30 First Dates

Yesterday I was reading one of Ask Alice's entries over on another blog. She was talking about Dating Dealbreakers, and it was as if I had written the list myself. It got me thinking about my own dating fiascos and I thought it might be fun to write about them here.

After psycho Ryan and I broke up, I went on over 30 excruciatingly horrible dates before running off across the ocean and (literally) bumping into Marco, the current incumbent in my love life and my presumptive husband-to-be. While I can't remember much more than snippets of mental pain from most of these abominations, a handful of them have permanently seared themselves into my bottom five list of worst dates ever. Here they are (in no particular order) for your Schadenfreude.

#5) The Comedian
He is your classic internet dating disaster. Online he comes off convincingly enough that you think you've covered your bases and double-checked your Google searches. He seems witty, ambitious, intelligent, and kind. His photo implies he's not bad looking, but he's no Gael Garcia Bernal either.

Swoon! Thank you, Mexico.

I digress. (Is it hot in here?).

When he asks me out for dinner, I suggest lunch instead (much easier to evade a creepy guy during daylight hours when shops are open). He's a little chubbier than in his picture, but dating psycho Ryan has taught me that picture-perfect is definitely not everything.


We head to my favorite Thai place and order crispy rice squares as an appetizer. I'm halfway through thinking that this isn't so bad when he starts telling me he's a comedian. The pleasant muzak record in my head stops abruptly. This can only end badly. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't appreciate a little Robin Williams: Live on Broadway or some good Frank Caliendo or Margaret Cho, but my intuition is telling me it's all downhill from here.

[Sidenote: I once told Ryan that I thought women tend to have better intuition than men do, and he flipped out, pulled the car over, and proceeded to lecture me on women's inferiority to men as noted in the Bible. Yeah....that should have been my first sign, right? Alas, I was young and he was brooding and sexy.]

Sure enough, The Comedian starts cracking jokes.....WITH SOUND EFFECTS. And I don't mean "vroom vroom, it's a car!" - I mean farting, burping, and anything else that he can think of. The man actually rips one between shoveled mouthfuls of crispy rice. At this point, he's attracting the attention of the waiters, standing on his chair doing the chicken dance. The sad part is, it's only funny in retrospect. If this was one of my friends, family members, or anyone else with whom I have a close relationship, I could handle this. But a stranger on a first date? Fuhgettaboutit. I'm mortified. So I do what any good Batgirl would do - I climb out the bathroom window. The next day I get a message from him: "Hey bitch, you owe me $10." Lovely.

[By the way, Lex is now surely sitting behind his computer screen, reading this and going: "Hmm, $10 with 5% interest amortized over approximately 4 years since you've been on that date....economic implications.....supply and demand.....Euler's theorem......Golden Ratio blahblahblahblah." He's so awesome.]


#4) The Sprinkler
I'm sitting in a dark jazz bar with a Caipirinha, waiting for a blind date with which my roommate's cousin's dog's flea's uncle's second cousin's aunt's owner set me up. (You get the idea). On stage a woman in a red sequined dress is performing the most horrible rendition of "Summertime" I've ever heard. It sounds like she's a drunk, tone-deaf chain smoker with a feather boa stuck down her throat.

My blind date walks in looking very emo-chic in a corduroy blazer, converse high-tops, and faded dark jeans. Hmm...I like. He orders an Appletini (er...ok) and sits down across from me in the padded booth. Our conversation navigates its way pleasantly through both deeper and more casual topics, and I'm beginning to like this guy.

As I sip my drink, I suddenly feel a fine mist cover my face and douse my silk shirt. My first instinct is: "Who set off the fire sprinklers?", but it's my date - he's choking on his drink and spraying the contents of his mouth all over me. While slightly miffed, I'm also amused - this is the kind of thing that only happens in movies. I'm all prepared to laugh it off when my date starts profusely apologizing and just.won't.let.it.go. Seriously, the man spends the next half hour almost in tears telling me what an ass he is. Ok, so it's a little bit over the top, but I can deal.

Just as I'm about to shift gears and get back into our conversation, he starts crying. Now as I've noted previously, I'm uncomfortable with sudden intimacy. I try to calm him down, but he just dissolves into a fit of sobs. "I hate myself I hate myself I hate myself I hate myself" comes out in garbled, snot-filled intervals. This man has baggage, and I'm jumping ship. I flag down the waiter, pay our bill, get The Sprinkler into a cab home.

