The Dog Doo-Doo’s and Don’ts of Dating

by Kaya

How cool would it have been if the nickname “dog-shit guy” had stuck with me? Unlike the nicknames I’ve given myself (Big Dawg, Captain Funtime, Senor Smooooth and Smarty McBrainenhauser), this one was associated with an unfortunate step and some canine fecal matter. Not the ideal way to be remembered and definitely not how you want to start a relationship.

Let me take a step back, I no longer date. Not because of my remarkable ability to seek out and step in dog droppings nor my interest in self-love – but because I’m engaged to be married to a wonderful woman. She’s truly an amazing person who gushes with love and positive energy. She makes me laugh, she makes me feel loved, she makes the world a better place and she makes me a better person.

She does not, however, make me miss dating.

I never really went on ‘dates’ that frequently. I often had girlfriends and spent most of my dating years in monogamous relationships, except for a few exciting times and many more celibate ones. Meeting women was never a pleasant experience for me and dating isn’t really very fun. The prospect of having sex with someone new is exciting, but the effort to getting to that point can be exhausting and fruitless.

While I’ve always been confident that I was a good guy to go out with (and given the award in my college freshman dorm “Most Likely to Take Home to the Parents”), I tend to shine after knowing me for a bit as opposed to a two minute conversation yelling over music at a dance club. Like the gangly guys on the track team, my strength is in the marathon as opposed to the sprints.

Knowing that I become a more attractive partner after being around me for a while, first dates are tough to get excited about. Scheduling a first date is exciting (oh, the possibilities! Will we kiss? Should I bring a condom? Is she really a man?), but actually going on the first date tends to be anxiety-riddled and brutal.

When you first date someone, you get to learn different aspects of their life – then judge those aspects accordingly. She’s in a band? Cool. A Christian band? Oh. She doesn’t like avocados, does that matter to me? Her nostrils are different sizes, will that mean our kids will look this way? And before anyone feels that I’m being rude here, she’s doing the same thing (He wore his high school letterman jacket, is that cute or sad? He referred to the waiter as ‘strapping’, is he gay?) Each person then weighs the pros and cons of each quirk (and how much can be ignored based on how attractive they are) and choose to move on or not from there.

The last date I went on before I began dating my fiancée was a fitting end to my wild and not-so-crazy dating days. She was an attractive woman I had met out dancing. She was sexy and fun with an alluring tattoo on the small of her back that peaked out of her jeans. We made plans to go to sushi and see how we hit it off. This would be the time that she’d figure out if I was scary or not and I’d figure out if she was more than an attractive shell.

Needless to say, we didn’t exactly have a meaningful conversation at the dance club.

“Hi, I’m Jim.”
“What? I met you at the gym?”
“No, my name is Jim”
“You go to a gay gym?”

I arrived to pick her up, psyching myself up for the evening. “You’re a cool guy, Jim. Any girl would be lucky to date you. No pressure. Talking to yourself as you walk to the door is endearing, not creepy.” We greeted each other and walked to my car.

Of course, as a gentleman, I went to open the door for her. I walked around and the car and grabbed for the door handle. As I opened the car for her to enter I felt a peculiar sinking sensation in my left foot. “Hmmm,” I thought, “the grass here is suddenly suspiciously soft.” I smiled at my date as my mind raced with alternate possibilities (A small mound of dirt? A malleable tuft of grass? Some child’s play-doh left out in the yard?) Truly no just universe would be so cruel as to have me step in dog shit on a first date, right?

Wrong.

Once she was safely in the car I walked a few steps away and confirmed my fears. I had indeed stepped in a pile of shit and it was not pretty.

Could I get away with not saying anything? Maybe I could just drive to the restaurant, get through the meal and drop her off without her noticing the smell or appearance of my shoe? “That’s crazy!” My non-insane conscious replied, “the grooves on the bottom of your dress shoes are filled with crap, you have to do something about it. The alternative means she doesn’t think you stepped in dog shit, but that you smell like it.”

I took a deep breath and told her that I had to go inside to clean my shoe. I had stepped in dog shit and if she could kindly erase any memory of the event, or at least stop giggling, that would be just great.

After several minutes of scrubbing my shoe (Does it still smell? Do I smell? Why is this so hard to clean? Am I the worst date ever? Will I ever be clean again? Is there any chance that she’s into freaky fecal fetish stuff and this is turning her on?) we went on with the rest of the date.

Dinner was fairly unmemorable. She was looking for a husband and I was looking to end the date and soak in and drink rubbing alcohol until all odor and memory of the evening was gone. I dropped her off and we said we’d talk again. I think we both knew this would be a tough first date to recover from.

I ended up running into her a few weeks later. She introduced me to one of her friends who promptly exclaimed, “Oh! You’re the ‘dog-shit guy’!” Yep, that’s me…but feel free to call me ‘Senor Smooooth.’