Why I Blogged

Everybody Hurts…Sometime

In January of 2012, I decided, mostly on a whim, to start a blog about online dating. This was no New Year’s Resolution or sudden epiphany that I was born to be a dating blogger. I wish I could say my hand was forced by destiny…that my mind was pregnant with blogorrheic nuggets of wisdom handed down to me by the gods of online dating themselves. No, dear reader. Alas, this electronic rag was first inspired by an experience most mundane—rejection.

The cute Jewish political operative and I had hooked up on OkCupid and exchanged some very bland and decidedly unbantery overtures to meet. Not only was she a Jew, but a Jew from Florida, which meant no escape from the late-December visit to the panhandle. Fresh off an ugly breakup and a string of fruitless first dates (yay, online dating!), I had no expectations when we met up at a South African wine bar in Hell’s Kitchen. She was even prettier than her pictures and I was immediately attracted to her. Over the next several hours and many glasses of Pinotage and Chenin Blanc, the chemistry was palpable and the night disappeared in front of our eyes as only those really great first dates can. Halfway through the bottle, we both had to pee, only to learn that the bathroom was overflowing. This led to a somewhat memorable experience of being ushered to their sister restaurant down the block by the bartender through pouring rain. With no umbrellas, it was a nice opportunity to take charge and wrap my arm around her in a most manly fashion.

When the night was finally over, we walked to the intersection of our parting and she congratulated me on being her longest date ever. Then, she punctuated it with a clear opening for a kiss. We made out in the rain, not quite Spiderman style, but pretty intensely, neither of us really wanting to go home. We both knew we’d see each other again.

We swapped texts and set up another date for the weekend. Lamely, I suggested we see a movie and get food later. (They can’t all be winners, whatareyagonnado?) On Saturday, screwed by Brooklyn’s ridiculous weekend subway changes, I rushed from the train to the train to the shuttle bus, back to the train, just to cut my lateness by a few minutes. I sent her texts and she was perfectly understanding when I met her just as the movie was starting. She looked great again and I counted the minutes until we could just let go again. After Young Adult (which was an OK date movie I suppose), a fabulously amazing and fabulously expensive tapas experience was followed by a perfectly divey bar. Not long after some beers, I volunteered to cab her home. We got into a car and started making out in the back. I didn’t expect her to invite me in, but she asked me to come up and “meet her cat.” (Oh, ladies, how I love your subtlety.)

Upstairs, after a quick tour of her charming Hell’s Kitchen apartment, we were back at it until we both started falling asleep in each other’s arms. She was sorry for not asking me to spend the night but she wasn’t quite ready, and I absolved her of any guilt. It was totally understandable. As I left, I texted that I really loved holding her. It was a totally uncensored but (I thought) fairly harmless expression of my feelings. I was feeling good again, all was right with the world, there was magic in the air. The Times Square fumes smelled better.

Over the next few days, I was really excited. I texted, I even called. But all I got in return were delayed and tentative replies, with lame and well-worn excuses about having a “crazy week.” It’s not that I hadn’t been rejected before, but not like this. Not after two awesome dates where two souls, as different as any other two, seemed so perfectly in-sync. Not after we kissed the way we did. Not after I’d met her cat, for chrissake! What the fuck did I do wrong? Was I a bad kisser? Was I merely kiss-raping a very timid girl the entire time? Was she seeing someone else who was just a tad more special? It didn’t matter. Her steely response (or lack thereof) was pretty clear. She blew me off without an explanation; I was no better than some loser contacting her online for the first time. I thought of confronting her for answers, but what would that do? So she could fire off some template sandwiching a firm rejection between telling me how awesome I am and that I would find someone great? For the first time in a long time, I was hurt. Truly hurt. Start-a-blog hurt.

 

A Dangerous Lick

Kick it, don't lick it

 

When in doubt, don’t stick your tongue out

Time to Get a Watch

Set your clock to: Punctual

Punctuality: it’s not just a river in Egypt. Wait, that pun makes no sense. In any event, I’m someone who’s very careful about keeping appointments, sometimes to a near-obsessive degree. If I have a doctor’s appointment at 4, I’ll be there at 3:59. If I have a conference call, I’ll be there on the dot, not a minute later. Whenever I schedule a date, I make sure to be there at least 5-10 minutes early. It’s not starting to sip our drinks at exactly 7 PM will directly determine the success of our relationship. But when you don’t have much to go on meeting a person face to face for the first time, impressions are important, even if people often mis- and over-interpret everything that happens on a first-date.

On the dating scene, punctuality very quickly reveals itself. If I’m running late, I usually call or text to get word of a brief delay out to the other party. So I’m not perfect but I try to be as considerate as possible so the girl doesn’t think that I’m not taking our meeting seriously. Plenty of girls that I’ve met are as good or better than I am. More interesting is the roughly 60% of women who are either lax in scheduling or wishy-washy in being on time.

With certain women, I would postulate, being on time is paradoxically a social faux pas. Times and appointments are for reference only, kind of like a weather report. We don’t spend time obsessing about the weather (excepting cases of extreme disasters), so when we check the forecast and see rain in the cards, we might grab an umbrella; most of us aren’t going to then drape ourselves in a raincoat and put on giant galoshes. This is how I feel many people treat date appointments. My dates have arrived anywhere from 5 minutes (totally venial) to 2 hours (she “didn’t realize” we were keeping our originally scheduled time and I was in a forgiving [horny?] mood) late.

Somehow I feel like if I kept a girl waiting for more than 5 minutes without forewarning (or even with if it goes beyond the 15-minute mark), they would not be so understanding. It’s kind of like being late to work. Of course, the trains can often screw your commute. But knowing that you should be able to exercise judgment and take appropriate measures (e.g., leaving earlier) to insure yourself against unpredictable factors. If you throw yourself to the whims of the subway schedule every morning by cutting it close, you’d better have a cool boss. Otherwise, you’re jumping without a parachute. Why would you take dating less seriously? Does being a girl impart some sort of endearing quality to being late? Is that what “fashionably late” means? Maybe I’m a little neurotic, but when someone is stranding me for 20 minutes or more, the vexation totally spills over and can change my mood from excited anticipation to annoyed resignation. If you kept your friends/family/employer waiting or flaked on a job interview, would you expect the other person to brush it off?

Then there are the people whose lives are full of drama, or so they’ll have you believe. The week is always “crazy” (most frequently used female brushoff, too). There’s always some vague and ambiguous reason to reschedule or a mysterious and unspecified obligation (which could be anything from a sick cat to banging some other dude, who knows?). There’s always a crazy boss, a last-minute audition, friend drama, etc., etc., etc. All of our lives, especially a city as manic as New York, are busy and fraught with unexpected challenges. But when we want to meet someone, we make the time and we handle it like adults. We can do better than approaching it with the emotional maturity of a 17-year-old blowing off their college class to smoke a bong or go skinny-dipping in a local swim hole.

Ladies, be kind, mature, and responsible. Do your hair for an hour if you must, but don’t bandy it as an excuse. If you want to be taken seriously and treated with respect, give it back. Get your ass in that bar stool on time!

Young Love