The Dating Scene

I've gone out now the last three nights in a row, all of which have had different, odd, but increasingly good ends. Allow me to regale you (i.e. myself) with the story.

Friday night I went out with Ty after work (only two more classes with those Friday junior hellions! wOOt!!!!), supposedly as Ty's wingman. See, he met a girl at the Hub a little while back, went out on a date with her, then before this last one, she asked if she could bring a friend with her, and Ty smartly decided to bring someone else along. I agreed.

Well, her friend of course turned out to be safety friend, kinda like safety stranger, but well, as more the girl equivalent of "girl that's there to make sure her slutty friend doesn't turn into a complete tramp" or, as a girl might be more apt to put it, "the second (sober) opinion".
We went to a Thai restaurant in Kashiwa, but neither girl could eat spicy food, so that was interesting to begin with. Silly weak pallated Japanese girls.

The guy, Tha Chang, who owns the place, is a 42 year old flamboyantly gay Thai man, who was just hillarious, and with whom Ty and I conversed far mroe than the girls sitting across from us. Yes you read that correctly, the seated themselves together, across from us, creating basically two completely different conversations in two completely different languages neither of which overlapped the other much at all the whole time. Ty and I immediately began drinking heavily, which safety friend, of course, did not. Here was our initial drink order:
"Beer Chang please."
"Ah, same here."
"あの、ライチサワー下さい。”
”Oolong Tea."
"Wait, what? You realize there's no alcohol in that, right?"
"はい。知っている。”
"*sigh*"

And of course these girls don't speak a lick of English, even though they understand it pretty well without letting on. Even in Japanese though, there was no getting a conversation started, no matter how we tried. It was over when: Ty's date asked safety friend if it was ok to get another drink, to which she replied "Hmm, well, ok. I think you can have another, but, wait a few. That should be ok." What are we 3? At this point, my job as wingman officially either just got harder or not worth it. Ty claims the former, I the latter.

The thing is these girls didn't realize we understood what they were saying between them privately. Ty and I just sat there becoming more and more appauled, till at the insanely early time of 10:40 I pulled the "I have to work early tomorrow morning, so, I kinda gotta go" card to bail. Since the cards were out on the table, safety friend revealed her aces too, saying that she as well was meeting a friend at 11 so she actually had to go too, which was the date equivalent of "you can't fire me cause I quit!" Additionally, revealed that they had a bailout plannned and were within minutes of using it anyway.

So we catch a taxi to Minami Kashiwa station, which none of us but safety friend need to go to, and on the way of course, the two are sitting next to each other whispering about Ty and me in some kind of last minute evaluation, since the next important decision of course is whether the girls will separate when we reached the station. Somewhere along the line though, I heard safety friend whisper "hentai" and I called her straight out on it. "What?! Excuse me? What did you just say??" For those of you who don't know, you generally don't call people out in this culture, they weren't really expecting to be heard, much less understood, much less called out on it. So The Date says, "Oh, she's tired, she's just tired," and I asked Ty, "Hey, when you're tired, do you accidentally call people perverts under your breath? I know I don't." The girls decided to pay for the cab ride.

At the station, the negotiations began, and Ty tried to paw out whether The Date and he should head back to Kashiwa for another drink, while safety friend and I went our seperate ways. Her answer, as it had been whenever presented one by Ty that evening was, "Dochidemo ii" (either way's fine). Which I guess I could understand, being coy Japanese girls, but, it wasn't coy, it was copout. This I guess is where I failed to uphold my duty as wingman by not distracting safety friend for long enough for Ty to run some serious last minute game and seal some alone time, but, in my professional opinion, it wasn't gonna happen in the first place, and before I could really do anything about it Ty made the decision for us when he told The Date "That's your fucking motto, isn't it? Dochidemo ii." Ty kinda has a habit of snapping. We parted ways.

"Dave (don't call me that you know I hate it), sorry, David, why didn't you jump on the grenade? You should have been talkin it up with safety friend from the get go. Poor form." You say. And I say, "Hey listen, as his wingman I'm also there to monitor the situation from an objective, 'I'm not trying to get my dick wet' POV, and it was clear Ty wasn't gonna reach his goal pretty early on. And, I did try to engage safety friend as much as possible, but in a conversation that was THAT dead from the get go, it was a daunting task, and hardly worth it. Additionally, well, I just kinda blanked and stopped really caring about it once I realized that The Date was acting like a 3 year old and clearly didn't wanna engage in a 'safety off' dating environment.
Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that personality just doesn't matter to some guys, or at least, not as long as they get laid. Not to say that's what Ty was after, but if it bothered him I didn't do more as wingman, it can't be because he was charmed by her personality and wanted to get to know her more on an emotional level. Either way, my bad, I guess."