Faux pas de deux
As my daughter has begun to moon seriously about boys, I’m now bracing myself for her first official date. The one where the mouth breather lopes to our door, baggy pants half down his butt, eyes dull of adolescent ennui as he grunts, ‘zalexhome?’
And wondering whether I can draw inspiration from how my father behaved on the momentous occasion of my own first date.
Get out your handkerchiefs.
I was 13, I guess, and he was a boy named Mark who lived down the street. We were going to the movies at 7.
I had only just begun to mutate from hardcore tomboy, so the mainstay of my panic and dread was the idea of having to be ladylike – assisted here by my brother who kept asking if I was sure Mark knew I wasn’t a guy. (And my sister freaking me out with stories of tongues and kissing and where hands may wander and grope.)
The afternoon hours a belly of butterflies, spent muscling into hated, dainty outfits, then padding down the hall to the full-length mirror, and my mother’s ‘goodness, is that what you’re wearing? Oh, and you mustn’t smell sweaty, darling…’
And on until 6:30 pm.
Gentle, kind and Clearasiled Mark arrives and we’re breathless, looking mostly at our shoes (and polish your shoes, dear; a boy notices that sort of thing) – ‘hi’ ‘hi’ ‘ha, ha, hi’ –wiping sweaty palms on our bums, goofy kid smiles flashy with braces.
A little agony later, it’s ‘wanna go?’ and, just then, my father enters the room.
Mark smiles so politely and straightens his tie, offers his moist hand to shake and lets the pater know that he works at Grand & Toy stationery two afternoons a week so, ‘Your daughter is in good hands.’
And my father, my tall and broad father with his deep rich man voice and who knows the full tizzy I’m in, keeps hold of the gulping boy’s hand and asks:
– So, Mark, are you much of a boxer?
– Um, sorry?
– Box. Do you box? Would you care to go a couple of rounds?
– … Sir?
Then father lets go the hand, walks into the kitchen and brings back two pairs of oven mitts, smiling, ‘Gail loves to box. Hell of a swing. Come on, sweetie, let’s show him what you’ve got.’
And he holds out the mitts to me, dead serious. I stare at them and stare and blush and,
– What?
Now he’s slipping on the second mitt, and his dukes are up,
– Come on!
– … What?
Clutching my pair of flower-patterned, heat resistant gloves and thinking that this would be as good a time as any to die. Then he punches me in the shoulder.
– Come on, come fill me in!
He keeps going and goading me, fancy footing and grinning around like Mohammed Ali as we’re trying to get past him. And I know he’s not going to stop.
So I’m mad and I spin around with my fist balled saying, ‘cut it out’ and swing, not aiming.
Then it’s ‘Oh jeez,’ from my dad as he crumbles to the ground.
I’d got him right in the solar plexus, and knocked his wind out. He’s on the floor, oven mitts rubbing his belly, and wheezing, ‘oh, boy.’
We don’t say a thing all the way to the theatre. Only Mark ducks during the film, each time I reach over for popcorn.
Beat that, Philip Larkin.
· · • · ·
Comment
- Keep your oven mitts handy when the young swains show up- undoubtedly you’ll be able to show them a thing or two.
Charming story, Gail.
— Tiffany Apr 25, 8:56am # - Beware of nice boys. Nice boys are the devil.
Trust me: I carefully cultivated my nice boy image.
— August Apr 25, 11:57am # - handkerchiefs forsooth.
your dad asked for it hahahha
did you ever go out with Mark again?
— phathima Apr 25, 11:57am # - Beat that, Norman Mailer.
— msg Apr 25, 12:35pm # - Come on, now. I don’t want sympathy; I want your horror stories.
— Gail Apr 25, 2:30pm # - That’s a fine one. In an instant, and at just the right instant, your dad makes himself look unhinged and you look physically dangerous to fully grown men. I bet your dad was as scared as you were about this date. And poor Mark’s testicles must have been wondering whether they’d done the right thing by descending when they did. “Uh, let’s go back and regroup or something. We’re not ready for this stuff.”
— eeksypeeksy Apr 25, 4:45pm # - I was a preternatural, if rather pint-sized, Lothario at the age of eleven – and I really did ask Judith Fowlie for an honest-to-god date! Wherever did I get the blind courage – or the idea at all, for that matter? I don’t even think I liked her that much, really. Maybe she just giggled at my self-aggrandizing jokes a lot.
