Super-awkward date

I totally thought I had told this story already, but evidently I haven't. So... storytime!

This happened last summer.

So, there I was. I'd just graduated from high school, and I felt like I was on top of the world. I was all set to go off to another state for college (which was really exciting and also a little bit nerve-wracking, but hey, I wanted to go on an adventure and I'm really glad I did now), and I was determined to enjoy the summer break to the fullest.

Enter T. T had been in some classes with me, but I didn't know her very well. I did know that my best friend K didn't like her very much, because T was dating J, and K and J were friends, but K liked J as more than a friend, only J didn't know that, and T didn't treat J very well, and that made K dislike T even more than she already did.

Still with me? So I don't know T very well. She'd been nice to me in the past, but we'd never interacted on any grand scale to speak of. I just knew that my best friend totally didn't like her. Well, T went on a foreign exchange program for the second semester of senior year to Spain. I figured that I was never going to see her again because we were barely acquaintances, and I was going away to college and that was that.

Well, about a month before graduation, I get this message on facebook from T, saying something to the effect of: Hey! I totally have this friend here in Spain who's gay and cute. You're gay and cute! You're like practically made for each other! He's coming to visit me and you should totally hang out with him *wink wink nudge nudge* (Which is another post for another time... the fact that two males are gay DOES NOT mean that they have loads in common and are going to be soul mates and want to spend the rest of their lives together, no matter how well-intentioned you may be).

I browse through her photo albums and see what the guy looks like, and he is, indeed, cute. Further, he's Spanish, so he's going to have an accent. And be able to speak spanish.

Sometimes I'm shallow.

Anyway, I message her back (despite the mild annoyance at her assumption that two gay males will automatically want to "hang out") and tell her that I'd love to meet him, and to let me know when he gets in town.

And then I kind of forgot about it.

Fast-forward to summer almost being over with: it's a Friday night, and I'm sitting at home. I'm going into Raleigh (a 2 hour drive) on Saturday for Alumni Day for NCGSE, which I had attended the previous year, and Sunday morning I'm getting on a plane to go out to Oklahoma for Camp Crimson, which is like a combination freshman orientation/get-to-know-someone-before-you-go-off-to-college camp so you won't spend the first few weeks of college being like WHOAH I don't know ANYBODY here, which was totally going to happen to me because I am from North Carolina, and I was going to school in Oklahoma, and those two states aren't exactly next to each other. I'd be coming back Wednesday, and leaving town again for a week on the following Sunday.

So on this Monday, I get a text from T inviting me to come hang out with her and J and the pretty spanish gay boy named F. And because he was attractive, and because there were going to be cookies, I was like "Okay, why not."

It turned out to be slightly awkward, with us eating cookies and watching Angels and Demons on T's TV while her and J made out and while her sister and her boyfriend made out and me and F sat on the couch and didn't make out and didn't really even make eye contact or try to talk because there was a movie going on and people were making out and that's just weird.

I have to leave before the movie is over because my parents totally still had a curfew on me at the time (so not cool, Dad) and so I went home and I thought that was going to be the end of it. However, the next day I get another text from T, telling me that she had to work and that F was just sitting at home by himself and HEY you should totally ask him out on a date! So I was like "that's a great idea!" and I called him and asked him to go get ice cream with me.

So we go get ice cream. And then we walk around the mall. And then we go to the park, only it was dark and there were mosquitoes. And this was my first date, so I wasn't sure how to do this, and I was nervous, so I asked him if I could kiss him, and he said no.

And I was a little disappointed, and he said it was because he was going back to Spain at the end of next week and he didn't want to get involved in anything here because he'd never been kissed before, and I totally understood. But it was still slightly awkward, so I started to drive him home.

At this point, I could have totally gotten him home without incident, except for two things. Lady Gaga, and Padiddle.

So, Love Game comes on the radio... the one about taking a ride on somebody's disco stick? Yeah. That one. Well, he tells me that the disco stick part was his favorite part, and I'm like... okay. Either he doesn't really get the connotations because english isn't his first language... or he's totally sending me mixed messages. Then a car goes by with one of its headlights out, and I hit the top of the roof, saying "Padiddle" and he gets really confused (like I'm sure you are right now... Padiddle is a game that my friend K likes to play with her friends that I'm just kind of acquaintances with. The rules of the game are, whenever you see a car with a headlight out, you hit the roof of the car and say "padiddle," and the last person to do so has to remove an article of clothing. Moving on...). I explain the rules of the game to him, and he gets the next car without a headlight, only I must not have explained the rules that well, because he seemed to think that he could pick the article of clothing that I took off, and I bet you can figure out what he wanted me to take off.

