Guilty Pleasure: An activity, hobby, or fascination that does not align with the social norms of a person’s sex, age, socio-economic status, or religious background that must be hidden from one’s peer group to avoid embarrassment or any potential wedgie situations.
Everybody has one. Some people really like Abba. Some love Harry Potter. And some adult women are FAR too enamored with silly vampire movies to see an enormous hole in the plot. Why does a vampire, who is seemingly hundreds of years old, choose to date a teenager? This vampire has seen countless generations of teen angst and stupidity and yet chooses to fall for one of the most emotionless, angsty characters in cinema history. That cat is either a pedo or a loser possessing just enough intellect to enthrall a sixteen year old. Either way, it’s pathetic.
But I digress. I have a couple of real stinkers in the guilty pleasure department. The first is my love of cheesy 80’s love songs. Picked out hair, combined with synthesizers and bad lyrics gets me every time. Think Atlantic Star. The second is my fascination with romantic comedies. I watch the ones even Amanda won’t touch. While Jennifer Anniston is no Meryl Streep, I’ll gladly watch any of her high school drama department quality “films” over and over, Except “The Break-up.” That was a terrible, terrible movie with absolutely no redeeming qualities.
Anyhow, I think the thing I love most about bad romantic comedies is the incredulous concept of a perfect first date. The ones where two people share caddy glances across the aisle of a grocery store, leading to witty conversation, and ultimately a nervous call to set up the first date. Then the beau (yes, I said beau) arrives at her front door, perfectly manicured, carrying a tasteful bouquet of flowers with his top of the line sports car parked on the street behind him. What girl wouldn’t love that scenario? Fancy dinner, charming strolls down the boardwalk, even though the movie takes place in Denver, and a magical goodnight kiss. First dates like that quickly lead to wedding bells, right?
What comes next is inevitable for this cute couple. Two years down the road, he’s got a girl on the side and she’s snorting enough prescription pills to kill a horse just so she can muster the strength to put her make-up on in the morning without slitting her wrists!!! Too dramatic? I say no. They were screwed from the get go. Their first date set unrealistic expectations. While it may seem important to appear perfect to your date, you don’t want the drop off of the real you to be like falling off a cliff. You’re looking for more of a gentle slide. It’s the cliff scenario that causes you to be disillusioned with your mate once you realize that the handsome beau has some serious mommy issues, feet that smell like dirty diapers, and can only sleep peacefully in the fetal position. And there ain’t anything sexy or masculine about a grown man in the fetal position. The problem is, most of the time that crap doesn’t come out on a first date. Some people can hide their issues for years.
That’s why I say perfect first dates are for chumps. If you really want to see where this relationship is headed, you need some trauma thrown in to the occasion. Thanks to Nolan luck, that’s the exact picture of my dating life. Two dates in particular can shed a lot of light on how you ended up with your spouse (assuming you have one), your first date ever and your first date with your spouse.
My first date was in June of 1994. I had just turned fifteen years old and had my driver’s license for all of about four minutes. This was to be a double date with two sisters and my friend Greg. Greg and the younger sister were a year older than me, while my date was three years my senior. It was obvious I had no chance, but this was more about feeling grown up and hitting the town. However, this was in small town Mississippi so we’d all known each other our entire lives. Still, we were very excited, or at least I was very excited. Then again, I tend to get excited. So Greg and I met up and decided to stop by a convenience store for some gum before picking the girls up. Oh the hubris to think that I had to have gum to ensure that perfect first kiss.
Before I explain what happened next I need to lay out the scenario for you. As an adult man, I’m about 5’9”. As a fifteen year old, barely in the throws of puberty, I was about four foot nothing. I was painfully short. If I sat back and relaxed in the driver’s seat of my Toyota pick-up I could only see the road through the space above the dashboard and below the top of the steering wheel. This was not a recipe for safe driving. Combine this with the fact that my truck was incredibly long and a stick shift, and you will see that most of the time I was barely in control of the vehicle.
Greg and I purchase our gum and head out, each in our respective trucks. I wheel mine out of the parking place a little too quickly and hear a loud bang, as my truck stops abruptly. Oh my Lord, I’ve just had an accident on my first date. I jump out of the truck to find that I was the only car involved. I backed squarely into a short concrete post in the store’s parking lot. The result of which was a bumper with one side lying on the ground. The driver’s side of the bumper was still firmly attached, but the passenger side was completely severed. This is just great. My truck looks like something you would see on blocks, with grass growing up around it. I’m freaking out as Greg proposes a solution. He has a couple of bungee cords in his truck that we could use to fasten it back to the frame. I agree and we rig it up the best we can.
