BAD DATE
ALL THESE STORIES ARE TRUE EXCEPT FOR THE ONES THAT AREN’T
MOMMA’S BOY
as told by KARI SCHWARTZ
So my first time meeting this guy I already got the impression that it was going to be bad because he kept asking me if I liked clingy guys and if I liked to cuddle. Oh and he kept calling me “babe.” I hate BABE. But I decided to give him a chance anyway. Before our date he lets me know that he has an eye condition and can’t drive, so his mom has to drop him off at the mall that we are meeting. Cool, that’s fine. We walk around the mall, talk for hours, seems to be going decently. He decides that he wants to eat. So I drive us to Olive Garden and wait for a table. The whole time he is cuddling me. Ugh. Then we sit down and he lets his mom know that dinner is ordered and our date will be ending soon. Before our food can come his mom arrives, waiting. He apologizes, then sits right next to me and kisses me. The flattest kiss in the world. He tells me I’m a really good kisser and asks me to be his GIRLFRIEND! So I awkwardly tell him that I think we should wait and he agrees. The rest of the week, he continues to ask me how I’m doing and tells me that he bought me a birthday gift. He barely knows me at this point. So the night of my 21st birthday I get drunk and tell him that I don’t want to see him anymore. He FREAKS OUT. Starts telling me that it will work out really great and that I don’t really know him yet and that we could last. I tell him no and end it. Over the next few days he proceeds to ask me if I want to hang out and if we can talk. I don’t respond. Then I block his number.
GRIZZLY BEAR
as told by ANONYMOUS
The year was 2014. His favorite band was Grizzly Bear. I was reminded of this fact 8 times.
WRONG IMPRESSION as told by DANNI WU
I went on a blind date with this guy who complained about missing his LAN gaming friends and claimed to be trying to be vegan, all while making immature jokes when we were at the DIA and apparently carrying a concealed handgun in his coat. He also had a car filled with trash up to the seat, to the point where I was so disgusted that I walked home in the rain when he offered to give me a ride home so he wouldn’t know where I lived.
IMMINENT DOOM as told by SAM PATEL
Every guy in a long relationship gets dragged to the mall. Here’s my story from one of those times. I was a dumb teenager with nothing better to do on a hot summer day so of course I went with my (now ex) girlfriend to, *sigh*, the mall. We do the rounds, hit some stores, she looks at everything and buys nothing, you know the deal. Eventually we get hungry and go to the food court. I make a beeline to the Taco Bell (my only salvation) while she gets some lemon rice soup from a Middle Eastern joint. We sit down, I start chomping away, and she’s about 3 spoonfuls in when a strange look comes over her face. It’s that look that says “imminent doom.” Hostiles inbound. You know that look. It’s frozen on her face for one second, and then - no warning - she pukes right over the side of the table. Right there. In the middle of the food court. Of the mall. I sit there not knowing how to even react to this, just awkwardly watching it happen. She was too far across the table for me to hold her hair, but close enough that I felt the flecks of vomit hit my exposed legs (shorts, never again). I chance a look down at the floor, and yup, that’s the exact same lemon rice soup that’s still sitting across the table. No change in texture, but somehow it’s ten times grosser down there. So she finishes her bit and then looks up, not even red-faced, and says “Oops.” Oops? That’s it? As I’m the man of the relationship it’s my task to find janitorial staff, and, still dumbstruck, inform him that “my girlfriend just threw up over there.” Mr. Clean seems to take issue with that for some reason, as if I had a hand in being partially vomited on two minutes ago. But he gets the message, I slouch away, and I find myself buying a bucket soon after the ride home. Didn’t even get to finish my burrito.
NEVER TAKE A GIRL TO FUDDRUCKERS as told by BETHANY RADLOFF
So. I was a tutor at the College for Creative Studies for a couple years and in my Junior year, I had this one student frequently come to have me correct his essays. The guy was nice enough, and the essays weren’t horrible so when he came by the 4th time, and asked me out on a date, I said yes. IMMEDIATELY after my acceptance of this date, he unloads that he is 8 years older than me, was previously in the navy, had been married and had recently divorced, wasn’t incredibly interested in art, and currently lived with his alcoholic father. At this point, regardless of the billion red flags that had just erected themselves in my head, I had already committed to one date and so I didn’t say no. As if the universe was trying to throw me a warning sign - I contracted Bronchitis a day before we were suppose to go out. But I am a woman of my word so phlegm or no phlegm, voice or no voice, I would be damned if I didn’t live up to my commitment. So, per his choices- we went to see the most romantic of movies, Dreamworks’ Puss-In-Boots, and then ate at the most romantic of dining locations, Fuddruckers. If you’ve never been, it’s the restaurant equivalent of your weird uncle’s basement, which he built, and where he stores his neon sign collection. I was so high on cough-syrup that I can’t remember the movie and so sick that I couldn’t taste the food. We had absolutely nothing in common, and it was clear that we were in completely different stages of life. My breaking point was when a child, from the only other party that was in this huge empty restaurant, ran over and placed an “It’s a girl!” sticker on the table in front of me. This prompted my drugged brain to conclude that I was most definitely pregnant and I promptly had to leave. I told him there would not be another date, he got angry at me for deciding that, and once every 2 months for about a year, he would send me passive aggressive facebook messages about how I was ignoring him… which after the first couple, was true.