Holy crap.

#3) The Mountaineer
Lex would argue that this doesn't count as a first date, since it was more of a horrible first encounter, but I'm including it anyway because it was scary and taught me to be more careful.

I'm sitting at a presentation about people who have overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. The guy speaking is a tall lumberjack sort who likes to hear himself speak. He's telling the audience about his successful conquest of the seven tallest mountains in the world. As we're filing out of the room, he pulls me aside.

Mountaineer: I couldn't help but notice your interest in my story.
SaN: Uh, yeah, sure. Very cool. Good job.
Mountaineer: You want to go out for a drink sometime?
SaN: That's really nice of you. I know it takes a lot of guts to ask a girl out, but I'm not interested. Thanks, though.
Mountaineer: I'm not taking no for an answer.
SaN: Uhh....sorry, but that's my answer. I gotta go. Good luck with your climbing.

As I'm waiting for the elevator to close behind me, he grabs the door and squeezes himself in with the rest of the crowd. I have to go to the 6th floor, but the rest of the people in our elevator get out at the lobby or on lower floors. Mountaineer is now making me very uncomfortable. Suddenly he turns to me and says "I'm not accustomed to not getting what I want." I ignore him, which infuriates him. He corners me in the back of the elevator. "Come on, just one kiss." Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!!! The only thing I can think to do is to spit in his face and knee him in the balls. Luckily he crumples to the floor right before the elevator door opens and I run out as quickly as I can, hoping to break one of his fingers with my stilettos in the process.

#2) The Aussie Googler
Internet dating is the devil. (See #5). I met a nice enough Australian guy online, and eventually we decided to go out for coffee. As I'm standing in line at the coffee shop, I hear a voice behind me. "You must be SaN." Ummm, ok. Kind of weird, but whatever. "How did you know?" I ask. "Oh, I recognized you from your photo." Strange, since I hadn't put up a photo. Maybe I had sent him one - I couldn't remember. We sit down with our mugs and start talking. He starts asking me all sorts of questions that sound eerily familiar. He's pushing all the right buttons, but it feels like a script. Finally I ask him "look, did you Google me or something? It's ok to tell me." Yes, he admits, he has. That's creeps me out. I excuse myself and tell him I'm leaving. As I would later find out, not only had he Googled me, but he had messaged my friends to find out more about me. Since I hadn't checked my email in a couple of days I wasn't aware that they were sending me messages saying "Hey, I got this weird request from some guy today. Isn't this the person you were talking to online?" Note to self: check all email before a blind date. Grrr..... A week later there's an email in my inbox. "Want to hang out again?" I delete my profile off the site.

#1) The Argentine Double-Tango
My friend Claire and I are on a double date with two guys from Argentina. We're at an enoteca downtown and thoroughly enjoying our Chilean reds. A1 and A2 are funny, charming, the whole deal. When they ask us if we want to go dancing at a salsa bar, we don't hesitate. Claire and I share a passion for older (not old!) men, Latin music, and a great pair of shoes. Heady from the wine, we show off our best moves on the patio in the warm autumn air. The whole deal feels like a photo montage out of a dance movie. When A1 and A2 invite us back to A1's apartment for a nightcap, we look at each other and shrug. Why not? The dancing continues at A1's apartment, as does the wine drinking. Around 3:00 AM Claire and I yawn. It's time to go. As we're about to walk to the door, A1 and A2 pull us into a side room and starting gunning for a foursome. Hard. If it weren't for the wine, Claire and I would be out the door screaming, but tonight it's just hilarious. We push them away with definitive "no"s (in English and Spanish) and stumble down the brick sidewalk laughing and hollering until we find a cab and head home.

So there you have it. Hope you enjoyed the train wreck. Thanks for tuning in.

Lex will be berating me for my lack of judgment later tonight.

This Weather's Bringing It All Back Again

How much do people really change? When my friends run out of patience with the Raf situation (bless their hearts), they inevitably turn to the phrase "people change" as a conclusion, and understandably so. I find myself asking the same questions over and over again - so much so that my poor roommate Lex has memorized the answers in spite of his most valiant efforts to constantly redeploy his empathy.

