I took a little while to post this date with Rick from Sunday because I wanted to make sure I got every detail in. Let me preface by saying that I emailed him to confirm the day before and didn’t get a response until an hour before we were supposed to meet…

As planned (and finally confirmed), I met Rick at Spice Market. It’s in the Meatpacking district, which is a good 50-minute commute from the upper east, where I live. His idea. Anyway I got there and, I must admit, it is a really sweet place. The décor is chic and old-world at the same time with huge windows and heavy drapes. Three hostesses greeted me as I awkwardly poked my head through the heavy double door entrance.

“I’m… uh, meeting someone and I…” A medium height (kind of short), medium build (kind of chunky), chalky-faced red headed guy stood up from a stool at the bar and waved to me.
“Ok” I thought, “he could be worse.” He stood up and shook my hand… awkward pause… kiss on the cheek. Rick was dressed in designer jeans, a white button-down shirt, and sported a huge silver watch that was probably worth more than all of my jewelry combined. He held up a motorcycle helmet and looked at it pridefully. Annoying. I ignored this and the hostess began to lead us to the table. “Outside please,” Rick demanded. It wasn’t the warmest afternoon —about 65—and I was in a sleeveless dress, did it occur to him to ask if I’d prefer sitting inside? Apparently not. She nodded and brought us around through the front door and onto a patio toward a table. “On the other side, if possible,” Rick whined.  She picked the menus back up and we followed her around the corner, where we were seated at a more secluded table right by the sidewalk.

So far things weren’t going well. But there hadn’t been any conversation so I was still hanging in there. I feel bad, but I couldn’t help noticing that when he opened his mouth, that his teeth were buckteeth and kind of yellow.  I reprimanded myself mentally: Oh my God, stop being so superficial! Wow, I’m a bitch! I resolved to focus on his positive attributes, like the fact that he was buying me lunch at an expensive restaurant. We ordered.

While we waited for our food he gave me his life story. Rick dropped out of high school to start his own computer business in Montana. He sold it off and joined the army for a year. He came to New York and started doing computer stuff again, repeated the cycle, and is back in New York with no plans of leaving anytime soon. Hey, I’d be pretty content if I lived in a Battery Park high-rise building with purple lights in the elevator, a BMW motorcycle, a truck, and a shitload of money. This guy was loaded and made sure I knew it right off the bat. Wow, so impressed. A membership at the SoHo House? That’s great dude. What did he want me to say? I took the 6 train and the M14 bus to get here.

Alright so he’s arrogant. But there are perks to dating a rich man.  I’ve never been to SoHo House… Not moral thoughts, I admit. But I was trying not to be fair and not immediately write this guy off. I attempted to take the focus off money by talking about family. We never got to MY family though. (Come to think of it, he didn’t ask a single question that related to me!) His brother lives in Brooklyn and has been jobless for the past 8 months. Rick contemplated what jobless people do with their time, and why they always seem busier than their employed friends.

My contributions to the conversation were usually met with vague amusement, especially when I talked about cabs being expensive, or how much I like my gym in Spanish Harlem. I told him that I might get my street vendor’s license so that I can sell my paintings on the street (a little side hobby I have). The discussion quickly segued into the midtown bag vendors whom Rick compared to “cockroaches.” He told me that he found out where they stored their stuff and gave cops a list of locations so they could “raid them.” Oh, such a turn on. I love a man who takes it upon himself to mess with someone else’s income simply because their mere existence “pisses him off.”  I brought up the gentrification going on in the city and I wondered what would happen to the people who are dependent upon low-income housing. (I wanted to see if this guy was really that much of an asshole.)  He batted his snowy white lashes and said that he “doesn’t care as long as they’re pushed out of Manhattan.”

Oh, there’s more.  His mother moved to Staten Island a month ago (to be closer to her kids) and he still hasn’t visited her because “that’s where we send our trash.” By that point I’d had about all I could take of Rick. Lucky for me the bill quickly came and went and came back again. It looked like it was going to rain by then and Rick had to get on the road. It was a rough 5-minute commute to his place and he didn’t want the rain to “mess up his outfit.” We shook hands and he said we should do it again soon. I lied that I’d email him and turned around to walk back across town as the sun came back out. I decided to walk back to detoxify my brain.