Y’ALL CONSIDER THIS A DATE?

Image by Seydou Keita 

While “No Strings Attached” and “Heartache Weekly” are very much en vogue those are not the issues we are all trying to subscribe to. This Valentine’s Day, let’s celebrate all types of lovers and lovin’. Let’s give a shout-out to the "emotionally distant but love to cuddle" types. One more for the "clingy and I know it" bunch. Couples or throuples. Fully committed, or sharing the love. In this day and age, romance can take on any shape it needs to. How convenient is that?

For those of us riding solo, happily or not, we put this together for you. The month of February may have you looking for love in questionable places. However, when you meet that special someone who piques your interest it is fundamental that you spend some time together. Dating, like any sport, can be exhaustive, emotionally taxing, and anxiety-inducing. But let’s not forget how entertaining and boosting it may be. We asked our followers to submit to us some of their best and worst romantic escapades, and now we’ll ask you reading:

do y’all consider this a date?

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So boom... This GORGEOUS ass girl DM's me one day like "I'm not sure why you haven't asked for my number yet, but here. Hit me up." Bet. I hit her up on like a Monday. By the end of the convo, I decided I wanna take her on a date. She lived two hours away so I'm like, "Saturday, I'm coming to see you, and we lit."

I eventually make it down there. We go to this dope ass little restaurant for brunch then to a park where there was live music. Afterwards, we got ice cream, and from there it was a wine tasting. We just kept ending up at all these random places. We ended up riding a horse and carriage all around downtown and eventually to the river where we sat on a bench and talked till like 2 AM. At the end of the date, she says, "I know you have a 2-hour drive back home, but it's late. You should just spend the night and leave tomorrow."

So we get to her house. We're in her bed cuddled up, and I honestly I thought I was about to get some butt. She rolls over and gets on her phone and logs onto Instagram. Out of NOWHERE, she starts spazzing out. I'm like, "Yo, what's wrong? You good?" That's when she's like, "I hate this nigga! I can't believe that he’s taking happy couple pictures with the b***h he cheated on me with!" She's crying and yelling and I'm just lost.

Then she goes, "You know what? I wanna go bust his windows out. Let's go!" The f**k? I tell her I'm not down. We argue about it. At some point, she goes, "You ain't a real nigga. This nigga hurt me! You supposed to be on my side. If I wanna bust his windows out you should support me." I tell her she's tripping, and I start getting ready to show myself the door. On the way out, she tells me that I’m, "just like all these other niggas" and throws a wine glass at me. She barely misses my head. I got in my car and drove two hours back home in the middle of the night. 

27. Cleveland, OH.

My worst date wasn't atrocious. He wasn't rude. He didn't do anything startling, but he also didn't talk. How do you go on a first date and not talk? It was a setup. He wasn't someone I would have initially been interested in. When a best friend sets you up with their boyfriend's cousin, what real choice do you have? He picked me up to go to my favorite burger spot in Ann Arbor, MI. The food was the highlight of the night. I spent the first half of the evening asking what I consider probing questions in hopes to get this guy out of the habit of one-word responses. I was unsuccessful in my efforts. By the time the food actually got to the table I had given up deciding maybe he wasn't interested in me anyway. He took me home and we said a quick goodbye. To make the whole experience more confusing, he sent me a text the next day saying that he had so much fun and hopefully we could do it again.

23. Detroit, MI.
 

The best date I’ve ever been on was going ice skating. I was talking to this guy, and I would always tell him how special ice skating was to me growing up and how I haven’t gone in years since no one I knew can skate. The next day, he texts me saying, “dress warmly.” I was very confused up until we pulled into the rink. I started crying because I knew that he couldn't skate, but he told me he liked the way my eyes lit up every time I talked about it, and he wanted to see that happen again.

