OKC: It works sometimes!

A couple weeks ago I expressed pleasure at the lovely coincidence of coincidence:   Student Driver found herself sharing a coffee table with one of her most faithful (and previously anonymous) readers. 

As you recall, it reminded me of this blog's foremost -- of several, mostly undocumented variations -- small-world story:  The Artist from The Western Suburbs having a poor date with me, telling his next OKC interest (that very evening) about our poor chemistry, said female acknowledging she was a fan of my blog .... and The Artist using it as a reason to suggest a date with her.

I'm notoriously poor at noticing comments that come more than a couple days after a post.  However, I was so pleased to just discover that, 5 days later, the most important person who could have weighed in on that post weighed in on that post:

"Hi Karin - I had to laugh at your favorite deja vu blog moment. I am the lady that you 'helped' the Artist get. We did not hit it off either but I am happy to say that I met a different lovely man on OKC and we've been married one year! Just a little happy ending to that story even though you don't know me :) ... " 

Hey Anonymous:   Woo-hoo!

Speak of the Devil

Well, no, I hadn't been speaking of him.

And, I hadn't been speaking of or to this (nicknameless) guy I saw several times in December 2009 and January 2010.  He has rarely entered my brainwaves since we bumped cluelessly by each other at the Boylston/Berkeley Starbucks (and he didn't acknowledge my hello) almost 2 years ago.

Yet, yesterday.  The other Starbucks on Boylston (755).  Just done doctoring my iced black eye and turning to walk away, I feel eyes on me.  Look to my left, and a man sitting next to the creamer station, scrolling on his iPad, with  beard, glasses and heavy coat is staring at me with purpose. 

My favorite kind of random Starbucks-on-Boylston guy. Not. I return to facing forward and head to my seat.

It's only 40 minutes later, once laptop is open and logged onto the shop wireless, that I see this message, sent nearly 40 minutes prior, via OKCupid:

Hey (Karin, yes?)

Good to run into you. I hope there are no ill feelings! You look good and I hope things are well.

No shit.

I turned to where he had been sitting.  He had already left.

There are no ill feelings, of course.  Click back to January and March 2010 for my ambivalent feelings (and his ambivalent return of such ambivalence) for the situation as it ended.  I simply had not recognized him.

As I theorized shortly thereafter in chatting with MSF, perhaps a reason Nicknameless and I never worked out was that -- nice and benign and as open to cuddling as he was -- he is the kind of guy who sees an old flame in a coffee shop and rather than sweeping up and greeting her and reintroducing himself, sends her an e-mail from 15 feet away.

Holiday Monday (I)

OKCupid message blotter:

31 - Oberhausen, Germany.   hey beauty...how you doin? It's so boring right now...and I ask myself if you are in mood to meet...a funny...smart and nice guy?! I have to be honest today this nice guy is extremely horny too:-) the hormones are going crazy:-) so we could do something against that too...so I hope you are open minded as me....would be cool if you reply

23 - N. Scituate, RI.   Hi! (5-minute gap) Hello?

18 - Avon, MA.  I was wondering if you are interested in casual sex.

26 - Boston, MA.  It's obvious that you have a problem with 22 years old men, but I'm soo old than them:) I'm 26 years old and 3 quarters:)) in April I'll be 27:)) JUST KIDDING! how e u?

21 - Peabody, MA.  Heeeey

32 - Lake City, FL.   u r so attractive can we chat or talk anytime ? my cell is 8XXXXXXXXX. (Ed. note: real number furnished upon request, in case you might want to chat or talk anytime.)

37, Washington DC.  Hi, I think a WOW is in order!! You are stunning! I bet you are as sweet. I'm a good guy, just turning a page in life, and trying to have some fun. I have an insatiable 'drive' with the stamina to match and looking for someone that would enjoy that, and we seem like a high match.

And an old friend, this gentleman, popped up and requested a chat, too.

Thanks, boys, for the attention.

Did not acknowledge

Have I written this post before?  Can't believe I haven't ....

.... about how within a 5-day range of any major holiday, men from my past who have either a) ditched me b) ignored me or c) just generally been dismissive and uninspired and, therefore unworthy of my time, must insist upon pinging me as if we're best buds.

Ugh.  The Holiday Booty Call. Or Call-o-Regret. Or I Have Nothing Better To Do So I'm Trolling For a Past Lover, Any Past Lover, to See if She is Available.

So not attractive.

Take Not Available Man, who always represented himself as Available but never proved to be).  Who I never wrote about, because it was probably not public knowledge that he called himself Available.   Who ditched at the last hour more times (3) in 2 years than he actually came through ... most recently in June of this year, without remorse or explanation.  After which I told him to go (expletive) himself and deleted his contact info from all portals.  He evidently did not delete mine.  Last week he IM'd on Gmail  twice.  "Hi!", both times at 1 a.m. 

As if I had not told him to go (expletive) himself.  Did not acknowledge.

Then, take Coffee, Beer Big Hands Man.  From Oakland CA, with family in Mass; our one face-to-face encounter in October 2009 ended with him leaving my apartment, red-faced.  Who ever since, pops up on OKC every 3 months, as if it periodically occurs to him a cross-country conversation would be the cure to both our ills.  Three months ago he wrote in the same fashion, and  I cut the cord, suggesting I was weary of his no-effort approach:  he either had to be interested in me and do something about it or go away.  He apologized, but then didn't write again, so I thought he went away.

Until this weekend, when he wrote to say he was in Boston over the holidays and wanted to know if I wanted to get a drink.  Did not acknowledge.

