Up until this point, I've avoided the stereotypical Bad Blind Date experience, but tonight I had one that was just... utterly surreal. I can't think of any other way to describe it. Well, I can, but I'm trying to keep obscenities to a minimum.

Since moving to Portland, I've made it a rule to meet just about any dater who was willing, simply because I don't know that many people here, and that seems like a good policy for expanding my social horizons. So far, mostly I've just met the occasional girl here and there, and apart from the baseball girl and one other experience, it's been the One Lunch, Nice Ta Meet Ya thing. Which was fine.

The girl from tonight, named Melissa -- though she inexplicably signed all her e-mails with an abbreviated "Melis" -- actually approached me first, which any guy who's dated online knows is a rarity, unless you happen to be a millionaire doctor on a reality show. She got lost in the minor flurry of e-mails I received in reply to my somewhat witty new ad, but somewhere in our abbreviated correspondence, she sent me her phone number, which I promptly forgot about. Feeling bad about that, though, I called her up last night, and we talked for about a half hour, during which she managed to miss about half of my attempts to spur conversation. She is a young student at a nearby university, and it showed. She reminded me of the misguided girls who declare themselves pre-med at orientation, and quickly switch to English after that first chemistry class.

But I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, because, well... I don't know why, really. It was something to do, I guess. I was rather surprised when, at the end of that first phone conversation (and no more than two e-mails prior to that) she suggested that we meet for a drink. Normally, I don't even suggest that until at least a few conversations, though I suppose her method cuts down on the time wasted on bad matches. We negotiated for quite a while to agree on a place for the drink, and finally she offered to come to my part of town to meet at a pub around the corner.

I'm not sure why, but as a contingency, I worked out an elaborate plan to signal a friend with my cell phone so that he could call me back and rescue me from certain blind date death. I was fairly sure I wouldn't have to use it. I'd never even considered doing that before. I'm usually pretty good at thinking on my feet, but I'm still stinging from a recent date where I was too nice to say no when she said she wanted to see my apartment.

10:30 arrived, the agreed upon time, and I'm waiting near the entrance. Several fairly attractive women walked by, and since I'd only seen one fuzzy picture of her, I asked a few likely candidates if they might be her. No such luck. Then one rather befuddled-looking young lady happened by. "Are you Melissa?"

She seemed awfully surprised by what has to be one of the more common questions one hears during their lifetime, and surely one that she had to be expecting tonight. She stammered the affirmative, but still seemed off-balance. I tried to throw her another bone: "I'm Patrick." Nothing.

I had to recheck my data. Perhaps she also happened to be named Melissa, but wasn't the one I was supposed to meet. It is a common name after all. "You are here to meet someone, right?" She had the expression of a cornered rodent who is clearly outmatched by a much larger predator; striking back is out of the question, the only option is to map out escape routes. "Y-yes," she replied, finally.

I was trying to remain positive in light of the fact that she was acting less like someone on a date and more like the victim of a hit-and-run. I motioned that maybe we should head up to find a seat. Again, nothing. I was starting to wonder if she had suffered multiple head injuries as a child, but I saw no secondary indications like drooling or an inability to dress one's self.

Finally, after I verified her identity one more time, I again suggested we go and get that drink. I'm not sure why I persisted, except that I hadn't really given much thought to what else to do. "No," she said after a leaden pause, "I'm supposed to meet my friends soon, and I think that would take too much time." At this, I came very close to cutting loose on her -- Then why did you agree to come in the first place? -- but the sheer improbability of her response threw me for a loop. However unintentional, she'd pulled a perfect reversal on me. Now I was the befuddled one.

"Well, what would you rather do?"

"I'm going to go."

And go she did. Right back out the door, walking as quickly as she could without breaking into a full run. I pondered going after her to try and suss what just happened, but she clearly wanted no part of it, or rather me. I wasn't going to go upstairs and face the gaggle of pre-Melissas I'd misidentified, so I opted just to head home, which happened to be the exact same direction as she was headed to her car. After about a half-block, I started to feel creepy, walking behind her like that, so I detoured and took a walked off in the other direction for a bit until I was sure she was gone.

To be honest, given her air-headedness on the phone and the physical picture she presented me when we met, I was relieved. From the shoulders up, she was an okay-looking girl, but from there down... well, let's just say "okay" would have been generous. Now, I'm not saying I am Mr. Perfect nor am I any sort of snob when it comes to potential mates' looks, but the combination of her personality and her appearance convinced me pretty quickly that this wasn't going to be a long-term thing, even before she did her cornered rodent act.

Which left me with an unsettling pair of options: Either I confused her so badly that she had no choice but to make a break for it, or I resembled something on the level of the Hunchback of Notre Dame to her. Or perhaps she was just rendered blind and mute by my raw, god-like manliness. (Yeah, sure.) Either way, she couldn't wait to get back to her car.

I'm not going to let it get to me, really. I've been rejected by better. If nothing else, it gave me a chance for a good long laugh when I called back my contingency friend -- not ten minutes from when he and I last spoke -- to let him know not to worry about the rescue call. And he didn't have any insight to offer either. And who could? I doubt even would be able to...

Maybe she does this sort of thing all the time. I envision her and her friends, sitting in the car, drawing straws to see who gets to ditch the guy this time while the other two remain behind with their binoculars and camcorders. They cut through hundreds, maybe thousands of men all across this country, leaving them confused and full of self-doubt while the girls catalogue their reactions for some future project, perhaps a book, a lecture tour or even a reality show. Or even all three, spawning Ditched Date discussion groups, T-shirts ("I got ditched by Melis and all I got was this low self-esteem...") and the inevitable class-action lawsuit. Meanwhile, Melissa and her co-conspirators retire to Hawaii.

You know, I think I should probably stick with the head injury story...