PIZZA DICK
as told by ANONYMOUS I was a manager of a pizza place and did a lot of delivery service to the GM plant close by to where I lived at the time. I brought this security guard his food and it lead to him asking for my number and i freaking gave it to him. GOD -.- Then we started messaging and the next week we met again for a delivery and he asked to me go over to his house. I went over to his house and he ended up being like 30! O.O we had the worst 2 min sex of my life and he got major blue balls. I laughed at him, and I left, and he messaged me for three weeks with no avail.
POOP
as told by ANONYMOUS
When I was a baby freshman in college I had boy over. I had been drinking and we were getting down to business in my room. I can’t remember how it came up but at some point I said to him “I say poop all the time”. We did not have sex that night.
THE NIGHT
as told by ANONYMOUS I will begin this story by assuring you that this is, unfortunately, a work of non-fiction. I was at a bar with a bunch of friends. I had been working on one this guy for awhile, you know what I mean. We both knew this was ‘The Night.’ Seriously, this had been a long time coming. We get decently drunk and head back to my place. Things were going well and we start having sex. I’m going to get a little graphic for the rest of this story but its nothing too bad. Its purely to help the illustrative process, promise. We’re like twenty minutes into having sex. At this point he is on top, his hands are at my eye level supporting himself against the bed, things are continuing to go well as far as I can recall. Then I see out of the corner of my eye that he turns his wrist to look at the face of his watch. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING LOOKING AT YOUR WATCH?! (this is technically hypocritical of me because I always look at the clock during sex even if I’m having a good time).
He looks at me and says he’s sorry but he has to go.
I am so confused and insulted by this statement but I’m also like what the fuck you can’t leave in the middle of sex. I say “what?” and he replies that he has a big meeting in the morning about his summer internship and that it is “really important” for his “future”. Yeah right. To reiterate, I’m drunk, and I believe it is important to finish what you’ve started, so I say, “I think you should just stay for like ten more minutes.” He says “I wish I could, I’m sorry, but I really must go.” He does one or two more pumps, promises that he will make it up to me (he tries to, but fails, you know what I mean) gets out, gets dressed and leaves. I am left in my bed drunk, naked, sexually frustrated, and wondering what just happened.
LEND AN EAR
as told by ANONYMOUS It all started at a house show on Gratiot. I was a few too many beers deep, and an unassuming guy asked for my phone number. I drunkenly gave it to him, and the rest was history. We meet a few weeks later for what I thought was going to be a date. He came over, we smoked a joint and went up to the roof to look at the city skyline. After about an hour or so, I suggested we go grab a drink somewhere, go for a walk… SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Anything but sit around in my living room with my (at the time) terrible roommate who was incessantly hitting on him. He said no. He’d rather smoke more. So, I hesitantly rolled another joint. He didn’t “feel” like walking…or going to do anything for that matter. I put on my Nobunny record, hoping “Hippy Witch” might spark some conversation. We talked about music for a while…he told me that he was in a rock band and that John Mayer was his major musical influence. John FREAKING Mayer. The red flags were popping up all over the place, but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe he was just shy and didn’t want to go out anywhere, maybe he was broke and didn’t want me to have to pay for drinks…nonetheless, I kept trekking onward, thinking there was a glimmer of hope that he’d say or do something that we could connect on. Instead, he continued to talk about himself and his musical influences, and how “enlightened” he was after taking a few hits of acid at a pine knob concert last spring. I was losing hope, and desperately trying to get this guy out of my living room. Suddenly, without warning, he stuck his tongue in my ear. A wet willy. My ear felt exploited and slobbery….just about the least sexy thing on the planet. Then tried to stick his hands down my pants. I immediately pulled away and told him it’s time to leave. He then turned the entire situation on me, told me I was being immature and that we’re two adults, we were expected to have sex on the first date. I graciously asked him to get out of my living room, told him there’d be no second date and ran to my bathroom to bleach my ear.
