Tuesday, May 1, 2012

An Evening with the Muffin Man

At the request of a friend, I've made this site to tell the sad sad stories that are my very pathetic, usually non-existant, dating life. 

To get it started rather then rewrite my date recap from this past weekend, I'm just posting the e-mail that went around to my friends along with all of it's side notes.  The person this was orignaly wrote to actually is running a dating profile for me.  I was pretty overwhelemed by all of the .... amazing (-ly bad) options out there, so she took over. Therefore there are things that would have been already known to her which I've had to insert notes on for the later readers to understand.  Enjoy!




You need to know to understand this first part: The guys profile was titled "JoeMuffin" so my nickname for him was Muffin Man... and…


An Evening with the Muffin Man: 


Maestro, queue the music!



Do you know the Muffin Man? The Joe Muffin Man, the Muffin Man? Do you know the Muffin Man, who lives in Renton WA?



Well now I know the Muffin Man, the Joe Muffin Man, oh no wait it’s the Nick Muffin Man. Oh now I know this Nick Muffin Man whose name is apparently not Joe.



So why is he called the Joe Muffin Man, Joe Muffin Man, not Nick Muffin Man? Why is he called the Joe Muffin Man, and why the heck did he use Muffin?



In High School he used to eat a Muffin man, a Muffin man, every day man! In High School he ate a giant Muffin, MAN, and his friend liked to call him Joe.





Ok, I’ll stop the silly song now because I am sick of saying Muffin Man. So I gotta say, it was pretty awkward walking up to someone and saying “are you Joe?” and having them reply “um, you know my name is Nick right? I thought I told you that like right away.” Hum... really I don’t remember him telling me much of ANYTHING before tonight. But yah, so that was awkward. And weird. Very weird. The story behind it didn’t make it any less weird to me too.



But I’m getting ahead of myself. So I arrive at this bar about 3 minutes late and I am thinking well it’s only 3 minutes, hopefully that is ok. So I go into the bar and there is a guy about my age at the bar and 2 much older people. I really couldn’t remember what he looked like so I couldn’t tell if the guy about my age was... well... the Joe I was looking for. I looked around the place hoping if it was him he would look up since he was expecting someone. He didn’t. So I went outside and sent him a text message saying I had found the bar ok. (He had been texting me earlier to make sure I could find it as apparently it doesn’t always show up right on Google or Bing maps.) Then I went back inside. The guy at the bar still didn’t look up. So I got a beer and then texted “Joe” asking if he was there yet. No response so I went up to the guy at the bar and asked if he was Joe. He said no and then asked said “Are you meeting someone you’ve never met? Did you like meet off some dating site or something?” He thought this was pretty interesting so we started chatting. I wasn’t sure if this was really Joe and he was just messing with me from what this guy was saying at first. And then I got this text from Joe that said he was at the bar. He said “can’t you see the big guy at the bar texting?” Which made me think this guy was messing with me even more. But then the guy I was talking to mentioned he worked at **** as a vendor and I knew he wasn’t Joe. Joe didn’t know I worked at **** and he works at ^^^^^. So we started chatting and I could tell this guy was interested in me. Ironically he is one of the technicians that supports the electrical issues with my building at work.



About this time “Joe” sends me a text saying he is wearing a WASU hat and then I know he is not at the bar. The other guys friend shows up and then the 3 of us are chatting as Joe, I mean, Nick, finally shows up. Later I learned he lives 2 miles down the road. So apparently he hadn’t left the house yet when I texted him I was there. He had already pushed our meeting time back two times (from 4 to 5 pm and then 5 to 5:30 pm) and then he was 15 minutes late. I kept chatting with the other guys for a minute while Nick (who I still knew as Joe at the time) got a drink. Then he started chatting with someone because apparently he is a regular at this place and goes there almost every day. He came and sat across from me, which was good because in all honestly I wouldn’t have recognized him and only knew him at this point by the hat. I later learned his profile photo is about 6 or 7 years old. Which explains why I don’t recognize him. And he has put on a good amount of weight. But I decide to see how things go because even though he isn’t the best looking guy he could be super sweet and an amazing personality.



