Dating in St. Louis

I found this old narrative I had written about my dating exploits in St. Louis.  Here is the original piece with terrible jokes and worse grammar.  I believe I wrote this is 2001.

Dating in Stinktown (St. Losers) – a Retrospective Memoir

Okay, let’s back up a few years, when I was an eager young man fresh from college on his first job. I was working out every day, eating nothing but fruits and vegetables, and wearing the finest suits Famous Barr had to offer [read:  Nautica]. I was living in the Central West End of St. Louis, which is known for being a cool, artsy area.

Being that I didn’t even know ONE girl in St. Louis, I had to go out and hit the pavement to meet women. St. Louis is a tough place to meet people. It seems that if you are over 22, chances are you probably grew up there, went to SLU, got a job downtown, and now have moved “away” with a buddy to Clayton (young, suburban area). “Away” meaning a whopping three miles from your folks. But that’s St. Louis.

The question you hear most is, “Where did you go to high school?” My answer was always the all-girl school,  Rosati-Kain. Nobody ever laughed at that. Oh well.

So, in no particular order, here are a few chicks I dated from this pathetic time in my life.

• Girl number 1 – Dana.

First of all, that’s my sister’s name. Can you imagine being in the throws of passion and yelling out your sister’s name as you climax? But that wasn’t my problem with her. Those who have been intimate with me know that I’m so self-absorbed I only yell out my own name in bed. I really should start dating a girl named D.J. She’d think I was the nicest guy in the world. No, my problem with Dana is that she asked me if I had genital warts. Straight out. And I had already kissed her.

Is that a great question to ask a guy? And, do I give off the impression of having genital warts? Do I cough too much? Are my hands too big?

So, I had to be completely honest with her – I had absolutely no idea if I had genital warts. My guess would have been no, but maybe she was seeing something I wasn’t. Could genital warts explain my astigmatism?

• Girl number 2 – Bubbles.

Okay, that wasn’t her real name. I forget her real name, but Bubbles will do. In our first phone conversation she told me, right off, that she didn’t trust me.

“I don’t trust anybody,” she said.

This chick didn’t even trust her own trust fund. Okay, bad joke. Sorry. Back to story.

So, needing to steer the conversation to a better place, I knew she was a concert pianist. (And no, I didn’t do the joke about the 12-inch pianist). I did what any guy looking to score would do. I asked her to play for me over the phone. And then, the luckiest thing to ever happen to a guy trying to get strange happened to me. I actually RECOGNIZED the piece.

I said in my most seductive tone, “Bubbles, that wouldn’t happen to be Piano Concerto No. 3 by Rachmaninov would it?” She’s like, “Yep. Sure is!” Now, we’ve just hit an homerun. I mean, a HOME RUN.

So I continue, “The same piece that drove David Helfgott crazy in the movie  Shine?  Man, I love that movie! I’m kind of embarrassed to say, but I actually cry every time I see it. (Insert sensitivity here) It’s so sad.”

Dead silence on the phone. For at least ten seconds.

And the first words out of her mouth were not, “Wow, you’re so cultured, sensitive, and obviously don’t have genital warts. Let’s make love!” No,the words were more along the lines of (and I’m not kidding here), “You pussy!! Only pussies cry during movies!”

It was right out of  Girl, Interrupted. And then she told me her last boyfriend used to tie her up and beat her. I thanked Bubbles for the free concert and ran away faster than Jessie Owens with diarrhea.

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Okay, there’s a little bit of my old stuff – dusty, crumbling, and yellow at the corners.  I’ll see you tomorrow.

photo credit:  RichardBowen  via  photo pin  cc