worst date ever

For some reason, I feel inspired this afternoon to tell the story of the worst date I’ve ever been on, nearly 12 years ago.

(Maybe because I had a particularly nice date a few days ago — which I’ve promised not to blog about. And I hope seriously not to have any future disastrous encounters that might top this one from 1996. Oh, and names have been changed — not so much to protect the innocent, but to keep me out of trouble.)

In April 1996, I met a young man named Henry. We were both 26, and he’d answered an ad my housemate and I had put in the newspaper, looking for someone to rent our third bedroom. A couple of hours after he came to see the place, he called and invited me out for coffee. He seemed pleasant enough, so I accepted a dinner invitation several days later.

It was a beautiful spring evening in Richmond, Virginia, and I arrived at his house — more accurately, the house he was sharing with a married couple and their child — expecting a meandering stroll in the direction of one of the many restaurants in the Carytown district. Instead, Henry greeted me at the door and said he thought it would be more fun if we stayed in and cooked dinner together.

I soon discovered that the reason for the change in plan was because he’d forgotten that he’d promised his housemates that he’d babysit for them that evening, and he didn’t want to reschedule our date. I also discovered that there wasn’t actually any food in the house.

The housemates had a huge row on their way out the door to the romantic dinner that was supposed to magically heal their relationship. It was pretty unpleasant to sit in the living room, a stranger to everyone around me, while the argument raged. They finally got themselves out the door, but then it was time to entertain the toddler, who would soon need to be packed off to bed. So I played with the kid while Henry tried to figure out what to do about our dinner — Order in? Leave me to watch the child while he ran to the grocery store?

Henry was obviously embarrassed and frazzled, and I tried to reassure him — even though I probably should have been at least frustrated, if not furious. I made some comment that Tax Day was nearly over — it was April 15 — and suggested that at least he could relax about already having taken care of filing his taxes.

He froze, and turned to me with a look of horror on his face. I’m hoping that child has forgotten the string of expletives that Henry spat out as he nearly tore his hair out of his head. That’s right; he’d not yet done his taxes.

I should have gotten up and left, allowing Henry the time and space to get himself together, tend to his babysitting duties, and get his federal paperwork in order. But I didn’t. Because I’m an idiot and always want to help. So I offered to help him do his taxes.

I sat down at the dining room table with his 1040 and a handful of receipts and bank statements. Keep in mind that we’d still not eaten anything — I was starving — and there was a toddler running about. Henry paced back and forth behind me, still muttering various curses. I looked up and asked him if he had any 1099s for contract work or investment dividends.

Henry stopped pacing and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “My wife has all those.”

Umm, your who?

Yes, this is how I discovered that the woman Henry had referred to as “the ex,” was a wife, not a girlfriend… and that they had only recently separated. Wonderful. I held my tongue. Getting upset wasn’t going to help in that moment, so I next asked where his W2 might be, which is when all the color drained from his face.

His W2 was on his desk, at work, behind several locked doors, to which he didn’t have a key.

Henry launched into full panic mode at that point. He got on the phone to his boss — it was about 9:30 p.m. at this point — begging him to meet him at the office to let him inside. Henry stormed out the door, leaving me with this toddler, who immediately began crying and screaming, because he was up way past his bedtime, and everyone who lived with him had left him. I scooped the little one up into my arms and sang to him. He quieted down, and I carried him upstairs to his crib. I laid him down and stood watch over him, stroking his hair and singing him back to sleep whenever he stirred awake.

That was the most pleasant part of the evening.

About an hour later, Henry returned, armed with his W2 and the 1099s — he’d apparently stopped off to see the wife on the way back. I’m sure he was still expecting me to do his taxes for him, since he had no clue what he was doing and I’d been doing my own taxes for years. I just moved him toward the table, sat him down in front of his own paperwork, and then slipped out the front door. I stopped off for Chinese take-out on my way home.