The First Date Series-She Called Me Fat

Happy 4th of July to our readers in the States! We hope you’re enjoying this Independence Day weekend with friends, family and hopefully a hot date or two! We’re kicking off the holiday with the first in our new series highlighting the best and worst first date stories shared by some of our favorite bloggers, editors and websites. First up is Diana Denza, contributing editor at Betty Confidential, spilling the deets on the worst first date she’s ever been on.

“You’re 10 minutes and 47 seconds late,” she said as turned up the ignition.

“Oh, I’m…uh…sorry,” I uttered, taken aback by her abrasiveness.

“I hate waiting,” she said, “I also hate walking.”

Was this the same polite woman who had approached me at the bar, offered to buy me a drink, and danced (when I say “danced”, I mean swayed like two people who have zero skills) with me last week? Was I a bit too tipsy to notice?

Twenty awkward minutes spent crawling through traffic later, we reached our destination: a small pizzeria off of 42nd street. Determined to salvage some part of this date, I started talking about my family. She was a few years older than I, a hard worker, and part of a tight-knit Greek family. She was also a major Debbie Downer, though I must say that she did hold doors for me and open my car door, which was rather nice.

Within the span of 30 minutes, I discovered that my date hated mushrooms (they were on my pizza), bad Chinese food, good Chinese food (huh?), my lace-up oxfords, short hair, most of New York City, shopping, traveling, animals, vegetarians, and just about everything and everyone else.

After driving me back to my dorm room, she walked me upstairs (expecting what, I don’t know) and invited herself inside. As I was only one of six suite occupants (oh, Manhattan), my roommates happened to be home. The first we encountered, unfortunately, had a brand of granola bar Ms. Debbie Downer didn’t like, resulting in a 15-minute semi-argument about ingredient quality.

I was just about ready to shove everyone out of the common area, pop open a bottle of wine, and forget this ever happened when in walks my extremely sheltered suitemate from the deep south, clad in her usual inappropriate outfit of a long T-shirt –and nothing else. She took one look at Ms. Debbie Downer’s loose jeans and V-neck tee, screamed (I kid you not), and ran back into her bedroom and slammed the door.

Apparently, she had no idea I was a lesbian. I only know this because our entire suite heard her sobbing into her cell phone to her mother.

“Mommy, I’m rooming with a lesbian. A lez-bee-in. That’s right. Moooommmmmy! What if she looks at me like that?”

It took about a month for Miss Mississippi to actually speak to me again…and it was to ask how to boil a pot of water and if meat sauce had to be refrigerated.

My suitemates sympathized with me and went in to talk to the culinary-challenged roommate. I actually had wished they would’ve stayed. As the sun was setting on this awful date (and day, for that matter), Debbie Downer chuckled at my suitemate’s ignorance, followed with… “I was looking through your Facebook photos. You used to be kind of fat.”

Now that was the last strike. I could barely tolerate everything else, but there was no way I was going to let a date call me one of the worst things you can call a woman in the midst of recovering from an eating disorder: fat. To her, fat was synonymous with non-anorexic. Fat as in not a size zero.

“If you think a size 8 is heavy, we’re never going to work,” I said, as I closed the door on the date from hell –and a potentially emotionally abusive crazy person.

Later that night, I received a rather long text message from Debbie Downer, who turned out to be a Captain Obvious too, explaining that it wouldn’t work between us. No kidding.

Have you ever been on a date with a total Debbie Downer?