There comes a time in a young girl’s life when she feels the need to rebel against her parents.  I suppose there are many ways to do this, but it seems that the most common is to date some sort of “bad” boy, someone that a young girl’s parents would detest and order not to date, giving her full permission to date him behind the parents’ back.

I was no exception to this rite of passage.  Me being one of those “nice” girls, for most of my dating life, I dated “nice” boys, boys that my parents adored (sometimes more than I adored).  These were boys who played on sports teams in high school, who got good grades, had bright futures and who enjoyed dinner with my parents, with my dad’s bad jokes and my mother’s bad cooking.  But then I met him, Marty, the boy I knew my parents would hate, who therefore was so much more appealing to me.

We met at what I thought was the most unlikely of places, but later realized was not so unusual at all – a cemetery.  One night in early October, a bunch of us girls thought it would be fun to drink some peach schnapps and then drive over to the cemetery off Cuba Road.   We thought we would stomp around on some graves, try and scare some dead people before they scared us.

That is where we met.   I had just come around the other side of a large oak tree and there he was, leaning against a large tombstone, wearing a black leather jacket, one leg crossed over the other, lighting an unfiltered cigarette.  He had a grey pallor, and clumps of dirt in his dark blonde hair, his eyes were dark with a vacant look about them, and he did drool a bit, but you would expect that from a dead guy.  You see Marty was a zombie.  A mysterious bad dead boy that deep down I knew my parents would not approve of – that made him all the more sexy to me.

We exchanged some flirtatious banter that night, and then he didn’t even actually ask me out on a date.  He just told me that he would be picking me up on Friday at 10:30, so I should give him the address.

My mother asked me all sorts of questions about the “new boy” I was going to go out with.  “Where are his parents from?”  “What high school does he go to?” “ What sports does he letter in?”  I was frustratingly vague to her.  I knew that she would not like the answers to these questions.  I didn’t know where his parents were from.  Dead guys didn’t go to high school  The only sport he lettered in was being bad.

As all good bad boys do, he was a half hour late for our first date.  I heard him honk for me, and raced out the door to greet him, my mother right at my heels.

“In my day, nice boys came to the door to pick up a girl on a date.  In my day, they introduced themselves to the parents.  What kind of girl runs out the door to a honking car?” she screamed after me as I jumped into his rusted out Chevy Camero. We sped away, but not fast enough for my mother not to get a good look at him, and I could tell she didn’t approve.

On that first date we just drove around town scaring people, and I must admit that it was quite thrilling to see the fear and loathing that he instilled in people.  Some jock-type guy bumped into him outside of the 7-11.  At first the jock wanted to pick a fight, but all Marty had to do is raise his arms, spit up some goo, and slowly come towards him, with a low growl from his lips, and that jock turned pale and ran away as fast as he could.

He brought me home a few hours past curfew. My mother greeted us at the front porch, her mouth tight with anger, a clump of wolf bane in her hand.  Marty wickedly smiled at her and then turned and slowly walked away, dragging one leg behind him.

“I forbid you to see that boy,”  she said to me.  “He is no good.”

I smirked at her as I walked up the stairs, “Mother, wolf bane is for Werewolves, not zombies.   There is nothing you can do to stop me from seeing him.  I love him,” I wailed.

She did forbid me from seeing him, and so every night around 11:00 I would slip down the stairs and out the patio door and meet him on the corner.  The crisp thrill of defying my mother hung in the air.

Truth be told, the actual joy of dating a zombie wore off quickly.  He was never punctual, he kind of smelled bad, and he was very gropey, always wanting to eat my face.  When I would push him off me, explaining that I was not going to let him nibble on me (I was saving that for marriage), he would grumble something about me being warm-blooded, and sulk for the rest of the night.  When I took him to the homecoming dance at school, he brought me a dead orchid, refused to dance, and spent most of the night trying to eat my girlfriends.

I kept the relationship alive, so to speak, despite these frustrating things.  I continued to express my love for him to my parents, simply to anger them.  They would forbid me to see him, so I snuck out.  When they padlocked the back doors, I went out the windows.  When they forbade him entrance to our house, I snuck him in the basement.  There was nothing they could do to end this relationship, they were powerless to stop me.

Eventually they realized this, so they pulled me aside, told me that it was my life, and that if I really cared about this dead boy, well then they were giving me blessing to see him.

That took the thrill away, and quickly he and the relationship deteriorated.  It was at the time when his own face began rotting away, and his limbs began dropping off that I officially ended it.  I thought he loved me too, and that he would take it hard but he didn’t.  He just stared at me blankly, spit up some goo, picked himself up off the driveway and slithered away.

