Date #2: Q

Monday night, I came home, drank a screwdriver (after half a bottle of Cote du Rhone) and drunkenly sang the Jaws theme song to Danielle while lying in her bed. That is where this evening took me. All I have to say is that I’m glad I took that 20-year-old bottle of vodka from my mom’s house this weekend.

Not that the date went badly. It was just...white and from Connecticut, in the most typical of ways.

I'll start from the beginning: I have the bad habit of going on okcupid after I've had a couple of drinks. Mostly, I've stopped that now because I realize that I'm no longer where I was a year and a half ago (able to write coherent, engaging sentences while mildly buzzed- hell, I wrote most of my finals with a beer in hand). But last week, oh last week. I’m still experiencing the perpetuation of last week’s idiocy into this this week. I came home after a hard day, had three over-sized glasses of wine, signed in and began browsing. In total, I think I wrote 4 messages that night and one wink (and normally, I never wink- I think it’s sort of slutty and superficial). The next night, I received responses to 4 of the 5, and became particularly intrigued by this guy who 1) was a good writer, 2) was witty, 3) likes using food as a vehicle for condiments, and 4) studied aborad in Rennes (where I did) and taught as an assistant in Brittany.

I should mention: I’ve very recently moved to Philly (I’ve been here for a little more than 3 months), but I came home from France only for a month before relocating, and that month was filled with traveling and interviews and seeing friends- general busy-ness. Sufficed to say:the reverse culture shock thing that is supposed to happen, and in a way, I think is healthy and good and sparks a necessary critical reaction, did not due to the quick pace of that month. Or at least, did not happen all at once. I get pangs of nostalgia every now and again, and hopeful, optimistic ideas about maybe going back (which is a bit silly, because as good as it was, it was a circumstantial good. I think Philly is where I’m supposed to be for the next couple of years).

When these shared experiences cropped up, I was, well, I was excited as I could have been about this sort of a thing. We reminisced over Rennes and what a great place it was to study in: the bars in Saint Anne, drinking bottles of wine in the Republique Garmond, and the “Vive la Commune” painted on building B on Rennes II’s campus. It was this oddly intimate messaging about silly things that are no secret if you’ve lived in the town; but no one I know has lived in the town, and so these minor details that give Rennes its charm became this exciting secret between the two of us.

It was all very sexy and fantasy-inducing. And if I have learned anything within the past year, it is to nip fantasies in the butt before they become better than the real thing. Which I think is a danger of online dating. As an aside: from the start of signing up for okcupid, I was messaging back and forth with a guy I nicknamed Burrito Man. We had pretty good chats, nothing mind-blowing, but nonetheless intriguing. I have no problem making the first “let’s go out for coffee” move, and so I did this, you know, somehow tying it into a topic that we were covering. At this point, I want to say we’d accumulated about 12 messages altogether. He wrote back that we would go out when he made it into the city in a couple of weeks (he lives 30 minutes away). And then proceeded to write me a huge email about whatever, just continuing the topical conversation we’d been having. By no means am I a dating expert, but time equals interest in all facets of life. And if you’re writing a six paragraph message, that’s at least 20 minutes (30 or 40 at the speed that I write). I don’t think it was wrong to assume this guy was into me. A week went by, he was still responding (at length and quickly) to my emails, but no dice on the going out. He just avoided it, or skidded over it. I mentioned it again. This time, he avoided the suggestion entirely, but still wrote me a huge message. So I waited a couple of days, remembering what my wise friend Brown told me about online dating: “4 messages, Sarah. Back and forth. That’s it.” I’m not quite that quick at the draw, but 8 altogether is my limit. I lose patience and interest. Plus, the idea of investing in a virtual relationship with no real payoff is not for me. So for the sake of honestly, I told Burrito Man exactly that: “I would like to grab a drink with you, and I hope this doesn’t discourage you, but I don’t have the attention span to do this for more than a week and a half. If you’d like to come into the city for some coffee or a drink, that’s great, but if not, best of luck.” Maybe I’m a bitch, but I hate leaving things like that hanging. And so I spelled it out. He’s yet to respond. I doubt he will. Further evidence that he is a pussy bitch and not for me in the first place.

