In my defense, I'm not sure that I even thought that worst case scenario might include my house full of smoke, two pots boiling over and a mess of food and potential salmonella outbreaks.
The moral of today's dating adventure is to not break protocol or make assumptions.
Protocol being that I have always thought that you should be many dates into a dating situation before inviting a gentlemen back to your house. My reasoning on this is twofold: one) your house is your personal space and it says a lot about you. you have to be prepared to share that much. Two) you may not be prepared to share your personal space and/or the things within it.
The assumption part comes into play with the following conversation via text yesterday:
S5C: hey! do you work tomorrow?
me: nope. i was going to ask you the same.
S5C: do you wanna hang tonight?
(i did not) me: i'm probably going to stay in with my munchkin. how about lunch or coffee tomorrow? (i wanted to watch the golden globes in peace)
(and SIDEBAR: I JUST saw this dude Friday. c'mon!)
S5C: okay, we'll see. (was this him trying to play hard to get? tbd)
me: okay, well, just holler at me.
s5c: how about i make you lunch?
I'm intrigued at this because he's mentioned he can cook. this seems a bold date move too.
me: sure!
s5c: how about i pick you up, we can go get stuff and then go back to your place and i'll cook and we can watch a movie?
okay, so, i stupidly replied "sounds like a plan!" but there are about FIVE things wrong with the text above all of which should have made me immediately say "hell to the no, stage 5 clinger"
1) did he just invite himself over to my house?
2) does he want me to go with him to get ingredients so that I pitch in on the moola?
3) why are we cooking at MY house if he's cooking?
4) movies at somebody's house typically require some shared couch space. this, in retrospect, was ballsy for an early date.
5) DID HE JUST INVITE HIMSELF OVER TO MY HOUSE?
Now, again, in my defense, I assumed he was a top chef in the making and wanted to woo me with his mad skills and ability to move around my kitchen - which, in my head, sounded pretty hot.
My first inkling that this scenario might be less fantasy and more blog fodder came when we arrived at the Price Chopper and he didn't know what he was making.
"What should we have?" he asks me.
"um, you're cooking, you tell me" I'm a little quiet now, because I'm getting nervous. maybe he can tell because he pretty quickly counters with "chicken parmesan"
He says it so confidently that I naturally assume this was in the cards the whole time, and this is his "dish" much like the ex love-of-my-life/current best friend/always pain in my ass (i'm just going to keep adding titles to him in the hopes that it makes me stop mentioning him at some point) has his "dish" which consists of pan friend pork chops and fried apples. Every guy has one. the dish they can not screw up that they can impress girls with.
"Has anyone ever cooked for you?" S5C asks as we walk around Price Chopper.
"yes," I reply without hesitation, quashing his dreams of being suave and original.
Actually, I'm remember ex-love-of-my-life/current best friend/always pain in my ass/sometimes basis of comparison telling me during his slutty phase after he broke up with a girlfriend where he fixes his "dish" for what seemed like a dozen different girls in a two month period. This makes me wary of thinking too much of S5C's motives.
An aside to say that I am very grateful to have male friends, whose lives and dating habits I have generally been privy to. Can't get nothing by this girl. I've seen it, heard about it, and i rarely trust it. I know even if you're an AWESOME dude, you still have motives and most of them center around wanting to impress me with the hopes of either locking me in or getting in my pants. More on this later.
The trouble starts when S5C asks if I have vegetable oil - like 4 cups of it. And I begin to wonder how he makes pasta that requires that much oil. That's a lot of oil.
Enough oil to start a fire with, it turns out.
I realize my mistake as I sit at my own bar watching a relative stranger futz around MY kitchen and realize that it was way too soon to have this kind of date. I am possessive of my stuff, and strangely territorial. I didn't expect to feel this way, but BOY do I want him to stop getting flour all over my spice caps and slinging egg yolk across my kitchen counter.
"Do you have a fan?" he asks as I he begins frying the chicken and smoke starts a roiling.
"No, I don't burn things," I say, trying to cute but tinged with enough panic that he doesn't seem to notice that I have to start texting friends in order to not start visibly panicking.
