I hope you haven’t all given me up for dead! Between trying to find another job, forcing myself to go to the one I have, and this whole prickly dating business, I haven’t spent much time writing. At least there’s a lot to tell after a month.
I’m starting to get nervous about my finances again — I keep telling myself “I’ll work more hours this week,” but when I do manage to drag myself to that circle of hell we refer to as a call center I can hardly wait for a four-hour shift to be over. Jobs that sound at least tolerable and that I’m somewhat qualified to do have been scarce, and the ones to which I’m applying aren’t calling me. I had hoped I’d have something better by now, so that I could re-hire Lisa Brown to help me with my nonexistent writing career. As it is, right now I’m operating at a deficit every month.
What I’ve been most diligent about has been following Katherine Thomas’s book to the very end, and exploring various relationship prospects. You may be surprised to learn that “David” is no longer in the running.
**
What happened was this: I had been so delighted that David was so radically different from my dad and the patronizing men I’ve usually attracted that I failed to notice the huge pursuit imbalance that had been forming. The truth was I was contacting him repeatedly in order to nail down a date. I had initially been the one to reach out to him, and then I had had to prod him several times to make that first date. After that, it took a month (and more than one try on my part) before he suggested a group outing with his friends. A group outing.
So I was beginning to suspect that maybe David just wasn’t all that interested in me. He has a lot of very cute female friends, after all, who are a lot younger than I am and could pass for Suicide Girls, and I had to wonder if he’d keep them waiting for weeks.
Nevertheless, when we finally made it to the bar, and were having a great time with his friends, he cozied up against me in the booth and kept putting a hand on my back. Flushed with alcohol, I had a stong desire (for the first time) to kiss him. I hadn’t felt any such impulse toward him before because his demeanor was so eccentric, but I liked his touch and was starting to find his mannerisms cute. Two of his close friends, a couple, gave us rides home. As we weren’t alone I simply hugged David goodbye. If we had been alone, I doubt I would have been so restrained. I’m glad now that I was.
The next day (Friday) I called him to tell him what a great time I’d had. He suggested we get together again — maybe that weekend? He’d check his schedule and get back to me. I said: Are you sure? I knew he would be busy that week, helping organize a musical event at a local bar. But he said he’d call.
Except that he didn’t. Five days passed. No call, no messages, no nothing. Needless to say, by the following Wednesday I was feeling pretty disappointed, and realizing that I was on the same old merry-go-round I’d been on a million times with mixed-message men from León to Rick. Only this time I wasn’t going to focus on just one “message” (our seeming rapport at the bar) to the exclusion of all others (his repeatedly not calling). I deserved better than that, dammit. Not wanting to phone David yet again, I sent him a message, which I tried to make humorous and non-hostile in tone, but which in effect said: Hey, I’m getting the picture here from your actions that you’re just not that into me. And I don’t want to keep pursuing you if you’re not going to call when you say you will. I wouldn’t want to do that if you were a Nobel prizewinner or George Clooney. So if I’m correct about this, I think it would be best if I skip your upcoming event. I hope we can stay friends either way.
Notice that I left my surmisings open for him to contradict. I really thought he would contradict them. I thought I would at least hear something from him, if nothing more than sheepish agreement. But I heard nothing at all. Not the next day. Not the next week. Not since.
So so much for David.
**
Walking home through air heavy with the perfume of blooming lilacs and apple blossoms, I was reminded of how hung up on Rick I was last May, and how hopefully (and doggedly) I clung to every little bit of inconsistent attention he showed me. Given what happened after that with Sam, it seemed a bit like scavenging for potato chip crumbs from a discarded bag while the catered-banquet truck was coming down the block.
Now it occurred to me that for all I knew, something a million times better was coming down the block. Because I’d already tasted something a million times better than stale potato chip crumbs. And it changed me. Sam couldn’t stay, but he stayed just long enough to shift the entire ground beneath my feet.
I was able to laugh off my disappointment when I framed things thus: David had, after all, been dangerously close to getting the kind of action all boys like. A lot. If things had gone well, I could have been exhausting him the way I had managed to exhaust a 21-year-old. Your loss, kiddo!
