Pulp Storytime: The Best and Worst Dates

Mia Castagnone brings you a compilation of first-date stories from real people’s wacky and wholesome, heart-warming, and down right eye-rolling experiences!

‘A key can open many locks’ …the total misogynist that then expected a second date…um?!

[Really Bad Date #1] 

It was Friday night, I was really looking forward to a pleasant evening of food, conversation, and cute company. It could not have been more the opposite. After a stressful week at uni, I ended the week in a war of words with a misogynistic, uptight, downright rude human being.

It was so unbelievable the words exiting this dude’s mouth that I felt like I was in a movie. He had every misogynistic opinion under the sun; ‘women are just better mums, don’t you look forward to being a housewife?’, ‘men are just more rational, that’s why we get paid more, and my FAVOURITE, ‘a key can open many locks’. (i.e. ‘A key that can open many locks is called a master key, but the lock that can be opened by many keys, is a shitty lock!)

Not once did I agree with him (who on earth would?!) but you’d imagine that I wouldn’t be his type, right? Nope, apparently not because a week later he tries calling me to presumably ask me out again. Declined. Blocked.

Shoutout to my date who offered a luxury ride to uni xox

[Good date #1]

My date had been texting me for a while, but I had been on the fence about meeting him. He seemed really keen, which you’d think would be a good thing but really I felt a bit uncomfortable when he seemed keen to date me more because I was “a white Aussie” as he had said, than wanting to date me, for being me.

I was getting ready for uni one morning when he asks if I wanted to get breakfast. I was thinking this is so randomly spontaneous, especially for a first date. So, I tell him I don’t have time to make it to a café and then to uni. But then he offers to pick me up and drop me off at campus. I was so surprised he was willing to come from the city where he lives, to pick me up only to double back to the city, to drop me off at USyd. He says he lives at Central Park, will head to class at UTS afterwards and was happy to have company for breakfast.  

Hmm why not? A ride to uni and a brunch date? So I said yes. The next surprise came shortly after when I could hear his car pull up before I saw it. It was the loud engine rumble of his Mercedes. It clicked. Ohh international student money. Sure, I’d laughed at the memes about foreign students with their privately owned city apartments, Gucci shoes and LV handbags, but I wasn’t expecting one to be outside my house to take me to brunch or to drop me off at my lecture.

It was a lovely morning and needless to say, I was a few minutes late to my lecture but being spoilt to breakfast and a lift to uni was worth it! It was nice to experience his ‘gentleman-like’ behaviour (and if you’ve been on Tinder you know you can really get the worst type of people).

Who could insult the other the best?

[Bad Date #2]

The conversation was awful. He was entirely invested in himself and had the nerve to insult how I looked!? 

Finally we finished eating and went to pay. I wanted to split the bill and get out of there until he said, “Oh I realized on the way here I forgot my wallet.”

OMG there was no way I was paying for him! Thankfully he ducked to an ATM and left me to grab the bill. What was worse was that he insisted we go for a walk afterwards?! As I paid the bill, I brainstormed with the waitress about what excuse to use to get out of there.

As he came back, he gave me money for the date, and just as if God was answering my pleas, I received a text from work asking if I could come in. I have never been more overjoyed to be called into work last minute.

 “It was nice meeting you; shall we go out another time?” 

I was mortified- he wants to meet again? Had we been on different dates?! I said no and dashed out of there.

Bootycall or call-up counselor?

[Bad Date #3]

I had just started using Tinder and really was just there to widen my experience. COVID had left a real drought of dating opportunities. The guy I met with was really cute and in my area so one evening we hit each other up to go for an evening drive.

 We get to a parking lot and surprisingly broke into a huge ‘dnm’. I didn’t mind having a soft conversation with him but ahem, the other parts of him couldn’t really manage to be anything other than be soft too… a huge mood kill.

He admitted that he was insecure about a break-up that happened recently with a girl he’d dated for two years. But I’m the furthest thing from a professional therapist and I guess he learned that rebounding with hook-ups doesn’t always work either.

A fairy-tale evening overseas….

[Really good date #2]

 Have you ever had someone who gives you butterflies and makes you feel incredible, but you don’t want to ruin it by asking them on a date because just being around them is good enough and you don’t want to stuff it up?

 That’s how this crush started. It was a month-long crush. I finally went over ten times in my head how I would ask for his number, casually of course. I think I practiced it in my head 10 times over and over, “I’ll be in the area this weekend, we should go for dinner?” I went up to him and what came out of my mouth was “I’ll be in Nairobi this weekend, can I have your number…You know, in case of emergencies”.

“Sure,” he said “and do you have any plans? I’ll take you out for dinner”.

Nailed it. We ended up going for dinner twice! The last time we went for dinner we were at a restaurant at my hotel, which was a fancy Italian restaurant. I had bought a dress, especially for this dinner. We ordered a bottle of wine and ate, drank, and talked for hours up until the restaurant started closing down around us.

The waiters said we could stay a bit while there was a spotlight on our table. We had asked them if we could take the bottle and they said yes so, we walked around the hotel, around their pool, with a bottle of wine, with our feet in the pool, falling in love in the limited hours we had left, wishing we had spent more time together, before I flew out of the country the next day.

Want to read more juicy tales? Check out Pulp Storytime: Tinder Abroad!