New Bartender and Rant

I had my first real "date" in a while last night. I went out with a bartender I met last week. Overall I would say the date went well, but I can't decide if the chick is a little whacky or not.

Last Saturday I had plans to meet up with my sister and her two friends from Miami for drinks (drinks with one of the Miami-Colombian chicks turned into a hot tub event and all night sexcapade, a story for another time), so I decided to grab a quick drink and a bite to eat at a restaurant by my house beforehand. I was sitting at the bar reading a book while I waited for my food. The bartender asked about the book and we ending up chatting to the point that the rest of the bar was being neglected and our conversation got cut short by her manager. Before I left I asked her for her number so we could talk more, so she wrote her number down on a piece of paper and slid it over to me as I was leaving.

Bartender II:
The bartender is a cute little spitfire. She's short, barely 5' tall, super-thin (no chest, almost too thin), with long strait jet black hair and dark eyes. She's high energy to the point of being spastic and was zipping around the back of the bar like a hummingbird. I'll call her Bartender II, or BII.

This past Tuesday I sent BII a text and asked her if she wanted to meet up for drinks one night this week. She suggested we get together Wednesday after work, and when we decided on a place and time her final text was "Awesome, the food is great there, you'll love it".

This is where I typically go on a tangent about how when a guy asks a girl out specifically for DRINKS for a first date it's fucking rude for her to imply DINNER as well. So I'm going to do it.

If I ask a girl out and clearly say DRINKS, why do chicks make the leap to DINNER? If someone invited you to their house for a cocktail party, would you show up, sit down at their dining room table and ask what they're serving to eat? No, anyone with a modicum of manners would plan to eat before or after the party.

My suggestion for drinks is planned, specific, and has two purposes. The first is that it gives me a way to quickly and comfortably end the night in the event the girl sucks and I want to get out of there. Drinks can be short, thirty minutes to an hour, where as dinner is at least an hour and a half. The goal, both on dates and in most other aspects of my life is to avoid being trapped for extended periods with someone I no longer want to talk to. Secondly, if I truly can't stand her, having to buy her a $100-200 dinner is heaping insult onto injury. Don't get me wrong, I will gladly buy a girl I like dinner, or drinks, or concert tickets, or a fucking helicopter ride over Central Park, whatever she wants, but only after I determine I enjoy spending time with her and she with me. Plus, I still think it's just plain impolite to imply dinner. At least have the balls to say "Well, that place has excellent food, would you like to have dinner?" That shows balls and I would respect that. It says "Hey, buy me dinner motherfucker, I'm worth it" instead of "I'm too shy to ask you to take me to dinner, so I'm going to trick/shame you into doing it."

Let me address the "She'll pay half" argument. It's still goddamn rude. Going back to the cocktail party example, after you were invited over for dinner would you ever say "Oh, I'll bring the sides if you make a roast"? Again, not if you had any social graces. This is the same thing.

My point is, can't a date just be a couple of cocktails?

Anyway, after the chick spun drinks into a four course meal at one of the city's notoriously expensive restaurants I had half a mind to call it off and erase her number from my phone. However, one of my female co-workers talked me out of that and I (still reluctantly) met BII after work for dinner and drinks.

I showed up 15 minutes early and was surprised when she walked in right after me, early as well. She also looked hot, really hot. This description isn't going to work well, but here goes: she had on this VERY short puffy dress-shirt combo thing with no sleeves. It was really strange, like out of a Sci-Fi movie that a chick from Mars would be wearing. It was shiny and from the side you could basically see into it. It was like she had a huge puffy shiny pillow-case on and someone cut the sides off it. I could clearly see what color, style, and size thong she was wearing. Not only that, I could discern the exact pattern of the lace without any real effort. Same for the bra. She also had on really high leather boots. When she walked through the bar everyone, including me, stopped talking and stared. It was borderline slutty, but I'm down with that.

OK, I admit it, I would happily spring for dinner based on the puffy pillowcase dress thing alone.

We had a drink at the bar then asked the host for our table (I had begrudgedly called ahead for a reservation). Turns out she's a pretty cool girl. She's smart, lived all over the world, and has interesting hobbies. The one thing that threw me off was that I thought I caught her in a couple of lies and/or gross exaggerations. For instance, she said she liked to sky dive. I said "That's cool, where did you go?" and she said "I've jumped all over the world, and had 2,000 jumps before my 21st birthday?" I admittedly don't know shit about skydiving, but it would seem to me that 2,000 jumps is a lot in a three year window unless you're in an Airborne unit. There were a few other things, that's just one example.

I am taking her sailing on Sunday, I need another date with her to see what she's really like.