That Time I Went on a Date with (Maybe) the Future President

No one eats before a first date, right?

It all started five years ago. I was about to go on my first date in a long time and my stomach was all butterflies and whiskey. She was tall, red haired and fair skinned and, as my buddy Jovi loved to tell me, so far out of my league that we weren't even playing the same sport. But, she had agreed to go on a date with me so I must have been doing something right.

Right?

Jovi would playfully curse my luck and I played it cool but I was about as nervous as a man can be. Hence the whiskey. She worked as a director at the local museum of history, had a degree in art history, and spent her free time out at the lake or traveling with her girlfriends. Perfect. Here was a learned, well-respected, drop dead gorgeous young woman who had everything going for her about to go on a date with me. Cameron Palmer. Stammerin' Cameron they used to call me. Because anytime I tried to talk to girls it was always a toss up if I could get the words out or not. If you guessed usually not, good job, you already know me pretty good. So here I was, a retail worker making barely above minimum wage living in a sad little apartment driving a sad little two door beater. About to go on a date with Trisha Masani. A woman who, by all accounts, had no business being anywhere near me.

But you know what? Screw Jovi. I love the guy but who cares if she was white water rafting while I was lawn bowling. Jovi's metaphor, not mine by the way. Despite his cynicism and my tendency to self-deprecate I managed to gather up all the courage hiding in the dark corners of my mind and asked her out. We had met online a week earlier and surprised isn't really the right word to capture what I felt when she responded yes to my question. Shock? Awe? Horror? Flabbergasted? If you chose 'all of the above' you win the prize! And so my week of barely eating, shopping for nice clothes, getting haircuts (yes, I do mean plural) and cleaning my apartment began. I've honestly never seen so many empty cans of Fanta in my life.

The date was set for Saturday night, a newfangled thing called a 'web cam' date and I wasn't sure if that made me more or less nervous than meeting in person. Even though we had already been chatting for a week, Trish wanted to have the first date online as she had a very busy weekend and could only spare about an hour. And who was I to disagree, a mere mortal? (Get out of my head, Jovi!) He always did love referring to me that way. Okay, where was I? Ah yes, the date was now set. And I had nothing to do but worry about it for an entire seven days. What could possibly go wrong?

By day two I was a wreck. My last date, some three years previous, hadn't gone so well and so I didn't exactly have history on my side. Not good, especially when one is about to go on a date with a historian. But, as Jovi had kindly pointed out, (a rare moment of brevity from him) maybe her last date hadn't gone so well either. And I had a chance to make her forget all about it. Oh great. Was that supposed to make me feel better? No pressure, right? If anything, my already alarmingly large intake of whiskey increased and Jack and Daniel supplanted Jovi as my new best friends. They would never steer me wrong...

By day five I had to cut off my new friends and welcomed Jovi's teasing back with partially open arms. Seeing what I had become he promised to go easy and instead found new ways to roast me that had nothing to do with my upcoming date. Seriously, what was I thinking at six years old when I had asked my mom if he could come over and play Lego? Not the first time I had cursed my childish ways and certainly not the last. But, despite his constant prodding, I knew Jovi was the kind of friend that would stick with me no matter what. Even if he showed it in a rather unique fashion. At least all his jabs had distracted me a little from my date. Until day seven that is. After a meager night's rest, I awoke with clammy hands and clothing that clung fiercely to my sweaty body. Had I turned the heat up in the middle of the night? In July? A quick check of the thermostat told me I hadn't gone completely insane yet. And then I began to remember the dreams. Everything that could go wrong on a virtual first date including some stuff which I must admit impressed me even in the state I was in. Sighing, I sat down on my bed and began to pry off my soaked t-shirt. 9 am. Ten hours left on the doomsday clock.

At noon I stopped responding to Jovi's insistent questions. How was I feeling? Was I going to wear the red tie or the purple one? Was I going to comb my hair? “It looks so much better when you do, you know.” This was exactly not what I needed and so I thanked Jovi for just how much he cared but also that I needed to cut him off and hoped he'd understand. Things got really bad when I started to miss his teasing and I knew then that I was truly in uncharted territory.

