The Fairytale You'll Be Telling Your Kids: I Went To The Patriots Playoff Game With A Craigslist Date

I’ll start this by answering the most burning question, so everyone can just skip the rest if they want: no. No, I did not have hot, sweaty, wild monkey sex in a Gillette bathroom. The second thing I want to clear up is this was not a set up. An absolutely astounding amount (what up, alliteration) of people have been tweeting at me, offended that I’m continuing to “pretend” that we didn’t plan this whole thing. “You’re still acting like Chernin didn’t pay for these tickets?”… “Feits the joke’s over, we know you posted that craigslist”… “Jesus Christ dude quit acting like this is real.” Do you know how much effort that would take to invent this whole thing? More than minimal, and that’s not my bag. Sometimes we’ll photoshop a picture of Darrelle Revis at Logan, but if you think we’re going to great lengths to post fake craigslist ads and trick Jim Armstrong into doing our fake story then you are outside of your mind.

Anyway, back to the actual day. I suppose there are a lot of reasons I didn’t close. The most important one is probably that I’m fat and ugly, but there were a lot. First, I found out that I’d been chosen on Friday night. I was already at my parents’ house in Fall River, as it was my dad’s birthday, and she was leaving from Dracut on a party bus at 10 AM. I would’ve had to get up at like 7 AM, drive past Foxboro, then get on a party bus and head back to Foxboro. As Meatloaf said, I will do anything for love, but I won’t get up at seven in the goddamn morning on a Saturday.

So, instead, I drove to Gillette by myself and met the bus there. Woke up fresh, wolfed down my “Big Day breakfast” of three bagels: two with cream cheese, one sausage egg and cheese, and drove my own ass up to Foxboro. Taking two separate vehicles was a huge misstep. You know how people pick up their date? Yeah, that’s not because they’re gentlemen, it’s to keep the possibility of some hand stuff open on the way home. But, alas, I was not smart enough to do this so I had to walk roughly 5,000 miles around Gillette carrying a 30 to meet up with the tailgate.

I thought I would perhaps drop some pounds and arrive looking all yoked up, but that still wasn’t enough to get the job done.

The tailgate was fun, your standard drunken debauchery and palming grilled meats because you’re not eating for pleasure, you’re eating to line your stomach with sustenance so you can make it into the game. But there were two highlights. First, as soon as I arrived a guy came up to me and introduced himself as her ex-boyfriend. This ended up being a lie, he was just kidding, but I didn’t find that out for like an hour. So I spent my first 60 minutes not talking to her, but keeping one eye on him and the other eye on the knives over by the grill. The second highlight was the girl with teal hair who I met early on and introduced herself as an anti-Barstool feminist. Oh boy, I thought, here we go. Feminists and vegans are like cops, if they don’t identify themselves in the first 30 seconds then it doesn’t count. Nothing much ended up happening with her, she just doesn’t respect me as a person or what I do and wanted to let me know. We did end up taking a selfie, though, in case we ever need a Barstool ambassador.

I’m not sure how much my date appreciated my constant screaming throughout the game, as I felt myself catching the side eye occasionally. This just proves my point that regular season games are for dates, playoff games are for friends. If you bring your girlfriend to a playoff game and she’s not a diehard psycho too, then you should have your tickets stripped away. You know how StubHub revokes your tickets if the price goes up a lot? That’s what should happen if your brain decides to take a normal girl, they just vanish and go back on the market. Another reason I didn’t seal the deal, if I had to guess, was the drunk Stoolies who kept coming up in the concourse and screaming, “Feits you better fuck this girl!!!” as she was about three inches away (not that three inches is little or anything). Stoolies have a lot of redeemable qualities — well, some — but awareness is not one of them. If you’re a chick who just met someone, strangers coming up and yelling at you to have sex with someone is probably something of a turn off.

After yet another Patriots playoff victory, we went to celebrate at Toby Keith’s. There, I tried a last ditch effort to close by dancing sexually and shaking my ass all over the joint

Note: I did not take that video (I’m dancing) so I don’t know why it is less clear than the Zapruder. Please don’t yell at me.

Even that wasn’t enough to get the job done. So our love affair ended there, at a country star’s restaurant. The party bus took off from my life shortly there after and I was left to wander the Gillette parking lots, chugging water and with a dry penis.

I know Pamela Garnder wants to know if there will be a second date and, unfortunately, I’ve got some bad news there: I doubt it. Nothing against Francesca at all, she was lovely and I had a great time. I’m just not down with long-distance. Dracut might as well be in Europe. I’m like Kramer, if I live uptown and you live downtown then it’s never going to work. I wouldn’t even date a girl who lived in Southie, that’s like fifteen whole minutes away. Basically unless you live on my couch then we’re never going to work. So Dracut’s out. Sorry, Jim Armstrong, I know you wanted those Best Man honors. But Francesca and I will always have Saturday. We will forever be undefeated when we watch Pats games together, not a lot of couples can say that.

PS – This was Jim Armstrong’s last story ever at WBZ and I feel so bad about that. The guy covered the Marathon Bombing, Whitey’s trial, and Terrorist #2’s trial. He deserved to go out on something better than an idiot blogger getting a Craigslist date.