That’s Not My Drink

March 23, 2024

I just returned from a fantastic vacation in Charleston with some great friends. One of my favorite friend dynamics I have with these particular pals is that we all order cocktails over dinner and when the waiter brings the drinks to the table, we all pass them around saying “you wanna taste this?” The answer is always yes. It’s great because we can all order different drinks and then decide if we want to copy off of each other on the next round. Every now and then we end up trading drinks, like when I swiped a whole cocktail from my friend on Tuesday night at a wonderful southern restaurant called Lenoir. Her boyfriend and I spent the day getting tipsy on a pub tour of Charleston and both walked into the restaurant swearing that we weren’t drinking that night. But her perfect pink cocktail came out with a delightful pink Himalayan salt and peppercorn spice mixture on the rim, she offered me a taste, and just like that, the drink was mine. Other times, I’ll try a drink and make a face and pass it quickly back to the owner while shaking my head and exclaiming “That’s not my drink! Thank you!” This usually happens (shamefully) when a drink contains bourbon or whiskey or gin…or basically anything that isn’t tequila, mezcal or vodka. Rather than yucking my friend’s yum in this case and shouting “Oh god that’s awful!”, I think saying “that’s not my drink” is more polite – as if to say, “That drink is not for me, but thank you for letting me try it out. I’m glad you like it, it’s a fine drink to be sure. Please pass me my spicy margarita.”

I’m not comparing single people to specialty cocktails with little umbrellas and other garnishes in them…actually I am, because dating is a lot like our little cocktail swap. Just on a larger scale. We are all passing each other around trying to figure out whose is whose. I love the passion fruit in that but the vodka is a little too strong. Coconut – absolutely not. Oh you still live with your ex…interesting. He’s got a great job but he doesn’t like dogs…next. That’s not my drink.

Anyway, I thought you guys would enjoy a quick rundown “menu” of some of the personality cocktails I’ve tasted so far this year – including some that didn’t exactly make me want to “run up my tab” and complete with obnoxious cocktail names for each. Please don’t steal my excellent idea to have a bar where the drinks are inspired by bad dates.