We pick up the girls and head off to watch a very romantic movie, Maverick. Nothing says romance like a western card shark movie. So far so good, we are enjoying ourselves chatting on about the comedic genius of Mel Gibson (obviously prior to his anti-Semitic episodes), when we decide to waste some time riding around for a while until the girls had to be home. In all of the excitement I had failed to mention to my date that I had damaged my truck, so when she noticed sparks shooting out of the back of my truck through the passenger mirror she panics. “JAMEY, I THINK YOUR TRUCK IS ON FIRE!!!” That’s when I realize that the bungee cords had done all they could and my bumper had slowly lowered back to the ground. This caused sparks to burst from the rear of my truck every time I hit a bump in the road.
As she screams, I clumsily wheel my vehicle to the side of the road and explain the situation. She dies out laughing as we stare at my bumper which has now been grinded flat on the bottom from all of the friction. Suddenly, I don’t feel very grown up. I also realize that maybe this date wasn’t the most important thing in the world. It was just a play that we were acting out like we’d seen others do before us. But no matter how lofty and romantic I felt, all of that came crashing down with every obnoxious slam of my bumper on the ground. After this, I never took dating too seriously. I guess I decided that whether I wanted it to or not, my broken bumper would always expose it’s self, so why hide it.
Four years later, I met Amanda. We were in band together at MC and we lived in adjacent dorms, so I saw her a lot. I was obviously enamored with her, but had no way to really kick up a conversation other than passing hellos. Plus, she was pretty shy and mostly let her roommate do the talking. My roommate, Michael, was a nice enough guy who just so happened to be OBSESSED with his ex. So much so that dropped out of another school and transferred to her school, MC, after she broke up with him. He was going to win her back, or possibly kill her (my guess). After listening to him pine over this girl every night, I knew I had to invite him along on a giant movie outing on $2 Tuesdays, at the local theatre. Supposedly, a huge group of students from the music department were going so I invited a few people to tag along with us. Michael was one, and Amanda and her roommate were the others. Important to note: This was not a date, it was a group hangout. I purchased the tickets to “She’s All That,” and shot back over to the dorm to get ready.
That’s when I got the call from Amanda’s roommate. She would not be joining us and neither would Amanda due to a night class. Well that sucks. I called around to a couple other people I knew on campus to see if anyone wanted these prize tickets, but no one obliged. At this point, I was willing to eat the six bucks and call it a night. Then the phone rang again. It was Amanda. She got out of class early and wanted to make sure we were still on for the movie. I hurriedly got dressed and Michael and I met her outside. Michael agreed to take his truck, since mine was a two-seater. As we got seated, just before the theater lowered the lights, Michael’s ex walks in with another guy. Perfect. He begins rambling about not being able to handle seeing her with another then jumps up and bails. I follow him outside and remind him that he is our ride. He tells me he’ll be back to pick us up. “Trust me” he says. What turned out as a group thing, quickly felt like a date.
What he didn’t say was that he would be able to drink about eight beers in an hour and a half. As we walk out of the theater Michael beeps the horn and waves from his truck, across the parking lot from a couple of cops. As I open the door for Amanda, a beer can falls out on to the ground. Classy. She quickly hops in and I grab the can and jump in the back seat. He’s the kind of drunk that resembles a Hank Williams song. Luckily we make it back to campus amid his desperate longing for understanding and I invite Amanda to go grab a bite to eat. She quickly agrees. “OK, this has very quickly become a date, with a really cute girl who’s WAY out of my league.” I’m not even sure how it happened, but embracing this odd situation turned out to be the best date of my life.
We jumped in my truck and rode around Jackson talking for about three hours or so, finally ending up at ihop sometime around two in the morning. We shared a plate of chocolate chip pancakes (her favorite) and chatted it up far too long. This led to us returning to campus about 4 a.m., which was a bad thing since freshmen girls had a midnight curfew. The miracle in all this was that Amanda wasn’t expecting a perfect first date, and neither was I. Had we held ourselves to the unrealistic expectations of a stupid movie, she would’ve been out of there as soon as she heard the phrase “two dollar Tuesdays.” Twelve years later, two kids. However, I can’t state this part of the story enough; “The Break-Up” is a terrible movie. Vince Vaughn should wake up to a punch in the face every day for having been a part of that atrocity.
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