Never Cry on a First Date

The clues were all there -- the biggest clue being that this was someone I met on THE BUS. I gave him the benefit of the doubt since I, too, was on the bus, and therefore there must occasionally be some normal people on the bus.
We chat, and when we get back to town he suggests we meet for a beer. I didn't have anything else to do, so I thought, what the hell, I'll just stay for a little while.

He proceeded to get maudlin-drunk on just two beers, and started telling me all these horrible stories. Like how his 7-years-older brother used to break his bones ON PURPOSE, including a compound fracture of his right leg, which of course he wanted me to feel. Then he starts telling me that his brother finally stopped doing this when he started doing it back. I'm thinking, "completely demented, but some kids are," but then he says, "so that was about five years ago," meaning that he and his brother were still beating the crap out of each other at ages 24 and 31, respectively!

His next heartwarming story is about the girl he was engaged to, who aborted their child and broke off the engagement one month before the wedding. By this point he's sobbing, I'm horrified to the point of speechlessness, and he decides to take offense and get nasty when I try to find something to say to express sympathy. Freaky, especially when I'm dealing with a guy who seems to think that breaking his brother's arm is an appropriate response to an adult argument.

Oh, but wait -- apparently thinking that he's on a roll or that we are making an emotional connection or something, he next tells me about trying to save an entire family whose car has fallen into a frozen lake. After his psycho-brother has saved the mother, he goes down to save two kids and finally the baby, who dies in his arms from being in the lake too long, and he blacks out and wakes up in the hospital with a bunch of broken ribs from psycho-brother trying to restart his heart, since he almost died too. Now he's crying really hard, and tells me that he goes to sleep every night still seeing the face of the baby he couldn't save. (Um, maybe some therapy is in order?)

Interspersed with these charming stories were moments where he took great offense at my saying "wow," or "oh my God," and he would shoot nastily back with, "Is that all you have to say?!?" And then there were the really random sexual comments, like when he asked me if I had dated anyone since my last big relationship. I said, "yeah, I've been on a few dates," and he says, "oh, so that's what we're calling it now, dates," implying that what he really wanted to know was if I had gotten LAID recently. And he managed to say this with a scary, drunken leer. Right after crying over dead babies.

When I finally decided that as fascinating as this car wreck was to watch I wanted to go home, he proceeds to tell me that he thinks he's too drunk to drive home, and to stare at me expectantly. My response? "Wow, that sucks. Good luck!" and I quickly bolted from the bar.

--Anna