Lizard Lips

       

     

      It has been awhile since I have written about anything.  I was pondering through my mental files about all the ridiculous dates I have been on.  I thought it was time to bust back into 2016 with class and style.  I want to give you a dating story.

            So, back in the day when I used to work at an optical chain as the manager.  There would be certain occasions that I would have to give classes to people regarding how to put in contact lenses.  During these classes I would do such things as instruct the patient on how to properly care for their lenses, ocular health and how to pry their eye open with a tiny little contact lens balanced on the tip of their finger then how to remove that little thin disk from the surface of their slimy eyeball. 

            Normally, women were more skilled at this than men.  I am not saying this to be sexist.  I am simply saying it because women have smaller fingers, and a lot of women are accustomed to applying cosmetics to their eyes.  Thus giving them some amazing prerequisite skills to keeping their eyes open, and inserting the contact lens.  My classes generally took longer when I was teaching a man.  Read into that what you will, whether it be the fat finger thing, or the “I cannot keep my eye open” issue or the “I am alone with a woman in a small room” syndrome. Either way, I knew I was in for a long, tedious trip through hell. 

            On this particular day in question I had a gentleman scheduled for a class that was a dead ringer for Lewis Skolnick from Revenge of the Nerds. His glasses had lenses that could have weighed approximately 10 pounds each, they were the size of small dinner plates and if used to refract sunlight on a bright day odds are it could have caused the crash of a 747 due to the blinding intensity of the rays hurdled at the jet.  His glasses, to be honest, needed to have scaffolding around his face to hold them up.  Not only scaffolding to hold them up, but an entire crew of tiny window washers diligently working on the scaffolding to clean his glasses from the debris that collected on the enormous lenses. (A reference that only my friend Kristin would appreciate.)

            Anyway…

            Me and Lewis (we are totally calling him Lewis the rest of this story…) are in the tiny room together, alone.  Now, to explain…not only is Lewis a doppelganger for the star of Revenge of the Nerds, he also has the limited social skills of a geek.  As I had to lurk uncomfortably close to him to help him with this torturous contact lens class, I tried to make small talk.  Absolutely any kind of small talk would have made the situation less awkward, but even though I put forth fervent effort, his responses were so brutally dry and uninteresting that I really had to give a Herculean effort to simply stay awake.  During the course of what ended up being a nearly 2 hour attempt due to extreme nervousness, Lewis finally gets both contacts in, takes them out, and puts them back in again.  When he has succeeded at this endeavor, I thought I would boost his self-esteem a little bit with a compliment.  It was not my best idea ever…but then again, I haven’t always been known for my stellar skills of communication with the opposite sex.  

     I said “Lewis!  You look like a totally different man.  You are well on your way to new confidence and adventures.”  Lewis looked at me like a puppy dog that was going to get a peanut butter snack.  He fluttered his eyelashes even.  He said to me “REALLY?  I look like a new man.”  “YES Lewis, you DO!!”  He said to me, “You know, you’re right…I AM feeling more confident…I have never asked a woman on a date before.  I think today is the day!”  Immediately I am filled with a God-awful sense of doom.  

     It felt like those Nano-seconds of silence were days long.  I looked at him like a frightened deer and he looked at me like a hungry bear.  I knew what was coming next.  “SOOOOO….” he said, “would you be interested in going to dinner with me on Saturday?”  In this moment which was also not very long, but felt like six weeks, (cue the crickets chirping and a wayward tumbleweed rolling by) I stood there pensive.  A thousand thoughts filled my head at once.  The most prevalent were “SWEET BABY JESUS!!  I cannot POSSIBLY go on a date with this guy!!!!!  NOOOOOOOOO!!”  AND “You are the world’s biggest douche stick for boosting a man’s confidence enough to ask a woman on a first date only to shoot him down brutally.  You will RUIN his confidence forever!!  YOU MUST TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM!!!”  

     So, in the 15 seconds that it took me to answer, I stared blankly at him while processing the two distinct choices I had available to me.  It was like the proverbial angel on one shoulder, devil on the other arguing back and forth trying to persuade me to do one thing or the next.  I blurt out “SURE!” in the voice of a crazed psychopath.  “REALLLLLY?!!!!!” he says.  Oh damn it…damn it….DAMN IT ALL TO HELL.  “YES, REALLY!”  I say in an excited flurry without thinking.

Why I am so nice?  Damn angel always wins. 

Anyway….Saturday arrives.  I am at work, so I am dressed up in my work clothes.  Lewis arrives promptly at 6 p.m. He is dressed in jeans, a plaid “cowboy” shirt that had those pearl-ish buttons and cowboy boots.  His hair was greased down.  He WAS wearing his contacts.  He told me he had decided to take me to his favorite eating establishment, which, in an act of pure karma, was my most hated eating establishment.  I yet again did not have the heart to tell him that I would be horrified to go there.  We went there.  The whole date was spent making very odd chit chat.  I was thankful that the service was fairly fast and the date was over.  He asked if I wanted to go sit by the lake, and at this point I finally said “You know, I have to head home.”  I was thinking thank heavens, this is IT…this is the last time I will need to have any more weirdness.

Nope.  Our conversation on the way home was a strange confessional.  He looked at me and said, “You know, there are a FEW things I need to tell you before we continue on with any sort of relationship.”  (WHAT?! Did I miss a discussion about relationships?  Did someone not give me a memo?!) “I want you to know that in times of stress I get a great deal of psoriasis on my scalp…also, just an FYI, I can break out in spontaneous eczema when I am nervous.  Only on and around my lips.”  

(YUCK!!!!)  “Okayyyyyyyyyyyy…………………………………….”  I said, trailing the ‘y’ off as long as I can.  “Why are you telling me this?”

“Well as I said, when I am stressed or nervous I get these conditions…and to be quite frank I am nervous about being with you, and when I try to kiss you I don’t want you to wonder what is wrong with my lips, or see giant flakes in my hair.  At least THIS way you will know the reason.”  He said to me in a brilliantly “matter of fact” sort of way. 

(Someone please cue the sound of awkward silence.  Wait, there is NO reproducing THAT….I guess that I will just symbolically try to create it.)

Silence...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

I am still pondering on how he jumped from barely being able to have a conversation with a gal on a dinner, to a relationship!! 

Yeah.  SO…the time has come for me to break it to him…WHAT I am gonna break to him, I don’t know…but I need to say SOMETHING before he lurches in for a kiss!

I quickly blabber “YOU KNOW….just so you you’re aware, I am really not attracted to men physically.”   You see, these are the things I pull out of my hat in a pinch...you know, when I don't want to hurt feelings.

There was another brief yet longer than life uncomfortable reprieve of all talking.

He looked at me and said “So you are a….”

I said “I am just not sexually attracted to men.  Not looking for a relationship…but I enjoyed our time hanging out!”  (Here I see that karma perhaps punishes my white lie by not giving me sex on a regular basis now...I SWEAR, I was trying to spare his feelings!!)

He nicely agreed with me and we drove back to my workplace to my car.  I do want you to know that all went well for this dude, he went on to be in a happy relationship.  Apparently, she understood the scaly lips and flaky scalp issue.  If just being AROUND me made him nervous, and we didn't even touch...can you imagine what things looked like when he had SEX for the first time?  Ewwwww…..I envision some sort of crazy skin confetti everywhere.  Like a lizard shedding skin, but in some blizzard like flurry.  Ugh!!  Yes…that is the vision I am leaving you with.  You’re welcome.