My Blind Date Tonight

I don't even know where to start...My experiences with the Sugardaddy sites? Don't worry all you praying types, I'm still a virgin. Well, you know what I mean. It's still been 3 years since.

This has to be one of the MOST bizarre moments in my life history. I don't even know if I could manage a NON-funny post, because it's just getting stranger and stranger.

First of all, I'm living on the wrong coast. I should be living East Coast. I hate the East Coast materialistic mentality, but I'm starving for art and I'm NOT very happy that I wasn't able to see the opening of the new documentary "Bloodline" in the Village.

Secondly, I had the worst of all blind "dates" tonight, and I pray to God he'll pardon me if he finds out about this (my writing about it) but I'm going to be doing some bored housekeeper-wife and some reclusive spinster a favor by making them laugh and be thankful they're not "out there" "in the field". I think "the field" in Iraq might even be better. At least the reserves, and I, for one, am thinking about possibly signing up, simply to find "A Few Good Men". Especially after tonight. I was set up with a blind date and as soon as he showed up, I knew. But I was gracious, and thought, "You never know where there might be a good story!" so instead of declining to go out, I went out. Why the hell not. I told him I only had an hour. So, he shows up with 2 diamond studs in his ears, and a baseball hat, and a gorilla T-shirt, and a plaid red-and-black jacket, and black jeans and unlaced sneakers. He is most definitely not a "sugardaddy". Everything he wore, mis-matched, was black and red. Then we get into his 1970s low rider car and he puts on thick black leather gloves to drive. Not thin, cool, Michael Jackson gloves, but old, worn out thick black leather gloves and it's not cold out. Well, I WAS wearing a white turtleneck (which I didn't suddenly change into when I saw him, but I was thankful for my choice).

So we're in the car, gettin' jiggy wit da road because the car is bouncing up and down slowly like a Merry-go-round horse, and he's blasting straight-up hood music. Which was, actually, the best part of the whole date. Thank you God for rap music. So I'm focusing on the rap, (which, in this case, is hardcore rap, not "hip hop"), like someone who is trying to distance their mind from their body. I was already trying to erase the memory of what he'd said as we left the house. I said I'd love to hear his story and he tells me he's got stories alright. I'm hoping for the elusive drug or gangbanger story or something to undo the intrigue of Blaine and he tells me how his OWN mother called him a "nigger" (he's half black), and was a crack whore or meth-head, and he's going on about how lousy his life has been. So I'm keeping my head down in the car, thinking there has to be something to discover in one hour. I can DO IT!

We get to a hamburger joint and he offers dinner but I just order a drink. A strong one, made with vodka. Actually, it's a martini, and he says, "Are you celebrating something?"

So I sat there, and tried to direct the conversation and he talked away. He was so animated, I just listened and pictured myself as Erin Brokovitch, nodding and on the verge of a breakthrough. You can do it, I kept telling myself. And then...I got it.

But it wasn't what I expected. You know that Rollingstone song, that goes "You CAN'T always GET what you WANT! You CAN'T always GET what you WANT! But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you NEED!"

After he, Mike, told me all about his friends who went to jail for being petty drug-runners, and about his mother's meth lab and her overdose which killed her, and how Canada won't let him in to see his grandmother until he pays restitution for something he didn't do, and how his black friends showed him the ropes on how to protect himself and use drugs, and how he never leaves his house and doesn't hang out with anyone in town, and after he tells me about his lazy girlfriend, I asked if he'd ever met his biological father. He then tells me he hasn't. I asked if he knew his Dad's name, and he says yes, he found out not. He says, "Yeah, I found out what my DAD's name was the same time I found out "Mike _________" isn't even my REAL NAME!"

"What it is?" I asked.

Without hesitation he said, "Sunny Hill".

I am so glad I had finished my drink because it would have been all over the table. I burst into the most spontaneous laughter, which came from my belly, rolled off of my tongue, and bounced off of every wall in the restaurant. Then HE laughed and said, "Yeah. Sunny Hill."

