I give nicknames to guys with whom I’ve gone out. There are several very practical reasons for doing so. For one, I tend to wind up only dating guys who are named Bob, Don, John, Steve, or Joe. I don’t really have an explanation for this phenomenon other than my belief that the pool of boy names was extremely limited some forty or so years ago. That said it is certainly helpful that I assign nicknames to help differentiate between Bob#1 and Bob #3, for instance.

Another reason I do it is to help remind myself of why it is important to take very long breaks from dating sometimes, to recall to my consciousness the fact that this world is largely filled with freaks.

For instance, I went out once with a dark-haired, dark-eyed man who, while shaking a chicken bone in my face, asked me a very uncomfortable question. Now mind you, just a few seconds before, this chicken bone had been a plump, juicy, fried chicken leg. However, the flesh was eviscerated and the remaining bone sucked dry by this man who had a palate as discriminating as a starving alley cat (although I am fairly certain that the cat would likely exhibit better table manners). As his lips encircled the bone, the grease began to pool in the dimple of his chin and I was sure things couldn’t get worse. I hate it when I am oh-so wrong. That was about the time that he shook the bone at me and said, as he leaned back and smudged the grease from his other hand onto the belly of his shirt, “So tell me why it is that you find me so attractive.” Thankfully he said this when my mouth wasn’t full of food because surely I’d have choked. I tried to think of how to answer his question without completely crushing his ego but just then, my son called. It seemed that Dylan was suffering from a most unfortunate stomach bug and I had to leave rather abruptly. That man became known as “The Italian Stallion.”

Another guy, the first time we went out, took me to the Taco Bell drive thru after having gone to a movie. The line was long and so we sat in his car, chatting, waiting our turn. It was then, with seemingly no known provocation, that he burst into tears and took my hand in his. Oh—this is great—a grown man crying—“Is he always this emotional about burritos?” I wondered. I started looking for an escape route, but as if the crying wasn’t enough, while still holding my hand, he looked at me and said, “You’re really nice and pretty. I want you to marry me.” Oh goodie. Yeah. Sure. Perhaps we’ll have the reception INSIDE the Taco Bell, y’know, like all fancy and stuff. Uh huh. Chalupas for EVERYBODY! Wow—how will it read in the paper? Just then, my son called. It seemed that Dylan was suffering from a most unfortunate stomach bug and I had to leave rather abruptly. That guy became known as “Taco Bell.”

Oh and then there was the guy who I met at the request of a mutual friend. We talked on the phone a few times and when my friend asked for my impression of those calls, I said to her that I was fairly certain that, each night, he washed down his chicken pot pie with a glass of icy cold Tang as he sat in his mother’s basement, in his Star Trek jammies, watching gay porn. But other than that, he seemed ok. She said I was probably being a bit harsh. The night we met, I agreed (at his request) to meet him in the parking lot of a local grocery store. We hadn’t really made any plans beyond that but I was still startled to discover that the grocery store, Bruno’s, was not simply a meeting place, but was, in fact, the actual destination of our date. Trust me, you know it is going to be a bad date when the icebreaker for your conversation is, “Oh look. Pork tenderloin. Buy one get one free.” Ugh. But then, even before we’d been able to reach the dairy section, my son called. It seemed that Dylan was suffering from a most unfortunate stomach bug and I had to leave rather abruptly. And that guy became known as “Bruno’s.”

But the King of All Nicknames is a title that goes to the man who has come to be known as “Saturn.” I met him as I stumbled through my daily life while living in Birmingham. He seemed like a terribly nice guy and I wasn’t too offended when he looked up my number and called me one evening, out of the blue. We chatted briefly and agreed to go out to eat sometime soon.

The first time we went out, the date was…well…it was okay. There just didn’t seem to be much spark there, from my perspective, but I told myself that I should give him another chance. When he asked me to go out again, I had to force myself to say yes. It was on Date #2 that I knew this guy was a mistake, a big fucking (but seemingly nice) mistake. He must have sensed it because, in the car on the way home, he asked if I had enjoyed myself. I struggled with the proper way to word “You are an absolute bore.” The best thing I could come up with was, “I think we have very different senses of humor.” He interpreted my comment very well and said, “You don’t think I am funny, do you? Well, I’ll have you know that I have a great sense of humor. Just wait. Come into my house and I’ll show you.”