Eventually we did get around to chatting, playing darts, playing pool, and a shooting game. Here is a rundown of the conversation and highlights:



He tells me his name is Nick. We chat a little about work. Then he brings up the online dating thing and starts reminiscing about previous girls he’s met and dated through online dating. (Awkward... this is going to be a theme.) At first I’m kind of like, well he seems kind of clueless about the fact you shouldn’t bring this up, so I’ll not let this weird me out. But one story that sticks out to me is about the girl that after 2 months of dating tells him she is pregnant and then later says she isn’t but she was just testing him to see how he would react. He is using this story to tell me about a psycho girl, but what I got out of this is he is in the habit of sleeping with girls he dates a month or so in. So we’re not exactly eye to eye on that. This is about the point where I responded to you* about the underwear but I was thinking things were still ok. 



(*The friend I wrote this to told me I should go into the bathroom and put my underwear on over my pants if things start going terribly wrong.  Then act like nothing had changed so that I could scare the guy off and end the date early.  At this point she texts me and asks if my underwear are on the outside my pants.  I had responded not yet.)



I did manage to get some normal information out of him. He has an older brother and a younger sister. He grew up in Puyallup... but not really, kind of outside of it in the next city over. His brother moved to Japan and was headmaster of a school there where he met his wife. They live just down the street from the bar in the same area as him.



I also got some information I wasn’t that excited to hear out of him. He went to the Seattle Art Institute to get a degree in Graphic Design. It was a 2 year program but he quickly figured out that since he only needed to take 4 classes a semester, instead he could do it in 2 and a half which would allow him to take classes only on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that he had 5 days a week to have fun and party. Which I got the impression he STILL thinks this was a genius idea. However he doesn’t have his degree. You see, he figured out just before his last semester that he didn’t want to be a graphic designer, so why bother taking the last semester and getting a useful degree he didn’t want? So instead he dropped out and took up some odd jobs mowing lawns at a golf course, etc. Until he was running too short on funds and had to move home to live with his parents. Then he got a job at ^^^^, but even there I was misunderstanding him because he is kind of the lowest level, in his own words “grunt guy”, on a team of the production lines. He wants to be a manager but they just changed the policy that you have to have an Engineering Degree to be a manager, and he is studying Business Administration at a community college, and well, he doesn’t want to change his major again.



(Clarification: I have nothing against his job, my only issue was he totally misrepresented himself on his profile and wrote he was IN a management position, not that he was hoping to be in one.  And the whole lack of motivation shown in that he won’t change his major.  Which hopefully he would have grown out of now, but his first stint and college and now again… it doesn’t bode well.)



Also- I’m not exactly clear on if he is currently enrolled in school. He said when he switched to the night shifts to take morning classes they were all full. He never really clarified if he was ever able to get back in to the classes. 



Another fun fact. Apparently he smoked a LOT of pot while in college. To the point that a girlfriend broke up with him over it. She then ended up getting pregnant and marrying her brothers best friend less than a year later as he was the guy that tried to console her when they broke up by bringing her flowers every day to cheer her up. He had secretly been in love with her for a while. But even that guy apparently smoked pot and hid it from her. Then he committed suicide a year later. So really the joke was on her for breaking up with Nick because he smoked pot. (I just wanted to say Joe. Oh this is confusing. Oh and that was Muffin Man’s sentiments not mine.)



Ok, now here is the coup de gras of all of this. So it started when we sat down after playing darts. About 20 minutes in. I thought I saw him adjusting himself. But it was slight at first so I thought I was over thinking. But he kept slightly touching himself... there. And as the night went on this became more pronounced. The guy was repeatedly doing little touches to his crotch. But the WORST was when we were playing pool. I saw him reach to pull his shirt (which had a hole in the right arm pit FYI) up a bit and then saw his hands go for his zipper. I looked away not wanting to see and feeling that this was extremely AWKWARD, but could see from the corner of my eye he totally undid his pants and then messed with... his underwear? Then zipped himself back up. What in the heck? Who does that, especially on the first date? 



