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Most of you who have read the internet classic "My First Date" probably weren't expecting a sequel. Like the heroes and villains in countless other horror works, namely Scream, in which the antagonists were entirely too human to come back (and for all intents and purposes, many of them don't...but there is a sequel, so it fits), and the last few Jason movies in which Mr. Voorhees somehow manages to return after being struck by lightning, chained to the bottom of a lake, and sent to Manhattan, before he's finally banished to hell, you just didn't expect the characters in "Date," after all the emotional trauma they suffered, to be up for another go round. But they're back...and if you cried during part one, better break out your tissue for part deux (which I wanted to call Evening Star, but since that has already been taken, I'll stick with...): First Date II: My First Rejection.
Most people'll tell you that a sequel is nothing but a profit-fueled retread of the original. But then they'll say, and these people love to say this (I know because I'm one of them), that some very special sequels are better than the originals. I had recently reread "First Date" and realized that after Lynda vanishes into the ether with the same velocity that Darth Vader's Tai Fighter spins out to who-knows-where at the end of Star Wars, things actually get a lot more interesting: there's the grim, yet oddly satisfying cliffhanger ending of Empire Strikes Back; the flashbacking of Godfather II; and, as you may have already noticed, too much of the venturesome self-analysis of Exorcist II: The Heretic. So, let's get into past tense before I forfeit all of my sequel-guaranteed profits.
You'll remember, and if you don't scroll down to the bottom of this page, that "First Date" ended with a kiss in a van (that unremarkable kiss is replayed in all its grim cinema verite as the opening credits roll). At the time, despite a faint malaise I was only later to pin down and classify, I felt pretty good about the evening. I did speak with Joe and Chanda about how awkward things seemed to go, but they said that's how they had felt on their first date and look at them (they broke up Joe's second year at UCLA).
So, once again, (and this proves that when a sequel employs successful or, in this case, not so successful, bits from part one, it isn't always a slick, premeditated move--in my case, I should have done a lot more calculating before deciding to make a move), I started with a plan:
That of course was the extent of my plan. I had no solid idea of what I was to accomplish. I was in love (or so I thought). I wanted to be in love (I knew that much). I was 18. It was time! For what? Sex. Romance. What other people had and I did not have. Stupid people, mean people, ugly people who shouldn't have been born were having sex! Men were beating their wives and then having sex with them! 14 year olds were having sex and popping out babies! Couples were languishing, basking in the many pleasures of ignoring each other when they could have been having sex! And what was I doing? I was making plans!
(The above rant may be converted to a monologue for the film version, but that remains undecided...)
On the fateful Saturday, Joe and I stopped at Conroy's to pick out the rose. I, playing it somewhat safe, plucked up the first yellow I could find. Yellow is ambiguous, coy. What does it convey? Texas? Cowardice? "A living, thriving oxymoron," I poetried to myself, feeling quite pleased and hyper. Joe gave me a blank look. He insisted, with the force of his experience to back him up, that I buy a red rose. But red is all Brontë and blood. I knew she wasn't interested in me that much (although I had believed that I could win her over eventually). But I went ahead and bought it anyway hoping that women were as big uh suckers for the single red rose as commercial America purported them to be. Conroy's wrapped it up all nice and ugly for me and we were on our way.
I'd been to Lynda's house before. It was a normal house except that she had about a million brothers and sisters, including a gifted older brother who'd thrown away a full ride at USC to go live among the faithful in Rajneeshpuram only to return home upon deprogramming to find himself addicted to Pepsi. His skulking presence and the general disarray of the place only served to make my love stronger. So when Lynda answered the door, I whipped out the rose and asked her to prom with as much confidence as I could pull together amid all the sweat and shaking.
If she would have rejected me in those next seconds, it probably would not have mattered. I had had the courage to ask her and I had done it and that was enough. I remembered in that tiny instant looking at what I now know was the stunned expression on Lynda's semi-cute mug, I thought of the idyllic early '60s way in which my parents met: my mom, bouffanted coquette, giggling on the outer regions of a junior college party, riveted by my father telling stories while drinking wine at its epicenter. Actually, he was sucking the wine out of a siphonish tube. I imagined that tube being handed down to me like an heirloom, a symbol of my succeeding in some ancient white trash ritual. This was the best moment of my life.