I am laughing again. He says, "It was my grandmother's idea. SHE named me that." I laughed again, looking at him, with his almost gothic-meets-gangbanger-gone-camping dark clothes, and looking at the black t-shirt with the huge gorilla head. He continued, and that's my real, my LEGAL name and now I have to legally change my legal documents from Mike _________ to Sunny Hill." He found out when he was 15 years old. I started laughing again and said, "Oh no! that's a really bad time..." and he agreed. He didn't believe his family for days, and thought they were playing some practical joke on him.

I've found my thrill...Oooon Blueberry---wait, wait,--bright Sunny Hill...

So that was it. Then I had to go, because that's all there was. He tried to tell me some more dark tales but now and then "Sunny Hill" would come to mind and I'd start smiling, at a really inappropriate point in his story, and have to say, "Sorry, sorry, I, um, that name just popped into my head."

I guess it was probably "Sonny" and not "Sunny", but I kept seeing "Sunny". So he takes me back, asking me to open his cardoor for him from the inside. He puts his gloves on. Then he tells me he's finally making some good money at $30/hr. welding crab pots at a crabbing manufacture warehouse. He said he liked it because he didn't have to talk to anyone. And the music comes on and he tells me he's feeling a lot better now that he's had a drink and that he thinks it's improved his driving (he almost went off the road on the way over). He says now he's thinking about just driving around and getting into some trouble. I said, alarmed, "What do you mean by 'getting into some trouble'" and he said "Oh nothing." So he dropped me off and I said thank you so much for the drink. As I'd told him earlier at the restaurant I already had a boyfriend, I simply added it was good to meet him and I'd see him around.

Earlier today I worked, and I also cleaned house for this single Dad, and did his laundry. He was driving to Seattle to bring his girlfriend over and washing his comforter. I offered to wash his sheets as well and put them back on his bed. Unfortunately, I shrunk the sheets so badly they wouldn't fit back onto his mattress. I could only get 3/4 of the sheet around the bed.

Coming home from work, I took a beer (ale) from the fridge as they were leftover from work. So I was walking out with one and about to get on this old bike I'm riding on loan, which has a basket in front, and my boss laughs and asks if I want a bag for my beer. I was thinking about what I sight I would have been, riding up the hill, with a beer rolling back and forth in the bike basket, and I'm wearing these crappy clothes and looking like s---.

At work, I was going in and out of rooms, making sure everything was in place and had forgotten to don a uniform top first, so I probably looked like some random woman going in and out of hotel/condo rooms, and I told my boss and she laughed.

I thought today how strange it was that I have been hit on so many extremely rich men, even in the last several years, but how I don't even have decent clothes to wear anymore. I have "taste" and I'm fashionable when I have means, and I even love looking at the latest French Vogue (imported) when I have money to spend and style to keep up with, but I'm basically wearing clothes now that are hand-me-downs and not even my style at all. No one even KNOWs what my "style" is here, or that I have, generally, good taste.

But every experience I've had, and every part of my life, I wouldn't trade for anything. I know how it is to have people think I'M "rich" or from a "rich family" and I also know how it is to have people think I'm "po-white-trash" and a product of welfare or something. I have had the unusual opportunity to live and experience both sides of the fence, and it gives me a unique perspective which I am thankful.

"It will get better," said my boss today, even telling me how much younger I look than my years. "In your mid-20s," she said, and she said I looked good in anything, which wasn't true, but it was kind.

I'm just glad God gave me the ability to write. If I couldn't document my journey and see life as one big Drama, and find the lives of other people interesting, it would be depressing at times. But it's not usually depressing. It's an adventure. ;)

UPDATE! OH no! When I wrote the part about getting "jiggy" wit da road in the car, I was trying to describe how the car moved while he was driving to the restaurant. Reading it again, I realized it could be read to sound like I was DOING something with him and I was NOT and did NOT and never would.