Disastrous dates: even celebrities have an occasional nightmarish rendezvous

Ebony, Feb, 1991

THOSE all-important first dates can begin with so much promise. Then, before you know it, they turn into disaster. For instance, you arrive late because of a flat tire and your date has an attitude the entire evening. Or the maitre d' has no record of your dinner reservation. For a number of reasons, and no matter how hard you try, the evening ends up a wipeout.

Disastrous dates can befall dating veterans and even couples in long-term relationships. No one is safe in matters of the heart. Not even celebrities are immunte to romantic mishaps.

One incident involved actor Giancarlo Esposito, who thought he was headed for a relaxing dinner with his friend from the production staff after his performance in Balm In Gilead several years ago. Instead, he wound up in a quadrangle of disaster involving three romantic interests.

A woman he'd met while taping a Miami Vice episode in Los Angeles surprised him by showing up in Manhattan to see his performance. He escorted her to a nearby restaurant after the show and was ill-fatedly seated at a window table. Soon after, the production assistant, with whom he had originally made dinner plans, walked by. She backtracked, entered the restaurant and sat at Esposito's table.

As if that weren't enough, another woman Esposito had been dating also saw him through the restaurant window, entered and joined the party.

"I sort of felt cornered," says Esposito (Do The Right Thing). "I said something kind of stupid. Then the woman I'd been dating [the last one to sit down] picked up my drink, poured it over my head and left. It was my worst nightmare come true."

While Esposito's date seemed destined for disaster from the start, others start with all the makings of a romantic fantasy and then take a turn for the worst. That's what happened to saxophonist Donald Harrison when he went to an after-hours spot in Paris with a friend. On entering, he spotted a tall, very attractive woman across the room. His friend knew the woman and invited her to their table. As soon as she spoke, Donald knew fate was playing a cruel joke on him. The woman, who was from Africa, only spoke French. He knew no French at all.

"My friend sat and translated for me for 10 minutes. But then he left the table," says Harrison, an Art Blakey disciple and teacher at the New School in Manhattan. "We tried to draw things. I'd say 'Oui.' I asked how long had she been in Paris. She gave me a very perplexed looked and said, 'Very good.' We understood that we liked each other. But it just never worked out."

As Harrison so frustratingly learned, some language barriers are simply insurmountable. But there are dating faux pas far worse than miscommunication, as vocalist Johnny Gill can attest. A mismatched blind date a couple of years ago made him vow never to go on another one.

"I was looking for a classy woman," Gill says. But moments after being seated at Los Angeles' trendy Spago eatery, he knew his date was anything but that. "She didn't even know how to hold a fork," he says. "I tried to eat quickly, and get it over with. But she wanted to continue the date after dinner. I used one of those lines about having a headache and having to turn in early [to end the date]."

Kim Coles had a similar experience. She was a student at a Southern college, where she was told her blind date "was just perfect for me," Coles says. At the time, the comedic actress was 50 pounds heavier and "desperate."

"Here I was this 5-foot-8 fat girl. And he was Jack Sprat--short and lean," Coles says. "He though he was hot. And because he had a nice car, he thought I'd be impressed. I wasn't."

They went out for dinner anyway to a fast-food restaurant, with Coles paying for her own meal to keep things equitable. To make matters worse, he ordered extra onions on his hamburger, creating a "blue fog of funk" that brough tears to her eyes as they sat talking after the meal in his tiny sports car in front of her dormitory.

But Derrick Thomas' disaster was of his own making. Never mind that it was Valentine's Day. The Kansas City Chiefs linebacker could not leave well enough alone by spending the lovers' holiday with his Miami high school sweetheart. After visiting her, Thomas, 23, took another girl to a carnival. His girlfriend found out about the romantic interlude and called his date's house while he was still there. "It took me a long time to get back into her good graces," he says.

Such mishaps, while they cannot be foreseen, can be avoided. More commonly, though, dating mishaps are simply unpredictable. Case in point was Lalah Hathaway's perilous date to a Boston Red Sox game. As the young singer and daughter of legendary singer-songwriter Donny Hathaway sat with her boyfriend in Fenway Park, a foul ball hit him in the head.

"I though, 'Oh, my God. We've got to get him to the emergency room,'" says Hathaway, 21. "It didn't seem like it hit him that hard. And if he'd had his way, we would have stayed for the game. But I didn't want to take any chances." As a result, they spent the evening in the emergency room.