“You and I are gonna go on a date this weekend,” he informed me. He had a bellowing voice, a cross between James Earl Jones and Leon Redbone, the voice of the jazzy snowman in Elf.
You had to give the guy credit; no one had tried the old assumptive close tactic on me in a while. “Oh, we are, are we?” I asked him.
“Yeah, my ex-wife has a hot tub at her condo in Oakland. We can go over there and soak ourselves for a while, then go have us a nice dinner.”
His ex-wife’s hot tub? What the hell? Way to lead with your ace, man. “Thank you for the very sweet offer,” I said. “But I’m in grad school and I have to work on projects all weekend.”
“Well I’ll come pick you up, you’ll need a break,” he insisted.
“No, no, thank you, but, really, I can’t. Besides, I don’t even know you.”
“Well, we’ll get to know each other while we’re in the hot tub, now won’t we?” He had a point.
The conversation went back and forth like this for at least five minutes. Me saying no, and him coming up with new incentives for me to say yes. He was a musician; he would sing me a song. No. He would send a car for me, so I wouldn’t feel forced to make small talk with him on the way to Oakland. No thanks. He would give me a back rub, to ease my tension. No!
After a few more of these polite offers, he went a different route.
“Do you like it in the ass? You can tell me! There’s nothin’ to be embarrassed about! Cause if that’s what you’re into, we could do that.”
What the fuck? Who was this guy? As shocked as I was, I understood that he wasn’t trying to be crude; he just wanted to figure out what it was that would make me say yes. If I were an ass girl, he’d be willing. He was a real humanitarian, this guy.
