When Royalty Dates

Story Sent in by Marcy:

Greg and I met online. We spoke for a couple of weeks before he asked me if he could take me out to a "unique" place for dinner on a Friday night. Intrigued, I pressed him for more details, but he said, "Trust me: it's like nowhere you've been for dinner before." I agreed to go with him, and he told me to meet him at a certain address.

When I arrived there near the appointed time, I was puzzled to discover that the "unique place" was a church. Its windows were lit up, and there was clearly some sort of big event happening within. Many well-dressed people streamed inside.

I called Greg up and asked him, "It's a church? Are you inside?"

"Yep! Come on in, but hang a quick right as soon as you do. I'm downstairs."

I followed his instructions. The church basement was also lit up, but there were fewer people than those who had congregated upstairs. In fact, the only people downstairs were in aprons, and were cooking in the kitchen. It was a big space.

"Hey!" Greg called to me from across the room.

I walked over to him and said, "Hey. What's this all about?"

He replied, "It's a dance and dinner kind of thing, but I didn't buy tickets. We can have our own dance and dinner down here. I grabbed us some food from the kitchen." He pointed to a darkened corner of the room, where a couple of hot dogs sat next to hot dog buns on a single plate.

"And we can dance!" he said, then took my hands and shook them wildly up, down, and around, in some strange sort of mating ritual that I still can't really figure out.

I tore my hands away and said, "Are you serious? This is where you wanted to meet up?"

He looked at me as if I had dealt him a mortal insult. "What's wrong with this? Dinner, dancing under the stars–"

"We're in a basement!" I reminded him, "With food on a paper plate on a floor."

He shook, spun around to the hot dogs, picked them up, and threw them into a nearby trash can. "Princess wants what princess wants!" he spat, then barged past me and into the kitchen. I couldn't see him anymore, but I heard him shout, "Attention, everyone! Princess wants some five-star cuisine! Can I have some of your finest fucking caviar and your best fucking dolphin meat? It's for princess! And princess gets what princess wants! Always!"

I wanted to leave, but I also wanted to see how things turned out. Someone said, "Get him out," and someone else said, "You have to leave."

"But princess!" he shouted again, "Princess wants a five-star fucking meal! Time for me to get princess a five-star… fuck this place!"

There came a tremendous crashing, like a dozen pots and pans smashing against the ground. I expected Greg to bolt out of the kitchen at any second, but he didn't. There was a lot of shouting, and I took that as my cue to leave.

He left me close to 20 voicemails that night and about half as many texts. "Where did princess go? Princess's food must be gotten for princess! I'll just empty my fucking bank account for fucking princess! It's okay! I don't mind! It's all for fucking princess!"

After that night, he didn't contact me again, except for the following Wednesday, when he left one more voicemail that was just as angry as the other score he left for me. I stayed off of online dating for a while after that.