1. AHHHHHCHOO! Ok this guy was very cute. I matched with him on Bumble and we planned a date to go get barbecue. He asked me to do a quick phone call a couple days before the date so we could talk about the major compatibility things. The man called me and started the conversation by asking me about my red flags. I told him that I work a lot and I’m borderline obsessed with my career. I also told him that I’m being very picky this time around and that I’m going to mourn this time being single if/when I find myself in a serious relationship because…believe it or not…I’m having some fun and enjoying peace these days. For that reason, I am not interested in moving particularly fast. I asked him about his own red flags and here’s what he told me.
   • Red flag #1: He doesn’t eat vegetables. I giggled when he said that and asked him if he just meant that he doesn’t love them…because I don’t LOVE vegetables either unless we are talking about jalapeños, fresh green beans, or onions. But no, the man said he refuses to eat vegetables. No onions. No salad. No carrots. No broccoli. NONE. Woof. At this point in the conversation I started asking myself if I could live a life where I can’t cook with onions. The man said he only eats meat, cheese, eggs and bread. He won’t even eat pickles. How can I be with a man who won’t eat a pickle?
   • Red flag #2: He wears sunglasses EVERYWHERE. I actually ended up asking him about this because I noticed that he had sunglasses on in every picture in his Bumble profile, even the ones that appeared to be taken indoors. He explained that he wears sunglasses everywhere because he has a condition that causes him to sneeze in the sunlight. He told me it is called Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst (ACHOO) disease, and at this point I believe I said, “Shut the fuck up, stop lying to me.” But I googled it (and encourage you to do the same), and it’s a real thing. Okay, I recognize this is something he can’t help. But the man had sunglasses on top of his head (not on his eyeballs, but just on his head) in all of his sister’s wedding photos and I started imagining our future wedding photos (there’s a good Jane Austen quote about this line of thinking which you can also Google) and I felt very sad. I know, I know. It’s awful. But ACHOO? ACHOO?? The medical community is a riot sometimes. Sincere apologies to any of my friends who suffer from ACHOO. I’ll donate some money to the next telethon.
   • Red flag #3 (the only real one): He was divorced after >15 years of marriage and doesn’t speak to his four children from that marriage anymore. I’m not going to write about those details here, but this was the real red flag. I’m only mentioning it at all because it was a huge bomb to drop that makes the conclusion of this story more interesting.
   • The conclusion: After we got off the phone, I was a bit shocked by all of the information I received but had already told myself that I was committed to a date. I resolved to go through with it and see if we connected in real life because I could at least tell that the man was capable of carrying a conversation…and he was honest with me, after all. But the onions…could I get over the onions? I was having this debate in my head when I got a text from Mr. Cholesterol himself and he told me that my red flags were too much to overcome and he didn’t want to go on a date. Did you read that? MY red flags were too much. I celebrated my good fortune by eating some raw onions and peppers for supper. Not my drink!
2. Don’t Interrupt My True Detective! Ok this guy was also very cute and a perfect gentleman. We had several dates, and on date 3 or 4 he cooked me a lovely dinner. I came into his house and he had written a playlist of songs he thought I would like on his little white board and that playlist was playing in the background. It was so sweet and kind of stopped me in my tracks because it’s been a long time since a man was…like…thoughtful toward me. We made dinner together and we watched the Season 4 premier of True Detective. For these few dates I already had been feeling like my interest wasn’t quite matching his, but I kept going on dates to see if it would grow on me. He wouldn’t shut up during True Detective and put his arm around me and at that point, my body knew it needed to end. He took the news like a true gentleman and asked me to be his friend and I said absolutely. So far this friendship has not come to fruition, which I totally understand and expected. He really was a sweetheart and a cutie and I wish I had been into him. Not my drink!
3. Happy International Women’s Day! How about we celebrate with a big, fat, manly lie? My friend practically had to drag me out of the house kicking and screaming on International Women’s Day. We had made plans, but I got a text from a Bumble boy that made me a sad girl and I was trying to bail on her. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I got all gussied up for my first girls’ night on the town of 2024. I felt out of practice, but as soon as we sat down in my favorite meat market bar, a man walked up to me and showed me a picture of Tiger Woods and asked me if I knew who it was…his reasoning was that none of the other women in the bar knew who he was. An obvious pick up technique but whatever. We started chatting and really hit it off. Around 11 pm, I started turning into a pumpkin and he walked me to my car and asked to take me on a date on Sunday. Date Sunday came and I texted the man to ask if we were still on, and he didn’t bother to respond. I finally heard from him on Monday morning, when he told me he was super “sicky” on Sunday. His illness apparently continued into late in the day on Monday and I asked him if there was anything I could bring him. He texted me Tuesday morning saying that he still didn’t feel well, so I didn’t really push the subject of rescheduling our date. I was bummed because we really seemed to have a lot in common and I was really looking forward to my date with him. On Tuesday, I went to the bar after work for a drink and guess who was there? Sicky himself, and he ignored me. I’m not the helpful kind of doctor, but the man didn’t look sick at all while he was guzzling beer with his bros. I saw him again the following Thursday when I went out with another girlfriend and he was there, ignored me again and flirted with a blonde girl in front of me all night until he finally came over to speak to me…probably because he overheard me loudly tell my girlfriend that he’s a fucking asshat. I gave him an earful (I think I’ll have more to say about that in another post) and he revealed the truth that he never should have asked me on a date because he just got out of a relationship 8 months ago and he’s not ready. Communication is hard…apparently. Not my drink!
