(Continuation of The Guy Who LARPed )

The second time I went out with the LARPer (because oh yes, there was a second date), he showed up wearing what can only be described as shower shoes. You know those blue, waterproof Adidas sandals you wore in the shower at sleep-away camp, that by the end of the summer would be completely worn in, torn, slightly moldy, and smell like garbage?

He wore those.

I don’t even usually notice men’s footwear, but I swear to god these were emanating a stench that rocked me to the core. I thought about them the entire night.

I thought about the shoes as he ordered himself a cosmo in a Mexican restaurant (so you know that shit came with a tiny umbrella), and I thought about them as he regaled me with stories of his LARPing adventures (“I haven’t always played the monster, you know“). I thought about the shoes as he told me he makes a living by subletting his apartment to foreigners for 3 seasons out of the year and sleeping on his mom’s couch. “Why not in the summer, too?” I asked. Because in the summer he likes to be near Central Park.

For the LARPing.

I still thought about the shoes as he chewed with his mouth open and told me he doesn’t own a credit card (“Why would I?” he asked, as bits of cosmo-soaked guac flew from his mouth into my eye).

I thought about the shoes as he told me about his best friend, Leonard.

Leonard is a cat.

But mostly I thought about the shoes as he walked me home, stopped at my awning, and tried to kiss me goodnight. The doorman happened to be standing outside. He caught my “For the love of god, help me!” signal, but rather than doing so, he leaned against the wall of the building and essentially pulled out a bag of popcorn and a fountain soda.

The scene was as awkward as they come. He stopped and clumsily fished for my hand, which I attempted to hide in my pockets– only to discover, regrettably, that I didn’t have pockets. Then he went for it. I did the half turn, letting his lips land simultaneously on both my cheek and mouth. This had happened one other time in my life– when I was 13 and ran into my 60-year-old rabbi at the mall. We each went for the wrong cheek and ended up weirdly half-mouth kissing. It was mortifying and terrible.

But in this moment, I found myself missing Rabbi Weinberg.

Post-“kiss”, he attempted to say something, but I giddy-up U-turned for the door and ran inside. Literally. I ran. I ran like there was free Chipotle and I was…well…me.

Then, as I’m in the elevator, I get a text.

“I can do MUCH better than that kiss, but the doorman was killing my mojo.”

Oh, LARPer. Everything about you was killing my mojo, including your use of the word mojo. You literally could not have made yourself any less attractive in the past 3 hours, and no girl with any self-respect would even think about responding to this text.

I think we only went out one more time after that.