My Date From Hell

Hi everyone! This is the story of my date from hell. This is before I met my husband. I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. It was in the fall of 1990. This was something else.

On Friday and Saturday nights the thing to do was to go to the Airman's club. Or go clubbing off base but since I was alone it was safer to go to the Airman's club. Plus, the club was across the street from my dorm. When I say across the street the road was four lanes. Kadena Air Base was a very large base with about 30,000 people living on it and the road was the main drag through the middle of the base.

It's Saturday night and I walk over to the club across the street. I see some friends and go over to them. We are sitting there talking and these guys sitting at a table next to us start chatting with us. One of the guys (I don't remember his name, so I'll call him Chris) took an interest in me. We started talking some more, danced a few songs, and really hit it off. He seemed like a really nice guy. He asked, "next Saturday would you like to go out on a date with me?" I said "of course, would love to."

It's the following Saturday; Chris comes to my dorm to pick me up. We walk out to his car and I get in. I notice right away that in the back seat are two of his friends. I immediately get irritated. Life advice for all of you. Do not bring your friends with you on a date. Friends are a needless distraction. I was so irritated, but I didn't say anything. I thought to myself to give it a chance, give it a chance. So, I don't say anything.

We're driving along and he says, "so what do you want to do?" Heavy sigh. Another life advice for all of you. If you are the one asking someone on a date, have a plan. Do not leave it to the one attending the date to do the planning. It shows that you don't care and haven't given any thought to it. I say, "I don't care, whatever you want to do". His friends are loud and obnoxious and being morons and of course Chris is joining in. I am beyond irritated at this point.

He takes me to Gate 2 street. Every military base entry and exit is called a gate. Kadena, has I thought 6 or 8 gates because of how large it is. Gate 2 street is the main gate for the base, and it goes out to downtown Okinawa City. Now this street is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. During the day it has nice restaurants, shopping, and boutiques. It's very nice and super chill. At night however it's a totally different story. It becomes very seedy with a red-light district called Whisper Alley with bars and strip clubs.

We're walking around and I'm hungry because I thought we would go out to eat. Nope, we didn't go out to eat because at night the restaurants on Gate 2 street are closed so no dinner. If we went to a different gate, then yes, we could have gotten something to eat but not where we were at. We turn off of the main road, and the friends see a folded sign advertising Happy Hour with exotic dancers. The friends say, "let's go in there, I bet the drinks are cheap let's go in there!" Chris asks me, "is that okay with you?" I didn't want to be the killjoy you know. The miss priss that didn't want to do that and I'm not, but this was a date!

We go upstairs. They put us in a u-shaped booth. It was the two friends, Chris, and then me. At this point I was surprised he sat next to me because he hadn't spoken 10 words to me the whole night. That's the problem with inviting friends on dates. His attention was on them and not on me. The whole purpose of a date is to get to know each other. Well, that was impossible with his friends there. I'm sitting there and fortunately nothing was going on the stage because it was between sets and I was relieved because I really didn't want to see a nude woman.

After about a couple minutes I'm sitting there thinking "why am I putting up with this? Why am I here? This is stupid." I look over at Chris and tell me I wasn't feeling good and wanted to leave. He asked, "are you sure?" Like this was the most normal thing to do on a date! I tell him, "Yes I'm sure and I'll grab a cab and go back to the dorm". He let me leave alone, yep, he stayed there with his friends. So, I grab a cab and go back to the dorm.

I get back to the dorm feeling bummed because I liked him and thought he was a nice guy. Down the hallway I see about 6 people from my dorm. They tell me they are going over to the Airman's club and asked if I wanted to go with them. It was around 9:30 so I said "sure! Night is young, let's do this!" I had so much fun. More people from the dorm showed up and we all danced, drank, and had a blast. We stayed until it closed at 2am. It turned out to be a great night, and I put the whole incident behind me.

You think this is the end of the story, right? Nope. It's the following Saturday and I'm at the Airman's club with some friends. Chris walks up and he's angry. He says, "I need to talk to you!" He takes me out to the lobby and proceeds to berate me saying "some of my friends saw you here last Saturday. You told me you weren't feeling good and was going back to the dorm. That means you lied!" Now I'm mad. The nerve of this guy yelling at me. I stepped up into his face and looked him in the eye and said in a low voice with fury in my eyes "you took me to a strip joint on our first date! You know what that tells me? That tells me you have no class! Do not speak to me ever again!" Then I stormed off. He was so shocked I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head and bounce across the floor! The look on his face was hilarious.

I never spoke to him again after that. We would see each other at the club, and he would stare at me, but I would have nothing to do with him. He was dead to me at that point. I wonder what became of him. He's probably still clueless lol. Yep, worst date ever.

That's my story. Thank you so much for reading my blog. Watch my video where I expand on the story even further. Take care and be well. Bye Bye!