My Date With Irma

First dates are always a mess. It's like interviewing for a job, but without being certain you want to remain with the company past the first paycheck. Typically, I avoid the dating thing altogether, by associating myself with women who will sleep with me for the lady-like price of a few drinks and a handful of half-baked witticisms involving sexual organs or pop culture. By meeting women at the bar, I successfully circumvent the dating process and delve directly into the casual sex with no attachments terrain. In this case, however, I met Irma in front of a head shop at half past midnight as I tried to decide which bar I would grace next with my presence.

I was drunk and she was loitering- yet there was still some form of common ground for the two of us. We somehow got onto the topic of the evils of text messaging; how it desensitizes us to genuine conversations and relationships and allows us to hide behind an iconic virtual mask of text-based smiley faces and lols. Needless to say, I got her phone number before moving on to the next liquor establishment.

I don't think I actually intended to call her, but a few days later my lady friend wanted me to spend a night with her in her hometown. Because I didn't particularly want to see her- or, more specifically, her friends- I gave her the first excuse that came to mind: "I have a date tonight." We have an open relationship and she was unperturbed by this, even gushy over the details I'd promised to give her at a later date. My obvious problem was that I didn't have a date lined up and, while I am a writer, this succubus can always tell when I'm making shit up.

So I asked out Irma, ironically via text message, and because she didn't have any important standing-in-front-of-the-head-shop to do, she accepted. Here we go, lady friend: You asked for details and I can't make this shit up.

We met at a restaurant in the same neighborhood as the head shop; it wasn't anything fancy, nothing more than a glorified diner, really. But I thought that proximity to both our comfort zones would be relaxing. I arrived first, sitting at the table and listening to a horrifying oldies soundtrack playing through a half-blown speaker. Partway through "Hot Stuff," she walked in and I cringed a little bit on the inside.

While she would have been pleasant enough to look at had her clothing been removed prior to entry, the pleated hemp skirt, shin-high Native American moccasin boots, and airy blouse depicting virtually every species of flower in no discernible order was enough to remind me that I had met this girl while drunk. In front of a head shop. After midnight. Her 'purse' was a gargantuan shoulder bag made entirely out of beads and her hair was braided thickly with what appeared to be dandelion heads hanging from the tip of each braid. I thought to ask where she got dandelions in late March, but the incredibly witty sentence I formed came out sounding more like, "Huh? ... Bubbawha?"

She sat down smiling radiantly and I reminded myself that if I could get her clothes off, she would look significantly less like a hippie. I searched the archives of my mind for something- anything- to say that didn't involve the words I left my stove running, and I quite smoothly came up with a comfortable conversation starter. Having the first name Grady has accustomed me to this conversation and every less-common name seems to have a story to tell. Expecting safe territory, I asked her about her name, Irma, under the assumption that she was named after some close-but-geriatric relative.

"Irma's not my real name," she said. "My birth name is Moonchild Gethsemane Peacejoy. I grew up in a Zenna commune in Arizona. We all have names like that, isn't it great?"

I'm pretty sure bubbawha? came out of my mouth for the second time in this life.

"But," she continued unconcerned with my obvious bemusement, "my ex-soul-mate thought I should have a more traditional name. So we saved up six hundred dollars and had it legally changed to Irma, his mother's name."

"What would Freud think about that?" I said, not quite aware I'd spoken a sentence at all.

"I don't know," she giggled. "What's a freud?"

And then she started talking about the commune in Arizona, how it was founded forty years ago by what she called the People. With a capital P, she was certain to point out. The People believe that the Divine Presence, Zenna, wandered alone in the woods for aeons, dancing in the light of the moon joyously until she grew lonely and gave birth to the entire fucking universe. Then she evaporated her body into tiny fumes of Goddess and breathed them into every living entity in existence.

At some point I mentioned something about her 'commune' being an obvious and ludicrous cult and asked if she liked Kool-Aid. I expected a glare in return, but received only a patient smile like she had put up with silly little unbelieving heathens like me all her life and she was willing to work to convince me.

It was at this point that I stopped listening to a word she said and wracked my brain for an appropriate acronym for Irma, finally deciding on "I'd Rather Masturbate Anyway." Finally, our waitress came to take down our orders and I started a conversation with her, hoping that she would be chatty enough to distract me from the lunatic hippie across the table. Unfortunately, she was too busy for small talk, excusing her as soon as it was polite to do so and I was returned to the embodiment of all that is hell.

Trying to find a more normal subject of conversation to get me through the next forty minutes of our acquaintance, I suggested a topic that all of her kind could get into.

"So, you're clearly a hippie," I said, "are you into art?"

Finally, I got the smile to falter. "We don't really like being called 'hippies'," she said. "That's a derogatory term. The preferred name for us is 'freak'."

"That says a lot about the stability of your People," I said.

"And of course I'm into art! I love air drawing and sun-platting. I do it every night before bed!"

"Air drawing?" I said. "Like air-brush stuff?"

"No, silly," she said. "Paints and stuff aren't allowed to the People. It's so barbaric- I mean, cavemen drew on the walls before Zenna taught them how to sun-platt!"

"So, do you do... like... charcoal... or...?"

"No," she said patiently, "We draw with our imaginations... Here, I'll do one for you now!" She closed her eyes limply and extended one hand into the open air before her face, waving it around like she was trying to cast a magic spell. This went on for a good ten minutes- and people were staring, but I didn't mind because at least it shut her up. "There!" she said when she was finally through. "Isn't it incredible? It's a bird flying away from a cage! Don't you love how I platted sunlight to make the gilding really shine?"

After a moment to pick my jaw up from the table, I said, "This is probably the fourth craziest thing I've ever seen."

"Thank you!" she said. "I practice a lot and it is getting crazy good."

"No, I mean you pretending you just drew a picture on nothing. With nothing. It's crazy. Hey, I'm all about imagination, but we aren't the fucking Lost Boys. And what the fuck is platting sun supposed to mean anyway? What the fuck do you have to be on to make this shit up?"

Finally, she looked wounded by my words. "But... I drew it for you... And your language hurts my ears. My Zennamaster says that four-letter words are thunderclaps of cloudy minds."

"You're fucked in the head, you know that?" I said. "Seriously, you should sue the pants off the freaks at the Zenna cult for turning you into the wandering, bubbly, imaginationsmith."

"They don't have pants."

"It isn't the point. What's the deal with that place? It sounds like a compound of Henderson's Presence and Purpose stories from the 50's and some kind of pharmaceutical nightmare cut with a base of hippie bullshit. There's no way you believe you just drew a bird flying away from a cage by just waving your fucking hand."

This is when she started to cry.

"I think maybe the cage is your own ignorance and the sun-platted gilding is your Zennamaster's naked influence. But you can't fly from your cage with your wings on fire. You know what... this metaphor sucks. I'm going to the bathroom to throw up."

At this point, our food hadn't even come but I had had enough. I found my waitress, told her that if the hippie asks where I went... simply tell her I was kidnapped by evil rainbows. I paid thirty dollars then went to Burger King. And a whopper has never tasted so good.

And that was the second time I ditched a date at this restaurant.