TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I had to drive Adam home at 1:30 a.m. because when I told him I didn’t want to have sex with him, he called me a bitch.

Right.

And here I thought dating had evolved since high school.

I mean, I had totally forgotten about all the lines guys try to use to get their, ahem, way.
The lines the nuns at my Catholic High School warned me about.

But here I was, practically ten years out of high school, hearing the same ridiculous phrases that turn out more candidates for the show “Teen Mom.”

“Oh, I see,” Adam said, annoyed, after I dropped the blue-ball news.
“You’re the everything BUT girl.”

WHAT?!

“Did you really just say that? God, how old are you?” I asked, still trying to be playful.

He was 33 years old.
He was a 33-year-old bully.

“I mean, I just don’t see what the big deal is,” he said, pulling away.

Not that he deserved it, but I gave him a short list of reasons.

“Well, ONE, it’s a school night. TWO, this is our second time hanging out — ever — and THREE, it doesn’t matter what my reasons are because I don’t want to, so end of story.”

“Oh, so I get NO SAY in this??” he said.

“No,” I said.

I was hurt, because I really did like him until that moment, and now I was super pissed and wanted him to disappear forever. Certainly off my couch.

“I mean, we just met,” I said. “I like you, and I don’t want to have sex too quickly.”

He sat there.
“I don’t understand your logic,” he said.

He then jumped back into high school mode.

His next line, seriously, WORD FOR WORD was:

“I mean, I need to be able to have chemistry with someone in bed, and if we don’t have it, then I don’t know if we can go out again.”

HA!

I considered this for a moment.

“So you think people should have sex the first time they hang out to see if they're wasting their time?” I asked.

Adam then laughed, hopefully realizing how ridiculous that statement was when said aloud.
But, because he had to prove a point, said, “Yes. I do.”

I asked him if he’d ever heard of the term “having sex too quickly” and asked if he thought there was something to be said for building it up and building it up.

"What kind of game is that?" he asked.

Then he started begging.

“Look, I don’t know how many ways I can say, ‘no,’” I said, and then I looked away.

“So don’t say no,” Adam said, trying to get close to me again.

“NO!” I said with more ‘tude in my tone. Then Adam got all bratty. Like a high schooler.

“Oh, I bet you just LOVE holding this over me,” he said. “I bet you just LOVE being a TEASE!”

Oh GAWD.
I tried to remember how the nun in high school told us to respond to this tactic.
She probably would have advised the “cold shoulder” method.

“Stop being a jerk,” I said.

“Oh, I’M being a jerk?” he asked.

“Yea.”

“Well, I think you’re being a bitch. I mean, you’re just drawing a weird boundary line and I’m just supposed to go along with it,” he said.

“OK,” I said sarcastically.

Adam then got up to go to the bathroom and I fought back tears of anger about how out of ALL THE PEOPLE in the world I could have gone on a date with and brought to my house, it had to be THIS effing loser.

“Let me call you a cab,” I said to him when he returned, water splashed on his face.

He didn’t have a car, and I had driven his ass around town all day.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I don’t want to hang out with someone who’s going to call me a bitch for not sleeping with them,” I said, matter-of-factly. He was now dead to me.

I picked up my cell phone to make the call.

“I don’t have enough money for a cab,” he said.

“It’s, like, eleven dollars,” I said, on hold. “Cabs take credit cards now,” I added.

“I still don’t have enough,” he said.

I was painfully reminded of my mother’s advice to “screen people well.”

How does a 33-year-old not have $11 to pay for a cab?
How exactly WAS he planning on getting home?

“I’ll pay for your cab,” I said hastily, never wanting someone out of my sight more.

“If you insist,” he said.

The cab company told me that I actually could NOT pay for someone else’s cab, unless I faxed over authority, which was impossible at the moment. And I didn’t have cash on me to throw at him.

It was 1:30 in the morning and I wanted Adam gone forever.
I feared that if I threw him out of my house to let him figure out his own way home, he’d linger and come knocking like a puppy an hour later telling me he was cold and hungry.

I hung up with the cab company and said, “I’m driving you home.”

And that’s how I ended up taking the most uncomfortable 20-minute drive of my life, with an empty gas tank.

Neither one of us spoke to each other, even when I got lost finding his house.
When I pulled up, I put the car in park and waited for him to exit the vehicle.

“Look,” he said, almost sad. “I think we’re both being childish here.”

“I’m not being childish,” I said. He then tried to make eye contact, although I was fixated on the blue glow of my radio.

“Look at me,” he said.
I did.

“What do you want me to say, Adam?” I asked. “Thanks for a disappointing evening? Thanks for making me feel like shit?”

“Well, I don’t think I made you feel like shit…” he started, like he wanted to hash out this issue more.
But I was out of gas, and out of patience.

“OK. Fine. I THINK it’s really late and you need to get out of my car.”

He did, and then looked sad with a puppy dog face looking back at me through the window, and he didn’t walk to his front door immediately.

I sped off and saw him still on the street, staring at my car until I made the turn off his block.

By the time I got home, I had text messages from him.

“Thanks for the ride. Dinner was nice” was the first one.

“I’m sorry we don’t see eye to eye and that makes me sad” was the second one.

“No hard feelings on my end” was the third one.

Ha! Oh, thank GOD there are no hard feelings on HIS end!!!

I didn’t respond to any of the texts, and actually hadn’t realized he sent them until later because the second I drove away, I called a girl friend and told her all about my shitty evening and exactly what happened with Adam.

We laughed and made fun of him the entire 20-minute ride home and she said she knew someone who worked with him and she’d be sure to pass along the story.

You know, just like in high school.

-Jenny