**
I have since been asked out by two supervisors (who are now not supposed to date me, per company rules laid down after last summer’s scandal involving a director), one married man, and a slightly unhinged coworker who looks like Teddy Roosevelt and who may or may not be a pathological liar. Not exactly ideal pickin’s…but Ms. Thomas did say there would most likely be a number of “near misses” coming my way, that I might actually find myself challenged to make better choices for myself.
The only such choice that has been at all difficult has been the choice to lay it on the line with David. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, to decide I didn’t want to keep chasing yet another ambivalent guy. Typically I just try to convince myself that what little response I’m getting means a lot more than it does. To paraphrase Lisa Brown, the less love you’ve received in a relationship, the harder it is to let go. Which may explain why it took three years for me to let go of Sonny, and more like three months for me to start to let go of Sam. The mixed-message givers incite us to want to prove our worth to them, even as their behavior reinforces our doubts about it.
**
One night while reading Salon.com, I noticed one of their featured personals ads to the right of an article. I found myself wondering: would the Salon readership be a better pool to explore than the Yahoo one I had waded into a decade ago? My previous foray into online dating had proved inconclusive, but my hippie friend Diana was constantly singing its praises. I went ahead and did a quick search (which is all you can do without membership) of my age range and location.
The first person to come up in the list, a man my age, had a black-and-white photo that was a bit dark, but I swear made him look like Sam Rockwell in one of his mustache-and-soul-patch incarnations. As you might imagine, I stopped. Cold.
I tried to click on the man’s profile, but the site sent me to the signup page. I wound up building a rudimentary profile of my own just so that I could view his. (My introductory blurb was, I thought, funny and literate, if frank, and eschewed the standard shopping-list approach.) After I finished it, I was able to view the man’s full profile, and found his interests and answers to be intriguing and strikingly compatible with my own. To contact him, however, I was required to spend money, and I couldn’t afford to join the site, even for one month. Oh well, I shrugged. So much for that idea.
The next morning I had an email from the site: “Someone wants to see you.” Member X had requested my photo. Member X was the guy I had joined to investigate.
I literally shouted with laughter.
That same day I posted a photo, and filled out the rest of my profile. Then I went to look at the available payment options for sending messages. The cheapest option, hidden away from the membership options in the Help menu, was to buy 2000 credits (enough to send 10 messages) for $10. I decided to do it, and promptly sent the guy a message. “Hey man,” I wrote (literally quoting a Rockwell character), “sweet ‘stache.”
He answered the next morning. “I thought you’d never notice!” he said. “So when am I taking you out for a drink? My treat!” He had changed his profile photo to one in color. When I saw it, I literally broke a sweat. In this one, he more closely resembled Edward Norton…only better.
I found myself head-over-heels in lust with a photograph.
Controlling myself, I insisted on exchanging more information before agreeing to meet, but my fantasies were already running wild. Could Jason be It? Jason was such a hot-guy name — befitting that photo — and he was sounding so cool. He was a sommelier who had worked for an organic-foods market for years and recently transferred here from Austin. He lived in my best friend’s eclectic neighborhood. He was politically liberal and generally non-religious, but took an interest in Buddhism. And he looked like that. I kept pinching myself, and going back to look longingly at his photo. I imagined meeting this attractive contemporary and having the sparks fly as we both realized we’d met The One. Which was something that had really happened for many of Thomas’s clients. Finally I couldn’t stand the wait any longer, and wrote: Okay, let’s meet!
His response was immediate: How about tomorrow night? Name the time and place. I did…and then proceeded to not sleep a wink from excitement. Clearly this man and I were supposed to find each other!
**
I glanced nervously around the bar. It was a place Rick had shown me, a lounge in an old Victorian owned by a Polish family that was long on atmosphere and had a wonderful upstairs patio. I didn’t see anyone who vaguely resembled those photos.
And then I spotted a man who vaguely resembled those photos.