I hadn’t thought about Marty in years, and quite honestly forgot about the six weeks of that daring, parent-defying romance, but thanks to Facebook he found me.  I decided I didn’t want to friend him, who knew what this guy was really up to these days, and I had children to think about now.   But I did read his profile page, and flipped through his pictures.  He’s put on weight since the 80’s and lost his nose, but I still got a bit of a thrill from that vacant, dead look in his eyes.  I wonder what my parents would think of him now.

“So where are you from?”

“Well, I spent my childhood in Europe and then lived in Long Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Boston…then here.”

“Oh, where in Europe?”

“Born in Germany, then Yugoslavia, Greece and England.”

“Ah, an Army brat were you?”

“No, my dad was a foreign correspondent. We lived all over.”

I’ve had this conversation so many times I could predict it word for word.  It’s the conversation that opens almost every date I’ve ever been on.  And I’ve been on a lot of them…hundreds, maybe even thousands.  Over the years, the guys that didn’t start the evening that way became my boyfriends, but the rest…well, they ended up becoming their own chapters in the “K-Sudz Compendium of Bad Dates.” And this weekend’s date was no exception. I don’t often share stories from this sacred tome, but this week, for your reading enjoyment, I present Chapter 352a, Volume 2, “The Psychic Jew.”

Ring, ring…

“Hello.”

“Is this Kim?”

“Yes.”

“Kim who?”

“You called me, don’t you know?”

“Well, no.  I found your number in my cell phone, so I thought I’d call to see who you were.”

And that’s how it began.  I had gone out with Mill* a year ago, after enjoying some fairly witty banter online through EHarmony.  I liked him, we had a lot in common, he was even cute in a gap-toothed kind of way.  But after a few dates, I realized his daughter, ex-wife, job, football and everything else took priority over dating, so I broke it off.

Cut to a year later, he finds my number in his phone.  After ascertaining who the heck he was, we proceeded to chat for about half an hour.  He’s Jewish (I didn’t have to explain the significance of the High Holidays…yay), single and made me laugh.  What more could I ask for, I wondered?

“Remind me again why we didn’t make it,” I asked?

“Uh, apparently, I didn’t have enough time for you.  You broke up with me by text.”

“By text?”  Man, that was kind of harsh…but you gotta admire the expediency.  “Do you have time now?”

He thought maybe he did, so we decided to meet for drinks.  I actually put some effort into dressing and was pleasantly surprised when I saw him…he was cuter than I remembered.  He complimented me on my outfit and we got down to seeing how much we could remember about each other.  He remembered a lot.  I remembered almost nothing.  Then he reminded me that he was psychic.

“That’s right, I’d forgotten. Well, how’s this going to turn out then?”

“Oh, I’m not that kind of psychic.  I just kind of know when people are going to show up, before they do.”

“That’s it?  That’s your psychic power?”

“Yup, that’s pretty much it.  In the minutes between sleeping and waking, I visualize people and then they just kind of show up days later.”

Hmm…not terribly impressive, but I figured I’d let it go.  It wasn’t what I’d call a super power, like being able to move a saltshaker across a table with your mind, or seeing dead people, but it was something and it was different.   So, about an hour in, I was actually enjoying myself when it happened.  His eyes actually clanged shut.

Picture “The Thomas Crown Affair,” when Pierce Brosnan is lifting a priceless painting off the museum wall and thick steel walls suddenly slam down, barring entry and exit.  That is what happened to Mr. Mill’s eyes.  I saw it, clear as day.  I’m not sure what made it happen.  It could have been me talking about my obsessive love of disco.  Or I could have gone on a little too long about how much I adore my dog.  I’m not really sure, but I figured at that moment, when the “Vacancy” sign went up, that the date was over.  But no.

He then asked me to go on to another bar.  Reluctantly I agreed, wondering why on earth he wanted to.  We walked two blocks to another place, ordered two more drinks and then sat, staring at each other.  “So, what else?” he asked, bored to distraction.  He left the check sitting in front of me until I paid it, then requested that I drive him to his car.  Being the polite girl that I am, I did.

Parked by his car, he looked at me and announced:

“I’m going to kiss you now!”

Before I could say anything, he grabbed my face and did.  It was a non-event, to say the least. With that part of the evening over, he coolly said goodbye and took his leave.  That’s the last I’ll ever hear of Mr. Mill, I’m quite sure.  I wonder if he saw that coming in his twilight sleep?  I wish I had…I never would have answered the phone.

So, I have another date planned for this coming weekend. I’m already starting work on the chapter about that one.  It’s entitled, “The 60-Year-Old Dude” or “How Old is Too Old?”  Stay tuned.