The great date that wasn’t.

Sometimes the student becomes the teacher, the artist, the muse. So this one is for John, my muse. Thank you!

Once upon a time there was a girl named Shauna… its always Shauna or Lisa or Kim. You never hear stories of this kind (yeah, its one of those! ) about girls named Emily, Molly or Ann.

So back to Shauna. Shauna was a single 20 something, living in her dream city, loving her job and loving the single life even more. Dates were never hard to come by. Great dates were another story.

Playing it safe, Shauna met Ross at a bar, in the middle of the afternoon. On a Sunday. Got all the signs of a GREAT date, doesn’t it? And while Shauna isn’t this young woman’s real name, neither was Ross this man’s. But after 5 Guinnesses on an empty stomach, he started to look like David Schwimmer and the name just stuck. 3 or 4 beers later, Shauna found herself dry humping Ross in his car, parked in her driveway.

This wasn’t the date this story is about.

No, the great date that wasn’t was innocently planned for Valentine’s day. When Shauna realized what she had done she almost cancelled. A second SOBER date on Valentines’s Day was just ripe for disaster.

That night came and Ross arrived bearing gifts, a jazz cd, flowers and chocolate-covered strawberries. Gifts oohed and awed over and set aside, they went to dinner to a restaurant that didn’t live up to its name. The being seated right away on the biggest date night of the year should have been a sign. The cuisine wasn’t the worst part of dinner. The lagging conversation between two people who clearly had only the love of dark beer between them was the second sign of doom.

But darn that Ross. He was determined to get something out of evening for his efforts. And darn that Shauna, she felt bad for the trouble too.  Expecting it to be no better than the dinner, they refused dessert and drove back to Shauna’s walk up. A bottle of wine later, Shauna, well lubricated, submitted to Ross’s golden tongue request. “So, ya wanna fuck?”

Shauna was pressed to find the better performance, that of her chef or that of her date.  One only left her hungry, the other, a hideous piece of personal jewelry.

Mold found the strawberries, the dumpster the flowers and the mailman, the jewelry.