Allergies acting up? Yeah, well I'm allergic to your bad taste

When I walked out of my house for my date with The Cyclops* Friday evening, I took one look at him and nearly turned around to walk back inside. The guy had flames on his shirt. Seriously. Flames.** But I was there with a mission (to harvest blog material, remember?), and I decided not to give up so soon. If nothing else, this guy seemed promising for entertaining writing. I braced myself for being seen with him in public and got into his car.

We chatted easily on our way to play trivia*** at a nearby bar. Nearly as soon as we sat down, he asked if he was what I'd expected. Opting out of the likely too obvious, "Well, I didn't expect you to have such terrible taste in clothes," I told him I rarely have expectations. For some reason, he seemed satisfied with that not-quite-complimentary response.

I mentioned before that I only accepted this date to harvest blog material. The Cyclops isn't someone in whom I would normally be interested. He's a number of years older, which isn't really a problem for me, as I tend to like older guys. But he's still technically married. He claims they've been separated for three years and they've just stalled on the final technicality of pushing the paperwork through. While I don't necessarily think he's outright lying, I'm wary of the whole situation. Oh, and he has a 7-year-old. I love kids, don't get me wrong, but I think putting myself into that situation is a bad idea. I could go on listing all the other reasons I wrinkled my nose at him (and/or the idea of him), but at this point, I'd just feel like I'm bashing for the sake of bashing.

Anyway, we had a fine time at the bar. Thankfully, I didn't fall madly, deeply in love or feel any sparks flying, but it wasn't terrible, either. The only thing that really annoyed me was that he decided to inform me I was tipsy when I was on my third beer. He says he doesn't drink much, so maybe the assumption was based on his tolerance, but I wasn't even a little buzzed and pretty much resented the hell out of the comment. When a "24" Topics round came up,**** we decided we'd had enough trivia (and he didn't want his standing to suffer), so we left.

Back at my place, he offered to walk me to my door. Then he pulled the age-old loo trick, and I had to let him in. Sneaky bastards and their devious bathroom plots. Anyway, when we got in, Roommate mentioned Trivial Pursuit, and here I was stuck with The Cyclops playing trivia, yet again, until about three in the morning. (I seriously think Roommate did this on purpose. I'm pretty sure she just wanted ammunition so she could make fun of me for the rest of my life for going out with a bald guy with flames on his shirt. Thanks, Roommate! I'll be sure to return the favor at the first available opportunity. :-p )

When I realized The Cyclops wasn't going anywhere, I uncorked a bottle of wine and began to steel myself for the rest of the evening. Ah, wine, my deepest love.

The situation got a little hilarious when The Cyclops had a negative reaction to my cat. Despite being allergic, he proceeded to pet the cat when we walked in the door (because that's exactly what people with allergies should do). A bit later, he started complaining about his eye and rubbing it furiously. (I shouldn't have had to tell a 34-year-old man to go wash his hands after petting an animal he knows will cause an allergic reaction. *Sigh* I shouldn't have to do a lot of things.) His eye was red and swollen shut, which kind of made it hard not to laugh at him, especially considering his being so serious about the game.

When the game was finally over, Roommate disappeared, and The Cyclops started rubbing my shoulders. I let him for a while, then stopped him, telling him I'm a brat and would let him keep that up for a long, long time and give him nothing in return. Maybe bratiness turns him on because that's when he moved in for a kiss. He was a pretty good kisser, actually, but he made these little moaning noises the whole time, which totally turned me off. What the hell is up with that? I can't say I've never tossed in a moan or two before, but, damn, it's usually in bed or when I know I'm on the way there. Somehow it seemed weird and inappropriate coming from him.

I walked him to the door and bid him goodnight. He asked me out again for next weekend, but I stalled, saying I'd have to check on some things that are "in the works."

Married guy with kid + Flaming shirt + Swollen eye x Kissing moans = Belle saying, "No thanks" to round two


* I have to give credit to the guy for "choosing" his own moniker. Not that he knew it would actually be used here or anything.
** He kept mentioning later in the evening how much he loved that shirt. Ick.
*** I suck at all things trivia, but I'm a pretty good loser most of the time. Remarkably, I stayed out of the last spots the whole time we were at the bar and considered myself in pretty decent standing for a person lacking any skill at retrieving random bits of info from my memory.
**** Neither of us watch the show.