Guest Post: Part 2 Adventures in NRA Paradise

Please enjoy this guest post from my good buddy Lola.

I am a weak, weak woman. Well, also a curious one. So when I got another call from “Clive” (see previous entry), I agreed to take him up on his offer of coffee. Maybe somewhere deep down I kept hoping that Google messed up and the gun-toting lunatic it found for me was just “Clive’s” namesake. In reality, “Clive” would be tall, dark, handsome, and NRA membership-free.

Alas, my girlish dreams were shattered.



It was the same “Clive,” I realized, as I saw him getting out of the car at Caribou Coffee. Only skinnier. Much, much skinner. Holy hell, that guy’s skinny! Bill Gates could kick his ass, even without the help of his bodyguards!



“Clive,” in the meantime, was busy talking on his cell phone. And talking. And talking. Now officially late for our date, and yet still talking. Finally, he hung up and came in. And once we’re face-to-face, I think “oh my God, I’m on a date with John Leguizamo!” He could be John’s doppelganger. In bottle-cap glasses.




Once we have “Clive’s” creamer phobia all settled, we sit down with our coffee and fruit smoothie (I had the coffee…yeah, I know). So, “Clive,” tell me about yourself. And “Clive” did. In detail. Everything from his childhood to his fear of Memphis, Tennessee, to why art is dead (who hasn’t beaten that elitist dead horse!). I think I knew as much about him as his therapist after those 90 minutes.



“I feel like I’ve been talking all about myself,” he says to me at the end of our session. Well, yes, “Clive,” you have. And the few times you asked me something about myself, you played with your iPhone while I was talking. Maybe that was meant to impress me. Let’s pretend I didn’t see you checking your e-mail.


It’s a story as old as time – girl meets boy, girl thinks boy looks like John Leguizamo without the wit or charm, boy can’t put iPhone away, girl secretly rolls her eyes all through coffee. It’s like living a Jane Austen novel. And they say romance is dead!


Any old-fashioned romance would be incomplete without a passionate love letter. Mine was waiting in my inbox when I got home. “Very impressed with you,” it read. Oh, goshums. And I didn’t even know that I was on a job interview! Silly me.