Melvin is the herpes of friendship. I don’t mean that in a cruel way. He just is. Everyone has a Melvin. You picked him up at some random party, gave him your phone number when you were drunk, and that now you can’t get rid of him. You say things like, “Oh, I have Melvin tonight.” You have to warn people about your Melvin. Just like Herpes.
It’s not that I dislike Melvin; at this point I’ve gotten used to him. Melvin is the reason that people invented caller-ID and the stun gun.
Bearing all of this in mind, it was no surprise when Melvin called me a few days after New Year’s and, of course, the inauguration of Operation GLWC2. We exchanged pleasantries for a while. I asked him what he had been up to for the last three months — the participation in a failed covert operation to take over the Kandahar Airport while filming a pilot for a show on the WB called “Mullah’s Pond.” He had also seen Venus Williams on the corner of 58th Street and Madison Avenue the night before and is certain that she wanted to sleep with him. She just couldn’t muster up the courage to approach him. She’s like that.
Venus Williams could crush all 140 pounds of Melvin between her thumb and index finger and then eat him — I can’t imagine what would happen to the poor boy if she got him into a bedroom.
It was following the Venus story that Melvin trapped me. He told me he had heard about Operation GLWC2 and he was going to do ME the FAVOR of taking me out on a date — to get the ball rolling so to speak. So I remembered my pledge to say YES YES YES, and I went for it. Melvin and I were going on a date.
We agreed to meet that Friday night for dinner and drinks at Coffee Shop, a Union Square restaurant that serves overpriced lettuce and hamburgers adorned with guacamole and brie
It is also apparently a prerequisite of employment at Coffee Shop that one be: a) an aspiring model; b) an aspiring actress; c) an 110-pound waif; or d) a student at NYU that thinks they’ve been a New York resident since birth (read: the entire campus population.) I showed up a heavyweight at a whopping 120. They sat me in a special booth with metal railings.
The date started out on the wrong foot. I showed up 15 minutes late, which is customary for me. This occurs for several reasons. First, I’m under the impression that it takes only four minutes to get anywhere in New York using public transportation. This is not true at all. Second, I do not enjoy being the person who has to wait for the other person. When I am that person I feel as if I need to overcompensate for being alone by engaging in extremely unhealthy habits like chain smoking, having four drinks (if there is a bar), or attempting to pick up strangers in between compulsively checking my watch. Thus, when I am early, by the time my friend shows up I smell, am drunk, and have made friends with a 28-year-old student at Borough of Manhattan Community College who runs a fruit cart.
Shockingly enough, Melvin was late. So there I was, impatiently waiting while my busty blond waitress batted her eyelashes at the guy at the bar I was trying to hit on.
She got his number. I got a vodka tonic for $7.
When Melvin finally decided to grace me with his presence exactly 27 minutes late, he walked in TALKING ON HIS CELL PHONE. That is rude. I didn’t even know Melvin had other people’s phone numbers. Hell, I didn’t think he could remember a string of seven digits.
The waitress came over to give us our menus, and as she breezed by in a flurry of Chanel perfume and clinking heels I think Melvin’s eyes bore holes in her ass. He then turned to me and reported: “I’m not hungry, I don’t think I’m going to eat anything.”
I found this a little odd, but I went with it. Maybe he had (intelligently) stopped at a hot dog stand on his way to the coffee shop (Coffee Shop).
I ordered my food, and Melvin and I began to talk as I secretly balked at the fact that I was paying $17.95 for a burger and fries.
Melvin has never been a very adept conversationalist, but I certainly have never had a problem talking with him. Apparently though, Dating Melvin and Herpes Party Melvin are two different people. Dating Melvin kept on talking about some guy who he found amazing, smart, funny and talented-i.e., himself. He spoke, as if he were an IPO and he was offering ME a share of his stock. I think he was caught up in irrational exuberance. I was not investing.
I could also barely get a word in.
My food finally arrived, and I busied myself with determining a good ketchup to fry ratio. I settled on dip, dip, bite, dip, dip as I listened to Melvin talk about his second favorite topic: Sex.
I was surprised that Melvin had convinced someone to sleep with him. But, according to him, he had (once). My second surprise came when Melvin arrived with a LIST (I kid you not) of sex questions to ask me. They were handwritten very neatly on the pad of paper he had stolen from his summer of slavery at Goldman. Numbered and everything.
1. What is the average penis size you have ever been with?
Straight-faced I replied, more or less the length of the table top.
2. How do you feel about flavored lubricants? Handcuffs?
3. Where is the weirdest place you’ve ever done it?
I excused myself to go to the bathroom and wondered where the weirdest place I’d ever commit murder would be. I composed myself, determined to pay the check and run — I mean, leave.
When I returned, Melvin was all geared up for round two. My check had come, and now HE was ordering food.
Wonderful. Melvin is cheap.
In order to avoid paying, he waited until I had already paid, and THEN decided he was hungry. I silently fumed, wondering when all of this would end, while Melvin munched on foie gras.
On my way home, my feet aching from walking in 4-inch heels, I wondered how I would ever pay Melvin back for this traumatizing experience. On my 30th block, it came to me – I write a sex column.
Sorry Melvin.
Natalie Krinsky would like to remind the boys that she doesn’t necessarily write about all of her dates.