It's a Friday in October in Northern California. So, naturally, it's one of the hottest days of the year. In Silicon Valley, it's nearly 100 degrees; in San Francisco, it's in the 90s. San Francisco is not a warm city, so when the heat is on, it's stifling. This is, of course, the day in which I meet Brad for a second date. I leave work and drive in hellacious Friday traffic up into San Francisco to meet him at his apartment. As it is with San Francisco (henceforth just known as the city), everything is uphill and winding, including the road to his place. I park; he comes out and greets me. We immediately get into his car and try to decide where to go. As it is unseasonably warm outside, and a Friday night to boot, we are expecting it to be nearly impossible to get a table at most places.
He is driving and trying to decide where we should go. He keeps putting his hand on my thigh, and I keep brushing him off. At a red light, he looks over at me, grabs my face, and starts to devour me. Again, I push him away. "Ooooh, are you one of those people that gets nervous in a car?" he asks. "Yes, absolutely," I respond. And it is true; I am very anxious in cars unless I am driving or I trust the driver completely. Otherwise, I will be panicking for most of the trip. I didn't get my driver's license until I was 21 because I was so afraid of cars and driving. Funny that five years after that I drove myself across the country and now make a major daily commute. Anyway.
Brad takes me to the Haight, a neighborhood I had ventured around with my family at the age of 12, but which I now fully appreciate and love. I wanted to go into every thrift store, talk to every person, just take the whole experience in. Brad, however, was totally unimpressed and couldn't have cared less; but whatever, he lives in the city, why should he care?
We end up in a tiny Asian restaurant that is, yes, packed, and stifling. So much sweat started pouring out of me as we waited in the narrow entry to write down our names for a table. At this place, you have to write your name down on a chalkboard, and they will erase you when your table is available. I don't remember specifics, but I know someone came in and Brad was a dick about them writing their name down for some reason.
We start chitchatting. We order. Again, he is unnecessarily rude to the waitress. I'm getting pissed, and my gut is telling me to abort the situation. But I am now literally stuck in San Francisco, on a date with a man I'm starting to realize is a gigantic bag of dicks. And not in a fun way. Being that I am an English nerd, I try to bring up books as a topic of conversation. "Oh, I don't read that much," he said. I said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I get it, it's hard to find the time; you told me that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is your favorite book though, right?" And I swear, he said, "Yeah. Well, actually, I've only read parts of it. But I liked the parts I read." YOUR FAVORITE BOOK IS A BOOK YOU HAVEN'T EVEN READ?! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?! A lot. A lot was wrong with him.
Our food arrives. Brad is snarky to the waitress about something; I shoot her an apologetic smile. It's tasty, but it's spicy, and I am so sweaty I swear I'm sliding off the chair. I put my hair up in a ponytail; Brad asks how I manage to make that look adorable. Oh, a compliment! I'll take it. But I am so worked up and pissed that I immediately respond with something rude. So he takes the opportunity to say, "How does someone with your personality work in a wine tasting room?" Me, genuinely confused: "What?" And his response was one of the following; I can't remember clearly because I went into a rage blackout in my mind: "Well, you're just so sarcastic and bitchy," or, "Well, you're just such a sarcastic bitch."
He quickly followed up that comment with, "But I like that about you. I like that you're a bitch; it's hot." Okay, no, no, no, we are not doing this, no. Thankfully, dinner is almost over. Unfortunately, my bladder is full and I need to pee something fierce. The restaurant is packed, and there's one bathroom, and there's a giant line, and I have no opportunity to use it while Brad walks out of the restaurant. I'm screwed. I just need to pee! And to get the fuck away from this guy.
Walking out, I'm about two steps off from running smack into a naked man walking down the street. Seriously. Naked dude. Just wandering around. I'm flabbergasted, and ask Brad if he saw him. "Oh, that? Yeah that's normal. You're in San Francisco." Definitely not in Kansas anymore. As we are walking to the car I hear a noise: the click-clacking of heels on the sidewalk. I look around, and it takes me a second to realize that, in fact, Brad is wearing men's dress shoes that have heels. Stacked heels. Stacked heels that fucking CLACK ON THE SIDEWALK. I nearly peed right there. I mean, this is San Francisco; nobody would mind, right?
We get in his car to drive back to his place. At this point, I'm concentrating on not peeing and not having a total freakout on this creep. I don't know if you're aware, but San Francisco is a very hilly city. Getting anywhere requires you to go up and down a lot of hills. There's also a lot of stoplights. At nearly every stoplight, Brad tries, again, to put his hand on my thigh and/or make out with me. I again remind him that I am nervous in cars, and to please don't fucking touch me. He acquiesces, somehow. The road up to his apartment is a super steep, winding hill, because of fucking course it is. There's a minivan in front of us going under the speed limit, which pisses Brad off. "What the hell are they doing? This isn't okay." So he decides to pass them, which would be fine if we were on, you know, a highway, instead of a two lane residential street with a double fucking yellow line going upward towards a blind curve in the street YES THIS IS A GREAT IDEA BRAD YOU ARE SO SMART YOU MUST READ A LOT!
Of course, there's another car coming down the road, directly towards us, and Brad veers us back to safety just in time. I seriously was about .004 seconds from peeing everywhere, but he probably would've liked that. I must have screamed or made some kind of noise, because Brad looked at me, incredulous, and said, "What? We had plenty of time. We were fine!" BITCH I ALMOST DIED WITH YOUR STUPID HIGH-HEELED WEARING ASS ON A RANDOM STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO. NO. Thankfully, his house was less than a block away. Unfortunately, I still need to pee, and I have no idea where I can do that except in Brad's house. So I got out of the car, and I followed him inside.
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