#BadDateFiles: Killer Tofu
Brooklyn, Spring 2016: It was just after doors, and I was waiting for a friend and having a pre-concert drink at the venue bar when I noticed the cute guy sitting a few stools over. The idea of meeting a guy at a show has always appealed to me as a hypothetical perfect scenario, albeit one that has never panned out. As fans of the same artist or band, we would have a built-in shared interest and a bevy of natural conversation-starters to choose from (things I often find myself grasping hopelessly for on dating apps): How did you first get into them? Which album is your favorite? How many shows have you been to? What songs do you most love to hear live?
I observed my fellow fan casually, waiting to see if a girlfriend would emerge from the bathroom and join him at the bar. When he ordered another drink, still solo, I caught his eye and smiled.
We started talking. It was his first time seeing this band, and he was unabashedly stoked, which I found highly endearing. He had dark wavy hair cut neatly, and his “The Beets” T-shirt implied he was likely around my age. (The Beets were a fictional, Beatles-inspired band from the Nickelodeon cartoon “Doug.” Their hit single was called “Killer Tofu,” and if you watched TV and attended elementary school in the 90s, you can probably still sing the hook.) I found this dorky, but yet again, endearing. He worked in tech and lived in my old neighborhood. He was easy to talk to and we were definitely. Hitting. It. Off.
He excused himself to use the restroom, and while he was gone the friend I’d been waiting for arrived. By then, the band was about to go on, so she and I headed to the floor to grab a spot. I looked around for “Beets” and spotted him a few minutes later several rows back. I pointed him out (discreetly!) to my friend E, and mentioned we’d met at the bar and the vibes were good.
“He looks a little bro-y,” she observed. I brushed it off. A “bro” wouldn’t come to this gig, especially not by himself. They weren’t that kind of band, and they didn’t have that kind of fans.
A few times during the first of the night’s two sets, Beets (who was tall) would weave to the front of the crowd to take pictures of the stage with his smartphone. Normally I’d find this behavior obnoxious, but I knew from our conversation that it was his first show, so I gave him a pass. We met up and chatted excitedly between sets: How funny was that long story the lead singer told? Did you see their old drummer hanging around near the back of the crowd? What do you think they’ll play for the second set? It was my music fan meet-cute daydream, springing to life before my very eyes!
E and I grabbed another round of drinks and then scored spots even closer to the stage for the second set. Beets came and joined us a few songs in, and I introduced him to E. When the band started a slow song, he put his arm around me and started to sway gently back and forth, flashing me a goofy grin that seemed to say “yeah, this is cheesy, but humor me anyway?” I grinned back and swayed along.
During the next song, Beets maneuvered me in front of him and pressed up against me from behind. I was caught off-guard, and for a moment I worried that he was going to try and grind on me like a drunk undergrad at a frat party. We weren’t exactly at a Flo Rida show, and I haven’t been to a frat party since before Obama was president. Chill, I told myself. He’s cute, and he’s into you.
Before long, I felt one of his hands toying with a belt loop on my jeans. Then the hem of my blouse. Then, sliding up under my shirt to the band of my bra.
“Hey, take it easy there,” I admonished. I reached up and took his hand off my body. As soon as I let go of it, he put it back up my shirt.
At this point, I didn’t want to be near Beets anymore, but I didn’t want to make a scene in the middle of the crowd. We were close enough to the stage that the band would surely notice. I took a step to my right, out of his reach, nudging E towards the side of the room. He followed. E and I took another step away from him, and he followed again.
E asked, “do you want to get some water?” I nodded, and we darted back to the bar, where we each drank a glass before rejoining the audience near the back of the room on the opposite side. For the rest of the show, I avoided looking in Beets’s direction, and he left us alone.
Afterward, I thanked E for her rescue maneuver. On the way home, I tried to make sense of an uneasy jumble of feelings: irritation that Beets had cost E and I our great spot and distracted me from fully enjoying the gig; disappointment that the real-life version of my “find a boyfriend at a concert” fantasy had soured so quickly; embarrassment that other fans (some of whom I knew) had watched a man put his hand up my shirt in a public place; and confusion over whether I had somehow invited this gesture.
Because I had flirted with Beets. I had wanted his attention. I had hoped that he would ask me for my number; that we’d exchange witty text banter after the show and go out on a first date, and then maybe a second (a decade of dating in New York has conditioned me not to peer any farther into the future than this). Instead, he interpreted my interest in him as a license to ignore my boundaries, even when I made them clear.
My first instinct that night was not to be angry at Beets. It was to be discouraged, thinking that somehow *I* had botched what could have been the beginning of something good. If only I’d been a little less skittish, a little more chill, a little less uptight, a little more “game.”
Looking back, I know the mistake was his, not mine. And it probably was an honest mistake: after all, the same culture that taught me to blame myself for mishandling this situation taught him that his behavior was okay, even warranted by a man pursuing a sexual encounter. Maybe another woman would have found it sexy. Maybe 10 years ago, I would have been flattered by the attention from a cute guy who loved one of my favorite bands. Now, I’m glad I followed my instinct to walk away from someone who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) hear “no.” The music wasn’t that loud.
