Most Memorable Date

[cranefly]

The hottest, coldest, strangest, longest, shortest -- you call it.
--cranefly

[Drunk Monk]

One of the very first dates I went on with Stacy was a whale watching tour to the Farallones. It started out great. I was at the prow of the boat, enjoying the ride immensily. The day was gorgeous. Once we got past the Golden Gate, I turned to check out the back of the boat. That was a big mistake. I got spontaneously seasick and it was horrible. A Farallones Whale watch is about 8 hours and this was within the first half hour. I spent the rest of the trip hugging the rail, retching with about half a dozen other people. At one point, some one else barfed and tiny spatter of the spew hit me in the face, but there wasn't a lot I could do about that. I remember thinking 'Good thing I've see so much barf at Rock Med or this would make me sick.'

Stacy was fine, of course. She prudently dosed on dramamine beforehand and had even offered me some but I was too damn macho or something.

You can't actually go on the Farallones. You just circle around it. And it reeks. Even hundreds of feet away, you can smell this rock covered with seabird shit. We did see whales. At one point, a whale came right up to where me and another person were barfing. We looked at it eye to eye and asked each other if we should tell the others who were all on the other side of the boat looking at a whale some hundreds of feet away. We finally groaned 'whale' and instantly regretted it. The whole boatload of people crowded into our personal barfing space to ogle. I remember looking at that other person and having a shared 'well, that was another fuck up' moment.

Once we started heading back, I just kept myself fixated on the shore. Then there was this call 'puffin!' The goddamned boat turned around slowly to see this damn puffin, adding what felt like years to our slow journey back to shore. At AFS there were these signs that said "No Puffin" - I couldn't agree more. I hate puffins. I've hated them ever since that day.

Stacy was good about it all. She took good care fo me, all things considered, and I was fine as soon as I got back to land. She's always there to remind me to take my dramamine before boat rides, and now I do so religiously. Who'd a thunk that date was a prelude to marraige?

I'm not sure if that's the hottest, coldest, strangest, longest or shortest. It was definitely the barfiest, and the most memorable.
mt078

[cranefly]

We ate at a cheap Chinese restaurant called Pierre’s somewhere on the Peninsula. It was a blind date. I had put a personal ad in a paper. It might have been my subdued one: “Adjectiveless male seeks adjectiveless female to form hyphenated compound.” Or it might have been my outrageous one: “Eccentric genius seeks three-breasted albino with IQ of 700.” Anyway, she answered it, so we met.

We didn’t seem to have a whole lot in common. She was plain, earthy, nice enough, no doubt a lot more mature than me. And she smoked, which I find hard to get past. During our meal, she told me she had gotten her current job by answering a strange ad in the paper. The wording was: “Wanted: Someone to bring a little sanity to an otherwise insane life.” She responded, and it turned out to be Robin and Valerie Williams shopping for a nanny for their boy Zachary. Yep, she got the job, and I was on a blind date with Robin Williams’ nanny.

Not the one he later married. This one came just before.

I’ve always been amazed by Robin Williams, and I made clear that I greatly admired him. We ended up talking about him a fair amount throughout the meal. She mentioned how Robin was struggling to find his direction. He had done a few movies, but they were mostly misfires. So I told her my idea for a vehicle for him: A TV talk show that has a different host every night, but the guest is always the same -- Robin Williams. She found that amusing.

As we were finishing up, she asked if she could have my chopsticks. She hadn’t used hers, and I hadn’t used mine. She said she wanted to give them to Zachary and his best friend Sean. Sean Lennon. Apparently they played together a lot. One of their games was to pretend to be pirates fighting with swords -- only the swords are chopsticks.

Just before parting, she asked me to repeat my idea for the talk show. She intended to tell Robin about it and wanted to get it right. She still seemed amused by it.

So we had a nice meal and parted ways and that was that. As for the thing that sticks in my mind, it’s the chopsticks. Maybe I’m easily wowed, but to think that the offspring of Robin Williams and John Lennon used them as toys…

Wow…

[cranefly]

I remember you describing that incident years ago.
At the time, Lady Cranefly and I considered getting you a puffin stuffed toy. But on reflection, it seemed a bad idea. Sort of like rubbing salt in your wounds and then throwing pepper in your eyes, followed by a bath of dit da jow and -- well, you get the idea.

We have come to treat your Farallones incident as a shrine not to be made light of.
May all your future meals remain ingested, and puffins stay out of sight.

--cranefly