We asked for your bad-date stories, and boy, did you ever deliver. With a total of 16 real-life dates gone awry, submitted by readers, we here at the Bohemian have been gifted with sad anecdotes of Febreze-in-the-face spraying; meeting for the first time on an airport tarmac in a wedding dress; asking one’s daughter to call mid-date with an “emergency”; being surrounded by rowdy drunk sports fans on a bus and going to a Tommy Castro show.

But only three stories can make the cut, and we salute Flynn Alexander, Peter Danovich and Dani Burlison for bringing the goods. Congratulations to these winners, who have won their choice of a dinner at Ca’Momi in Napa, Hilltop in Novato, Downtown Joe’s in Napa or Pack Jack’s in Sebastopol—may it help your next date to be much better.

Also, an honorable mention goes to Mon Alisa Sydenham for her story of finding Mr. Right—and then, under his shirt, finding his swastika tattoos. Ouch.

On with the bad dates!

INSTANT JOES

By Flynn Alexander

My personals ad-venture was working too well. I’d instantly poofed up three fearlessly vulnerable, awake, strong and communicative men who were craving a peer and anxious to share their profoundly insightful, disturbing spiritual dilemmas about the female nature. I was impressed and stunned.

Ending a relationship Monday night, I had answered Joe No. 1’s ad Tuesday morning:

RESTLESS FERAL PSYCHIC

Fast-walking, straight-talking, versatile wonderdude seeks dreamy angel of harmony for mischief & healing adventures in nature, art, tunes, dance, touch, LTR magic.

I was seeking quick distraction from the heartbreak of having pushed away my rare and exquisite beloved for pushing me away after every deep connection one too many times, cursing his resistance to what he so badly wanted and what his soul had kept pushing him back to me for.

I was totally unprepared to discover that the world may actually be full of aware, confident, accomplished, emotionally articulate and possibly sexually masterful men who can’t find any women who match their evolvement.

Joe No. 1 had replied with a three-page, single-spaced letter describing how an anguished childhood birthed his deepest spiritual questions and blueprint for ideal love.

He drove one and a half hours and greeted me with a gift of broccoli. I said, “Oh, do you have a garden?” He said no.

During a walk, I was impressed by his first-date audacity to tell me that my shadow made me look like a Klingon. It was obvious, though, that he had sent a picture from 10 years earlier. I guess a shamelessly exposed interior doesn’t automatically imply an inhibition-free exterior.

Back indoors, musty no-chemistry permeated the air and tales of his 10-year heroin isolation evaporated any remaining cosmic edge I’d optimistically anticipated. To punctuate with finality, instead of being treated to a “soulful and Ray Charles–ish” piano performance, I had to endure torturous unfunky whining that made me struggle to keep my life force from draining as oxygen tried to flee the room.

Upon leaving, with wide eyes and effervescence, he professed how totally worthwhile it had been to make the long drive—but wasn’t sure when he’d ever do it again.

This farewell was a relief but left the sour task of trying to reconcile the hard evidence for rare quality I had poofed against the harsh reality that materialized. Same with Joes No. 2 and 3.

Turns out Joe-poofing isn’t that easy.

LEAVING LAS VEGAS

By Dani Burlison

About three months into a short-lived relationship, I made the mistake of going on an extended date of sorts: traveling to his sister’s wedding with him. In Las Vegas. In July.

Things were already a little shaky with Mr. Anger Issues, in part because he constantly suggested I change careers (to work for him) and that maybe I give up work altogether in order to make him some babies. I made it clear that I love my career and that as much as I love the two children I already have, there was no way in hell I was having any more children. Especially when Mr. Anger Issues was unsure about whether or not he loved me (he once said I had too much student loan debt for him to fall in love with me).

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So we’re in Vegas. Sweating and drunk from the sidewalk mojitos we’re pounding to fight the mid-July heat and the awkwardness that arose when his family members began asking about any potential wedding plans we were making (remember: three-month relationship). We push our way to the air-conditioned bar in our hotel when one of my kids calls me. Mr. Anger Issues tells me how much he likes her and how much he wants kids of his own.

“Yeah, I’m not having any more kids,” I remind him.

“We’re really going to fucking talk about this right now? Right fucking here, goddammit?”

I look at the pitcher of margaritas in front of us, take a huge, brain-freezing gulp and quietly ask him for the hotel key.

“If you leave me alone in this bar right now I will fucking hate you forever,” he scowls.

I drink more, start a conversation with the drunk Scottish construction worker who has taken his place next to me at the bar and eventually return to the room with Mr. Anger Issues, who stays up all night watching recaps of the Tour de France on TV.

He doesn’t speak to me the next morning and, nervous about our flight home, I search for the Xanax in my bag. As we pull into the airport, I begin sweating and run to the restroom vomiting, realizing too late that I have accidentally taken his pain medication. Turns out I’m allergic to Vicodin.

