‘GET out of the car, you f—ing yuppie!” the Fat Man in the Ferrari is yelling at Super Preppy as we hurry to make a sailing race in the Hamptons.
Yes, yes. I know. The irony is not lost on us, either.
But still – we’ve done nothing wrong. There is a good 10 feet between SP’s car approaching a traffic circle and the Fat Man’s car making a turn. Doesn’t matter to Fat Man, though.
“I said, ‘Get out of the car!'” Fat Man repeats, now standing inches away from our window.
“Yeah,” Super Preppy says calmly, “I don’t think so.”
Fat Man looks at SP, looks at me, looks at his Ferrari, and all of us in the same moment seem to realize that I could easily jump into the shiny red penis replacement while SP drives off, leaving Fat Man stranded and humiliated. He slinks back to his car, and SP and I burst out laughing.
“I should have said,” Super Preppy observes wryly, “‘Excuse me good man, but I’m late for a race.’ I bet he would have loved that.”
I love how he handled the entire situation.
A man who I shall call My Angriest Ex (I call dibs on talking plush-doll rights) once got in a fight at a gas station with a racist, vitriol-spewing Nut Job who said he would “jack his jaw.” It ended with me crying, jumping on Nut Job and trying to pry him off My Angriest Ex.
Super romantic, right? The police thought so, too.
Fat Man becomes a recurring joke throughout the weekend.
“You know,” I say as we share breakfast on Sunday morning, “everyone should watch someone in a fight before getting in a relationship.”
“Why?” he asks.
“It’s like when I told you I didn’t want to see you after our third date,” I say. “You apologized rather than being a jerk, and that’s what reeled me back in. It’s almost as if we broke up before we began.”
We start holding hands, and I feel the butterfly-stomach twitter that makes you say stupid things.
“I feel clarity with you,” I blurt out.
“What’s that?” he says. “You feel security?”
I pull my hands away and snicker. “Isn’t that the No. 1 thing you say to terrify a guy? ‘You make me feel safe. You make me feel like I’m home. You fill me up inside.'”
We’re both laughing now, and I realize that “clarity” is only slightly less psycho than “security,” but the thing is, it’s true. When I first re-entered the dating scene a few years ago, I was so blind that I thought every man I dated was the Best Guy Ever. Thankfully, my friend Nikki stepped in and gave me the real clarity I so desperately needed.
“New men,” she said, “are like Asian cuisine. The first time you have spicy drunken noodles, you’re convinced it’s your favorite dish, but then you have the pad Thai, and you realize there are other options.”
She was right. But some dishes are truly exceptional.
“I adored this weekend,” I e-mail SP on Monday after dropping him off at work and parking his car uptown.
And…I hear back…nothing.
My refusal-to-obsess solution is to listen to a mix CD from My Angriest Ex. It includes decidedly un-angry songs from Weezer, Jonathan Richman, et al.
It puts me in the mood for spicy drunken noodles.
When I log on the next day, SP’s reply appears.
“I adored this weekend, too,” he writes. “What are your plans, want to do something Thursday night?”
“Maybe,” I write. “How do you feel about pad Thai?”
mstadtmiller@nypost.com