In the remark about, "you're already giving me attitude," I still think it sounds like HE has issues. That's over and above whether YOU are ready to date.

Here's my date from hell story. We met through toll-free telephone personals, what they had before the internet. You called a toll-free line to leave a voice message, but if you wanted to answer one, it was charged to your phone bill.

Well, first he told me he was a singer and guitarist in a local country band. I had mentioned a love of country music; I'm sure that was only a coincidence. So I got to his apartment (bad move, never go to somebody's apartment on a first date) and there is no guitar in the place. He says it's in the shop being restrung. Number one, having a good many guitarists in my family, I know any musician worth half of a damn can restring his own instrument. Sending it to a shop for that purpose is like having an electrician change your light bulb. Two, if ever a guitar does need to go to a shop for repairs, any professional would have a backup instrument. Three, in a discussion on music, he argued with me and said no, absolutely not, it never happens, no song ever changes key in the middle of it. Ha! It's called modulation. A form of it that's common in classic country music, TV Tropes refers to as a Truck Driver's Gear Change. Again, any professional would know better. Four, when I heard him sing along with the radio, it was painfully obvious he was tone deaf.

All of this was my first warning that things weren't as they should be, as he had plainly lied to me about who he was. Sure enough... he tricked me into spending the night by deliberately keeping me there past the time the last bus had left--oops, that's right, you're not familiar with this part of the city, and you don't know the buses stop a little earlier than where you live. I'm afraid you're stranded here for the night. Sorry. Well, I'm not *really* sorry, because (trigger warning; I'll put it delicately but white it out just in case.) having you here means I won't take no for an answer. I've picked up on your chronic victim vibe, and I fully intend to take every advantage of it. I'm going to hound you until you let me have my way, even if I have to keep you awake all night to wear you down.

He had no telephone; he answered my ad from a friend's house and put it on his bill. Cell phones weren't in common use yet. I was stuck, and had no means of calling the police. Yeah, I probably could have run out of there screaming and banged on a neighbor's door for help, but I didn't think about that until years later. When you're accustomed to being a victim, those things don't enter your mind. You don't know how to protect yourself. No one ever taught you. Life has led you to believe that these things are going to happen, and you can't stop them, so like the dogs in the learned helplessness experiment, you sit there whimpering, accepting the shocks, not knowing you're actually free to run away.

To top it all off, the next morning at the corner drug store, he bit the clerk's head off because they had run out of his favorite brand of chewing tobacco. ONLY that variety of that brand would do. Substitutions were not allowed. At the time I still smoked, so I started to buy a pack of cigarettes, and he wouldn't let me. "Uh-uh! If I gotta suffer, you gotta suffer."

It was the last I ever saw of him.

Relating the experience so people know not to do what I did. Don't go to someone else's apartment on a first date. Meet in a neutral location with plenty of means of escape. If you don't drive, don't ever be in a part of the city you don't know, without first studying the bus schedules. Now that cell phones have been invented, never go into an uncertain situation without one. And, unless he has a weapon aimed at you, if there are people around, you can always run away screaming.