At four in the afternoon I managed to choke down a bowl of cereal and fifteen minutes later welcomed my old buddies Jack and Daniel back into my life. They embraced me with open arms, as if I'd never left, although I was more careful around them this time. After all, I wanted to greet Trisha sober. Mostly sober anyways.

At 7 pm sharp I logged in and entered the date. Trisha joined seconds later and I exhaled deeply, not yet realizing that my volume was still muted. I must have talked for five minutes straight before I paused to breathe and Trisha could get a word in. And that's when she informed me about my volume. With my face suddenly the color of an overripe tomato, I clicked unmute and to my disbelief, Trisha stayed on the call. After the rocky start I didn't know what to expect but every moment spent talking to her was another moment that the rest of existence slowly faded from my mind. Trisha, with her hair up, glasses perched on a perfect nose on a perfect face, with a glass of Merlot in hand and a voice like a songbird. And me, all dressed up with a glass of whiskey just out of sight, a tie that seemed determined to choke the life out of me and my hair slicked back with so much gel and it made a crunching sound every time I shifted in my seat.

Twenty five minutes in and my whiskey still sat beside me untouched. I couldn't believe what was happening. Trisha was actually talking to me like a real human being and had smiled and laughed at my terrible jokes more than once. She genuinely seemed to be having a good time. If anything, my initial bumble with the mute button had eased some tension rather than create more and I'll even go so far as to say the date was going rather well.

And then, without warning, it was over. I was in the middle of telling Trisha about my love for all things barbecue when she politely interrupted, saying there was a knock at her door and that she would be right back. Not knowing that I had just seen her for the last time, I waited patiently and remarked again how well things were going, taking a moment to check my hair and make sure not a strand was out of place.

A minute went by. Two minutes. Five. Ten. The date was now more than half over and I was getting worried. What was taking so long? Who was at her door? Was she okay? Twelve minutes. And then her screen went black. She was no longer on the call. I stared at that black screen for some time, not really sure what to do. Eventually, it came to me: I was an idiot. She had just been pretending to laugh at my jokes and smile and excitedly tell me about her trip to Peru last summer. She had been looking for a way out right from the start and it had taken her a while but she had found a perfectly legitimate reason to leave the call. I angrily closed my computer and called it an early night. That was that. What a waste of a bottle of gel.

Days and weeks of unanswered messages passed by and I still thought of Trisha – of her autumn-colored hair, her perfect posture (don't ask me why I remembered this), and the way she lit up when she had discovered that I too held a deep reverence for the writings of one Frank Herbert. But these things eventually faded from my mind, as Jovi said they would, and soon I was back to living life and mostly forgetting about Trisha Masani.

I say mostly because something about the date still bothered me. I never voiced this concern to anyone, not even Jovi, but if she had been so eager to leave the call why not just tell me the truth? Was I really that intimidating? Perhaps I was giving myself more credit than I deserved. Or perhaps she had been dared by a friend to do it and that's who was at the door, eager to see if she had actually gone through with it. Who am I kidding, there was no one at the door. Right? My mind created all sorts of crazy scenarios like this and while the passing of time succeeded in blocking most of them out, they would occasionally still show up unannounced and unwelcome.

For the last six months I hadn't thought about Trisha once. Not a foolish story to excuse her behavior, not a fond memory of her cute freckles and the way they scrunched up when she smiled, not even a wandering thought that arrived one moment and was gone the next. Nothing. But that was before last night. Before I had uncharacteristically turned the evening news on. Before I had heard the newscaster mention Trisha's name. Before I had dropped my dinner on the floor as I scrambled for the remote to turn the volume up. Before I had seen her on the screen, looking as beautiful as I remembered, standing before a podium at a press conference getting ready to give the biggest speech of her life and declare that she had decided to run for office. Before I had listened to her speech over and over and over again. Before I had laid in bed all night wide awake wondering just who had been at the door that night and if it had had anything to do with her future ambitions. Before I had gotten out of bed the next morning, still wide awake, and eagerly grabbed my phone thinking of exactly how I would tell Jovi.

Before I told my best friend about that time I had gone on a date with the future President of the United States.

Maybe.