In 2001, I met this girl at a nightclub in New York City. She was pretty cute, had a job as a magazine editor (as did I), seemed pretty smart and willing to hop in the sack with me if I’d just put forth some effort to woo her. We went out a few times and she mentioned she’d been wanting to eat at some fancy restaurant near the meat packing district that took weeks to get a reservation at. So I made some calls and asked around and lo and behold my boss, who sat on the New York City restaurant board for some unknown reason, knew the owner. What luck! If you’ve ever seen the movie American Psycho, and know the running gag about getting a table at Dorsia, then you’ll understand what type of place this was. I made the reservation for a couple of days later. She said okay, but for some reason she wasn’t that excited about it. She seemed sort of annoyed. Maybe because I got the reservation when she couldn’t? I don’t know.
So here I am, getting a table at an elite restaurant that most people would kill for, thinking that this is really going to impress the pants off of her—literally. But I wouldn’t be including it in this book if things had gone as planned, now would I?
Each entrée on the menu cost well over $75. I was making some good money at the time so I was willing to splurge a bit. Right off the bat my date orders a $100 bottle of wine. I like wine, don’t get me wrong, and I can drink a bottle and a half of the stuff in a night and still remain lucid, but I subscribe to the notion that even the best bottle of wine is just grape juice after you’re drunk, which for most people is by the second glass. Did I mention she was about 5'2" and weighed 90 pounds? Yeah, one glass was going to be enough for her. The $30 bottle of wine would have sufficed. But we’ll see how the expensive, potent wine plays into this in a minute.
So we order our entrees. A very nice waiter took our order. He was a good looking guy, you know, as they are apt to hire at such an establishment, where the In Crowd and celebrities hang out. Mostly likely the entire staff of mid-twenty-somethings were all waiters-by-night and models-by-day. It was that kind of place. We make small talk and finish off a glass of wine. $50 down the hatch. Ok, that’s cool, it’s good wine, and she’s really starting to loosen up now, but there’s something weird about her attitude. She’s becoming judgmental, and elitist, a know-it-all. I figure she’s just drinking the wine too fast. It was pretty strong. So I pour her another.
More small talk ensues, and she goes on the attack for some reason. I’m doing my best to ignore the backhanded compliments, the random insults, the name dropping, the megalomania. Finally the food comes. We take maybe two bites and she looks up at me. “Our waiter…I fucked him a couple of weeks ago.” Ah, well, there you go. She knows the waiter. That’s why she’s being negative. But the look in her eye let’s me know she not angry at him, instead she’s...purposefully antagonizing me? I don’t know if she meant it to be enticing, as in, “Hey, I fuck lots of guys and you could be next,” but I was pretty put off. I’m dropping good money on this dinner and don’t need to know she’s been banging the guy bringing me my food. I can’t remember my reply, but I remember the night went downhill from there. Through the dinner she starts calling me names and telling me I’m a nobody. She’s definitely mad at me for some unknown reason. She keeps referring to me as a little boy. I was twenty six at the time. Not exactly old in this day and age, but I had gotten my college degree and been in the work force for four years so it wasn’t like I was some teenager who had to have Dad’s car home by midnight or something. Not to mention she was a year younger than me.
The waiter comes back to take the food, which I’ve barely touched. She gives him some kind of sex-crazed leer and he looks at her like he’s trying to understand the punchline to a bad joke. I still can’t tell if she really fucked him or not. Five minutes later I deicide that we should order dessert and maybe try to change the subject. For some reason I’m trying to salvage the night. Maybe for sex? I don’t know. I really don’t. The desserts are $50 a pop. I give the waiter our orders.
Now she’s really pissed at me. “You think you’re cool because you work at some nightclub and run some magazine but I already know the people you know. I knew them before you knew them. Do you even know about The Bank?”
“The club downtown. Yeah.”
“I know all the DJs there. Did you know Allen Ginsberg asked for me to be at his bedside when he died. He loved my writing so much he said I inspired him.”
I mean, lots of weird shit was coming out of her by now and I didn’t know what to believe or not to believe. Maybe she knew Ginsberg, and if so, good for her. I don’t know that it’s something one should hold over others’ heads, but whatever. So anyway, long story short, I can see she’s drunk and insane and I decide this is not going to work and start thinking about whether or not I can meet up with my friends. At least we can all laugh about it. By the time the waiter comes back we’re not even talking now—and she’s still eyeball fucking the guy, who’s looking at her like he needs to call the authorities. Finally I tell her we shouldn’t see each other again, that she can’t handle her liquor, that we should go our separate ways tonight. I tell her this as she’s raising a full glass of wine to her lips. When she hears my words she flings the red wine all over me. Just like in a movie! I had on a crushed red Velvet shirt with white silk panels. I know, you’re thinking, “What the hell kind of shirt is that! I’d throw wine on you too, you jackass.” The shirt was a gift from my father. It was a really cool rockabilly lounge shirt made by Tattooed Kingpin (check ‘em out if you like rockabilly stuff). If you don’t like rockabilly stuff then, yeah, it seems goofy, but my point is more that is was an expensive shirt. And now it was covered in very expensive red wine.
The shirt was ruined.
Let’s stop for a second and figure the tab here. It was $200 for two bottles of wine, $150 for the diner, $50 for the desserts, and $100 for the shirt. Roughly $500. I couldn’t leave because I still needed to pay the bill. So I tell her to get the hell out before I call the cops…or something. I don’t exactly remember what I said I just knew that if she didn’t leave I was going to throw my wine back at her, or maybe something more sinister. I was PISSED. Yeah, capital PISSED. Not the British pissed, as in drunk, which only she was, I mean fucking mad! Thankfully she got up in a huff and left. I sat alone in the booth for a good ten minutes until the waiter came to get the check. I didn’t ask him if he’d fucked my date. If he did, I didn’t care. I tipped him $100 and apologized for my date’s behavior (now we’re up to $600). He said he understood. To this day I seriously doubt he knew her. Now here’s the kicker. I walk outside the restaurant, out into the frigid February Manhattan night. Snowdrifts are plowed up on every corner. Slush puddles fill the streets. It’s almost zero degrees. I start walking to the corner, towards 10th Ave, deciding I’ll grab a cab.
But something catches my eye. Something in the street. I stop and make my way over.
She’s lying in the middle of the fucking road, in a slush puddle, crying her eyes out!
Now here, boys and girls, is where you’re saying, just run away already! But no, not me. I suddenly feel bad, and offer to get her a cab. She says she wants to lay in the street and die. I tell her a car will run her over any second, but she doesn’t care.
I walk back to the restaurant and ask the greeter to call a cab for the crazy girl in the street. They inform me that they’ve already called the police because apparently when she was leaving she threatened one of the waitstaff. They just want me out as well, and do not let me use the phone. I walk back to the puddle, pick her up, tell her she’s going to go to jail if she doesn’t start moving (she can barely stand now she’s so drunk, and covered in freezing, wet slush) and walk her to the corner. I hail a cab with her hanging on my shoulder and calling me random names with lots of four letter words. Somehow I got her home. I actually dated her again after that, for a while, and it did not end well…yes, I’m stupid. I thought she’d apologize and change and we’d avoid expensive alcohol. But no, some crazy people just stay crazy. But that’s all for another book. Point is, that date was a major warning and I ignored it, tried to see the good in her. But in the end she was just batshit insane. Some girls are just psycho, and yes, some guys are just psycho as well. (Hell, I've been told by enough girls that I've got some loose screws myself.) It’s just the way it is. Now, if you think that story is crazy, flip the page and read about some dates that put my story to shame. Enjoy