Anyway, (he sighs), I took her out for lunch one bright early winter’s Saturday afternoon. To Fran’s Restaurant. Yes, Gail, THAT Fran’s – and to those of you not originally from Trauma, Onterrible: well, just imagine the most royal and treasured greasy spoon in your own hometown to get the picture.
“Anything you want”, I said. “It’s on me..!”
We both had hamburgers. I don’t remember the ‘conversation’.
Later, I went skating with her family. They all looked a bit like roly-poly dolls, but they could skate alright. I thought I was a pretty decent skater myself – I was all feigend-modesty and mock-confidence as I stepped onto the ice – but, alas, it must’ve been the first skate of the season, because the blades were as dull as the latest CBC television drama. I could barely stand up, let alone glliiiidde along – or take the corners like an NHL hero.
I spent the next wretched – I dunno, hour..day…long-weekend? – ‘pretending’ to be the ‘clown’ from the Ice Capades who just couldn’t stay up. By golly, he was so funny, he just had to keep falling down! Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck! This guy’s a riot! Why aren’t you laughing? I’ll just do it again – harder and louder and faster! Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck!
Alright – the story’s not as good as yours (beat that, David Sedaris) but it does speak to my own private horror.
And, you know, it was years before I ever had a real ‘date’ again. And much longer than that to stop playing the clown.
Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck!
— MOJdeB Apr 25, 9:37pm # - Ah, the first date of a burgeoning artsy-type girl, already wearing black at age 16, Brentwood, California, circa 1968:
He was a nice friendly boy in my photography class. He asked me if I wanted to go see an Andy Warhol movie. Sure! That sounded trés cooool.
He picked me up in his Pugeot and we headed to a seedy part of Hollywood where an art theater was showing a Warhol double bill. We were a bit late.
As we walked into the darkened theater, the movie was already playing. We took seats. The screen was filled with blurred pink, with a sort of darker pink line running horizontally across the middle, moving a bit.
We sat watching, and listening to the muffled sounds coming from the movie, as it slowly dawned on me, and I’m sure him also, that what we were looking at was in fact two bodies, one on top of the other, naked, undulating, DOING IT! OMYGAWD!!!
This went on for approximately EVER, as we sat side-by-side, dying of embarrassement, not daring to say a word or touch or look at each other, just waiting for it to be over, please, God.
After about ten or fifteen excruciating minutes of this, more academic questions began to emerge, like were we watching a man and woman? or two men? or two women? And IF it was a man and woman, which one was on top?
I believe it turned out to be Viva and Joe Delasandro. Mercifully, I don’t remember the rest of the evening. We never went out again, and he grew up to be an architect and I grew up to teach graphic design and we recently reconnected via email and had a good laugh about our outing.
And by the way, now that I’m thinking about it, my current boyfriend bears a striking resemblence to Joe Delasandro!
— susan bein Apr 26, 9:07am # - Fran’s!
Most grimy and sordid Fran’s. How we loved thee.
— gail Apr 26, 10:23am # - Woman, you rock, seriously. Does the boyo know what he’s gotten in you, besides the obvious?
The dating thing isn’t as bad as I thought it would be for my 16 yr old girly-girl. Mostly because if they step over a line, she lets them have it… although it’s a verbal punch to the solar plexus as a real punch may damage the manicure she’s given herself. Then there’s always the calvary: this “fire-breathing raptor of a momma” (her words) will decimate them physically while I do so verbally.
Yep. My daughter’s got spine and moxy, with a vocabulary to match. Some things are genetic.
— roggey Apr 26, 12:49pm # - Oh? My horror story—I’m down to skimpy details as I keep trying to repress it all.
Okay, deep breath: I’m 17, he’s 18—we go see a movie—we end up back at his parents’ house—we end up bumping uglies—the parents arrive home… his bloody brilliant cover plan is to play the damn song “Footloose” at a horrendous decibel, on a “repeat” setting while still bumping around.
I really hate that song.
— roggey Apr 26, 12:55pm # - >>the mouth breather lopes
>>to our door, baggy pants
>>half down his butt, eyes
>>dull of adolescent ennui
>>as he grunts, ‘zalexhome?’
Reason #462 why I do not want children.
— listless Apr 26, 3:07pm # - Well ok then.
