I was living in Chicago, having a grand old time. Let’s face it, I was wild. I had no interest in a serious relationship. There were a couple of men buzzing around me. One of them (sweet, nice, a guy I saw perform improv numerous times) approached me at a party and, after chatting me up for a while in a very humorous and effortless way, asked me out to dinner.
I said Sure!
It ended up being one of the best dates I have ever been on before IN MY LIFE. Not because there were sizzling romantic sparks between us (there weren’t) but because of where he took me to dinner, the people we met there, and what we ended up doing. We went out to eat at a great old-school Greek restaurant (sadly, the joint is now closed). The coffee they gave us at the end of the meal was so thick our spoons could stand up in it. We stayed there for hours, talking and laughing, and then, after 11 or so, the music started. There was a round dance floor in the middle of the tables (like a nightclub you see in 1940s movies, although dilapidated and decaying), and people started dancing. These people were all Greek. These people were all over the age of 70. They danced in a circle, holding hands, shouting and whooping.
We were the youngest people in the place by two generations. When the dancing started, it involved a bunch of 70-year-old Greek women, caked with makeup, jewels glittering on their ears, their fingers, dancing around in a circle, holding hands, gesturing majestically out to us to join their dance, as their 70-year-old Greek husbands, or lovers, stood on the outskirts, throwing money up into the air, throwing money at their women. The air was filled with floating American currency. White-haired women picked up 20 dollar bills and plastered them onto their sweaty necks and sweaty bejewelled cleavage. The atmosphere was sexually charged, more so than any hip dance club filled with 20-somethings like ourselves. This was experienced sexuality on display. It was midnight, 1 a.m. when we finally joined the geriatric set, who showed no signs of slowing down. We danced with them in their circle, as money swirled through the air. We scuffed through the bills on the floor, laughing at how much fun we were having, how awesome it all was.
But that’s a tangent, and not the story I want to tell which is the story of the Eyeball and the Dozen Roses.
During the great date at the late-night Greek place, for some UNFATHOMABLE reason, I told him that my eye doctor had taken a picture of the back of my eyeball.
He: “Your grey eyes look so lovely. I could drown in their sparkley depths.”
Me: “Oh yeah? I should show you a picture of the BACK of my eyeball, pal.”
I have no idea how the subject came up, but he (bless him) seemed completely fascinated by the idea of having a picture taken of the back of his eyeball. The photo of the back of my eyeball was very weird and I was kind of obsessed with it: It looked like a big burning red ball. It looked like a close-up photo of the red storm circling Jupiter in the cold depths of space.
The back of my eyeball looked like that, basically.
During the date at the Greek place, he already set up the next date. I’m telling you, he had the basics down! “Okay, so Valentine’s Day is next week. And – I know we don’t know each other at all or anything, but I think it would be fun to have a date on Valentine’s Day. Whaddya say?”
I Zorba-ed my way through the carpet of money, plastering 20 dollar bills on my arms, and said, “That sounds like fun!!”
I’m not big on Valentine’s Day, not being a romantic type (as this story will OBVIOUSLY prove), and also: it just seems like a hell of a lot of pressure. When I see couples out on Valentine’s Day, the men look stressed and cowed, and the women look either vicious or triumphant. It’s not my scene, man. But he and I had such an unbelievably fabulous time on that first date, I thought: It’s cool.
And then I came up with what I considered to be an inspired idea.
Instead of getting him a nice Hallmark-y little Valentine’s Day card, I put the photo of the back of my eyeball into a little red envelope, with his name on it. On the margins of the photo I wrote, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
I know it is insane.
I cannot defend it.
I am just reporting the facts of the case, which are: I put a photograph of the back of my eyeball into an envelope to give to a guy I barely knew on Valentine’s Day.
I went over to his apartment for our date. He greeted me at the door, so nice, so sweet. He let me in. He got me a drink. We didn’t really know each other at all, but we had had (no contest) the best date EVER. One for the books. We were kind of proud of ourselves for that.
He went into the kitchen, and came back out, holding a dozen red roses for me. For Valentine’s Day.
The second I saw the roses, I remembered the little red envelope in my purse, and I could feel my face getting as beet-red as the back of my own eyeball.
Oh my God. I am such an asshole. I have given him a photograph of the back of my eyeball. I have given him a Polaroid of the inside of my body. What the hell was going through my mind at the time that made me think that was appropriate??? My head was literally burning with embarrassment about my eyeball.
I suppose I could have chosen to not give him the picture of Jupiter’s eternal red storm. But comedy is important to me, and I knew that what was going down here was freakin’ funny.
I said, “Okay, so this is completely embarrassing, seeing as you gave me a beautiful bouquet of roses … but here’s what I got you.”
He opened up the envelope, looked at the Polaroid, and then BURST into laughter. (Thank God.)
Throughout the night he kept making jokes about it, pretending he was describing his Valentine’s date to friends who didn’t know me. He would do both sides of the conversation.
“Hey, man, did you go out on Valentine’s Day?”
“Oh yeah, dude, I went out with this sweet girl I just met.”
“Really? What does she look like?”
Long long pause.
“Oh …. she’s a circle.”
“Dude, you went out on Valentine’s Day? What did the girl look like?”
“Uhm, sort of like a raging fireball.”
Or, when someone would ask him, “What did your date look like?”, he would take out the photograph of the back of my eyeball and, smiling proudly, hand it over.
He ended up being very kind about the whole thing, turning it into a huge joke, which I appreciated.
So that is the mortifying story of a man who gave me a dozen roses and I gave him, in return, a Polaroid of the back of my eyeball.
A Coda:
We ended up going on something like 4 dates, stretched out over an 8 or 9 week period. Obviously there wasn’t a sense of urgency to it all. We weren’t hot for each other, we weren’t burning like the backs of our own eyeballs to see each other. I don’t even think we kissed. Occasionally we would go to a movie, or out to dinner, whatever, but nothing ever really happened beyond that. There were no games, no weirdness, it just was what it was. I would forget for weeks at a time that he existed, and then he would suddenly call me up and invite me to do something. I was dating other people, I’m sure he was too. Whatever. My 20s were great. I had my head on straight about all this shit.
The whole thing ended when I called him up, after another 3 week “break”, and asked him to go to a movie, or something like that.
He sounded very hesitant. I could tell immediately something was up.
So I said, “What’s up?”
He said, “Well … I guess I’m thinking that we should slow down.”
I sat there, on the other end, filled with blankness. I thought nothing, I felt nothing. I went completely dead. There was nothing to say, but it seemed I was required to respond.
And what finally came out of my mouth, was: “I literally do not know how much slower I can go.”
This was greeted by a deafening silence.
And then what came out of my mouth was: “If I go any slower, I think I will stop.”
An even louder silence from the other end.
I wasn’t being bitchy. But I was, God help me, being truthful, and the entropy was already swirling me into its polar vortex and I could not, conceivably, in any biologically-sound carbon-based universe, go any slower than I was already going, without stopping outright.
Needless to say, we stopped.
And to this day, in my group of friends, “If I go any slower, I think I’ll stop” is a favorite phrase. It works well in a multitude of situations.
I ran into him some years back at a party in Chicago, and we had a hilarious conversation. I said, “To this day, that date at the Greek place is one of the best dates I’ve ever gone on.” He said the same was true for him as well.
We avoided mention of the back of my eyeball, which is probably for the best.
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