Two hours of crying and dry-heaving later, I emerge from the restroom. He glares at me and offers this:

“Well, I don’t want kids with you anyway. Look at yourself, you’re like a crackhead prostitute.”

A CLASSY JOINT

By Peter Danovich

San Francisco, 1976. Smoking marijuana in the street was in vogue, and transplanted females declared their independent, feminine, we-are-women voices. San Francisco was a sexual cookie jar with ready and willing beautiful women. Within five minutes of conversation, it was the norm that the f-bomb would flower as a noun, pronoun and adjective while offering a joint. Their modus operandi was “why wait!” Wining and dining was not necessary. You were their hook-up selection for the night. Why wait, indeed.

I left a $70,000-a-year job in Chicago, came to San Francisco without a job, let my hair grow out to a naturally curly afro and added a mustache. Quite a new look. I can best summarize my initial San Francisco beginnings as someone always offering me a drink, marijuana, hashish, taking their clothes off, or my looking for a parking place.

My Swedish friend and hair stylist, Anita, worked at I. Magnin and cut my hair every two months. My “worst date” had its origin at the I. Magnin boutique. Anita’s co-worker, an absolutely gorgeous, tall brunette from Ohio named Denise, shared an immediate attraction with me, leading to our one and only date.

Denise lived in the Pacific Heights area. After parking my car, I stepped in dog shit. Nice beginning.

Denise looked ravishing and greeted me with a welcoming kiss. Off to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Vintner’s on Union Street. We smoked a joint before going in. Normally, smoking a joint leads to enhanced appetites and a loosening of inhibitions with free-flowing conversation. Interspersed, I constantly visualized Denise naked in my bed. I couldn’t wait.

I was a “happy stoner,” the type whose gaps in conversation retention were quite frequent, accompanied by that dopey stoned look. Denise was the opposite. The joint didn’t affect her in the least as she talked on and on in all seriousness. My brain cells couldn’t keep up. Being so stoned led her to verbally dress me down multiple times during dinner.

“Peter, do you understand what I’m talking about?”

“Denise, your conversation is deep and wordy, and by the time you finish, I’ve only retained the last part of what you just said. I’m sorry.”

There was a deep, cold chill in the air after that. Conversation was at a standstill. Maybe she’d forget the dinner and share my thoughts of saving the date by having sex at my apartment.

Not a chance. She walked alone to her apartment without a “Good night.” It was my worst date. If Denise was writing her story, it would mirror mine—her worst date ever.

I’ve completely forgotten Denise’s looks, our dinner and conversation, but, for some reason, I’ve never forgotten that smell of dog shit on the sole of my shoe.

To its millions of users, OkCupid might seem like the hip younger sibling to online dating sites like eHarmony or Match.com. The free site will welcome you with an illustration of a woman whose feathered bangs and chic boots connote certain keywords—urbane, maybe. Worldly. She’s less Michael Bay and more Michael Cera, less Axe body spray and more post-yoga patchouli musk. She looks mellow—like she might just make an exception for you.

And then there are the fun surveys, which one local woman likens to Cosmo quizzes. What’s your sign, and how important is astrology to you? Would you rather be normal or weird? Would you date someone who does drugs, and, if so, would you prefer only “soft stuff like marijuana?”

But what if the place you live isn’t exactly urbane? Or worldly? What if it’s Sonoma County, and the guy you’re meeting online is, say, the same guy two of your friends have already dated?

“The pool is just so small,” says Louise. (Note: for the sake of the interviewees, all names in this piece have all been changed.)

The Santa Rosa resident describes selecting an age range from 28 to 40 and looking for men within 25 miles. The search turned up eight pages of eligible guys.

“And then I selected just one age, 37, and typed in San Francisco,” she says. “There were 50 pages just of 37-year-olds.”

“I don’t want to date my friends’ ex-husbands,” says Margot, another Santa Rosa single girl, who says she’s gone out with people mainly down in the city and in the East Bay to avoid such awkward situations.

Which can get creepy fast.

“You can ‘wink’ at people on there,” says a third Santa Rosa dweller, Kate. “It’s like poking people on Facebook. To have some guy who’s dating a friend of mine and supposedly in a committed relationship winking at me on OkCupid just makes me feel like I need to go take a shower.”

Local users describe the site in language similar to any encounter filtered through a two-dimensional screen, where user profiles can be edited to reflect a reality that in actuality might not be so real.

“The men that I’ve connected with, they’re all rebounding or heartbroken and just want a quick fix with the woman with the hottest pictures up,” says Kate. “It’s like a fantasy; they want to fill that loneliness with some kind of attention.”

In Louise’s experience, this casual atmosphere was a positive at first. She’d recently gotten out of a 19-year relationship herself, and had little experience with dating.

“I basically didn’t wait for anyone to approach me,” she says. “I’d find five to eight people who looked interesting and write them a quick note. I was just open about it.”

