My coffee date was going to the desert last week, for work. He was going to Sedona, specifically. There is an astrology conference there at the end of March, if you didn’t know. It’s called “The Blast”. But anyway, since I am from desert, he asked what he could expect.

“Sedona? Well I can’t tell you much. I’ve only been there once. I was on a blind date in a plane, if you can believe that. Yeah. Some guy took me on a blind date in a plane and we stopped there for lunch. We just landed, ate lunch and left to go fly around the Grand Canyon, which was cool. They don’t let you do that anymore. No more flying around in a plane in the Canyon!”

“You had a blind date in a plane?”

“I did. Anyway, Sedona is metaphysically inclined. It’s like… well, it’s like Santa Fe. Or Taos, I guess. If you actually go to these places they seem like tourist stuff to me. Nothing more. But people think… they get energy off these places and who’s to say? So Sedona is like that. It’s a metaphysical center. I think they have vortexes or something. I do know that Hollywood types travel there, or they used to back in the day. They go stand in the holy energized spots or something. I don’t really know details. But you can find an astrologer there, for sure.”

I thought about mentioning having his palm read, but decided he’d gotten the picture, so I moved on.

“And it’s pretty there. They have these tall red rocks. And people climb them. You know. It’s a spiritual place. And we flew around those rocks and waved from the plane at the climbers. That was cool. We could get really close to them in this little plane, so we were all just smiling at each other up in the sky.”

He was still listening, so I kept talking. I’m a storyteller, after all.

“So yeah. It was a good day. If was different, but in the end I had to kick that guy out of my house. My date, I mean.”

“You kicked him out?”

“Yeah. He pissed me off.”

He laughed.

“Well he did. I was supposed to be on a date, but as it turned out I didn’t like him all that much. He made a few mistakes.”

“Like what?”

“Like bringing a better looking more appealing man on our date for one thing.”

He laughed.

“Yep. There was another man there… he needed hours in the air or something. I don’t know what he was doing, but he was there to get hours in the sky in this plane. And too bad for my date because this guy was way more appealing, than he was.”

He smiled.

“But what can you do? It’s a date. It’s a blind one, and this is how it was.”

“Why did you kick him out of your house?”

“Why? Well we got home, it was a long day. We dropped that other guy… and then he took me home and came into my apartment. And he wanted to screw, obviously.”

“Obviously?”

“Yeah. But I wasn’t going to do that.”

“Why not?

“Because… well I kissed him and he couldn’t kiss at all. So there was no way I was going to do anything else.”

“Now that’s what I don’t understand about women. If you didn’t like the guy, why did you kiss him?’

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d spend this long day with him. I guess I’d have liked to get laid if I could. But how? If you don’t like a man’s kiss… well if the guy can’t kiss there is no way this plane is going to get off ground!”

We both laughed.

“Right. Kiss me like that, and I don’t want to know any more. I don’t want to suffer. So I told him I wasn’t going to sleep with him. I said it very plainly. I’m not going to sleep with you and he said… boy did this piss me off.”

“What?

“Well I guess he figured he took me to the Grand Canyon in a plane. And that I ought to screw him, I suppose. Hell, I don’t know what he was thinking. But he said, what’s wrong with you? What’s the matter with you? That’s what he said. Like something is wrong with me because he can’t kiss! What the hell is that?”

My coffee date laughed. He has a daughter the age I was when I was on this plane date and he’s protective of her. He is on the side of the girl in situations like this which is a very good quality in a man.

“Well, hell,” I said. “He was boring. He had no appeal at all and he couldn’t kiss! And now he wants me to tell him what’s wrong with me because I don’t want to sleep with him?” I shook my head. “That was it! That was the living end. Get out! I said. Get the hell out of here!”

He laughed.

“I know, I know. But I was 19. I was a hothead back then.”

“I think you’re still a hothead,” he said.

“You do? Well maybe I am volatile. Enough people say so. But personally I think I have outgrown a lot of that. But I could be wrong. I could be a hothead and Sedona could be the center of life itself. how about you go visit and come back and tell me what you think?”

Are you a hothead? What would you have done in my situation? And where’s your Mars?

That’s one of the pictures from my blind date. Guess it’s not my first time to travel in ugly pants, huh?