It Was Quite Possibly the Worst First Date Ever. Then I Ordered the Scallops

It was the kind of seafood place decorated with old fishing nets studded with starfish that hadn’t made it out in time, plus a couple of battered life jackets lying around suggesting that maybe the sailors hadn’t either. There was a general feel of algae.

I was trying to decide if this was the worst date I’d ever been on.

A week earlier David and I, who knew each other by sight only (through mutual friends) had run into each other in a bookstore. You know how it is when you don’t like someone even though you’ve never actually spoken? That was us. 

We managed a half-hearted hello, then eyed each other’s armload of books. No overlap. As we chatted I began to think that maybe I’d misjudged him. He seemed nice. Interesting. Right up until he asked me what I’d been up to.

“Backpacking.”

“Who with?”

“Just me.”

That’s when he yelled at me—actually yelled. In a bookstore.

Poof. All interest evaporated.

Through gritted teeth, I explained that I was perfectly capable of going backpacking alone. Through similarly gritted teeth, he explained he’d lost a friend that way. We both took a step back.

A week later we’re on this date.

For the first 20 minutes, David regales me with stories of ex-girlfriends while I check my watch and empty the breadbasket. When it comes time to order, he selects swordfish; I go for the scallops. But as soon as the food arrives, he mentions he’s highly allergic to scallops.

“Highly,” he emphasizes.

I ask if I’d ordered the wrong thing.

“Not per se,” he says.

Per se?

He switches to an explanation of black holes which (apparently) arise when a massive star collapses in on itself. I want to feel sorry for the star, but I’m sitting across from a man who first yelled at me in a bookstore and has now spent the last 20 minutes talking about other women. So I feel a little sorrier for me.

My mind drifts. Was it possible for someone to go into anaphylactic shock from scallop fume inhalation? Maybe. He’d used the words highly allergic, and since he already seemed like one of those people who spoke mainly in facts, it seemed doubtful he would have used the word highly if highly wasn’t the case.

As he drones on about interstellar implosions, I start wondering if he carries an EpiPen. If so, where does he keep it? He doesn’t have a backpack. Front jeans pocket, maybe. I hope so because I’m not willing to conduct a full body search. The date wasn’t going that well.

I take a bite of my scallops. They’re good. Garlicky. Which suddenly makes me wonder. Although scallop fume inhalation was proving nonreactive, surely sharing scallop protein particles via mouth-to-mouth contact would not be. If, after this dinner, we kissed—which seems, let’s say, “highly” unlikely at this point— it might literally be the kiss of death.

Hmm.

A few months back I’d been on another bad date with a man who was getting a PhD in philosophy. He was writing his dissertation on Schopenhauer—you know, the philosopher of pessimism. As we drove into San Francisco, he missed his turn and stopped his car in the middle of the cable car tracks to make an illegal left. This was despite the fact that a cable car was already chugging its way toward us like a lethargic great white shark, its little bell dinging away in toy-like fury. I suggested to Schopenhauer that the cable car might not stop. He laughed and called me a pessimist.