Vaguely. Except that he looked quite a bit older and chunkier, with graying hair, a baggy flannel shirt and a round, avuncular face. He lit up when I introduced myself (in contrast, I tend to photograph poorly). I tried to stifle the disappointment of an addict denied a promised fix.* Understand, it’s not that Jason was unattractive — he actually had beautiful, warm eyes — it’s just that he wasn’t particularly hot, and I had been expecting Edward Norton. He looked his age, kind of like that favorite history teacher you had in high school who had teenagers of his own. I felt a momentary flash of resentment, as if I’d been a victim of false advertising. Those photos were apparently not recent.
I ordered a pineapple martini on his tab, and proceeded to get good and inebriated as we sat on the patio. I enjoyed talking to Jason; we have a lot in common. We talked politics and conscious consumerism and music and travel; he loves Italy, too, and has explored Ireland. He encouraged me, as my artist friend had, to “just go” to Europe and work there illegally if I had to. He loves to read, and I considered how much fun it might be to show him around the semi-famous bookstore where I used to work. He really did have nice eyes.
I thought of how I wasn’t infatuated with Sam until the third month of knowing him, and how madly in love I fell with him…how ravenously eager I became to have sex with him at every available opportunity. I thought of how I had had trouble getting past David’s oddness on the first date, but wanted to make out with him by the second. I knew I was experiencing a major letdown because I had giddily believed I had found that lust-at-first-sight fantasy man who could feed my chronic craving for eye candy. I had built Jason way up in my imagination. Granted, he hadn’t helped me any by posting an out-of-date photo. That was frankly unfair, and seemed somehow dishonest. But if I had met him another way, in his present form, I probably would have warmed up to him pretty quickly, and thought, “Gee, what nice eyes he has.” Maybe eventually I would have found myself wanting to ask him out, as with Ted.
**
Speaking of Ted, I mentioned in my comments thread a couple of posts ago that he had made it clear to a mutual work friend that he prefers younger women. So I had given up on him. One day, however, in the staff kitchen, I witnessed a particularly humiliating incident which Ted’s unfortunate preferences afforded him.
Two of our younger callers, a skinny skaterboy and a slender, platinum-blonde princess who would look completely at home on any given MTV show or spring break video (all eyeliner and spaghetti straps and miniskirts up to here) were conferring quietly in the lounge area. Ted was sitting near them on the other couch. I was eating my lunch at the kitchen table. MTV girl was telling skaterboy about some club or other where she had seen this “old guy” dancing and “totally making a fool of himself.”
Ted, undaunted by her obvious contempt for her elders, asked, “What club was that?”
Apparently he must have tried to chat her up before, because her withering reply to him implied as much. For Ted’s sake I won’t repeat it, but I’ve never heard another woman over the age of eighteen be so directly and unapologetically cruel. In movies, perhaps, or on featherweight TV dramas aimed at teenagers, but not in real life. Poor Ted, stammering and backpedaling, crimsoned from neck to ears. I felt myself blush in sympathy. When he spoke to me shortly thereafter, he had the look in his eye of a bleeding calf. I wanted to say, Look, honey, you can bother me anytime, but I didn’t want to embarrass him further in front of MTV bitch-goddess and her lackey.
Later that week Ted started to say something to me about how long it had been since he’d seen a show at a music venue I like, and I was about to say something, but we were interrupted. I was a little sorry about that, but I’m not at all convinced Ted wants a grown woman, or things to be easy.
**
I came home from my date with Jason (I left things at “Call me”) and upon hitting the pillow was comatose for the next nine hours. Toward the morning, I dreamt that I had locked myself out of a borrowed car, a light brown station wagon like the one my family had owned in the 1980s, and was trying to push it, but accidentally pushed it into a river. As it sank, so did my spirits. How could I have fucked up so badly, on two counts? Everything was ruined.
Suddenly Jason appeared, offering to buy me a meal and console me. Utterly defeated, but comforted by his kindness, I asked him to drive me home instead. He drove me to my parents’ house — the house I grew up in, not my home. Sitting in his car in my parents’ driveway while he chatted outside with my mother, I was overwhelmed with despair, and felt like breaking down and begging him to take me out after all, to take me the hell away from there. Then I woke up.
