February 28, 2008

A Three Hour Tour

Here’s something I never thought I’d say to a man:

So, if I actually were going to throw up, where would be the best place for that sort of thing to happen?

And that, my friends, was the highlight of my weekend.

It is 6 Nations time again (that would be a rugby tournament) and on Saturday, Scotland came to town. I equated it to Fleet Week in New York but with kilts and better accents. Since I ended up in a gay bar last time the Scots came to town, I rounded up the girlfriends and we hit the town.

The objective was simple: to get chatted up by cute Scottish guys in kilts and if a kiss came my way, roll with it.

I found myself in a pub, with 6 Scots at our table, all in kilts, all 55+ and married. Not exactly the way I envisioned things going… I ended up on my sofa at midnight-thirty screaming down the phone to my sister, who decided it was like having Christmas cancelled. She’s a good sister.

So when I woke up on Sunday and was asked if I wanted to go for a sail, I figured it was a good way of redeeming my weekend. I’ve always wanted to sail and let’s face it, a cute guy asks you to go sailing when you’re bitter and sulking, you jump at the chance.

That was how I found myself throwing up on our first date. Not, I’ll admit, the best impression to have made on my part. He felt terrible. Not as terrible as I did but you know, it’s sort of rude to make your date vomit. But he was kind enough to keep imploring me not to be embarrassed. ‘We’ve all been there’, he said.

The funny thing was I wasn’t embarrassed at all. In fact, I found it quite funny. There I was, throwing up on a boat, so far removed from who I am normally. And I kept humming the theme from Gilligan's Island. It just made me giggle. After I came out of the bathroom, he looked uncomfortably chagrined but I just smiled and said to him: I feel soooo much better! Because that’s the thing about motion sickness, you always feel better on an empty stomach.

The stupid thing is, while I was waiting for my train to arrive, I flashed back to a boat ride I took while I was a student in Sweden. I'd gone traveling around and was taking a day trip with two girls from my hostel. We were about 30 minutes into the trip when I got most violently and painfully motion sick. I spent the rest of the 2 hour trip in the doctor's cabin, lying down and praying for death. Finally we arrived at Estonia.

It was the only time in my life I've ever been sick on a boat but it did make me wonder if I should be hitting the pharmacy for Dramamine instead of having coffee.

Should have gone with the instinct. Ah well, it was good fun for most of the day. I did really enjoy being on the boat, seeing the shore from a completely different perspective. The sun felt good when it did come out. The wind wasn’t as cold as I was expecting, although the four layers I was wearing might have helped that. I liked his dog very much.

But it didn’t give us much of a chance to talk, seeing as he was concentrating on getting me back to land as fast as possible and I was concentrating on not throwing up any more. Staring at the shore really does help. So if and when he does ask me for another date, land bound hopefully, I think I’ll say yes. I figure if he can get over that, he must be worth a do-over. Right?

The Professor and Mary Ann... Here on Gilligan's Island.

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