Rina and Frasier
Rina is a 37-year-old teacher who lives in the St. Lawrence Market area. She enjoys “kayaking, jewellery-making, improv comedy, reading, eating dim sum, going to concerts and working with rescue dogs.” She has “a pair of jeans for every occasion.” One of the lessons Rina says she has learned from online dating is to “follow my instincts.” She is looking for someone who likes to see live music, loves to travel and shares her political views.
Frasier and I met online. We exchanged messages for a few weeks, and although the initial communication was fine, his messages started to irritate me. He tended to write in clichés, which is annoying on its own, but he kept misusing one cliché in particular. I called him out on it, and he said he had no idea what the idiom actually meant. What?! Why use it, then? That was my first clue that the guy just might be kind of an idiot. We had previously made plans to meet up, but at this point I wasn’t interested. I drummed up a plausible excuse and cancelled.
He kept messaging me, not overthe-top 24-7 messages or anything, but every few days he would be in touch, asking what I was up to, telling me bits and pieces about his own life. He eventually asked me out again. I felt bad for blowing him off before, and thought that maybe I had been too hard on him, so I agreed to meet up with him for an early dinner.
When I arrived at the restaurant, which was a nice place I had chosen, Frasier was already seated at a table, nursing a drink. He was wearing a tank top, which I thought was tacky, and the first of several red flags. We went ahead and ordered some food, which he washed down with three or four more drinks. That was the next red flag.
In all fairness, the conversation wasn’t terrible. We discovered that we like a lot of the same authors and filmmakers and have a similar brand of humour, and he seemed to be a decent guy.
However, the next and biggest red flag soon presented itself. Frasier had a tattoo on his shoulder and upper back. It was a couple of lines of text in French; he told me it was a favourite quotation of his from a novel he loved. When I looked more closely at the tattoo, I realized that it had a typo. I didn’t know if I should point it out or not, but it seemed too egregious to not comment on. When I did, Frasier told me — as though it was no big thing — that it was a typo. A typo? In a tattoo? Seriously?!
This was the turning point in the date for me. What kind of person gets permanent ink, in a foreign language, without at least checking in with Google Translate beforehand? Answer: the same kind of person who speaks or writes in terrible — and incorrect — clichés. All I could think was that I could never bring this guy home to meet my parents, or even my friends.
Frasier was actually a likable enough guy. He was attentive, friendly to the wait staff and seemed really easygoing. His attitude about the tattoo was evidence enough of that. If he were my neighbour, or that cousin who shows up at every third family gathering, I’d enjoy chatting with him about his latest misadventures. But as a love connection? Never.
Rina rates her date (out of 10): 3 The Dating Diaries are readers’ accounts of their best, worst and weirdest dates as told to the Star. Want to be a dating diarist? Email datingdiariescontact@gmail.com.