Maybe my unconscious was trying to warn me about seizing on anyone out of a sense of desperation or defeat. Maybe I’m afraid that saying yes to Jason means that the Prodigal child is at the end of her rope. I don’t know. What a loaded one, Dr. Freud.
**
On waking, I felt a wave of disappointment crest and crash over me, and wondered melancholically if I would ever be able to love another man the way I had loved Sam. This thought made me cry. Eventually I got up, fed myself, bathed and dressed and even put on a little makeup, determining to go to my favorite coffeehouse to write on my laptop and see if anyone interesting showed up. Irrationally, perhaps, I still half believe my Rockwell is out there somewhere, waiting to be found, ready to make up for the fact that I could never have my beautiful older brother. (“Mommy,” I asked my mother at a precocious three years old, “When I grow up, can I marry Johnny?”)
I scanned the whole place from my vantage point at a front table, my back to the open garage-door facade. No one in particular caught my eye. On some days the prospects are as thick as thieves — I’m tripping over men I‘d like to tackle — but not today. After a while I went to get more hot water for my tea. As I stood in line, absently gazing out the open garage door at the patio, I saw our old buddy Eli strolling by on the sidewalk. He glanced inside. I waved my arm. He stopped.
I chortled to myself. Well, there’s some candy for you, baby!
Eli came in to have a cup of coffee with me, since he had some time to kill. His “lady friend,” as he called her, was at the nearby medical clinic having some tests done on her eye. He explained to me that she was already blind in one eye (save for peripheral vision) and that she might be losing her vision in the good one. She had asked him to come with her today. That he had accompanied a brand new “lady friend” in such difficult personal circumstances struck me as unusually caring, and I suddenly remembered him telling me about how he did his best to look after his semi-disabled mother.
But let me just point out a major irony here for a moment. This is Eli we’re talking about here. Beautiful Eli. The young man who completely commanded my attention the very first time I laid eyes on him. Even with his shaggy unwashed hair in a bandanna and nerd-specs on and skin breaking out, he causes me to stare in a trance of near-intoxication. I have to remind myself to keep my head, to peel my eyes away from his intense gaze. You all know I’m well aware that there’s more to relationship compatibility than finding the other person visually compelling, and I had previously ruled him out as anything other than a friend, but Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome that he’s an Equal Opportunity Boyfriend, this probably indicates that he’s a far finer person than I previously imagined, and I hope his “lady friend” doesn’t lose what’s left of her sight. But I could not get over the fact that Eli was seeing a woman who might lose her ability to see him.
I for one was damn glad I could see him. We talked for a good hour, catching up — I shared my latest job disappointments, he filled me in on his political organizing — and I kept up the appearance of detachment. But the junkie inside me was soaking up my drug like a thirsty sponge. After he departed to go get his girl, I sat there for some time, substantially cheered up but starting to second-guess myself.
Eli is ten years younger than me. I know he wants to put down roots here, while I want to go abroad. He’s an atheist and a loner and he doesn’t like people. He would probably detest half my friends. And yet…and yet…he’s extremely caring. He does like me. And he may not look like “Johnny,” but he does resemble that kid I had a crush on in my youth group for forever.
To supersitious types like me who can’t quite believe such encounters are only a coincidence, I can only say: what a time for Eli to reappear. Had I not gone for a refill when I did, we would have missed each other. He doesn’t even live within five miles of that coffeehouse. It’s not exactly his usual haunt.
Of course, he’s not currently available: beautiful Eli is dating a visually impaired woman. And I’m trying to talk myself into dating your old history teacher. Who may or may not call again. I opened Thomas’s book at random the other day to read: we must do our best to live 100 percent committed to whatever intentions we set, without being attached to the results we are getting.
Who really knows what’s around the corner?
I guess I’ll continue to wait on that catering truck, anyhow; you can keep your potato chip crumbs.
_______________________________________________
*20/20 cited a scientific study that actually showed that the same area of the brain becomes active viewing beautiful people as becomes active when alcoholics are shown pictures of alcohol or compulsive gamblers are shown pictures of cash.
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