(Excerpted
from God is a Woman: Dating Disasters.
All rights reserved by Ian Coburn and Firefly Glow Publishing. Print version. Click here for more stories from the book on
www.godisawoman.net.)
Excerpted from “Spread
‘Em” Chapter
I have had
phone dates. Huh? Phone dates.
That’s what I call it when I ask out a woman who I have only met over
the phone. Who would I meet over the
phone? I went out with a couple
newspaper reporters who interviewed me over the phone. We flirted during the interview, conducted
for their local paper about my upcoming comedy appearance in town, and I asked
them out. I went out a few times with
sales reps who handled my glow’n-the-dark condoms account.
One night I
called a girl to play in a beach volleyball tournament. A friend of hers—who I had met on the beach
and asked to play—referred me to her. I
called her up and we got to talking about more than the tournament. Her name was Julie and she was upset because
some guy hadn’t called her. They had
been on a few dates and he said he would call, but he hadn’t. We flirted big time
for thirty minutes. She told me she was
wearing only a little red nightie.
Abruptly, she invited me over.
“I don’t
want to be alone; I’ll just get more and more pissed about this guy not
calling. You should come over.”
There was
no way I was going over to her place.
She lived out in the burbs. I
wasn’t going to drive all the way out there only to learn when I arrived that
she had changed her mind, and then drive back home. I told her that.
“Then I’m
coming to your place. What are the
directions?”
I told her
and added a stipulation, “If you come over, you have to wear the red
nightie. We’ll have a pajama party.”
She
agreed. I didn’t think she’d show and
got on the phone with my friend John. An
hour later, much to my surprise, my doorbell rang. I blurted into the phone, “Gotta go, John; this
girl just got here for a pajama party.”
“What? What girl?
Who?”
“I don’t
know, I just talked to her tonight for the first time.”
I hung up,
buzzed her in, searched frantically for a pair of pajamas (I don’t wear pajamas),
and threw them on, finishing just as she reached my door. I hope
she’s pretty, I thought. She
was. She was actually a pretty farm girl
from
“Come on
in.”
She stayed
in the doorway, “I just want to tell you that I told my sister and a friend I
was coming here. They know the address
and everything.”
“Damn it,
now I have to kill them, too; that’s kind of a hassle.”
She laughed
and came inside, “You’re not really going to make me put on my nightie, are
you?”
“Of course
I am; I’m wearing pajamas, aren’t I?”
“I’m not
going to put it on.”
Actions
speak louder than words. She drove to my
place. She knew about the pajama
stipulation. Most importantly, she
brought the nightie with her. If she
really didn’t want to wear it, she would have left it at home. She didn’t want to be held accountable. If I acted like a jerk, it would relieve her
of accountability in her mind. See how
it all comes together?
“Okay,
well, seems like a long way to drive for nothing. Have a good trip back home.”
“Ah! You’re not serious. You’d make me drive all the way back home?”
“Yup.”
“I guess I
better put it on, then.”
See? In her mind, she was putting on the nightie
because I was making her, not because she wanted to. She wasn’t being honest with herself about
what she wanted. She wasn’t being
accountable. In college, I would have
screwed the whole thing up. I wouldn’t
have made her put on the nightie, I would have changed out of my PJ’s back into
my clothes, and we would’ve talked until she became bored with my lack of
action and left. But this wasn’t college
. . . school was out.
She changed
in the bathroom. She came out wearing
this little red nightie. We danced to a
song and then off came the nightie.