22. Queens, NY.

I'm just about drunk enough to tell the story about when I took one for the team. My best friend was interested in this girl that lived 50 minutes away. He planned to go bowling with her but she wanted to bring a friend, so I went along too to entertain her. The girl really wasn't my type. A few years younger - her twenty, I was twenty-two. That wasn't the problem. Anyone who says Rich Homie Quan is a better rapper than Nas isn't my type. Sigh. We had a bottle of cheap-ass Christian Brothers. After we went bowling we did IHOP, and I'd been drinking straight from the bottle because I know he's going to want to spend the night, and I might as well be drunk if the night is going to be this long. Again, this girl thought Rich Homie Quan was better than Nas so you can imagine our conversations throughout the night. She was sweet. Very sweet. Just not my kind of girl. Long story short, her friend was staying in a hotel with her mom that my homie didn't know about. He thought that the hotel was booked for them. We end up spending the night in two separate cars. He was with her in their car, and I with the friend in her own car. She tried to make the move to get things to pop off but I was so drunk I fell asleep on her shoulder. Slept there until the sun came up. All that and my friend still didn't get any.

26. Atlanta, GA.

A co-worker that I liked (she liked me back, but we never really made moves) sends me a screenshot of Knicks tickets ON my birthday asking, "is it a date?" I was INSTANTLY the male equivalent of wet. My birthday comes, we go out, and the vibe is amazing. Everything is PERFECT, and the Knicks win. We're walking out of Madison Square Garden and she asks, "I know it’s the first date, but will you come home with me?" I say yes and the rest of the night is self-explanatory.

Now, the worst date ever was with the same person. We got super drunk, and we got matching tattoos. We go home, and during sex I throw up all over the bed. Worst night ever. That’s the tea.

25. Queens, NY.

Planned to see a movie with a Tinder guy. The day of, he asks if I want to come to his photo shoot beforehand. When I met him at his place, I find out he had recently undergone toe surgery & was on crutches. Basically, he just needed a ride to his shoot. I ended up paying for the movie & during the previews he had the nerve to ask me if I really needed to eat the popcorn (that I paid for).

23. South Carolina.

I got set up on a blind-date by a friend. It happened to also be a double-date. I meet my date, we get to the restaurant and order appetizers. Twenty minutes in, beloved sniffs a line of coke off the table. I had to dip immediately. While I was waiting for my Uber, she comes out to me to try to explain herself. “I had a really long day. I don’t usually do this. I thought everyone would be cool with it!”

24. Long Island, NY

Worst date? We were supposed to get ice cream and go to the park. Dude said he’d pick me up after he left the gym. I get cute AF. It was a sunny fall day, so I wore an orange sundress that hugged my booty and made my skin pop.

It’s getting late. The sun is setting, and the ice cream parlor is closed. I text him some show times as an alternative. He reassures me that he is on his way for sure. He arrives very late wearing a wife-beater and some sweatpants. He looks me up and down and says, “Wow I got underdressed!” My emotions show up on my face. I just roll my eyes and get in the car.

He takes me to Walmart.

We buy a box of ice cream sandwiches and go to a park. It would’ve been cute…in the daytime. It was now a whopping 50 degrees, and I was cold and annoyed by being pushed on a swing. I tell him to take me home, but he kept on talking about himself and the gym. Anytime I said something about myself it reminded him of something he had done. The radio, as usual, was my saving grace. Chris Brown’s, "New Flame" had just dropped and I turned it up and tuned him out. I’m jamming out in his nice ass BMW or some s**t and he turns down the radio as Usher’s part comes on.

“You like this,” he asks.

“It’s Chris Brown and Usher. This song is a banger,” I reply.

“Not the song. The music in general.”

“R&B?”

“Yeah, I don’t like it.”

Pause. The date was over. I never answered his calls again.

23. Louisville, KY.

Worst date ever: A girl and I had talked on Tinder for a couple of days, and we went out for breakfast. She had one of the top three worst voices I had ever heard in my life. I thought she'd be cool because the one thing I knew about her was that she liked skydiving, but that was literally her only hobby. Other than that she was straight up bland. The date lasted maybe 45 minutes. The second she said she was full I got the rest of mine to go and dipped. She was sweet but so boring.

23. New Paltz, NY.

It took my ex two weeks to plan this romantic night for us. The day of our date he told me he cheated on me. Part two is when we bumped into the other woman at dinner.

The best date happened last summer. A longtime crush took me hiking and swimming. Petals floated on top of the river. He brought cherries and playing cards. I felt a sense of innocence for the first time in a long time.

21. Fort Lee, NJ.