BLOODY MARY
as told by ANONYMOUS So I dated this girl for about three weeks maybe a little longer, I don’t remember I try not to think about it that much. She seemed perfectly normal at first and everything seemed to be going great. There was only one thing that bothered me, every date we went on she was always wearing a heavy long sleeve shirts or a hoodies, now this would be okay if it wasn’t the middle of fucking summer. So i brought it up, turned out she liked to cut herself....A LOT!!. Now to most people this would probably be a huge deal breaker, but for some reason I continued to go out with her, whatever everyone has their flaws...right? Well turns out some people have flaws and some people are really fucked up. Our relationship started to get more intimate after about a week and a half, you know like sex and stuff. The first time we had sex it was awkward, she seemed like she wasn’t into it at all. The second time she asked me if she could cut herself while we did it, I let her know I i wasn’t really comfortable with that but she decided that she was just going to cut herself anyway, she was super into it this time. Around week three she asked ME to cut her while we had sex, At that point i couldn’t do it anymore so I ended it and then promptly fell into a spiraling bout of self loathing and disgust.
“CAN I LIVE WITH YOU?” as told by ANONYMOUS
I met this guy while I was working at my job (an indoor bouncy castle play area) when he came in for his little sisters birthday, and my manager encouraged me to talk to him because I hardly ever expressed any desire to date anyone. He had just moved to the area and had no local friends, no job, no car, and he wasn’t in school but I texted him for about two months. The only date we ever really went on was him coming to my house and watching Pirates of the Carebbean 4. Afterwards I drove him home, he gave me a kiss and called it “awkward” and asked if my parents knew he was my boyfriend, which he really wasn’t. About a week after I got a phone call from him. He had been kicked out of his house (Why? I never knew) and needed a place to stay. I had only met him three times in total, and he wanted to live with me. I had never been in a relationship but this was not something I knew how to handle. I told him that wasn’t an option. My dad gave me a number to a shelter and I awkwardly texted it to him. The relationship went no further after that.
THE ANAL BEAD STORY as told by ALEX REINKE
I want to preface this story with a extremely important statement; This did not happen to me.
This is not my story, but it’s a great story, so I have to tell it. Names are changed to protect the identity of a man who has already suffered enough.
My friend Richard had been in love with Alison for about 2 years. He’d hovered around, dated other girls, but mostly he’d just waited for her to finally acknowledge him and his feelings. Alright, so one night, he gets completely wasted and confesses his feelings, and I don’t know her exact response but I guess it was positive because they wound up in her bedroom and things got heated. He got her clothes off, and it’s everything he’s dreamed of for the last 2 years. So he’s ready to go, like more than ever, but she puts up her hand and tells him to hold off for a second. So he freaks out, no way he came this far only to stop here. So he asks her whats wrong and she kind of shyly tells him that she wants to sleep with him, but only on one condition. She reaches under the bed and pulls out a long string of anal beads, and tells him that if they’re gonna have sex, he has to use these. On himself. What would you do? I mean, you gotta look at this thing from his perspective. 2 years of his life for this girl, waiting and waiting, and now here’s his chance. You saying you wouldn’t? So fast forward 5 or 10 uncomfortable minutes later and he’s got a string of beads hanging out of his ass, but he’s also having sex with the girl of his dreams. So after a while, he’s right there. You know what I mean? So he’s at the end of his rope and he tells her “I’m going to cum”. As the words leave his mouth, she grabs the strings of beads and rips it out all at once. He immediately begins to shit everywhere. He leaps out of the bed and starts running for the bathroom, shitting and apologizing the whole way. He gets into the bathroom, slams the door and just starts crying and trying to clean himself up. He’s sobbing in the bathroom, apologizing, standing in the shower, hes done a complete 180 on the emotional scale. Meanwhile, it’s dead quiet outside. He’s in the bathroom for maybe 5 minutes, and he’s finally cleaned up enough that he’s willing to walk out. So he comes out, apologizing as he opens the door, and what does he see? Alison lying in the bed, covered in his shit, just rolling around. Like, completely fine with it. As if that was her goal the whole time. At this point, he was just ruined. He just left, didn’t say a word. What is there to say? Two years of friendship down the drain. He cut all contact and they haven’t spoken since. That’s the end of the story. His life was ruined by this moment. There is no resolution. Only shit.
NICK DAUPHIN:
An illustrator and humorist that hasn’t really gone on too many dates. nick.dauphin@gmail.com nickdauphin.com
This zine wouldn’t be the zine it is today without the help of: Stephen Schudlich, Bailey Knudsen, Alex Reinke and the submissions from Kari Schwartz, Bethany Radloff, Sam Patel, Danni Wu, Alex Reinke and all my friends and aquantances who wished to remain anonymous Thanks