Quit While You're Behind (part 2)

"Rhonda" and I met at my new church.

I'd recently left my old house of worship and decided to move down the road, ostensibly to "try something new," but actually to lay low for a while, "girl problems" at my previous church being the foremost reason for this decision.

On just my second visit to this church du jour, I was made to feel at home by a lovely, chipper blonde named Rhonda. She knew I was a newcomer (it's that 6th sense that ChurchFolks have; the innate radar they possess that alerts them when somebody is alone and vulnerable and doesn't know another soul in the foyer that morning).

She displayed a pointed interest in my teaching career ("that's soooo sweet!") and, in turn, I volunteered my opinions about downtown Dallas architecture (the fact that she worked in the accounting arm of a local architecture firm, and therefore did not know 'Mid-century' from 'Madonna' did not matter to me; I sounded smart, dammit).

Being the grizzled veteran that I am, I did not take her flirting seriously. I figured it was just an example of Happy ChurchGirl being Happy ChurchGirl. But she continued. And continued...
Soon she was approaching me on a weekly basis; after the service, like clockwork. It wasn't long before my old instincts kicked in.

"Could this girl really like me?" I wondered. I tried to talk myself out of it. "I really don't need to get involved in any dating shenanigans at this place... I'm new to this dating thing, and girls don't ever pursue me!"

But her advances didn't stop.

One morning, her winking and touching and smiling crossed the line and triggered an almost involuntary reaction from me. Rhonda began talking about the degree to which she enjoys sushi and wine, and I interpreted these comments as any other lonely, straight male would: That she wanted to go out with me sometime in the very near future!

"Why don't I get your number, and maybe we can grab some sushi this week?" I coolly suggested.

With that smooth display of skillz, the die was cast. We hammered out the terms and conditions, and the date was set.

Later that week, on an otherwise uneventful and ordinary Thursday night, I shaved and showered and headed out to pick up the cheerful blonde for a night of (unknown to me at the time) unparalleled torment and torture.

The agony began almost immediately.


"Your seats are freeeeezing!!" she announced as she landed in the passenger seat of my Honda.

"Sweetie, it's 40 degrees outside and they're leather," I replied. "It happens."

"Well, I just figured your car would have heated seats or something..."

"Or something?!" I thought to myself. What the heck does that mean? "Or something" She never seemed bitchy during any of our previous time together, and now she was bitching about my car seats just 20 seconds into our date!?

I was at a loss...

"Or something"??

Like, something besides heated seats? What did she want, two flint rocks and a pile of twigs under the passenger seat? Perhaps a 55-gallon drum in the back seat, filled with newspaper and set ablaze (homeless man and bottle of Thunderbird not included)?

"This is hopeless," I thought. "What am I doing? ... Am I this lonely? ... Can I go back in time and try again?"

She had already given me a headache, but maaaaybe a nice dinner would change things. Besides, it was too early in the date to give up all hope.

During one of our many after-church flirting sessions, she had mentioned that she liked sushi. So we headed to The Blue Fish on Greenville Avenue. A hip and attractive crowd frequents The Blue Fish and, as if the short skirts and enhanced bosoms were not enough to seal the deal for me, the sushi they serve is pretty darn tasty.

"I'm not real hungry, but I heard this place is cool," Rhonda said as we walked through the front door.

"Not real hungry?" I mumbled, just loud enough for her to possibly hear me. "You were eating lunch when we spoke at 1 o'clock today. That was six hours ago..."

"I've always wanted to come here," she explained, "but I guess I just ate too much this afternoon."

"What did you eat, a whole goat?"

She didn't laugh.


But things were already looking up!

I discovered a blessing in disguise: Rhonda's goat lunch meant that only a tiny amount of food would be ordered tonight, and large amounts of alcohol would -naturally- have to fill the void.

Drinks at The Blue Fish are notoriously potent, and this night was no exception. After a few rounds, Rhonda gradually became more tolerable, and our conversation slowly turned more pleasant. We were making each other laugh! My headache went away! The genial, extroverted blonde I'd known from church had returned! This was now a date!

