I Don’t Know Anything About Dating

Sep. 20, 2011

By Brad Pike info

Brad Pike is a writer and performer in Chicago. His writing has been featured on The Sixth Wall, Thought Catalog, The ...

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It’s difficult for me to talk about relationships and dating because it seems everyone knows more than me, and it always becomes rapidly clear as I elucidate my own flawed opinions that I don’t know anything about anything and should just shut the hell up. Nevertheless, I soldier on against the rising tide of derision like a fat dumb cow trotting earnestly into the ocean to drown.

In dealing romantically with women, there is, I am told, a complicated system of rules governing behavior. The more apparent one — do not head butt her, do not sit in a car parked outside her house all night, do not text her fifty times a day and then start screaming and then guzzle Drano — I understand. The subtler ones I tend to fail on. A signal which others would describe as “like a flashing ten-foot-tall neon sign” I overlook or misinterpret. Because of this tendency for confusion, I have an impulse to ask a lot of questions, many many questions — something which there is also a rule against because evidently asking questions does not exude “confidence” and “manliness.” I have a lot of questions like, “Are we dating now?” and “What does this mean?” and “If I kiss your face, will you flee in terror?” and “Am I acting like a clingy person, and if so, does it bother you?” All of these questions indicate a person who lacks confidence. All of these questions asked all at once consecutively indicate a person in a state of manic insecurity. This behavior also seems to stereotypically be a “girl thing” and reflects poorly on my potential as a boyfriend. (Which is why I’m writing about it on the internet. Because I’m an idiot.)

Once, after a long stretch of no communication, an ex invited me to a picnic with her new boyfriend and a few other friends. My reaction was to rant about it to anyone in the vicinity — “She’s taking advantage of how reasonable I am! She should be afraid I’ll wreak havoc at the picnic and flip over a table and claw my own eyes out!” I wrote a poem called “Fuck Your Picnic.” I integrated this event into the tragic narrative of my life set to the Road to Perdition soundtrack. Then I went to the picnic, enjoyed myself, and felt generally like a melodramatic idiot.

At the picnic was also this girl, my friend’s sister — let us proceed past this small detail without comment — who exhibited signs which seemed eerily analogous to flirting. She followed me around, seemed intent on talking to me, and later, when I asked for her phone number, she happily gave it. One of my friends even observed, “She sure seems interested in you.” This all seemed like a pretty unlikely boon from a previously cruel and hateful deity. Nevertheless, I took the pieces of this puzzle, assembled it, and — based on my interpretation of the resulting picture — I made the momentous decision to ask her out for coffee. Coffee turned into walking around campus. Walking around campus turned into driving over to her dorm room. When I asked her if she wanted me to come inside, she answered yes. All seemed to be going shockingly well. Impossibly well.

After discussing her art for a few minutes or so, I made a move to kiss her face. As my face swung toward hers, she dodged out of the way and started babbling about some ex boyfriend of hers she was still somehow involved with. I have never gone flaccid so quickly. She started crying. The air was sucked out of the room. Evidently, she had no idea this was a date. She thought I was a friendly boy who wanted to show her around town. At this point, I stood up and said something dramatic like, “I MUST LEAVE THIS FOUL DEN OF DECEIT!”

In my car outside, I stared intently at the steering wheel. I recycled the night in my mind, dissecting it for clues as to what had led me so inexorably to this moment. For one thing, she made a particularly big deal out of paying for her coffee, would not let me pay for it under any circumstances. For another, she hadn’t made any overt gestures or comments that would confirm her attraction to me or knowledge that this was a date. I also had never specifically said “date” or “I like you in a romantic type fashion,” or any other clear warnings that this would be more than a fun activity for platonic friends. Other than that… nothing! Confusion! Brief few minutes of emotional devastation! Then I moved on with my life. (Except for the whole thing where I vividly recall this incident many years later.)

But this wouldn’t be the last time I went on a “date” like this which is why I always return to it as a kind of paragon of awfulness. Experiences like this have led me to be highly suspicious of every aspect of a date. Nothing is for sure. Everything is in doubt. I need a network of experienced analysts nearby to assist me in interpreting various complicated situations, but instead I receive input like, “You fuck her yet, bro?” This is why you should never listen to me when it comes to dating — because I never know what I’m talking about. TC mark

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image – James Williams

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  • http://www.oneyearintexas.com Perfect Circles

    That’s why you don’t try to kiss someone on a first date unless the welcome signs are so large you fear being killed by one of them falling on you.  Otherwise, take it a little slower and it will become more and more obvious what she might want – and you might take some time to think about what you want too.

    • http://www.facebook.com/brad.pike Brad Pike

      Eh, this was a long time ago. I was ever so slightly dumber than I am now.

      • http://www.oneyearintexas.com Perfect Circles

        Brad you seem like a very self-aware young man.  The only problem might be that you are the wrong gender.  Consider reassignment surgery and therapy.  

      • http://www.facebook.com/brad.pike Brad Pike

        I’m receiving many valuable insights today, thank you.

  • Aja

    This made me laugh so hard.  I’m clueless too.  And female and probably older than you.  So don’t beat yourself up too bad.

  • Anonymous

    My heart goes out to you….

    Come let’s form a unisex support group.

  • http://idratherbesailing.tumblr.com/ Becca

    Trust me, it isn’t easy on the female end of things either!  That question, “So, are we dating?” has gotten me into so much trouble that I am afraid to ever brooch the subject again. Still, how long do you dwell in unlabeled ambiguity?  How do you introduce each other? “This is my friend So and So”?  If I say this does that give the impression that I’m not interested in being more?  It is a mess.  I like games, but the board variation, or even the rpg’s that involve dice and complicated math, but when it comes to human interaction games I am complete shit. 