SaN: Do you think he'll ever write me again?
Lex: Maybe. Eventually.
SaN: Do you think he hates me?
Lex: No. I think he's afraid of the impact you have on his life.
SaN: How can he do this? How can almost a decade of friendship not matter to him?
Lex: It does matter to him. He's just trying to get by in his own world and you were collateral damage. He had to make a choice.

When we are faced with a situation in which another human being inexplicably betrays the trust created by a close bond, we are left feeling blindsided - wondering how we couldn't see such a thing coming. As blissfully uncomplicated as men can sometimes be, Raf's complexity has baffled me from day one.

I suppose the irony of this blasted situation is that for the longest time, it was Raf who had the stronger feelings for me as opposed to vice versa. Now, in my twenties, I am left feeling like I ran out of time to reciprocate and as a result am hemorrhaging my emotions into the vacuum left by his departure. I berate myself often:

- Did I not take his feelings seriously enough?
- Was I not expressive enough with my feelings?
- Was I so vain that I thought his adoration would last forever?
- Did I ever really think that we could make it work, or did I just like the attention?
- Did I lead him on?
- Did I do enough to let him know he was important to me?
- Did I drive him toward a placeholder instead of giving him the freedom to find someone he really loves? (More on this later)

There's a great song called Hold You Down by a band named JUMP. Their discovery is about the only good thing my psychotic ex Ryan ever contributed to my life. That, and the ability to definitively tell the assholes from the good guys for the rest of eternity.

The lyrics discuss the effects of paradigm shift (seeing the same issue from a different perspective).

Was I watching over you?
Or watching you fall apart?
Did I lend a hand to hold you down?
Or just a hand to hold?
Did I pull the wool over your eyes?
Or keep you from the cold?
In every look upon your face
There was an element of grace
Did I read between the lines?
Or erase...?

The snippet above pretty much describes the constant state of questioning in which I find myself - did I do good or evil in my friendship with Raf? Did I damage him with uncertainty? Did he finally just decide to cut his losses and exit with what dignity he had left?

Throughout our friendship I always had long-term boyfriends while Raf bounced around from one 3-month stint to the next. I would consistently get emails that extolled the virtues of one girl only to receive a follow-up declaring that it was over. He was restless, nomadic, and victim to a self-described incompleteness. This sense of purposelessness, coupled with his family's reticence to accept his desired vocation, made for quite the quarter-life crisis as we headed into the new millennium, now firmly bound to each other by unwavering loyalty and implicit understanding.

Photography was Raf's escape from the world's negativity. It was the one place where he could feel at peace and, most importantly, be good at something. To this day I am so proud and grateful to have been part of the force that compelled this kind of talent to firmly anchor his proverbial stake in the ground and tell his father he was going to follow his passion. (See below)

Back in the day we used to talk about the kind of photographic subjects Raf would pursue if given the chance. His answer was always the same: people. Ironically, what he has ended up specializing in is landscape photography. Why is this ironic, you say...?

...time for another Flashback.

It's a good thing Raf has shaved his head this year, or he wouldn't be able to strap on the helmet he's just been handed. I almost didn't recognize him coming down the long gravel driveway a week ago and might have walked clear past him had he not called my name from 50 feet away and started running toward me the instant my Keds-clad feet had hit the dirt.

In the meantime, we're being informed of the safety procedures of whitewater rafting. As I'm trying to get Raf's attention from across the gazebo, he motions sternly for me to pay attention to the woman explaining what to do in the event of a man-overboard situation. "On your back, feet up and pointed downstream, grab the closest possible oar, make sure you get pulled into the raft on your stomach, not your back. DO NOT STAND UP IN THE CURRENT." Check, check, check. Got it.

We are dismissed, and I strap myself into a damp life jacket. This is going to be awesome. I clamber into an eight-person inflatable raft with Raf at the helm. As we make our way down the first couple of Class II rapids I feel an icy splash at my back. I look behind me to see Raf holding the neon orange bail bucket and sporting an I-dare-you-to-retaliate grin. I glower at him and vow revenge. My opportunity strikes quickly - at the next eddy I "accidentally" over-paddle and catch him fully in the face with my backsplash. Excellent! We continue down the river, laughing and dousing each other in the freezing water, which is a welcome repast from the afternoon heat. The sun catches Raf's eyes and they prism into an array of hidden colors. He flashes me a smile that hangs in the space between mischief and tenderness.

