The Shorts ⏤ One Date Only

These peanut butter pretzels were the death of me

Some first dates are the best, and some are the absolute worst. Most people want to know immediately if the person they are dating is not the right fit. 

Thankfully I found out instantly that this group of guys were not for me. Well, there is one story I’m almost positive the guy is glad he got rid of me, but you will have to get to it when you get to it. 

Welcome to the dating shorts! 

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Happy Hour at TGIFridays 

I’m not a big TGI fan, but they have (or at least at the time) one of the best happy hours for a chain restaurant. I was at Tysons Corner in Virginia shopping for something I guess. 

While I was there, I decided to take a peek on Tinder to see who was in the area. 

The first couple of profiles were a bust, but an alright one came up after about eight left swipes.

*swipes right* 

Issa Match! 

I noticed right away he was less than a mile away from me. Buddy must have known the same thing because instantly, I got a message from him. It was so fast that he was swiping on the app or just hawking his phone. 

I should have unmatched after receiving his first message but being bored puts you in situations you shouldn't be in. But hey, it makes for a great story. 

His message read: Hey, I see you are close. Do you happen to be at Tysons Corner? 

No hello or nice to meet you, just to the point. 

I rolled my eyes and responded with, “I am. Grabbing a few things.” 

“Want to meet for a drink? I am at the bar at TGIFridays,” he responds. 

One drink couldn’t hurt. So I told him I would be there in 15 minutes. 

I walked up to the bar, and there he was, sitting at the bar, looking rather unappealing. 

In my head, I’m cursing myself out for wasting this precious shopping time. 

After our initial hellos and short introductions, the bartender brings me a menu. 

This dude immediately points to the happy hour section and says, “here are the drinks.” 

“Are you telling me I am only able to order drinks that are on special? Is the bartender only making happy hour drinks?” 

He gives me a look. “No, but I figured since I invited you to have a drink I figured we can drink from the happy hour menu.” 

I really wanted to say, “Oh so you are cheap.” But I didn’t. Instead, I ordered a drink off the regular menu because I wanted to be petty. 

Do you know this fool asked for separate checks? I was shocked. 

Instead of giving him a reaction, I paid my bill, got up, and walked away without a goodbye, nice to meet you or nothing. I unmatched him as soon as I got enough service (parts of Tysons Corner are a dead zone). 

I had never had anyone tell me I had to order off a particular part of a menu before. Unbelievable. 

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Five Egg Whites and Boiled Chicken

He asked to meet at this hotel lobby bar in a part of DC I never frequent. 

I wasn’t skeptical about the location because DC has some of the best low-key cute and quaint hotels with amazing bars. So I was rather elated to find a new spot.

I show up 15 minutes early, thinking I was going to be able to check out the spot before he gets there, but when I walk in, our eyes immediately meet. He sat in a chair in the bar, which made it impossible to miss him. I think he did this on purpose. 

I knew from his Tinder profile that he was some sort of gym guy, but you could absolutely tell he spent at least two hours a day in the gym based on his appearance. 

He was tall with beautiful brown skin and nice teeth, but everything else I was not feeling. 

He had too much going on with his outfit.

A hat, glasses that I am almost positive were not prescription, a scarf, about 10 beaded bracelets on each wrist, a smedium v-neck t-shirt that exposed his nips, an open vest, a jacket, skinny jeans, and some boots. 

I love fashion, especially fall fashion, but this was just too much. 

When he stood up to greet me, he was much taller than I expected. It showed on my face because he said, “yea, I get that a lot.” 

The conversation was pleasantly good. He was easy to talk to, but I couldn’t get over his sound effects. He made these noises after almost everything I was saying. This is what it sounded like 👇🏽

Imagine hearing that after everything you said. 

So guess what I started doing, I started mimicking him. After he started saying shit, I had my own “oohs and aahs”. I miss their food.

He didn’t catch what I was doing for almost 5 minutes. He finally said, “are you making fun of me?” Loud and proud, I responded with “sure am”. 

I guess he thought it was cute because we continued our date for another couple of hours. Next thing I knew, it was almost 11p. 