One thing, as it tends to do when large quantities of sake and Sapporo are consumed in a short period of time, led to another. Before long, we found ourselves at Kismet Lounge, alternating hits from a hookah pipe, inhaling all manner of Central Asian wacky tobaccy, ingesting numerous shots of liquids that neither of us could pronounce, and dissecting the works of Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe.

Unfortunately for me, the smorgasbord of illicit substances coursing through my bloodstream had significantly dulled my senses. For almost three hours now, Rhonda had been nearly doubling my chemical intake, and I had been none the wiser.

The cute, vivacious blonde cavorting in my lap in the dark corner of a hookah bar had morphed into the sloppy, blabbering, embarrassing slut that every other man in the bar is thankful he is not burdened with.

Rhonda had crossed the intoxication threshold that every man dreads; that Maginot Line separating "this girl is loads of fun and wants to hook up" from "if I have to carry this girl to the car I just might leave her face-down in the parking lot." Some unscrupulous men strive for their dates to achieve this level of drunkenness; I, being a gentlemen, find it annoying.

I had to get her home as soon as possible.

"Baby, let's go to the car," I firmly said to her. "You need to sleep."

"Aaaghh... mmmmm....aghghaaahh... nooo," she gurgled (apparently defying my order).

I was in no mood to argue with an incoherent blonde, and so I grabbed her waist, slung her arm around my shoulder, and limped out of the bar with her nearly-lifeless corpse in tow.

We obviously made for quite a spectacle, since all 400 other patrons at Kismet made sure to point and laugh and heckle us. Some even jumped around and signaled their friends to come get a glimpse of the carnage, which reminded me of Lawrence Taylor waving hysterically at the Redskins' sideline that they'd better come and look at Joe Theismann's broken leg, before it's too late (it was later revealed that LT was sky-high on blow during that game, but at the time it was seen as a very compassionate act of good sportsmanship).

"Just a few more minutes, baby," I pleaded. "We'll be home in no time."

I attempted many of the tried-and-true methods for sobering up quickly while riding in a car: windows down, sunroof open, no seat belt, seat pushed back, slow speeds, gentle turns... I tried it all. But still she sat doubled over and moaning loudly.

As I was praying for the health of my leather seats, I heard a blood-curdling sound.

It all began quite innocuously, and gradually grew to a steady, constant stream. There was no explosion or climax or apex, it just kept coming and coming...

Pink in color, and full of bits and pieces of marble-sized, half-digested sushi, Rhonda's vomit was a force to be reckoned with. There was no end to it. Like that volcano in Hawaii that has been slowly erupting since 1983, this barf also seemed eternal. She feebly attempted to catch the spewage in her cupped hands, but those quickly overflowed, leaving my leather bucket seats and then my (previously) spotless floorboards to act as puke receptacles.

She just sat there, expressionless, spitting up liquified fish chunks and simultaneously tossing it out the window.

"Well," I thought, "at least she knows she's being unforgivably disgusting."

If only I'd more closely monitored her alcohol intake! If only we'd done dinner and a movie! If only I'd heeded my hunch that she was a closet lush and rented a car for the evening!!

The regurgitation did not stop until we arrived in her driveway.

I dragged her indoors and set her down in her bed. After toweling off a good amount of "pink stuff," I left a note on the counter, apologizing for not cleaning the remaining vomit from her chin, arms, and pants. "I'm sorry," I wrote, "I was fresh out of handi-wipes..."

I spent the rest of the night doubting God's benevolence, and most of the next morning on my hands and knees, scrubbing a sushi/martini mix from my car's upholstery.

Rhonda and I have spoken only once since the night in question, and it was an awkward 5-minute conversation re-capping the lowlights of our date. I think she is too ashamed to ever call me again, and I, frankly, won't mind if she doesn't.

God and I have since made up, but He made me promise to never date again, as long as I shall live.

Anything you say, Big Guy, anything you say...