At this point you need to clarify that I do not strip off articles of clothing while I drive. Generally when driving I abstain from this game, and in situations where I cannot, I pull over and pull off my shoes or something.

Well, I'm an 18-year-old American teenager, and there's a cute boy in my car who seems to have decided that he wants me to be less clothed than I am. What do I do?

I pull over on the side of the road.

That was a mistake. It turns out that there was a ditch on the side of the road that was QUITE deep and overgrown with weeds, and because it was dark, I did not see this ditch. I drive a buick (Read: boat). Well, my front right tire got stuck in this ditch. I tried to correct the mistake, but only managed to make things worse... by the time I was done, I had managed to make my vehicle look like it had dived off the road, rather than simply tried to pull over and then get stuck.

Well, I'm sitting there, and I don't quite know what to do. Ordinarily in situations like this, I would call my Dad, but I hadn't exactly told him that I was going on a date, because he's still slightly uncomfortable with the idea of me being gay. Also, I would have then had to explain why I had pulled over on the side of the road, and nobody wants to have that conversation with their parents.

Well, while I'm trying to figure out what to do, F says I should call T, to let her know what has happened. I do so, and while I'm on the phone with her, a truck pulls over on the other side of the road. I go to talk to the man, and he says that he's with the volunteer fire department, and that they would be along shortly to help pull me out of the ditch. I'm thinking, "Great! They'll pull me out, and life will be great."

Two police cars, two fire-pickup-trucks, a fire engine, and an ambulance showed up. It was so much more response than was needed. I was mortified, I kept apologizing to F, who was very gracious, and kept saying that he had wanted to see what American fire trucks looked like (which I doubt, but I pretended it was true because it made me feel better about myself).

At this point, I have several concerns:

• The police officers who have arrived are asking me questions like, "How much have you had to drink tonight?" (none) "Why were you pulling over?" (Uh...) "Why didn't you see the ditch?" (It was dark?) "What's your name, young man?" (crap. they're going to call my parents...) "Who are you?" (To F) "Let him answer his own questions" (But his english isn't that great and I can understand your accent better than he can...) and it was just super awkward
• T and J showed up at the scene, and the police officers yelled at them and told them to leave
• It's like... 1130, and I need to get up early the next morning to drive to Raleigh
• My car is in a ditch, and I need to drive to Raleigh and back the next morning and I'm terrified that my car has been damaged in some way and that I won't be able to make the trip
• I have no idea if my car has been damaged or not, and neither do the police officers, because they can't tell 'til the pull it out of the ditch, and this means that I don't know if I'm going to get a ticket or not 'til they get my car out
• There are cars going by, and of course everybody's looking at me, and I'm terrified that someone will recognize me and call my Dad (which is not an exaggeration. My big brother broke some traffic law on his way home from school, which was a 10-minute drive at most, and Dad knew about it before he got home because someone called him)

An hour after the police start to arrive, the tow truck shows up. They manage to pull my car out of the ditch (although they DROPPED it the first time they try because they were pulling it at a weird angle and it almost flipped over) and I pay the tow truck (in cash, because I had just gotten graduation money, and because I didn't want this to be traced back to me when my parents read the bank statement at the end of the month and saw a weird tow truck charge on my debit card) and drive F to meet T and J, who were watching from down the street after they got chased off by the cops. F goes home with them, and I go home, too. My immediate thought is, "I just got away with this..."

As I'm going to bed that night, I found a tick in my hair (we had been standing in the tall grass, which prevented me from seeing the ditch in the first place), and I freaked out and flushed it down the toilet and couldn't get to sleep for awhile because I kept feeling imaginary bugs crawling all over me. I hate bugs.

Anyway, the next day comes and I go to Raleigh, and I tell this story, and I'm like, "well, this kind of sucks... but it's a funny story to tell."

And then I remember that my dad is the editor of the local newspaper. And the local newspaper prints the emergency response reports every week.

So much for getting away with it.

I told him, and he told me that my name wouldn't have been in the report because there wasn't a ticket (frick).

BUT I didn't get a ticket. So that's a good thing.