Well, the first thing that I noticed when I stepped in his living room was his overstuffed, pink sofa. I laughed out loud—I had this guy completely wrong—he WAS funny. He looked at me, confused, and asked why I was laughing. When I pointed out the sofa and said, “you’ve got a pink couch—that is the ugliest, campiest thing I have ever seen—I love it!,” he looked hurt.

“It isn’t pink. It’s salmon”

Shit. The couch wasn't meant to be funny. Shit, shit, shit.

He disappeared into another room and came back, holding three tennis balls. “Now,” he said, “you’re going to see how funny I can be,” and he began to juggle. That’s right—he juggled three tennis balls.

Juggling. Now that’s funny. Ha ha. Very funny. A real riot. No. You’ve gotta stop. No. Really. YOU’VE GOTTA STOP!

I left soon thereafter, in spite of the fact that he had promised even more merry-making.

I was sure that I’d never see this guy again and that I’d tell him exactly that the next time he called for a date.

Now here’s the good news: he didn’t call. A few days passed by and I hadn’t heard from him. Cool. Maybe I had dodged the bullet. Maybe he thought I was just as boring. Maybe he just wasn’t interested. No matter what, I was relieved. Whew.

But then one evening, as my son and I were finishing our meal, there was a knock at the door. Hmm. Wasn’t expecting anyone—who could that be? Holy shit, Batman—it was him. I let him in and talked to him as we finished our meal and I cleaned the kitchen. Finally I said, “Wow—I wish we could visit longer, but I promised my son we’d go to Dairy Queen after supper.”

“Oh,” he said, “that’s amazing. I LOVE Dairy Queen. I’ll ride along with you two.”

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of it, so I searched my memory for any knowledge that I had gleaned from the How to Dump a Man handbook that women pass to one another in times of crises like the one I was experiencing. “Ah. That’s it,” I thought. “I’ll use this opportunity to pick a fight with him,” (p. 53).

The three of us got into my car and drove to Dairy Queen just down the road and, as we got close, we saw that they were remodeling, that only the drive-thru was open. Moreover, only the lower part of the sign was lit up. As I turned in, this guy said, “I thought you said we were going to Dairy Queen. This isn’t Dairy Queen. The sign says ‘Hot Eats, Cool Treats.’” Then he gave me one of those conspiring nudges with his elbow and said, “And you thought I wasn’t funny. You see, I have a great sense of humor.”

Yeah. Non-stop hilarity. How very droll. My sides are splitting. Ha ha.

I just looked at him and he said, “You don’t think that’s funny? I’m going to tell the woman at the window that I was lost and was looking for Dairy Queen not Hot Eats Cool Treats—let’s see if she laughs.”

No. Let’s not.

But he did.

And nobody besides him was surprised that she didn’t laugh. In fact, her response was altogether more appropriate than anything I could have imagined: she didn’t say a word but instead, she looked at him with an expression that said, “you need to double your dose of fruitcake medicine, pal.”

I decided to drive around the adjoining shopping center in an effort to keep the car rolling while also affording myself the opportunity to eat my ice cream without worrying too much about traffic. It was then that the golden moment arrived, the one so ripe and burgeoning with argument-inducing potential that I nearly wet myself with excitement. Yes, that was when my son innocently commented, “Wow—it isn’t even Thanksgiving and there are Christmas decorations up in the store windows.”

Aha! I seized the moment! I knew this guy was a long-standing customer of Jesus, Inc. And he loved Dubya. And was a bigger and better patriot than you could ever dream of being. So I looked into the back seat at my son and said, “Well, Dylan, there’s a Republican in The White House, so the economy is suffering. Moreover, our country has started a war for no apparent reason. People are poor and don’t have much to feel good about. So the stores are preying upon those Christians with a disposable income, trying to cash in on their gullibility. And it is a win-win situation. The big companies get rich, while the population grows poorer but feels better because they’ve just filled their homes with a bunch of useless crap.”