But eventually, the then-39-year-old started to notice a bizarre pattern.

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It happened when she was messaging a 40-year-old man who lived locally. “I saw something that I see all the time, but it was the first time I noticed it,” she recalls. “At the very bottom of his page it said [the age range] he was looking for: 18–25.”

“When you’re older and you’re online, it tends to not go your way, because men your own age tend to look for younger women,” Margot, 42, agrees.

“If I’m out in the real world, I’ll get hit on by guys my own age and guys younger than me, somewhat frequently. I seem to get attention. But online there’s a different set of qualifications.”

And according to the three women, this disconnect between reality and internet fantasyland can get much, much stranger.

There’s the goth guy who likes to walk women around town on leashes. The guy who’s constantly changing the city where he supposedly lives. And then there was Kate’s boyfriend, who created a fake OkCupid account while they were still in a relationship and secretly tried to get her to cheat on him with . . . his online self.

“Every single section in there was catered specifically to my profile,” she says. “Like [he wrote about] this obscure East Bay band, Our Lady of the Highway, which hasn’t played together for, like, 10 years. He sent me four messages within a 12-hour period, two really late at night and two really early in the morning, begging me to contact him.”

Two months later, she says, he admitted what she already knew—that it was him.

“That kind of spooked me,” she says. “It made me wary, like anybody can have an OkCupid account. It really freaks me out that someone could just be out there to fuck with you.”

Louise used the site for six to eight months—dated someone for a month, someone else for two months—and then met a guy in real life. That lasted a year, and then she went back to the site. Her second time on OkCupid—post–difficult breakup—was wildly different than her first, and she only used it for 10 days.

“I just kind of wanted some distraction, but I understood what my friends had been saying about it,” she says. “Before, I had just been having fun. But the second time, I was like, ‘I don’t want to put myself out there. I just got stomped on.’ It’s scary to get disappointed so many times.”

“I didn’t have a negative experience with it,” says Margot, who was only on the site for roughly a week. She had one date, she says. “I just kind of realized that I didn’t really feel like dating online. It felt like a lot of work. After you go on the date, then you have to think about, well, are they going to call me, or is this going to turn into a relationship?”

“When you just want to have fun, and you’re not looking for Mr. Right and the clock isn’t ticking and you’re really open-minded, that’s the best way to use online dating,” says Louise.

But after several years in the real dating world, she says, “It just wasn’t fun anymore.”

Having just watched an old episode of Sex & the City, I am feeling very Carrie Bradshaw as I sit at my computer. But there ends the comparison. I do not have a body and a wardrobe like hers, indeed, nor her talent at writing. Like her, however, I am searching for a mate that will love me and complement me.

Why, at the age of 67, am I searching? Almost four years ago, my husband died of cancer. He was 69 years old; we’d been married 41 years. I am not looking to replace him; I am wise enough to know that will never happen. And I have not made the mistake of putting him on a pedestal with the belief that he was perfect.

But I yearn for the companionship, the quick glance or smile, all those little nuances that happen between a couple. “Meal for one” is a low point in my day. And in my aloneness, I turned to standup comedy and found that it alleviated my sadness and gave me much in return. I revel in the compliments from audience members as they thank me for bringing them a few minutes of laughter.

Equally important is the ability to laugh at oneself. I find myself doing just that, as I recently started dating. Yes, it took me a few years to get around to it. I didn’t want to go the route of online dating as the experiences of several single girlfriends mortified me. It took a good friend to nudge me, encourage me and assure me that I was ready for that next step.

I joined a gym to tone my body (as an aside, I’ve lost 60 pounds since I became a widow). But really, how attractive can one be if we are wearing old T-shirts for workout clothes and one’s hair is plastered with perspiration to one’s head? As I look at men at the gym—and I am very good at appearing nonchalant—I find that most of them are wearing a wedding ring. Do single men, I wonder, ever look at my left hand to see if I am wearing a wedding ring?

Wouldn’t it be simpler if, as in a foreign culture I heard of long ago, women could wear a flower behind the right ear to signify they are “taken,” and behind the left ear to mean “available”? (If she wears a flower behind each ear, I recall, it means, “I’m taken, but make me an offer!”)

What I have found is that it isn’t easy to find available men in their 60s. It’s like finding a parking spot—all the good ones are taken, and the rest are handicapped. And don’t get me started about men in their 70s! Like the old saying goes, they are looking for a “nurse and a purse.” In fact, some of them are downright desperate. I had one man in his mid-70s ask me if I could cook! He said he was looking for a domestic partner. I told him he should just look for a domestic, period!

Well, I continue to search—and stay busy. I recently started tango lessons. And to my surprise—maybe it’s the Latin in me—I love the music and the movements. As one partner recently led me in a dance step wherein he intertwined his legs with mine, I thought, “This is as close to sex as I’ve been in years!”

Maybe in the not too distant future, I’ll be singing along with Etta James: “At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are over . . .”