Bowling, Beer, and Bad Times

“It’s a match!” I click on his profile, seems like an okay guy. His hand tattoos, long swooshed over black hair, and wearing sunglasses in every picture wasn’t enough of a red flag for me. I message him. We go back and forth and eventually agree to meet up that evening for drinks.

Three hours later I receive a text, “hey is it okay that my brother comes along, he just got out of jail today.” I show the message to my sister, who has kindly agreed to accompany us, her reaction was also not enough of a red flag.

I text back, “Sure, what did he go to jail for?” To which he replied something along the lines of, beating the crap out of someone at a bar, and so now he can’t go near the downtown area. So this new found double date has been moved to the bowling alley. My sister and I arrive late, he’s already there with his brother. I go up and shake his hand and notice he’s got a bowling-themed tattoo on his hand, yet another flag I completely ignored. We all proceed to get drinks, and he goes off and gets just insanely smashed. Then finally, we get a lane and start bowling and he’s way too into it, yelling when he misses, doing dances when he strikes. Just making a total ass of himself. I ignore it and sip my beer, at least his brother is interesting. Just when I thought things were smoothing over, the creepiest, most giant douche I have ever met (he used to buy my friends and I booze when I was younger) shows up with an equally scummy girl. Turns out he and my date are best friends. I was literally being smacked in the face with red flags and I just kept pushing on through determined to have a good night. For some reason, I have yet to figure out. The night seemed to be going somewhat okay until the scummy couple convinced my overly drunk date to go downtown. My sister and I agree to go, his brother goes home. It’s the sixth frame of the game and the couple has left. So I walk up to him, as he’s mid bowl and ask what the plan is. He gutters the ball, spins around and proceeds to start screaming at me for messing his game up. Then storms outside and starts screaming on the phone to his friends. Then ditches us. I’m in awe that someone could be so crazy over a dumb game they weren’t even that good at. My sister was pissed. We both decide to go downtown anyways to our favorite bar, blow off some steam. Maybe 45 minutes later, they all show up. (I’m a little drunk at this point) he walks up to me, asks why I ditched them. Now I’m pissed and tell him to F off and go smoke a cigarette. He follows outside and we proceed to yell at each other for ten minutes which ended in what I can only describe the sloppiest, grossest make out session imaginable. Just something about the yelling and the passion and the copious amounts of beer I had to make that night okay, just got me. Very long story short, I go home with him (I realized I just ditched my judgement in car when I first showed up for the date), we get back to his “house” which turned out to be a sofa in the garage. More fighting happens and then so does the deed that all adults do (I’ll spare you those details). The next morning I wake up with regret and a need to get home. The scum friends from last night are banging on the garage door, asking if he wants to get food. He throws up the door and starts freaking out on them for banging and yelling at the garage. They leave, then I get up, throw my stuff together and say I’m leaving. He then asks if I can drop him off somewhere. So I comply, he gets in my car and what should be a simple around the block trip, turns into running errands with him for two hours! He finally gets out for good and I drive away ashamed and confused. We never talked again, as you can imagine, but for a few months there he’d call my phone at 3 AM and leave me voicemails with no sounds or just send one worded texts. Needless to say, never ignore those red flags or you’ll end up on your #worstdateever.