I’m skeptical about getting caught up in long, in-depth email chains because expectations rise, and then this becomes a game of quality, not quantity. And online dating will never be that. And that is what I went into Monday’s date with. Jittery expectations. We decided to go out for wine in the name of France, and I gave him the option of a small dinner or wine bar. I think we were both so excited to meet each other that we went for the dinner, in retrospect, probably naive, but didn’t turn out awfully.

I left work on Monday at 5 on the nose, when it was raining and gross and generally frizzy. I stopped by the wine store (the place we went to, Audry Claire, is an amazing BYOB, and so I told him I’d bring the wine, taking it on faith that he would do dinner). I wore a good shirt, good dark jeans, some hippie jewelry, and black leather heeled booties; I looked like me, but more put together. And holy crap was I nervous. I actually spent the time that I had allotted for shower time laying on my bedroom floor meditating. And I never meditate. But I was freaking out. And it wasn’t a what if he’s repulsed by me sort of a thing, but a you idiot, why did you not go somewhere that wouldn’t take forever (see the previous post).

Eventually, 8pm rolls around, I’m running late (what else is new). I leave my apartment, which is 8 blocks away from Audrey Claire; I overestimated how quickly I could walk there, and more so, how quickly I could walk there in 3 inch heels. Not as quickly as I thought. Finally, I get there, a bit damp, and immediately, I see he is more nervous than I am. He was sitting at the window seat, and we had that awkward initial meet: do you hug, do you shake hands? You both know that you’re their because you found each others’ profile photos vaguely attractive, but no one actually wants to admit it because of the whole fear of rejection thing. It’s a very loaded situation. He goes for the safe approach: the hand shake. We sit, and I can tell pretty immediately that this bottle of wine is going to need to opened and consumed, if only to calm nerves.

Our conversation began with quotidian topics: the day, the job, etc.- he’s a computer engineer, graduated with an MA from Drexel, and likes his job working at an ESL software company creating programs to help foreigners learn English. And then the menus came. Now, I know the right thing to order on dates: date food. Nothing that will spill or splatter, something that is both easy and a bit sexy to eat, nothing that will destroy your breath, makes you look like a pig, or pose the risk of indigestion.

I don’t believe in date food. Is that bad? Bring on the spaghetti with marinara. Curry: please. Sweetly, Q asked what was good (I chose the restaurant), and what is good, unfortunately, are the 2 pounds of mussels in chunky-tomato and garlic sauce. Mussels are probably the ugliest food one can eat. They look like snot. Opaque, beige, large snot. And you need to use your hands in eating them. But they are one of my favorite foods, and Audrey Claire sort of rocks them. For $12. It’s an amazing deal. And being the agreeable guy that he was, we got mussels. And Gorgonzola flat bread. (If I’m going to break with convention, I’m going to really break with convention.)

We got some wine down, start talking about France, but to be perfectly honest, I cannot, for the life of me, remember the specifics. Because my attention was split between him, and noting what he was saying so I could ask him interesting, engaged questions, and thinking: I should be hitting it off with this guy, I should want to jump his bones, but I got nothing.

We finished dinner, delicious dinner, and we were the last people in the restaurant, just eating and talking until 10. When we left, we walked around for a bit so he could walk off a bit of wine before he drove back to the country. It was lovely, a great night, good talks, really, the ideal situation to have a first kiss. I didn’t even want one. He walked me to my door, and we hugged goodnight. On an Indian summer night with a warm breeze. Give me a break; I couldn’t have orchestrated the thing better. But I didn’t want him. The whole thing just killed my libido (hence the Jaws song upon entry into my house).

I’m trying to figure out why. I mean, there are two options. The optimistic one, the one I want to believe because this guy is good on paper, is that nerves, exhaustion, and the circumstances in general, put he and I off. The realistic one: chemistry takes less than a minute to gauge. Mostly, at least in the past,I know within 10 seconds if I’d like to see you naked. This guy? Nothing. And I wonder if it’s the online dating thing.

I’m thinking about the last guy I wanted to see naked (at least at the time). Truth be told, I didn’t want him immediately, it took an hour and a half or so until we started speaking and broke away from the group. And then I wanted him. And then I fantasized after the the night was over. But with this guy, I fantasized during the week before our date. The date itself undercut whatever prior hopes I had for the outcome.

He’s asked me out again, and I think I’ll go. Not to fill quotas, but because I would really like to like this guy.