I dated a girl named Jenny. Her mom was a cop in early days when being a woman cop was pretty exotic.
I went over there the first time and her mom was getting ready to go to work.
She gave me a please be a good guy look and sort of asked me to, too; then she asked me what my dad did for a living, and I told her, and then I told her what my mom did, and then she left.
We made out for a while, then walked to the store. Then we came back and made out for a while, then I figured it was time to go home, so I did.
— msg Apr 26, 9:51pm # - Your dad deserves your eternal gratitude for such a shameless enactment of fatherly anxiety. You got a gem of a story out of the deal (plus some residual mortification)!
In my own misguided attempts at puppy love I led my dates through my own sort of gauntlet (hikes through the woods leaving knees scratched and hair tangled with briars, fishing excursions in the cold, trespassing on property guarded by dogs and shotguns—we were in the country). I would have wet myself with joy if I saw a girl take down her father with one punch.
As a boy I labored under the misguided notion that a good girlfriend was one that you could depend on for a quick game of football, or one who could help you haul the canoe out of the truck, etc. You have proven that such a mindset was not entirely unhinged. Your brother’s doubts would have been an endorsement to my boyhood self, and your sister’s stories would have seemed as alien as a parade for Mardi Gras in Amish Pennsylvania.
So apart from my dates arriving home bedraggled like a wet dog, hair tangled or stinking like fish bait, there’s not much to tell. But we dressed like that all the time where I come from.
The hot chicks were the ones who wore rubber boots and stretch wranglers while they hosed down the cow manure out of the milk barn, so the playing field was canted a little differently in our neck of the woods.
Maybe a little soft work with the boxing gloves could’ve straightened us out.
— Riure Apr 27, 9:16am # - How about a dog who would masturbate with a pillow in front of the tv and a mom who would ask if I had protection on me – all with my date standing there? And they wonder why I don’t visit very often now…
— Mona Lisa Apr 28, 1:07pm # - Reminders of a past I’ve tried to forget…
The first guy who ever asked me out showed up at the door looking terrified. That was before he met my dad. My dad showed up, asked him a bunch of questions, then started telling him he should be careful not to piss me off. I could feel the worst blush of my life start at my neck and work its way up my face, slowly. I was raised with English Bull Terriers, martial arts, and in the Society for Creative Anachronisms. I knew what was coming next.
“She grew up with a crazy dog, you know, and the only way to get bull terriers to let go once theyv’e latched onto something is to choke them off. She’s choked off dogs since she was five years old and weighed about what the dog did. Oh, and if you get mugged, just let her deal with it. Looks like she actually knows what she’s doing. If you really want some fun, though, have her teach you how to fight with swords. She is doing fairly well there lately.”
At each step of my dad’s quest to make sure I didn’t get touched at all, this poor guy’s eyes got bigger and bigger.
We finally got out the door and he asked if what my dad said was true.
“Well, yes, but I’ve been more into nonviolent problem solving for a while now.” What else am I going to say? “Um, yeah. Want to go do some sword work?”
Sigh.
Poor guy never came back, didn’t talk at all on the “date,” and I didn’t bring anyone home to meet my father for 6 years.
— Wendryn Apr 28, 1:45pm # - Nobody believes me when I tell them this story, but I swear it’s true.
I had a very cute, very tall, very large boyfriend at school who wore a long black coat. I couldn’t have been more than 13 or 14, and he was maybe 15 or 16.
Gosh, I can’t even remember his name now. How terrible is that? I can remember Kevin, who told me at age 12 on the steps to the agriculture building that he wanted to “jump my bones.” I can remember Jason, at whom I actually did laugh when he asked me out (but I was laughing at the absurdity of the logistics of getting out of my house, not at HIM per se), but I can’t remember my old boyfriend’s name.
Anyway.
One day at school he-who-has-no-name asked me if he could come over to my house that night. I think I shrugged and said ok, not really thinking about it, then promptly forgot.
I’ll never forget what happened after that, though. This was the night that IT came out on TV, and I was watching the first part with my grandmother, when suddenly there was a knock at the door.
Now, growing up in my house was a little odd—it was just three women (my grandmother, my aunt, and me), and my aunt worked as a nurse on the night shift, so my grandmother and I were left alone most evenings. She was extremely protective.
