Lord, Give Me Strength: The Experience of Dating on Campus

There is not going to be a section in this blog post designated for my blogging program today. My mind is turning over and over like nobody's business. People say I don't talk about my dating life all that much, and really, it's true - I keep it private. But this just made too good of a story to keep to myself.

I recently started emailing back and forth with this guy who lives on campus in the building next door to mine. He seemed really nice and like he had it together, and I agreed to meet up with him - tomorrow night.

Earlier I got back to my room and checked my email only to find a reply from him asking if we could hang out around campus tonight instead because his anticipation was killing him and he really wanted to see me. I'm like - okay, some people might see this as being desperate, but I'll give dude a chance, maybe he's just anxious or whatever.

So we meet up at the newly agreed-upon time, and things get off to a great start. We walk around campus [the long way] talking and finally reach the UC. We go inside and sit down in the lounge area. At this point, he starts telling me all about his financial and family-related issues. Oh, and all of his ex-girlfriends.

I could deal with a little bit of it - college life is full of freedom that leads some people to rebel against their families, and, of course, it's a time when being completely broke is completely normal.

I think telling me about the intimate details of his brother's two divorces and his sister's relationship problems crosses that line. It gets to the point where it is repetitive and predictable. Apparently, his mother has also had back surgery recently that didn't go so well for her - the doctors didn't close up the incision properly, and in his mind, it is important that I know exactly how and why.

At some point during the middle of all of this, he says something that strikes me as being a little off in the numbers when it comes to his age (I'm a future journalist - I pick up on these things). He told me he was 23 - he confesses to being older, but he never gives me a specific number. He tells me - oh, it's no big deal, I'm around 31, 32, 33... something like that. I'm like - WTF, are you serious? why would you lie to me when you don't even know me?

I start to feel quite uncomfortable, but again, I'm being nice and trying to give him a break. Maybe he thought I wouldn't give him a chance if he told me how old he was - I don't know. But a lie is a lie, and I can't shake the thought of it being a pretty ridiculous one. Alas, we carry on.

He continues to talk about previous girlfriends incessantly, until the point at which he says - and I kid you not - that there is nothing to do where we are, and he wishes his roommate wasn't in their room so that he could take me up there and I could visit with him EXTRA cozily.

I suppose he sees the expression on my face, because he quickly laughs it off as a joke. Unfortunately, after a couple of minutes, he makes the same suggestion to me again. I ignore it and end up listening to him chatter on about his family drama, his low self-esteem, and how he wished he hadn't wasted his 20s rocking back and forth on his mother's spare bedroom floor like an amoeba.

By now, I'm pretty much done with the freaky ish, but I'm thirsty and he wants to buy me a drink - fine; it's not like I was getting anything productive done now tonight anyway.

We take our drinks outside where a giant beetle crawls on me. He laughs. I do not laugh. I do not like beetles - or most other bug-like things, especially when they are CRAWLING ON ME.

Somewhere in the midst of this beetle incident, his student ID falls out of his pocket, and I see that he has also lied about his name. um... NEXT!