tuesdays bad dates (BILL PART 2)

When we last left Heather at Tuesday's Bad Dates Land, she had accepted a date from Bill because she couldn't think of any reason why not to...
(Just because I wanted to feel like a radio announcer for a cliff hanger show!)

Anyway, as I said, I can think of several reasons now.

The first of which is, the date appeared to start exactly the same way as the one with Adam. We had just sat down at a restaurant for lunch. We hadn't even gotten the menus yet. And Bill says:

"So...have you ever dated a man of color before?"

I repeat: A MAN OF COLOR. Who the hell says that?

So many responses were flying through my head: "Well, there was the orange-and-green guy from Seattle," or the opposite extreme: "Until now, I was exclusive to albinos." But we hadn't even gotten the menus yet! I felt it was a bit to early to break out the sarcasm. So I simply said:

"No."

He replies, "Why not?"

I'm like, "I don't know." What is this? Some kind of Spike Lee inquisition?

Then he throws out, "Well, what do you think of it?"

"What do I think of WHAT?"

"Dating a man of color?"

"Um, I wouldn't exactly say we're DATING. We haven't even gotten the menus yet."

"Oh, I guess you're right. Ha Ha Ha."

And really, that should have been the end of it. But it wasn't. Which brings us to reason number two why I'll never date Bill again: he just couldn't get past skin color. To me, it is a non-issue. To him, it was the ONLY issue.

Later, after both the menus and food had arrived, we were talking about places we had lived. I mentioned that for a year, I lived in Southie.

"Southie is very dangerous" he said.

"Well, dangerous is a relative term," I said. "Southie wasn't dangerous for ME. I'm a blue-eyed Irish girl. And my dad is a union man. I was as safe as Fort Knox. Now, the guy I was dating at the time, he could have had some issues. You know, at 2 am when drunk, belligerent locals emerged from the bar? But we never had any problems. People were really nice."

"Why would your boyfriend have problems?" he asked.

"His mother was from Syria and his dad was from Lebanon. He didn't BLEND, like me."

"Oh." Bill said. "I thought you had never dated a man of color."

"Well, I guess I never thought of him as a man of color. I just thought of him as Sam."

"I'm sure he thought of himself that way."

"No, he really didn't. It was never an issue for him."

"You don't know that. I'm sure he was always aware that he was dark and you weren't."

"YOU don't know that. I dated him for two years. You never met him. It really was never an issue. Except that sometimes he said that he had superior pigmentation if I got a sunburn. Sam and I never had this ridiculous conversation."

"Oh, I've had this conversation quite a few times" Bill said.

You don't say? Wow. That's a shocker!

"I only date white women" he says. "Usually blondes."

I was about to ask him why he's never dated a woman of color when he clinched it with reason number three why I never want to see Bill again: Bill got really inappropriate. (As if everything up until this point wasn't inappropriate enough.)

"The last woman I went out with at dinner, asked me if it was true that black men had big....." (I'll let you fill in the last word)

I was flabbergasted. WHO THE HELL SAYS THAT????

"Um, that's a little inappropriate!" I said.

"Yeah, I thought so, too" he said.

"I don't mean HER, I mean YOU. It was inappropriate of you to say that to me."

"I was just making conversation."

"You know what?" I said, "This conversation is over." And I left.

I saw Reggie at the gym later on that week.

"Sorry, Reggie. I do NOT like your friend Bill, at all."

"You went OUT with him?" Reggie said. "That guy is an asshole!"

Indeed.