No, no—EXTREMELY protective. You don’t understand. When I was a very small girl I used to sleep in the bed with her. I preferred the left-hand side of the bed as you face it (still do, in fact), but she wouldn’t let me sleep on that side of the bed because it was closest to the door, and she was worried that if someone broke into the house and she had to shoot them with the loaded pistol that she kept under the pillow, that I might sit up just at the wrong time and that she would shoot me.
Yes, very protective.
Anyway. Again.
So this knock came at the door, and my grandmother looked through the peephole and saw my boyfriend (MARK!! That was his name!) She saw Mark standing there—tall, big, in his long black coat.
She went to the front closet and got her rifle. She opened the door holding the rifle.
Mark never came to visit again.
— angel Apr 28, 5:03pm # - Gail- I’m afraid it will too soon be my son [with his jeans down to his butt!] going to someone else’s home to go out on that first date. But as for me, I remember Mr., well, actually it was Rev., Rev. Furio was at the door between me and his lovely daughter after I had made that long, lonely first date walk up to the front door, who politely reminded me to treat his daughter as if she were my sister. As confusing as this was, it was nevertheless of little comfort or direction, becasue I had no sisters, only two brothers- Peace- Gary
— Gary Apr 29, 1:51pm # - I was 13 and my first date was a visit to his house for a weekend afternoon. I had never heard that bit of “wisdom” that you were supposed to act girly and let boys win and I would’ve scoffed even if I had heard it. I beat him in every game we played, from cards to pool. When we went cross-country skiiing I laughed when he fell down. His dad thought I was great; he and I never went out again.
— Shawna Apr 30, 12:17pm # - My first date (and kiss) happened when I was 16. I accompanied Bill and his family to his little sister’s soccer game in the middle of rural no where. Bill & I went for a walk and in some random field, we found a golf ball. A very cold golfball that Bill decided to put down my shirt. I squealed, likely quite delighted that there was a foreign object near my brand new boobies. I did the whole girly running away, making sure he had the golf ball so he could chase me with it. He tackled me and kissed me. Not long after that (different day) he chased me with an ice cube. I ran smack into a door and required 16 sitiches over my bloodied black eye. Good times.
— weee. Apr 30, 12:40pm # - I love the:
Boys Are Stoopid, Throw Rocks at Them!
magnets from David and Goliath. And the, Boys are made in the Stupid Factory…:)
I have 2 girls.
A new lurker here…
LittleMiss
— LittleMiss May 5, 9:50am # - The long and short of it is that within a week of dating a pretty young girl my father asked her mother out. They asked if we would like to double date at one point. Now I love my dad and still give him a hug and kiss goodbye when I see him, but a double-date with your father and your girlfriend’s mother is just not on.
They are still going strong while the girlfriend and I have parted ways. Imagine if they marry and she becomes my step-sister. Charming.
— Paul Watson May 7, 2:24am # - Paul – thats the funniest thing I’ve read in a while!
— Ian May 14, 10:56am # - Ok amusing story, more than first date,
I was going to a going away party with some friends from work, and i was getting a liftr with two female friends. We organized that i would go over to one of the girls houses (Corin) and then the other girl (Michelle) would come pick us up and take us in to the party, well i arrived at Corin’s house a little early and was invited inside, ok everythings going fine, i’m invited to sit and watch tv and wait for Michelle to come pick us up, sounds totally harmless, thats when the horror begins, “Soooo, how do you know corin?”
“I work with her…”
“Are you still at school?”
“No i finished last year, i start uni(versity) in a few weeks time”
“How did you do last year?”
“Quite well, not as great as i’d hoped but still quite well”
These questions continued for about half an hour (getting worse as we went), until Corin was ready. Then as Corin walked out her parent ask, “where is it you’re going?”
“Ummm, to a Bar/Hotel”
“YOU’RE NOT 18 YET!!! You wont be allowed in”
“No mum, dad there are other people under 18 there, its ok i wont be allowed to drink”
“Daniel?”
“yeah they said something about wrist bands ort something… ” (i was 18 so i was drinking)
“Ok, what time are you getting home?”
“dunno…”
“what do you mean??? We want you home by 12”
So yeah i got to meet the parent from hell, and i wasn’t even going out with her, she later did drink and get drunk but thats another story, suffice to say, i think i may try hitchhiking next time…
— Daniel May 28, 3:22am #
commenting closed for this article