about our Spanish homework. Back at my apartment he stood around forever in the doorway and I couldn't get rid of him. When he finally left I closed the door and laughed for 5 minutes straight! To this day I still can't believe that all of those things happened in one epic failure of a date.

Best Date – Entry M

A group of friends and I decided to take a road trip to Vegas. It just so happened that one of the guys on the trip and I had awkward crushes on each other (you know what I mean.) On the way there, mancrush decided to make a move by putting his arm around me in the back seat. The rest of the trip Mancrush and I were pretty much inseparable. We walked all over the strip and had tons of fun and got to know each other really fast.  On Saturday night we mancrush and I were casually looking at shows deciding what to do.  I don't know if you've been to Vegas, but seeing a show there is kind of akin to Broadway, e.i. EXPENSIVE.  We were considering whether it would be worth it to get the cheapest tickets to Cirque du Soleil (which were still like $70), and I was leaning towards no since I was a lowly TA and had no money (and we weren't a couple or anything, so it's not like I expected him shell out money like that on me).  Mancrush was feeling adventurous, though, and all of a sudden he was buying tickets for BOTH of us to go see Cirque.  I was floored.  I made him let me pay for dinner at some Asian place in the Venetian. After dinner, we walked around some more (me kind of in a really happy daze) and made our way to the show.  It was pretty much the coolest thing I'd ever seen, and even the super high seats that we had actually gave us the perfect vantage point to see everything. Later we met up with our other people by the Bellagio fountains and took our tired selves back to our crappy little motel.  Mancrush and I were both still kind of wired, though, and we walked around and talked some more in our PJs in the sketchy parking lot. That night, we may have had our first kiss at a dingy motel in Vegas.  And what happened there did not stay there.  :)