“I’m hungry” came out of his mouth next. I was rather hungry myself too because I didn’t eat dinner thinking this bar we were going to had some food, but it was just a lobby bar with peanuts and drinks. 

We decided to go to a diner back in VA near both of our homes. 

After he squeezed his way-too-muscular-for-me-body into the booth, we looked at the menu. I knew I was going to order French toast, eggs, and bacon. 

Something told me this man ate how he looked. 

“Let me guess, you ordering egg whites and some bland ass chicken,” I said to him. 

He gave me this look of “how did you know”. 

The waitress came over, and this man ordered five egg whites and a skinless unseasoned chicken breast and made a huge emphasis that he did not want anything cooked in butter, only olive oil. 

I already knew this overly buff accessory man was not my match, but this solidified the deal for me. There is no way I could date a man who eats like this all the got damn time. Like no butter bruh? Yes, I can cook with olive oil, but butter makes everything better. 

“So you eat like this all the time?”

“Not all the time, but majority of the time.” 

😒 🙄

He laughs and says, “you not with it huh?” 

“I like to eat. I am a healthy eater but not egg whites and unseasoned chicken at a diner at almost midnight.” 

As I devoured my French toast, I learned his eating habits have impacted his dating life. Which makes sense to me, unless you find someone who loves the gym and bland ass chicken as much as you. 

But catch this, this fool (I really wanna call him something else, but I won’t) tells me he prefers women who aren’t in the gym as much as him, he prefers their body types. 

Well this body yawned and called it a night and never called him again. 

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Did you poison me?!

This story I am rather embarrassed about, but it is fucking hilarious! 

I don’t prefer to have a first date at someone’s house. It’s just not safe, and I think it can send the wrong message, sometimes.

But once again, I was bored, and his reasoning for inviting me over seemed legit. He was a secret service agent that worked with the White House. He flew on the planes with the White House (whatever that meant) pretty much 247, so his time at home was very limited. 

I shouldn’t have gone for several reasons. 1) He was a stranger I met on Tinder just a few days prior. 2) He lived out Maryland, and that is “out of town” for someone in Northern VA. 3) His work lifestyle was something I was not interested in. He was only home 4-5 days a month.

But my simple behind went. 

I knock on his door when he answers, I am immediately upset. Not because he didn’t look like his photos, but because he looked better than his photos. He was a very handsome man, and I knew this would probably be the only time we hung out for the next several weeks. 

After inviting me in, we sat on the couch just talking and getting to know each other for the next 30 minutes. I learned that dating was very hard, which I already assumed because of his career, and he would probably never get married or have kids. 

But he had a look of “I’m not sure if real sad about it though” on his face. 

Then it hit me. This man invited me over to try me. Why else was he on Tinder inviting women to his house versus out on an actual date? 

“So you want to order some Chinese food and watch a movie,” he says. 

Yea, that sounds cool to me. 

In my head, I am saying, yea right, a “movie” and rolling my eyes. 

I tell him what I want for my Chinese food order. I take his remote and start to look for a movie. After he puts our food order in, he grabs the remote out of my hand and says, “I've been wanting to watch this one movie” and scrolls to the search bar and starts typing z-o-o-t…

“We about to watch a kid’s movie?” 

He responds, “yea, but it’s not like that. Have you seen UP?”

“Yea I have.” Up is a really good movie. Like it starts off so sad and then makes you smile. 

“It’s supposed to be good like that,” he says. 

“Aight I trust you.”

So he hits play, and Zootopia begins. 

About 30 minutes into the movie, our food arrived. So we pause the movie, and he takes the food to the kitchen while I head to the bathroom. 

When I come out of the bathroom, he already had my food plated in a bowl from his pantry. 

“Oh thanks,” I say. 

We eat and finish the movie. 

This weird dead air space begins to enter the room. So I tried to fill it before he got any extra ideas. 

“So do you ever tell anyone about your ‘top secret’ missions?” 

“Nope. Because that always comes out to bite you. Plus, I am not around anyone long enough for them to gain my trust like that,” he replies. 

