Chapter 2 - How is all Began

How it all Began

It is 10 years since my first dating disaster. I don’t think anything before that really can constitute as proper dating. Since it is 10 years I thought that this would be a better time than any to share my experiences with the world. My friends seem to get much joy out of my pain. At first I got the “you must be joking” treatment, then came the sideways head tilt and nod that suggests that all these disasters are actually my fault and now it is just the running joke! Nobody expects to hear good things anymore, in fact if there isn’t some strange story or drama there are disappointed faces!

It was June 2000, I was spending summer in Martha’s Vineyard, off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. I was staying with my Aunt and Uncle but it was my first summer of freedom. Here I was in the land of “dating”, surely at 17 I would meet the American of my dreams, tall, brown eyes, basket ball player, fall in love and that would be it. I had watched Clueless so many times, that I just presumed that that was how my dating life should be. Carefree and wonderful! How wrong could I be..

I met Matt, while out with some friends. On first meeting, he seemed like everything you could imagine an American man to be. Polite, manners, taller then me and a convertible. One of those convertibles that only had one seat in the front. I was in dating heaven! Over a shared dollar slice of pizza and ice cream he asked me if I would like to go on a date. I jumped at the chance, I had never been on a real date before. This was it this was the moment that would path out my whole relationship and dating life!

Days leading up to this momentous event, I did what any girl does. I went with my aunt and got my hair and nails done, bought a new outfit, rehearsed what I would say when I first saw him and how would I greet him. He arrived to pick me up to get the approval of my uncle. This was like scenes out of Hollywood films, how could it be anything but perfect, that was me, all ready to pack my bags and move to America.

So we drove to the beach and took and walk, held hands and laughed. Serious innocent romance. Then went for some pizza and to the arcade, everything pretty normal so far. The end of the night was coming and it had been arranged that Matt would drop me home. Can I just add that I had no mobile phone and my uncles house was about an hours walk. Anyway, as I said the end of the night was drawing near and we went to sit on a bench, that was on top of a hill, looking down onto a restaurant. The conversation up to that point was good, nothing was said that made me think ‘hey this guy is a bit weird’ until he asked me “what was the worst thing I had done to make someone jealous?”. I was a bit curious as to why he was asking but when he went on to express that his girlfriend had cheated on him with his brother so I brushed that question to one side until he asked “had I ever been in jail?”. Even in my Hollywood blurred vision of dating I even realised that this was never a good combination of questions!

I politely answered “no, why have you?”, to which he replied “not yet”! Here was I sitting on a park bench with a guy who was contemplating a stint in jail, even Drew Barrymore wasn’t this unlucky. Naively, I thought that this was a blip, the end of the weirdness. When just then, a waitress appeared from the restaurant that lay at the bottom of this picturesque hill, running towards us shouting “get away from my man - HO” with what appeared to be a very large kitchen knife. There was a moment between running and thinking I’d never heard a real person say “HO” apart from when it follows “HI”, when I did actually look behind me to see the poor women that she must have been talking to until I realised that it was actually me! So, what did I do? I ran and hid behind a tree, that’s right, I hid all 5’11 of me behind a tree, while these two battled it out in the middle of the park thinking to myself what would Cher do in this situation!

Days following, Matt did call the house several times asking if I would like to go out again, at first I gracefully declined and then I had to get my 8 year old cousin to tell him I had gone back to Ireland! So this was it, this was dating, how it all began and how I still know it now. This is when the blow off “I have a boyfriend” , the “I’m moving country” the “I’m not emotional available” the “tragic death” (yes I have actually had to use that) and many more excuses all started.

This experience bodes the question; is Hollywood to blame for my idealistic view in dating, or am I just that unlucky? And so it continues…