By: Matthew Navey
I can still remember my dinner date with Nebuchadnezzar. Or was it Methuselah? Either way they were a frightening bore and refused to pay for the bill. My date insisted on the blood of the innocent as his drink, and I had to help the Olive Garden kitchen staff with the sacrificial rites. The rites were rather simple, just a few glam rock songs played backwards, a recitation from the Necronomicon, and some blood from one of the chefs, I think his name was Pierre.
My complaint isn’t that he didn’t pay the steep fee for the drink, help out with the rites, or anything petty like that, it’s just that he never really said thank you. But then again he might have, but I’m not really fluent in ancient Aramaic.
Even worse though, all he ended up talking about was his stay in Monaco during the plague years. “The Gyps really got it I tell you, I saw them walk two-by-two up and down the boardwalk rubbing their boils and coughing up blood. Disgusting sight, and right outside my apartment. You know I never had this before what do you call it, Lasagna?” and he gulped the food down, with purposeful eye contact and a skeletal hand on my thigh.
I remember the date ending, the exchange of phone numbers, though I later learned the number he gave me was to a pay phone in an abandoned bus station in Queens. We promised each other we’d do this again except we’d see a movie, an opera, a live surgery, something fun and theatrical. When I went home I deactivated my eHarmony account. This time for good.