Suddenly his face turns to horror as I'm flying through the air. I crash into the water and my world goes into slow motion.

My mouth is full of water. My body feels paralyzed. Where am I? My head goes under but the life jacket buoys me back up to the surface of the raging water. My limbs are numb from the cold. I am floating above myself in third person, compelling myself to swim. "Closest oar...downstream..." Adrenaline ordered by my brain finally reaches my body and my feet shoot up out of the water. Do not stand up, SaN, or the current will take you down and drown you. I spot the yellow raft and starting swimming for what seems like miles. An oar touches my fingertips. Raf. I latch on and let him pull me toward the raft. Then my mind goes numb. I emerge from my brief trance to Raf shouting my name. I don't understand what he wants. My hands have no feeling in them. I look down at my whitened knuckles. Why can't I move? Raf kneels over the edge of the raft, and I see his lips form the word "oar" over and over again. My mind has trouble parsing his words. What does he want me to do? His hands grab my life jacket and pull me toward him. "LET.GO.OF.THE.OAR!" I comply, and with one heave he has me back in the raft, soaked and shivering.

Raf: You alright, then?
SaN: Mmm-hmm
Raf: You eejit - don't scare me like that!
SaN: (...)

(...)

He was scared?

It's official: ravenous butterflies have set up shop and are making a meal out of my innards.

Later, as we browse the gift shop and flip through the souvenir photos of our raft, I spot a photography book. I flip it open and become engrossed in the images. Over my shoulder I hear a snort of derision. "Landscapes." He's back to being himself. "I like them", I tell him. Raf walks off and becomes interested in something else, but I can't take my eyes off the book.

On my birthday that year I get a package postmarked eight weeks earlier from halfway around the world. I open it and start laughing. Landscapes.

As the afternoon turns to dusk we walk back to the bus, still damp from the water but no longer shivering. Raf and I break into a run, racing each other to the parking lot. About halfway there we stop and look at each other for no good reason. He motions in the low sun and I give my silent assent.

I jump on his back and drape my arms around his shoulders.

We don't care who's watching anymore.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

I dreamt about Raf last night. This is not unusual, as I tend to dream about him quite frequently, but most of the time I don't realize it's a dream until I wake up disappointed. This time I spent most of my REM cycle racing around, telling people I was in a dream until one of them said "Fine - WAKE UP!" and I did.

Maybe the dream was spurred on by the talk I had a few days ago with Jake, another camp figure.

Jake is one of those guys that every girl from age 5 to age 50+ has a secret crush on - and the girls and women at camp were no different. The female directors loved him, counselors were enamored by his flippant trans-Atlantic accent, and little girls went giddy trying to sign up for the activity which he would be leading. I distinctly remember sitting on a bus with other girls heading towards our 2 weeks of summer bliss, gossiping about whether or not he would be there and swapping stories about how cute he was.

Jake has this way of complimenting you that makes you feel like he's been studying you for ages, only to come up with the kind of relevant and generous compliment of which you can only hope to experience a sequel. Many hearts were broken when he got engaged and then married - the only consolation was that his wife was at least as beautiful and as kind as he was. We had emailed back and forth over the years, but as we are both notoriously bad at keeping in touch, it had been at least 7 years since I had had verbal contact with this Thoreau-quoting, French-speaking, motorcycle-riding import. Naturally, I went with impulse (nostalgia) rather than reason and picked the most convenient time I could think of to call him: while I was at the grocery store. (D'oh!)

As I stood balancing my 24 cans of Coke Zero perilously on the Cheese Nips shelf with my knee, cradling my cell phone between my ear and my shoulder, sweating profusely and wondering how stupid I sounded relaying my Raf story to Jake, I realized how I had idolized this conversation in my head. For a long time, I had thought of Jake as the end-all, be-all guru who would understand my history with Raf and comfort me by saying things like "Of course he still loves you" and "There will come a day when he'll regret what he said." But the more I talked to Jake the more I realized that when it comes to this Raf business, I truly am alone. I suppose that's another reason for this blog - communal empathy, right? There's got to be someone out there who has shared a similar experience and knows what I'm talking about.