4. A Missing Tooth and a Silver Lining. The night I found myself fussing at a grown man at a bar like he was my three year old nephew who had been caught “tellin’ stories again”, one of his friends did get my number and he was very cute and nice. Now…when we were talking, one of his teeth flew out of his mouth and landed on the floor. It was the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. The man lost his tooth and I stood there, jaw agape…and the other men around us acted as if he had dropped his keys or his fork. They just calmly started telling each other “Oh his tooth is on the ground, let’s find it.” as if a friend dropping a tooth happens every other day or something. So they got their little iPhone flashlights out and started looking for the tooth. Now the part that really got me was that when they found it…on the floor of the bar…where everyone’s feet go and all the beer spills and all that…he just picked it up, popped it back in and took a swig of his beer. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I gave him my number. We are allegedly going on a date this week. Might be my drink but I have questions about the tooth or may just carry around some rubbing alcohol for him to use when he drops it while we are out on dates…or whatever you would use to wash bar floor sludge off of a tooth. Come at me if you have suggestions.
5. The Stairmaster! Remember that time I fell down that guy’s staircase? We don’t need to dig up old bones here but I wanted to include it in the list for posterity. The guy didn’t like country music, was super conservative and really seemed to have a problem with fat people. Not great for me. Not my drink!
6. Let’s Do it for Science! I went on a date with a local in Charleston so I could compare and contrast the dating scene between DC and the South. The Charleston fella I went out with was very handsome on his Tinder profile. He was another phone call man, so he called me while I was driving from DC to Charleston last Saturday. We actually talked for two hours and really seemed to click. I felt really worried about going on a date with him because I was afraid I would be a smitten kitten and then be sad about the distance between us. Because I felt so happy about the phone call, I broke a key rule of dating and planned a long first date with multiple events. We got drinks first and then went on a horse and carriage ghost tour in Charleston. Here are the high(low)lights.
   • He did not look like his photos. He was significantly heavier. Now, a heavy man can be handsome as hell. I think the thing about the photo discrepancy that really bothered me was that he complained about women “catfishing” him with weight all the time and said “YOU WOMEN really know how to use angles in your photos.” He was guilty of exactly the same thing. That distance between what you say and what you do is hypocrisy.
   • He smelled like a middle school locker room. Axe body spray and way too much of it.
   • He asked me what I was looking for and I told him something similar to what I told the Jolly Green Giant from story number 1. His response was “so what I’m hearing is that you’re carrying your past trauma into your future.” Well what you should have heard was what I actually said.
   • He was spreading his legs out as much as possible on the carriage ride so as to invade my personal space. I practically sat on the carriage wheel to move my thighs away from his, and the more I scooted to the edge of the seat, the more he spread them. The man was 5’9″ – no reason to be taking up so much leg room.
   • At the end of the night he texted me, “So safe to assume you’re not interested?” Relieved that I didn’t have to craft the text to let him know, I said “yes, safe to assume.” And he responded with “Okay good, I’m not interested either.” Sure, Jan. If he wasn’t interested, I would have never heard from him again, but I hope saying that to me made him feel better. Not my drink!
   • The bar we went to, The Griffon, served me the best beer I’ve ever tasted. It was a very cool old pub that has thousands of dollar bills on the walls that guests have signed. I put one up that said “Call Rebecca for a good time!” but I put my dad’s number on there. Sorry, Dad! The ghost tour was fun because I got to kiss a horse named Otis, but there were no ghosts mentioned on the tour. Like none. No ghosts. I know, I know. I complain about ghosts all the time, and now I’m complaining that there are no ghosts. I’m impossible to please! Red flag!
7. Sample Size of 2, Dude! Ok, I thought maybe I just had a little bad luck on my first Charleston date, so I went on another. I made sure to learn from my mistake and planned to meet a guy for “a drink” when my friends and I wrapped up a dolphin tour. I showed up for the drink with wind blown hair and a wet ass from the tour (I got splashed with sea water, I didn’t pee my pants from excitement) and I told the man about my disheveled appearance apologetically when I was sitting down at the bar. Then I got my first good look at him and noticed that he was in sweatpants and a t-shirt and he looked like he hadn’t trimmed his beard in weeks. When I finished explaining my wet ass he said “oh dude, this is folly beach, dude.” He called me dude a lot. He told me he moved to Charleston because he had Peter Pan syndrome and that he was looking for a partner to keep him out of trouble. All in all, he was very nice even though he kept talking about “vibes”. We had a couple of drinks, walked out on a pier at sunset and he called me a baby while I shivered in the cold and I said “But my ass! It’s wet.” He wanted to hang out longer but I wanted to get home to take a hot bath and eat the hotdogs that my friend grilled for me while I was gone. A nice beach date, but not my drink, dude!

As always, thanks for reading! Call Rebecca for a good time!