From about 30 minutes in I was kind of checking the time wondering when I could get out. But I gave him 2 hours. At that point I had had 2.5 beers myself. He had had a very stiff drink at first and then 3 beers. He had repeatedly asked me if I wanted to do shots. And didn’t understand why I didn’t want to drink more. He thought it strange I liked wine best and didn’t like to drink a lot of hard alcohol. He totally didn’t understand when I said I was ready to move past that and just wanted to drink things I enjoyed to drink slowly and not drink to get drunk anymore. And he mentions he keeps a small keg with some kind of cooling system in his garage at all times. Which he has to replace about once a week.



Anyway, so at this point he wants to get us another pitcher of beer but I say I’m actually going to head home as it is now almost 8 and I have to work the next morning and have a bit of a headache. He hugs me and then says he’ll walk me to my car. I wasn’t super thrilled about that as I was afraid he was going to try and kiss me and didn’t want that. At my car he hugged me again and again I was so afraid he was going to try and kiss me but luckily no. He says it’s his turn to come north next and so I’ll have to stay up late one night so he can come up after work. He gets off work at 11 pm and works down near Tacoma. So that means meeting up at midnight. Apparently he missed my story I had just told him about needing to keep a regular schedule which meant getting to bed at a decent hour since I have to wake up early and lack of sleep causing performance issues at work. But I just say yah and leave. I don’t intend to meet him again.



Oh another funny thing. Remember how he got testy about my joke of Renton being the Ghetto? Well apparently his brother works in Everett and has tried to get him to work up in Everett too. But Joe... I mean Nick... refuses to because there is no way he would ever live in Everett. That city is just to “UHH” for him. He is above that. 



(He actually stopped responding to me online for a while because I told him I didn’t know much about Renton and people used to call it the Ghetto, but that I was interested to learn more about it.  He indirectly called me a snob and the most he ever wrote to me was when he went off on how he was sick of people saying things about how bad Renton was and calling it the ghetto.  That is was a good place to live.  I totally called him out on the date.  I said “Oh, look who’s being the city snob now?”  I don’t think he appreciate it. - Further note for any online readers: After he went off on me I didn't respond.  Then a month later he suddenly wrote me out of the blue asking how I was doing.  After the rant I knew this guy was more drama than I wanted, but a friend got into my account and sent him a message that I wanted to meet him in an effort to perk up my dating life. When he responded super eargerly that he wanted to meet, I decided to give him another shot.  Live and learn.)



Anyway, there is my story of my 2 hours in Renton with ... Nick. I’m not sure what his impression of the date was. He did a LOT of talking. I tried to tell him more about myself but got cut off by him a couple of times. And I was just too polite (?) to tell him that I did not agree going to school for an extra half a year so he could get high all the time was a great idea. That it was in fact a completely dumb idea because of how expensive school is. So I think he took my silence to mean interest and agreement. But it was really just trying to be polite and let him talk so I could figure out who he was and size him up if we had any potential. So we shall see if he tries to contact me again. At which point I guess I text him back and say thanks, it was fun, but I just don’t think we have much in common.



Luckily there are plenty of other fish in the sea.


**Note on this guys screen name: It did dawn on me the first time I read it that JoeMuffin was in reference to "Yo Muffin".  However I like to think the best of people and not assume that they have the mental maturity of a 12 year old upon first acquaintance.  So I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  I do believe his whole story about being called Joe and eating a muffin was just that... a story because he didn't want to explain to this girl he just met his screen name was actually a sexual reference.  Which just adds to his stupidity that he knew he shouldn't explain it, yet he still used it.  Anyway, I went ahead and ran with the Muffin Man euphemism when talking with friends because there was just so much more I could do with it.**

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