...And she didn't reject me! She said, smiling, "Of course I'll go to the prom with you," then took my rose and we both went upstairs to her room to have a brief discussion about Billy Idol, Clark Gable and some other dumb stuff that she was into. We made some small talk but that was it. After all, Joe was waiting in the car; and, besides, I didn't want to give her time to reconsider.
It was Monday when I got the call. It wasn't unusual that she was calling me. We called each other all the time. I figured she was calling to talk about the specifics: the kind of dress she would wear, the kind of tux I would wear. These were not exactly things that I ever thought I would care about, but I was eager to discuss them. So, I brought up the prom. "I talked to my sister," she began (my first thought was "Which one?"), "And I don't think.... I can't go to the prom with you...."
My heart sank. Since Saturday, I had told myself that what mattered most was that I had had the courage to ask her. But I was in shock. Whatever confidence I had managed to muster at Lynda's door was gone. I didn't say anything. I'd wanted a magical teen love moment. I'd wanted to be half of a great love affair. I'd wanted to make up for that terrible first kiss. Why was that too much to ask? She continued: "I just don't feel the same way you do....(pause)...I know, as a poet, how into symbolism you are and you gave me a RED ROSE!"
"B-B-But," I started b-b-but couldn't finish. It was true. I had shared some of my sophomoric verse with Lynda as a way of roping her in--since if there's one thing that popular (she was kind of popular, yes) girls like more than ugly nerds with glasses, it's sensitive, ugly nerds with glasses who write tender poems. I continued: "That was Joe's suggestion....uh...we....uh...could go as friends, that's fine."
I was crushed. I felt the tears well up, the whole bit. Part of me, the resourceful, witty, sarcastic part, had left my body in a surge of new age light and was now looking down on the rest of me with scorn. Lynda talked on, pausing awkwardly at first, but then gaining courage and momentum, she told me how she didn't "adore" me, she couldn't "see" us together.
"Okay," I said and my voice cracked, "I'll see you tomorrow." I hung up. If I hadn't, she would have heard me burst into gurgles and blubbering. And then, she would have heard my mom come in and, maybe, she would have heard me, sounding like a mixture of Anthony Perkins and Anthony Michael Hall, start to cry on her shoulder. I actually whined at one point, "I can't help it if I'm no Tom Cruise!" (I've always wished I'd said "Don Johnson" instead). This was the worst moment of my life.
So, I did what any self-pitying teen would have done at this point. I got mad. I got mad and.... wrote a letter--a letter filled with all of the hatred I could feed it in my debilitated state. I took all the bile, the pith, and the piss that was fomenting in my stomach like something primordial and put it on the page. Of course, I was a nice guy so I half-apologized for each blistering stab in the little parenthetical asides and daydreamy elliptical pauses that will someday become my trademark. I wish I had samples of this or any of the other mournful epistles I'd written to women I'd admired during my vulnerable years. It amazes me that I wrote them. It wasn't the 19th century. Geez....only girls write letters anymore...
And that's what Lynda did. Went up to her tiny, youngest-child room, sat at her hand-me-down desk amid pictures from past proms that must have glowed like Greek Orthodox icons in the dim light and wrote a letter that put mine to shame. She said I was "elitist" (for an accurate comment I made about the combined intelligence of her party/football friends). She said that I was trying to play the "martyr" and that I should stop "whining" and "get on with my life." It was a letter that anyone in their right mind would have fed, along with a lock of her hair, to a Satanic altar candle.
I wasn't in my right mind (had I ever been?), not even close. So I decided to call and apologize. She accepted my apology, but she seemed cold and distant. We would remain friends and we would still talk about everything, though I knew it would never be the same. As I hung up the phone, I thought that we would probably never see one another again after graduation. Lynda had found an older boyfriend (he was 20) and that meant that I, in order to avoid total self-humiliation, not to mention more mother-son cry fests, had to get myself, if not a girlfriend, then a date to the prom. That's when things got really weird.
Page hobbled out to thunderous applause with his double-neck and violin bow in tow for a little nostalgic wanking. He danced about like an old stripper, a Frankie Goes To Hollywood cone of laser-light transforming him into even more of an anachronism. 