On a separate note, Sparsely Kate left a really nice comment on my blog, telling me that she liked the flashback portion of it. Thanks for being my first supporter! Please check out her blog if you get the chance - she's lovely.


Ready for another Flashback? I thought so.


It's the Fourth of July. I'm riding a pretty Paint named Lexington through the hillside just beyond camp. Two of the girls with whom I share my cabin are trotting along beside me. I can feel the gelding twitch under the saddle - he knows we're heading for home. It's been a long day, and the merciless sun coupled with little to no shade has made the trail ride almost unbearable for the horses. Lexington is annoyed by the flies that bite his flanks but has been behaving himself so far. (Pretty impressive for an animal that spends his days being kicked and pulled at by inexperienced riders.)

Our riding instructor and trail guide, Seth, is a total hottie. One of my cabin mates and I exchange wry smiles - the other girl we're riding with hooked up with him last week in the outhouse and is gunning for a repeat performance tonight while the fireworks go off and the director's attention is diverted.

I start into a slow canter, hoping to entice someone into a race toward the stables. Seth responds, kicking his large Bay into an instant gallop, catching up to me and passing me. Lexington's competitiveness goes into overdrive, and he juts his head forward begging for the slack to transition to a gallop. I finally let him go and he blasts off after the Bay, thundering along the field and through the trees. I'm still laughing at the little alpha male underneath me as I pass Seth and make the final turn toward the stables.

Later, as I'm washing Lexington and putting him up for the night, the girl of outhouse-romp-fame comes up to me and firmly plants herself in front of the door through which I'm attempting to exit. "You're not planning on hooking up with him, are you?" I chuckle, trying to contain my hilarity, but to no avail. The tickle in my throat turns into giant, snort-filled laughs. Seth is in his 30s, and I couldn't be less interested. The girl storms off. I sigh. Women are so complicated.

My mockery of the May-December romance between my cabin-mate and Seth earns me few brownie points with the rest of our roommates, and I spend the rest of the evening being ignored. That night, I climb onto the hill overlooking the lake to watch the fireworks. As I'm trying to swat away a particularly insistent mosquito, I smell rain. Raf sits down next to me. He's been working out on the lake all day, and I'm glad he can't see me blush in the darkness when I think about how I've been watching him swim in the mornings.

We sit in silence, as usual. The fireworks start and he notices my face. "Are ya worried about somethin'?" I confess that I'm concerned for the horses. The stables are across the lake, and I'm tempted to head out there to calm them down. The loud bangs from the fireworks must be scaring them by now. Raf looks at me and says: "well, it's probably best you're not over with the horses and all that." He puzzles me. Why would it matter to him? " 'Coz I'd rather have ya here with me."

*Gulp*

I carefully lean into him and he takes my hand so that nobody else can see it. As he traces amoebas in my palm with his index finger, I feel at peace.

The Anxiety of Influence

Part of what makes it so difficult to write about Raf after all these years is that it becomes impossible to recall experiences exactly the way they were. Because I know how the story ends - the anger, the resentment, the impossible stalemate, I find it difficult to write without carefully meting out my words.

My roommate Lex is the only other person who knows about this blog (and probably its only reader). Last night, as he was perusing my first couple of posts, he said to me "I think this will be good for you...but I know you, and you're editing yourself."

I suppose he's right, but part of that comes from the desire to want to recall every experience exactly as I took it in with my whole being. Harold Bloom called this dilemma "The Anxiety of Influence" and describes it not only as all writers' inability to produce a wholly original thought because of their precursors, but also as the problem of memory superimposing itself on recollection.

I keep wondering how I should structure these posts. Would it be easier to write them the way my brain works - i.e. in flashes and snippets from the past mixed with my present stream of thought? I'll have to get some input on that after I've experimented for a while. I also wonder how long it will take for my recollection of a decade worth of memories to sync up with the present. Hmm...

For now, I'll continue with the story.


Flashback

I'm sitting on the dining hall porch at camp. It's raining, but that doesn't prevent me from intuiting Raf's presence. He's sitting at the other end, about 20 feet away with his chin on his knees, staring out at the muddy lake at the base of the hill. In a self-described effort to rebel against his father's idea of "normal", he has grown his hair into the biggest afro I've ever seen on a white man. We exchange snatches of sarcasm and somehow fall into reluctant conversation. Everyone has retreated into their cabins to wait out the storm, but we sit and talk for almost an hour, letting our legs be splattered by red clay and raindrops until we're covered in the stuff.