He finds the fan, turns around and says "actually, you might need to open windows and turn on the overhead fan...maybe open your patio"
I turn around to see MY WHOLE HOUSE IS FULL OF SMOKE. I mean, I open the patio and it's like there's a boy scout fire in my living room the way the smoke rolls out.
"Oops!" i hear him say twice as I try to calmly turn off my heat and open every window in my house. he's calm, so I'm trying to stay calm even though internally I'm starting to think this was one of the dumber things I've approved and willingly entered into.
I turn to see that both the speghetti he's making and the tomato sauce he's eating are boiling over.
Now, he couldn't know that i JUST soaked and scrubbed my stovetops and the little catcher things underneath, but I certainly do and I'm really hoping my eyes are shooting death glares at him as he dirties, like, five more bowls unnecessarily.
I like cajun, but blackened chicken is not looking so great as he pulls a charred piece of something from the oil and puts it in one of my son's bowls (because clearly he's burned through all of mine) and asks if I want to try it.
No, sir, I do not. Because that thing is burnt to a freaking crisp and it's going to be bad and I don't want to be liar.
"Mmmmm," I say out loud.
"What do you have to drink?" he asks, and I swallow the crispy fried former chicken.
"Water and apple juice...or wine. I have wine. I'll get the wine."
I NEED THE WINE. I don't care that it's one o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday. I need the wine.
Two glasses of wine later, my house is less smoke-filled, still messy (i'm trying to accept his "i clean as i go" statement as I stare at the dishes still rife with food debris that he merely rinsed and stacked in the dish drainer) but the pasta and bread is passable.
Here was something I WAS glad for. I read on the dating etiquette thing to set not only a start time for dates but also an END time when possible. So I have set an end time as dictated by my son, who I am very grateful for and intend to use more in dating scenarios where necessary.
The post dinner hour was considerably better - we watched "The Kids Are All Right" with only one hiccup on his part regarding a comment about not understanding why sometimes lesbians are pretty and others are more manly and almost heading down a terrible dealbreaking path of sexual judgement that I would not abide by.
We cuddled, which was nice, even though I think he might smell a little weird (that's go to be me being weird though).
Funny part of the cuddling: his hand was resting on my hip and at one point ventured more directly towards my ass which required a pretty quick non-verbal signal of "too soon" on my part. He was quick to understand which I appreciated. Just testing the waters, I get it, but you almost set my fire alarm off and I haven't forgotten.
Another context clue from today: I don't think S5C makes a lot of money. I don't particularly care about this - in theory - although I hear that a lopsided financial situation can turn our poorly for one or both parties if a relationship blossoms (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think that's going to be a problem here) He mentioned at least twice how nice my place was, going so far as to say "this can't be cheap" to which I replied (quite tactfully i thought) "well, it's not the cheapest place I've ever lived." And he also said he may be taking a second job...and he keeps saying "when I'm out of OT school, I'll be able to afford a place like this" Except he's not even IN OT school yet...so...I'm not sure what I was supposed to gather from all of this, so I'm mostly noting this for the record. It brings up an interesting part of this dating thing as to how you suss out one another's financial situations - and its impact.
Okay, but not to let today's little adventure end without a happy ending, we did kiss again and it was just as breathtaking and generally awesome as Friday night. This is a plus. Maybe not a big enough plus to overlook all the other little red flags that seem to be sprouting, but enough to merit seeing him again.
At least so long as he isn't texting every 5 minutes. He hasn't, although he did text an hour and a half after the conclusion of our date as I was recounting the highlights to a very dear soon to be married friend (i hate you and your happily ever after coming so easily, Albany).
"How's the nose minor?"
Sigh. One, WHY ARE YOU TEXTING ME?! Two, it's nose miner, not minor. This is a very MINOR point, but it notes the path of destruction when someone texts to much. You get annoyed quicker.
I'm just going to keep thinking about that lovely kiss.
The smell of burning oil is almost out of the house.
Almost.
Lesson learned.
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