Amen, Brothers and Sisters!

I launched so much shit in a single answer to my son that nobody could respond. Surely. The only way to reply to such commentary would be a deafening silence, one that could only end with a request to be taken back to his car…right?

Wrong.

In fact, what he said next was even more surprising than the fact that he’d actually spoken. “You don’t believe in miracles?”

Huh? What the hell? Where did that come from? I thought quickly, looking in the rear view mirror at my son, wondering how much of this Dylan was actually following. The smile on his face let me know he was fully expecting another shit-launch.

“I don’t think you have to buy into the entire teachings of the Christian mythology to recognize the value of the teachings of Christ,” I said. Hmph. Take THAT!

“Mythology?” I’d insulted him. Cool. “You think The Bible is mythology?”

“Of course I do. And it is. The term ‘mythology’ refers to a story that sometimes has supernatural implications but that affects the views of people in respect to their culture, their histories, and helps them determine how they should go about their lives. So…yes…The Bible is a mythology.”

He stammered and then shocked me again with another seeming non sequitur. “So, do you believe in reincarnation? Life after death? Ghosts?”

My shit launcher was worn out. I couldn’t keep it up. So I made a vital mistake. I mean, it didn’t seem like a mistake when I replied, “I think we all believe things that we, intellectually, know don’t make any sense. And those are the things we don’t like to talk about.” But it was a mistake to say that. I thought it would end the conversation, that we’d shake hands, realizing we just weren’t right for each other. And then we’d go our separate ways. But no.

Instead, he then leaned close to me and said, “I know what you mean. I have one of those beliefs.”

Holy shit. This was NOT intended to be a confessional. This was meant to have ended the conversation!

“I think I’m from Saturn.”

How do you respond to something like that? I couldn’t think quickly enough before he started expounding, providing me with his reasons behind this belief.

He told me that he was fairly certain that people from Saturn always have either blue or green eyes, which explained why he felt people with brown eyes seemed a bit “shifty.” At that moment, for the first and only time in my life, I longed for brown contacts to conceal my blue eyes.

He then told me that, the second he’d met me, he was certain that he’d known me back on Saturn. If I hadn’t been in total shock, I would have asked him for some names of people who may have been mutual acquaintances back on our mother planet, for no other reason than to have the fun of shaking my head and saying, “no…didn’t know him….no…didn’t know her.” But I wasn’t thinking that quickly.

He then went into great detail about how he was certain that he could fly, that he could accelerate by simply leaning forward. Again, I was in shock. Otherwise I would’ve offered him a ride to Little River Canyon to test his theory.

We’d gotten back home by then and I purposefully stayed outside, hoping that the view of his car would entice him to get in it and leave. I also hoped that the thing in his pants was, really, simply, an antenna receiving signals from the mother planet and absolutely nothing else.

Standing in the cold, though, I realized that my senses were beginning to come back.

When he said that looking into the sky at night gave him a sense of peace, I weakly suggested that lots of people get a feeling of comfort from gazing into the expanse of the darkened sky. When he responded that he felt as though he was looking homewards, I absolutely felt like myself again (instead of simply being the girl from the wrong side of the planet). I said, “DO you ever phone home?” The E.T. reference passed over him but he did reach into his pocket to pull out his cell phone. I cynically said, “Hell, there must be incredible roaming charges.” He shook his head and replied that there were chips that people from Saturn put in his phone so that he could call without incurring such costs.

Then I remembered page 44 of How to Dump a Man, a method I have used so many times that I feel as though I should receive credit for it: I worked up a loud belch. “Hmmm. Ice cream. It always does this to me. I better get inside. I think I am about to get sick.”

Damn! My friend, the ol’ upset stomach card. It ALWAYS works.

I went inside, leaving him staring at the sky. I heard from him several more times before I was finally able to truly get rid of him, but I think that he, without a doubt, earned his nickname: “Saturn.”