He tells me about his family, wondering how to tell his father that he wants to be a photographer. "My father wants me to get a real job, yeah? But what does that mean? Photography is real to me. It's what I love doing." I balk for a nanosecond - I've never been good with sudden intimacy. His honesty makes me uncomfortable, and I'm puzzled by the apparent wisdom he thinks I have to impart.

We sit in silence for so long that I think he's going to get up and leave, but he just waits for me to mull his existence over like it's the most normal thing in the world, until finally I say: "well, have you ever tried just telling the man what you want?" This is a completely foreign concept to Raf, who looks at me as if I had just suggested he take a nailgun to his eye for kicks. "Well.....? Have you?" No, he concedes, he hasn't. Tentatively, I suggest that maybe he should write his father a long, honest letter and see what happens. The earlier perplexion has disappeared from his face and suddenly he's gone, running across the grass to his cabin to start the opus. "This guy is bonkers..."

I go inside the dining hall and grab an apple. When I swing the porch door open I nearly clip his face. He's standing right smack dab in front of me holding all the writing implements he could find.

"Will you help me, then?"

Damn it. I like him.

Begin the Beguine

Where to start...?

Best to button down the hatches and bear with me. It's gonna be a bumpy ride, mates.

Flashback:
I'm circa 15. I'm at summer camp. There are gnats everywhere. A bell gives its sharp triple peal, signaling the beginning of the afternoon's activities. I roll off my cot in the squishy humidity and jog up the hill to the shooting range.

Today I will meet the reason for this blog.

He is four years older than I am and smells like rain. Today, he will teach me how to shoot a rifle. For the next two weeks, he will teach me how to forge an emotional bond with nothing more than silence and shy glances. Over the coming decade, we will continually peer over the ledge of truth and then walk away with our hands over our eyes singing "lalalalalala" to drown out the din of inevitability...

...and we will succeed in driving each other away.

But for now I present to you the story of Rafael and SaN

----

It's 2:30 PM. I'm waiting for my turn in line at the range. I have no real interest in this activity - I just needed something to fill my requirements. Raf hands me a rifle. "You know how to use one of these?" he asks in his lilting accent, stressing syllables I never knew existed. I shrug. "I'm sure I can figure it out" - the retort comes out more sharply than intended. He looks at me sideways and trots off to help another shooter. I put the gun to my shoulder, aim through the sight, squeeze the trigger and flip over the bench behind me - flat onto my ass. Raf barely looks up, but the "I told you so" rings loudly in my head. I'm secretly glad he's not watching.

[Not being good at things is paralyzing to me - it's the reason that to this day I'm hesitant to walk into a new takeout place by myself because I'll have to take too much time to gape awkwardly at the menu. I like managing my expectations, what can I say?]

I aim a second time, now prepared for the recoil. A smell invades the space between my brain and my tongue and mocks my concentration. Earth and Rain. He is standing behind me now, drilling his thumb into my lower back, telling me to stand up straight, "or you'll fall on your arse again." Never in my life have I wanted to have better posture than now. But my stubborn pride resists his help. "Whatever. I got it under control." I'm brilliant, this should make him all the more eager to correct my stance.

I'm dead wrong.

Raf ignores me for the rest of the afternoon. I feel like an idiot. I vow to take a mulligan tomorrow.

All of the Inevitable "Whys"

Why blog?

Catharsis, mostly. Writing allows to you to reach out and tickle the dark and twisty parts inside you that you thought you'd neatly packed away and forgotten about. Since they have a nasty habit of jumping out to scare you at the most inopportune times, I figured I'd saddle up and confront them mano a mano.


Why the title?

Two of the things that best demarcate the line between my projected image and my thought space are highlighted in the title. They're also two of my biggest vices - things which I spend way too much time and energy hunting down and examining, only to return a week later swearing up and down that "this time it will be different."


Why Anonymity?

(It's a beautiful thing)

To protect the privacy of those I care for and to write more uninhibitedly. (Should be obvious)


Why now?

Because I didn't do it a decade ago like I should have.


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See you on the flip side...and thanks for your audience.