Eating Dinner after a Dinner Date

This situation has happened to me on two different occasions with two different guys.

Date 1:

I went on a date with a guy who I had known from high school. We had already graduated and were in college, and met up again at a party or something. Anyhow, he calls one evening and asks if he can take me to dinner the following night. I accept the invitation.

If you're anything like me, when you go on a date you actually eat on the date. I'm not the kind of girl who orders the side salad. If I'm going to order a salad, there had very well be a huge fresh-caught salmon on top. Normally, I enjoy the pasta dishes. They are delicious. Plus, I always take home leftovers, because lets face it girls, you have roommates to feed.

So, the day of the date I don't eat much if hardly at all, because I am expecting to have a nice meal come 6 o'clock. He picks me up and takes me to a Roadhouse-kind of restaurant. When we walk in he says, " We'll just sit at the bar." "We will?" I'm thinking as I am passing rows of comfortable booths, lined with red-leather cushion. So we take seats on hard stools at the bar and the bartender walks over. "Give me 2 of your cheapest drafts." my date says. "Really?" I'm thinking, bc honestly I was getting ready to order a Rolling Rock. Whatever.

Our beers arrive, and we're talking about this and that. I notice he doesn't open the menu past the appetizer section. "Good!" I think, I'm starving. I leaf through the menu, and decide that the grilled chicken (this was when I did eat meat) with the baked potato looked amazing. The bartender comes over and asks what we would like to eat. I let him go first, as I'm under the impression that he's going to ask that we start off with a certain appetizer. My date, instead, says, " Yea, we'll split the chicken finger appetizer for dinner."

Whaaaat?!

"Does it come with fries?" my date asks. "No, that's extra," says the bartender. "Oh, that's alright, we'll just have the chicken fingers." I hang onto my menu for a minute too long, hoping that if I give one last look at the picture of the grilled chicken it would automatically appear in my mouth. But reluctantly, I hand it over.

The chicken fingers arrive. There are 4, small, pathetic looking pieces of strips just staring at me. Chicken's would be ashamed that they were murdered to look like wispy excuses for a chicken strip. The appetizer should have been called " burnt fried crips" for $4.99.

Anyhow, he dives in. He's dipping and biting and talking all at once. Before I realize it, he's already on strip two, and I've only begun to shred my first strip into two small bites, hoping it would make them last longer. By the time I'm done with my one strip, I look up eagerly searching for the last one. You know the rule, when there's an even number of anything and you're sharing then it's 2 and 2, right?

Wrong.

I look up to see him happily shoving the 4th strip into his mouth. OMG. I think. Suddenly, I am very, very sad. We leave shortly after and he asks if there is anything else I would like to do that evening. "Yea, like get dinner," I'm thinking. But, I politely say that I have company in town staying at my place and that I should head back.

He drops me off, and my friend Vera, who was staying with me that weekend, looks up from the computer in confusion. "You're back already?" I mutter, Yea," as I head over to the fridge and start pulling out everything inside of it. "Didn't you just eat?" she asks? "No, he ate, and I watched." It was a more of a "Show and tell" kind of date. "Oh my," she laughs. "Well I'm starving she says, want to go get something?" "Absolutely," I say. So we head over to Max & Erma's and order actual meals and we even add a "to go" order of their famous chocolate chip cookies.

Date 2:

Literally, a month later I go on a date with another guy. He's older, has a job, etc. He asks if I want to get dinner for tomorrow night. I say sure. And the day of the date, I actually don't purposely try not to eat, I simply don't have time to because fall quarter had started, and I was very busy that day.

Right when he pulls in to pick me up, it starts pouring rain. That should have been a clue.

So, I hop in the car, and hope that the sound of the rain pattering against the windows are drowning the thunder-hunger rumble that's coming from my stomach. He says that he is taking me to this Mexican-like restaurant that has a full bar, etc. "Good," I think, "Chips and salsa for free."

When we arrive, the place is completely dead except for a table of about 5 people. He starts walking towards the table, and I follow hesitantly behind, completely unaware of what he's doing. When we get to the table, he "hi-fives" everyone all around, and introduces me to these people who are apparently all of his friends.

Mortification begins to seep through my veins, and I am immediately dizzy.

We take seats on bar stools (again, with those damn, hard chairs), and he orders us some Pacifico beer. He starts making inside jokes and what not with these people who are very, very drunk already. I am extremely uncomfortable and look around for a menu, but I don't see one. The waitress brings us our beers, and asks if we would like menus. I'm about to say "please," and he turns to me and says, " I actually already ate, you're not hungry are you?"

YES I AM HUNGRY I HAVEN'T EATEN ALL DAY! (screaming in my head)

"No, it's fine." I mumble. But it's not fine. It's not fine, at all. When a guy asks you to "go to dinner," I take it as a literal meaning of ordering food and putting it in your mouth. I didn't know it was code for "get drinks." If a guy wants to "get drinks," he should simply ask, "would you like to get drinks?"




2 hours later, I went home, changed into sweats and ate 2 bowls of cereal.