Worst date ever. No, really.

I had a few reservations about meeting Pipe Fitter Dude. Our online conversations started well (zombie apocalypse and global pandemics!), though they took an odd turn when we got into a huge debate on adoption.

He asked me if I wanted kids and I said I wasn't sure; I didn't think I wanted to have my own biological children, but the idea of adoption appealed to me. He said that only infertile people should be allowed to adopt. I thought he was full of it and ripped all his arguments apart until he shut up. He still texted me the next day, so I took it as a good sign that he wasn't one of those dudes who had issues with a woman having opinions and expressing them.

We texted for about two weeks without meeting. We hadn't been able to make plans because his schedule was so crazy. He worked 10-hour days, six to seven days a week. And then, there was his insane work-out schedule. He went to the gym every day and then ran five kilometres after that. He was always talking about how he needed to lose weight, though he looked fine in his photos. I began to wonder if he was an exercise bulimic, or a manorexic. This was reinforced when I asked him to go to an event with me on a Thursday night, and he turned me down because he had to go to the gym after work ("gotta keep to my regimen") and then, it was "wing night" with his coworkers.

Any dude who would pick obsessive exercise and wing night over meeting a hot chick was someone I didn't have much time for. Not to mention the disconnect between freaking out about losing weight and then going for wings.

Another bad sign was when he asked me what I was doing one weekend, and I said I was going out with a friend in order to convince him to stop dating psychos already. Manorexic started asking me all kinds of questions about my friendship with the guy, fishing around to see if it was a date or whether I was interested in my friend. Which was none of his fucking business, considering Manorexic and I hadn't even met yet.

A week later, he texted me to say that he finally had some time off and we should go for coffee on the weekend. I said my weekend was open. He didn't set a specific date or time, though, and my schedule filled up. On Friday night at 9 p.m., he texted to ask if I still wanted to go for coffee. I said I had time on Sunday evening and he freaked.

Manorexic: Just a few days ago, you said your weekend was totally open.
Savia: A few days ago, my weekend was totally open. I can't help it that I'm popular.
Manorexic: Well, I just think it's weird that we haven't met yet. I think it's better to meet sooner rather than later and it's just weird that we haven't met.
Savia: Dude, you're the one with the crazy schedule who has no time to get together.

I was pissed. He expected that I should keep my entire weekend open, just waiting for him to make plans with me? Savia don't play that. I decided I wasn't interested in meeting him at all. Controlling freak.

But then, something happened. I went on an amazing date with someone I thought was an amazing guy. And then, he totally blew me off. I was upset. So, when Manorexic texted me the next Friday and asked if I wanted to do tea that night, I said yes because I just wanted to get out of the house.

Note to self: never make dates when you’re upset about other guys. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a great time, but I had no idea what was in store.

First off, he refused to go anywhere except places near his house because he had to get up early the next morning. Only he didn’t know the city and had no idea where any coffee shops were in the area. And he wouldn’t look into it because he had to work out before the date, so I was left to research options. His part of the city is as far away from my house as possible, and I miscalculated the amount of time it would take for me to get there. He texted when he got to the coffee shop and I texted back that I would be there in five minutes.

When I arrived, he wasn’t there. Weird. I texted to ask if he had left and he answered that he had decided to run out and do his grocery shopping for the week while he was waiting for me.

What?

So, I sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. He showed up 20 minutes later. Apparently, you can’t do your grocery shopping for the entire week in five minutes. Who knew?

I decided to give him a hug, mostly because I was curious to see what he would do. It’s a good litmus test on a guy’s personality. Manorexic practically jumped out of his skin as though I were assaulting him. And then I kind of wanted to assault him.

As we were standing in line for our drinks, all he did was groan and complain about how tired he was and how hard a week it had been. It was clear he didn’t want to be there, so why the hell was he there? Another great sign was when he didn’t sit in the comfy couch chair beside me, but slumped in the one across from me, which was far enough that I had to lean in to hear him complain about how tired he was.

Things just got worse from there. So much worse that I began to wonder if I were on some kind of hidden camera show.

We began to talk about current events and the conversation turned to the Israel/Palestine conflict, which led to him going on a rant about how evil Israel is. Which then led to a long diatribe on his part about how the Holocaust never happened.

Um…huh?

I was on a date with an honest-to-god Holocaust denier.

I got to hear all about how the six million number was made up, and it was more like 600,000 Jews that died. The camps weren’t death camps, they were just work camps. The prisoners were skeletal when they were liberated not because the Nazis starved them, but because the Allies cut off the food supplies. Some of the people who claimed to be survivors of the Holocaust don’t even have tattoos and their stories are really far-fetched. And why did no one talk about these supposed atrocities until decades after it happened, when, suddenly, there were all these movies about it? Well, it’s because the Jews own Hollywood, of course! Further evidence of the world-wide conspiracy was the fact that if you even question that it happened or not, you get carted off to jail.

When I told people about it later, their first questions were, “Did you tell him off and leave? Or did you get into a big fight with him?” Strangely, the answer was no. I just sat there, in shock. My brain was doing gymnastics, trying to understand what was going on. He couldn’t possibly be saying what it seemed like he was saying, so it must be something else that I just wasn’t getting.

The thing is, I consider myself to be a Holocaust scholar. I’ve connected with it since I was in elementary school. I felt compelled to find out what happened and why. I’ve watched countless movies and documentaries (including all eight hours of Shoah), read reams of books and articles and taken a number of university classes. In fact, the last class I took for my MA in English was on Holocaust literature. It is something sacred to me.

And yet, I was speechless. It didn’t help that he didn’t ask me a single question the entire time, or that he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise. I interjected a couple of times, trying to change the subject or to explain why, for instance, people get upset when you question the existence of a significant genocide, only to be cut off so he could return to his rant. There wasn’t much to say, anyway. How do you try to convince someone that a major historical event did, in fact, occur?

“It’s so good to be able to have someone to talk to about this. If I try to talk to other people, they won’t let me,” he said. One of my friends asked later, “Savia, were you being polite to the Holocaust denier?” I answered, “Um…yes?”

After an hour and a half, I was relieved when the barista started shutting off the lights as a hint that the coffee shop was closing. We walked out the door, said goodbye and went our separate ways. I didn’t give him a hug this time.

It’s pretty sad that I am considering adding, “Must believe in the Holocaust” to my dating profile.

I swear this shit only happens to me.