How Katy Perry Ruined My Date

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It’s a tale as old as time: Girl meets boy. Boy asks girl out on date. Katy Perry ruins date. I mean, what date hasn’t Katy Perry ruined?

I guess I should start from the night I met a really cute boy at 4 a.m. out front of Enids. In one of the weirdest nights of my life, we ended up at a random guy’s grandma’s house in Greenpoint (grandma was notably absent, apparently on vacation in Florida), drinking beers and navigating some serious social tension when one incredibly vocal girl rubbed another incredibly vocal girl the wrong way (I was neither of those girls, although I too am incredibly vocal, especially in matters of Katy Perry).

It was weirdly romantic given that everyone else was arguing; we were surrounded by an old woman’s collection of decades worth of hoarders style ephemera; we didn’t kiss; and he didn’t try to drag me to bed with him at the end of the night in the oft-celebrated New York tradition of poorly realized, early morning sexual encounters. He did, however, ask for my number as we strolled through Greenpoint’s streets at daybreak, searching for a cab to take me home to my bed alone.

Other chivalrous and cute things he did: He did text me almost immediately. He did continue to text me as the week wore on. He did want to see me again. It was, quite simply, as perfect a first meeting as any I’ve had in New York, and with the love gods apparently bestowing their blessings all over me, I think I got a little bit too comfortable. As in, when we finally met for our “first date,” I was hammered. Like, pretty f-cking drunk already, and obviously incapable of making good decisions, namely, telling Katy Perry to sod off when she reared her beautiful, California dream girl head.

It was late when we met up. We sat at the bar and he bought me a beer. Things started going well. He turned towards me on the stool, his knees spread so that mine, pressed against each other, were in between his thighs and he kept touching my arm. I kept touching his too, but it was mostly to stay upright. I knew the date was really good when we started divulging, telling each other personal things that touched on past events, feelings, fears and dreams (romance! Blossoming! Huzzah!). And that’s when it happened.

There she was, in all her f-cking blue-wigged glory. Katy God Damn Perry. I felt her before I saw her, and even though I wanted so badly to ignore her, I couldn’t. The words came up and bubbled onto the bar, spreading like a sickly vomit. And they just kept coming, and coming, a torrent of spam so annoyingly twee even Ryan Seacrest would have been disgusted. I can’t bring myself to repeat the drivel I was spouting but suffice to say, I spoke exclusively on the merits of Katy Perry for at least an hour, didn’t take one breath, and certainly did not allow him to interject or have an opinion contrary to my own at any point.

Look, I love Katy Perry. Sometimes I think I love Katy Perry more than anything I’ve ever loved anything ever before in the universe or ever will love again (total overstatement but I just want you to understand how much I love Katy Perry). I talk about Katy Perry at least once a day and I listen to Teenage Dream a number of times per day that is wholly embarrassing and partly unhealthy for a woman of my age. In fact, I love Katy Perry so much that one Saturday morning my roommate came in to check if I was OK because, in his words, “I was just worried because you’re not playing Katy Perry.” That’s how much I love Katy Perry.

As you can imagine, not everyone is as enthusiastic about Katy Perry as I am. I think I lost him at around the point when I compared Teenage Dream to Michael Jackson’s Bad.

We walked out of the bar as it closed, me expectantly by his side, him walking a little too fast, smoking a little too slowly, and looking anywhere but directly at me. It wasn’t until he’d put me in a cab (alone again) without kissing me that I realized. I pulled out my phone and text him, “I just spoke about Katy Perry that whole time, didn’t I.”

He wrote back, “Yes you did,” and I’ve never shrank so far into a seat before in my life.

That’s how Katy Perry ruined my date, and led me to the depressing conclusion that when all the other spinsters have a menagerie of cats to keep them company, I’ll simply have a home full of Katy Perry memorabilia, and neighborhood children will run screaming as I bundle my wrinkled flesh into a glitter bikini and act out “California Gurls” on my porch.

So damn you, Katy. Damn you and your impeccable pop, your amazing chameleon hair and your beautiful, whipped cream spouting breasts. Damn you all the way to Candy Land. In the wise words of James Murphy (paraphrased) “Katy I love you, but you’re bringing me down.”

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