Makes total sense, I thought. 

And then it happens. His hand landed on my thigh. 

“I think I am going to head out.” 

“You can stay over if you want to,” and he leans over, trying to kiss me. 

I ain’t going to lie I let him kiss me. But then I got up and walked right to my boots that were at the front door. 

He tugged my arm like he ain’t want me to go. You know what kind of arm tug I mean. 

And with all my willpower, I walked out his front door. 

You know he opened the door and said, “you sure you don’t want to stay” loudly down his apartment hall. 

“I’m good. Have a good night.” I walked to my car, thinking about what I was going to listen to all the way back to Alexandria. 

I didn’t text him when I got home because there was no purpose. And when I woke up the next morning, there was no message from him either. We both knew what was up at that point. 

So I unmatched him and began to start my day. 

I get to the office around 7:45a. I used to work at this crazy suck-you-dry tech recruiting company that had our dumbasses thinking we had to get up at the ass crack at dawn to make a 1/4 of our worth. 

Anyways…

Around 11:30a, I head to the kitchen to get some more coffee. While I am waiting for the make-shift Keurig to finish, I grab a styrofoam cup and fill it with some peanut butter stuffed pretzels that were in the break room. 

As I do that, one of the thousand white people who work at that office says to me, “those pretzels are the most addicting thing ever,” as they walk past the break room. 

I had never had them, so I was like, “okay let me see what they talking about. Because this white girl spoke to me for the very first time and we been working in the same office for the last year. That hoe ain’t never spoke to me before, so these must be some bomb as pretzels. 

So I grab another handful. 

I promise there is a point here friend. 

I head back to my office, drink my coffee, eat pretzels, yes they were bomb, and caught up on group chats. 

What seemed like an hour or so later, I began to feel a bit queasy. I started to have this tingling feeling inside my belly. Like a feeling of being hungover or having one too many edibles. 

I immediately grab all my stuff and headed to the bathroom. If I was about to get sick, I was not about to walk back up into this office and finish the day. 

After the short walk from my office to the elevators, which were located right next to the bathrooms, I felt better. So I decided to drive myself home and lay down. 

During the last five minutes of the drive, that feeling came back. 

I had to get home quickly because wasn’t a good feeling. 

After what seems like forever, I finally enter my apartment and head straight to the bathroom. And there it was. 

Vomit. Plenty of it. 

I heaved so much that I became very disoriented. 

Everything I ate in the last twelve hours was sitting in that toilet, even bits of those peanut butter pretzels. 

Instead of thinking I ate some old pretzels, my ass going to say, “that dude from last night poisoned me.”

Yes. You heard me right. To be specific, I said, “the dude from last night poisoned me so he could do it to me.” 

It doesn’t even make any sense.

That’s how you know I was delirious from throwing up. I was thinking this man put some sort of drug in my food that allowed me to drive home last night and then again to work this morning and then back home to make it upstairs, and throw up for what seemed like an hour.

So instead of just leaving it at that. Y’all know my Black ass decided to call this fool and tell him this. No lie.  

He answers the phone. 

“Hello?”

“You poisoned me so I would sleep with you.”

“What? What are you saying?” 

“I can’t stop throwing up. The only thing I’ve had today was coffee and some pretzels. So you must have put something in my food last night to get me to loosen up or feel sick.” 

I wish I was making this up. I promise I wish I was. I am so embarrassed. 

“You gotta be kidding me.” 

And he hung up on me. 

I wanted to pick up the phone and call him again, but I stopped myself because I knew I had already become his worst date story ever for the rest of his life. 

I’m sure he tells this story over and over to anyone who would listen. 

The girl who I invited over for a movie called me the next day, yelling in my ear that I put some kind of poison powder in her food while she was in the bathroom. Talking about she ain’t see me plate the food. When she came out of the bathroom, the food was already in a different bowl than what it came in. I looked at my phone like bih wtf and hung up. 

I’m sure that is how he tells it or some version of it. 

Embarrassing. I can’t believe I shared that with you.