    All of this was really just to say, you are not allow!  There are others out there who know nothing about dating.  If they are at all like me, however, I am afraid they are all sitting in their respective apartments watching Doctor Who and Game of Thrones. :-p

  • Dontspammebro

    Best thing I’ve ever read on TC.

  • Jordan

    You had a rager already?

    • http://www.facebook.com/brad.pike Brad Pike

      RAGERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! …yes.

  • http://twitter.com/Hollarom Arom Choe

    I
    am
    CRYING.

  • http://www.nosexcity.com NoSexCity

    For your sake, I pray this is a pen name. Otherwise… prepare to hate Google for the rest of your young dating life.

    • http://www.facebook.com/brad.pike Brad Pike

      Probably true. I have a pretty big dumb mouth I think.

      • http://www.nosexcity.com NoSexCity

        If nothing else, it’ll give you something else to write about. (Speaking from experience, here.)

  • eron

    “you fuck her yet, bro?” hahaha ugh the least helpful question ever. 

  • theoneandonly

    To be honest, if a man asked me “if I kiss your face, will you flee in terror?” I’d date him in a second.

    • Anna Beth

      Oh, agreed!

    • RG

      No, you probably wouldn’t…

  • Alex

    God, you are just the funniest. And I get your confusion. Dating is WEIRD.

  • http://karyninny.com/ karyn

    i love you, this, whatever, all of it. does that make you flee in terror?

  • Kay

    You should ask those questions anyways, everyone must already know you’re weird. It’s better a girl understand that you’re not like everyone else than to be pulled in and a few weeks later think “Ohhh my god. What have I gotten myself into? This guy appreciates weird things and states the obvious with dry humor waaay too much.”

  • a.

    Story of my life, only the girl’s side. I never know it’s a date, and then I freak out when they make a move.

  • Laura Girio Bolonhezi

    You’re not an idiot.

    She’s is though.

    I love you text.

    Congrats :)

  • Anonymous

    I literally just wrote about the same thing from the female perspective.  Glad to know it’s frustrating and confusing and wonderful and terrible for both sides.

  • Anonymous

    I literally lol’d three times. That’s pretty incredible for a blog post. Congratulations. I’ve had similar “date” experiences, including one where a stripper pole almost fell in me. It was…weird.

    • http://www.facebook.com/brad.pike Brad Pike

      The circumstances of this event sound intense.

      • Anonymous

        On not in, I wasn’t impaled. And less intense than you think: I thought I was going to be doing some date-esque interpersonal chilling w. this girl and through a series of events I ended on a couch high while a bunch of girls tried out a really chintzy mail-order stipper pole in the dorm lounge for some girl’s birthday, and it slipped off the ceiling and almost fell on me, but I caught it. They were also looping the instructional video at the time which was unpleasant to watch to say the least.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6IFPDSFKEQJE2ZPP3ASE35MRL4 Laura

      Fell IN you…or ON you? That minor detail may change the seriousness of your situation drastically

  • Anonymous

    *on me, not in me.

  • Anonymous

    Soooo relate to this.  I heard it does kind of works out if both sexes are insecure and ask if they are doing something right. Then you can be awkward together. But like you I’m probably talking out of my ass, because I don’t get dating either.  Everyone seems to move so fast. I never understand what the rush is, therefore I’m the queen of platonic relationships.    

  • xra

    buck up and figure it out, there’s nothing more contemptible in our current society than a low-value male

    a lot of it comes down to reading body language, and the right frame of mind (read: you are an oak tree)

    • http://www.facebook.com/brad.pike Brad Pike

      Okie doke.

      • Aurora

        Haha.

  • Jessica

    Hm, I ironically wrote a blog on this very subject from the female perspective. I’m 24 and just out of a 5 year long relationship where I lived with my ex for 4 1/2 of those years. I feel completely inept at dating…. Put me in a relationship and I’m a pro. But that whole step to being in one of those? Yeah, I’m pretty f’ing clueless.

    Part of what I wrote:

    “Dating? Wot? How does one go about this “dating” thing? If I like
    you, do I tell you that I like you? Do I wait for you to tell me that
    you like me? Do I wait for you to never call me again? Should I just
    assume that’s what’s going to happen? Do I put a plastic bag over my
    head and relieve myself of the neurotic mess I’m turning into from
    wondering all of these things? O_O 
    Do you call/text me or
    is it weird if I do that part first? I mean, I know I have a vagina and
    all….but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to pick up the phone and
    thank you for a nice time out.
     
    If you don’t call/text
    right away, does that mean you’re not interested or is there a sort of
    “trick” to all this stuff and really you are?”

    In short, I sympathize.

  • Makia Gold Rucks

    well, i don’t know, this sucks, but everything’s going great for me and your multivitamin article…so uhhh…take a clue…clue stands for more vitamins. 

    more vitamins = more sex.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=78000959 Kasey Baker

    wow i love this. i am the girl that always ends up in situations where i think i’m just hanging out with a guy as friends, and then at the end of the night–out of left field–he tries to kiss me! ahhh! so awkward. it’s nice to see the other end’s perspective. obviously we’re both incapable of reading people/giving out clear signals… 

  • LDN

    I want to be your friend.

  • Kennneth

    Clearly the bitch had something wrong with her, not you. Don’t let it fuck up your game, man. 

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=508371039 Rayan Khayat

      LOL I see what you did there

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