The Blind Date

Dating Amy
by Amy DeZellar

Looking for Mr. Right often means sorting through the good (guy), the bad (boy), and the ugly (morning after). Amy DeZellar brings readers her hilarious insights on love in this funny memoir that's both a naughty, irreverent dating diary and a self-help book.

Amy has seen it all-a blind date who was quite literally, well, blind; a painter she dubbed Harry Potter who really does turn out to have a flying car; and how love compares to a magic pearl G-string. And you'll meet her dates, including Have Glitter Ball Will Travel and a supercomputer builder named Teflon.

Get ready to laugh, cry, and commiserate. And use her tips and sharp observations in your own search. Who knows? You might learn, as she did, a few things about finding the perfect man.

Chapter 1

True Confession

I wasn't sure about meeting this odd man from Match.com, and, truth be told, I wouldn't have if I hadn't already launched the Web site and therefore needed a date to write about.

Autumn. The snap in the air, leaves the color of flames, a holiday that includes dressing up and not buying gifts for other people — it's my absolute favorite season. Jews consider it the beginning of the new year. I'm not Jewish, but am often mistaken for such with my pale olive skin, dark hair, and what I tell myself is a dry, Woody Allen-circa-Manhattan-style wit that doesn't go over that well in Seattle where I live. Fall has always seemed like a time of new beginnings to me, too. It was the perfect season to launch the dating Web site that I was sure would launch my career, and I was going on my very first date for it. I felt like a sophomore girl getting asked to the homecoming dance by a senior, except that I was in my late thirties and the senior was some stranger from Match.com and we probably wouldn't have dated under normal circumstances.

Our abnormal circumstances were that, (1) as bold as I am about some things, I don't believe in asking men out, and (2) he asked me out through an old ad I had up on Match.com just when I needed a date.

DatingAmy.com was not much more than a home page that said "I flip between dating men who are like George Costanza and men who are like George Clooney . . . then quickly back again. If romance is a numbers game, it only makes sense for me to pick a biggish number." The bizarre pressure of needing a date to write about on the Internet was standing in front of me like a fat woman in a bright orange suit holding a Drive Slowly sign as I trundled past, a single person in the diamond lane.

Driving, slowly or otherwise, was apparently something my date did not have to worry about.

"Sorry I won't be picking you up," his e-mail said. "I can't drive. I'll explain when I meet you. It's not that I am a loser, though." Hmmm, that last part would be up to me, surely. "If he can't drive it means too many DUIs or he's on parole," my friends assured me. "He sounds great!"

Like most people, I'm always nervous to meet a blind date. Unlike most people, it's not because I think he may not like me or think I'm attractive; I'm much more worried about what I'll think of him. Part of my hesitation — I thought pretty realistic in this case — was that he had sent a picture of himself with five cats on his head and a story from his childhood about a fish flopping in a wooden boat that was somehow supposed to be analogous to meeting me. "Maybe after we meet you can tell me what I'm doing wrong with dating," he wrote hopefully. I was starting a list already.

We had agreed to meet at a pub and barbecue place whose rotating sign features an apparently not-too-bright pig and cow dancing arm in arm. As soon as I stepped inside, a fortyish man with a shaved head, one dangly earring, and glasses as thick as mason jar bottoms wheeled around on his stool at the bar and asked if I was Amy. He was having a pint of beer with a lemon slice floating in it and ordered a chardonnay for me.

Although it was Monday Night Football time, the TV in front of us was tuned to a sailing event. "Have you been watching this?" I asked.

"Well, not exactly," he answered.

He went on to apologize for not picking me up but explained that he can't drive because he is vision impaired. Really vision impaired.

Jesus, my blind date was actually blind.

When you're doing online dating, it's perfectly understandable to shave a few numbers off your age or weight and add them to your height. Less forgivable, but still in the ballpark, is putting up a picture that's a year or two old, but how could someone omit the fact that they're missing one of the senses? There are only five of them and sight is one of the important ones. For example, I guess I don't really care if someone I'm involved with has a sense of taste. Sure, I'd feel bad for him and touring wine country might be less fun with him, but ultimately it wouldn't affect me personally. Someone's not being able to see feels completely different and like something that's at least worth mentioning.

"Four really gorgeous blonde girls walked in just before you did," he said. "I told the bartender I am definitely coming here again."

I looked around and didn't see any girls, gorgeous, blonde, or otherwise. Normally I would take that kind of a comment so early into a blind date as a very bad sign about where things were heading, but given the circumstances I decided to let it go.

He mentioned the cats I had seen pictured sitting on his head. They were all his, obviously. He said that sometimes he wished that he could be lord of the manor, like in a Gothic novel, and that someone else — a servant of some sort — would attend to the demanding cats and their needs. From that point on I thought of him as Indentured by Cats. Well, as that and also as that blind guy who didn't mention he was blind.

"Have you noticed how people put those tacky tchotchkes by the side of the road at accident sites as a tribute to their loved ones who died there?" I floundered for a topic to try to put his handicap into perspective. "I guess nothing says, 'We cannot accept that you were cruelly swept off the planet at such a young age' like Beanie Babies and Mylar balloons. In Germany they make crosses and things out of the twisted wreckage of the actual cars to mark the spot."

"Of the European countries I like Holland the best; it's like a second home to me," he said, thankfully not completely picking up the conversational thread I had started. He raved about how great the Dutch are. I didn't comment but silently recalled an incident at a train station in Amsterdam when I changed my mind about a ticket and the agent threw a golf pencil at me and screamed, "IS THIS HOW YOU DO THINGS IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY?" Never mind that the answer to that question is, of course, yes, the experience left me scarred.

Copyright © 2006 by Amy DeZellar

About the Author

Amy DeZellar is a promotional powerhouse, and has already been featured nationally on ABC News, Fox News and the WB News. She has been an entertainment journalist for the past eight years and got her start as a music critic in Los Angeles. She lives in Seattle, Washington.