THE F-WORD

I pride myself on being a gentleman on my dates. I'm always on time, I open doors, I don't engage in inappropriate touching, I pay, and I don't burp or fart. I think that puts me in the top five percent of eligible New York bachelors. So I was a bit shocked to learn from the friend who set us up of my recent date's displeasure with my excessive use of the f-word during our time together.

"Who uses that word on a first date?" he wanted to know.

"She started it."

"How?"

"We started talking about hand sanitizers and she said she uses them all day because the people she deals with at work are disgusting. I told her that I'm also OCD about Purelling, but I never feel totally clean after using it."

"So how do you get from that to what you said?"

"I told her I read an article about how hand sanitizers are completely ineffective at killing the bacteria in feces, and that feces was pretty much the main reason I used hand sanitizer. "

"And what'd she say?"

"She kinda nodded and said, 'Oh, really.'"

"You couldn't tell from that that she was turned off?"

"Guess I read her wrong."

"She thinks you're obsessed with germs and...christ, fuckin' feces. What's wrong with you?"

"She said that she shakes a lot of hands for work, and I said that five out of six people don't wash their hands after they use the bathroom. So over eighty percent of the hands she's shaking probably have fe--- Yeah, I see your point."

"See a professional about that, man," he said before hanging up.

I would, but I'd probably have to shake their hand first.