FOR LOVE OR PEANUT BUTTER
My First Date(s) With The Man The Universe Wanted Me To Marry
In my last column, I introduced four suitors who I inadvertently dated in 2020, a.k.a. my accidental summer of love. The first one was A. I’ll start from the beginning…
A and I first met back in 2012, in a divey but friendly bar in Tahoe City after Friday night coed Z-League softball. (Yes, that’s really what it’s called and it’s exactly as competitive as it sounds.) He bought me a drink, and from then on he heckled me on the softball field every week and then I crushed him at shuffleboard at the bar.
Because I was only in Tahoe for six weeks to help my dad recover from brain surgery, I wasn’t really focused on dating. I know, weird, right? I was happy to see A when we ran into each other, but otherwise, nothing romantic happened between us. But even after that summer, I ran into A pretty much every time I went to Tahoe. It felt like the universe was pushing us together like an overzealous Yenta.
Years later, circa 2017, I had been doing a little day drinking with my mom and sister at Garwoods, a lakefront restaurant whose specialty beverage, the Wet Woody, is the ultimate vacation drink: fruity, frozen, and saturated with rum. Perfect for loosening up tourists for generous tipping and consensual vacation sex. Our mom cut…
