2001 was a weird year for me. I moved there to do bankruptcy arbitrage for a friend of mine. Unfortunately, his main holding was a company that went bankrupt about a week after I got there.
I thought I was cool enough to bring my 1965 Mustang. People were honking at me all summer, which always freaked me out because being a terrible driver there was a 50-50 chance they were beeping a thumbs up for my car or a thumbs down on my driving. Once a carfull of Hispanic gentlemen told me they loved my car at a stoplight. “Hey man, cool car do you want a beer?” I turned the beer down politely and smiled.
I had a weird run of internet dates at that time.
I took the first girl to a musical tribute to the life of Jackie Wilson. It was an incredible show – we were almost the only white people attending that night, and I thought I was way hip to be there. Then I realized that she didn’t feel the same way. The show was fantastic with tons of great music and dancing. At the end it got a standing ovation from everybody but my date. The lights came on and she was the only one sitting down and not clapping in the entire theater.
We had talked about grabbing dinner after the early show, but she pretty much wanted to be home and rid of me as quickly as possible.
I took another girl to see Glitter, which actually went over way better than the Jackie Wilson show. We went to a coffee place after and I had a good time.
I was pretty close to moving back to Los Angeles, but I had tickets to see Ray Davies. I should have taken the Glitter girl, but I was really looking forward to taking a different girl, whose correspondences seemed cool. Her online profile was a really fuzzy picture that had been taken from a distance.
The girl turned out to be just gigantic. I feel bad because I have a feeling that my degree of shock at first seeing her immediately ruined her attitude. She was cranky as hell and told me that she’d rather have a used Toyota than a classic 60’s car. It was a disaster and not taking the Glitter girl is still one of the greatest regrets in my life.