Amazingly, last night, Canoe Enthusiast joined the procession.  Without any pretense.  Just the message:  "Want to get together?" As if, because we slept together in February 2008 and he ditched me in clueless forgetfulness on 2 successive dates in March, I might want to get together in December 2011.

While I was in mid-deletion of said request he, still online, pinged with an instant message, "Hello!" After which, when I didn't reply immediately, followed with "Hello?"

What the hell?  Yuck.

Finally, as if he knew I was going to write this and wanted to provide a finale as the King of Such Behavior, in comes the 1:35 a.m. text from C-2: "Yo!"

I knew he wanted me to be my old spontaneous self, meet him for last call, get drunk fast, see what transpired on Kingston Street. As if he had been in any meaningful contact since June, other than several times to suggest that if I volunteered for one of his local campaigns, it might afford me the opportunity to see him.  But that otherwise he was too busy.  As if he even deserved to still have my number in his phone.

Awake, but pretending to be asleep, I did not acknowledge.

But I gave in this morning at 10, because he is C-2, and I do this for him.

Replying: "Are you in town?"  

To which he said:  "I was. Was at Foley's, but on road back now. :( " 

To which I said:  "Thanks for the ample heads-up, as always."

To which he said:  "Sorry. I tried."

To which I wanted to say:  "Really, no, you never really did, your apology is hollow, and I think I'm safe without ever wanting to see you again.  Which makes me sad after all the things I liked about our friendship before you started treating me exclusively like your Boston booty call but, thanks anyway."

Next time, I swear:

Will not acknowledge.  At all.

Feet (again)? Really?

One of my life mantras is, truthfully:  To each one's own.

This applies to anything:   to weird food likes,  to careers in questionable fields, to drug use, extracurricular sex lives, and one's decision to judge others if one feels like it.  Mostly because, despite my relatively open nature, I can't help but judge even when it goes against my own mantra.

(And it is my mantra, damn-it.)

That said:  what is it with folks and feet? Admittedly, I have an Inexplicable Need to Take Pictures of Them, as you well know.  But I would never pick a partner or a friend to be my partner or friend based on what their feet did or didn't look like,or if they liked me to touch their feet in a certain way or not, and I don't think I would ever choose to use it as a pick-up line.

Nonetheless, from a 40-y-old Bostonian on OKCupid recently, a couple hellos (in their entireties) to my inbox:

Yesterday:  "This is a lovely message."
Today:  "Do you have beautiful feet?"

In hiw writeup, he mentions nothing of any special foot requests or indications of why that might be important to him.   However, 1 of his 2 profile photos is a shot of a pair of black-haired shins, connected to feet in bright green socks printed with cartoon characters, without explanatory caption.

I'm curious what tomorrow will bring.

And I still don't get it.

Imaginary (donkey of) love

Chomping on a tuna sandwich and reading Love Letters on my lunch break, I got sucked into a sidebar conversation thread titled "Facebook nonsense".  It began on August 23, with a a post from:

-- A woman who friends an artist whose creative work she admires and feels mirrors her own;  she visits and commented on his FB page. He responds and comments on her comments.

-- The two begin flirtatiously texting/e-mailing relationship; they don't live in the same city so they don't meet, but they soon have a phone call that leads to (the woman's) enormous hopes.

--  He drops off the face.

-- She's convinced she's screwed up something good, big-time, and apologizes. He says she has nothing to apologize for and wants to remain friends.

-- But their friendship has changed and seems, now, not destined for anything greater. She's, in her words, "bereft" over what could have been:

"You know, prolly wishful thinking on my part, but last week I really felt that this man and I could pull something together. I can't think of what I could possibly have said to have turned him off. But I won't bug him, I won't nudge him..."

If you've read this blog at all before today, you of course know this type of What Did I Do WRONG?!!!!! thinking has had its place here on too many occasions.  Which is why I cringed viscerally at the resemblance to situations of past. Cringed reading through the 90 subsequent posts on the thread after her above self-admonition ("I won't nudge him...") stretching until yesterday. Even as other commenters advised her to move on, she continued stating admiration for her artist, the reasons why she thought she still wanted to be with him, and berating herself for holding out hope.

It took until today for her to say, "OK. I blocked his profile. Gotta let it go." But it took 3 weeks.

Not chastising this woman at all. Just understanding it (after all, it took me 9 months...) and marveling, again, how we humans get into draining situations that we can't see don't benefit us and, really, have no desire to get out of.

Somewhere on the thread, the woman posted a link to the British advice blog Baggage Reclaim, specifically to a 2009 column on "Letting Go Of A Relationship That Doesn't Exist":

"There are two big questions hovering in the comments recently that pretty much amount to the same thing:

How do I let go of the guy that didn’t reciprocate my feelings?

How do I let go of the guy that I didn’t actually have a relationship with?

In essence, how do you let go of a one-sided attraction which in your mind has created a relationship out of…your feelings?"

The blog author, Natalie Lue, is a prolific tough-love talker. In fact, she's written 2 books on the topic (one titled Mr. Unavailable and the Fallback Girl) in addition to this blog that has been ongoing since 2005).  Her thoughts on "Letting Go Of A Relationship That Doesn't Exist" are countless, but these lines specifically spoke to me:

"For a start, you can’t ‘break up’ when there is nothing to break up from. The only person you have to break up with is you and your rather overactive imagination and feelings ....

"The thing is, from the moment that you recognise that you 1) are not having your feelings reciprocated and/or 2) that you’re not in a relationship with them, major warning signals should be going to your brain that there is something seriously wrong if you are still trying to get them to reciprocate and obsessing about them over an extended period of time ....

"Whilst I recognise that in some instances, we can be misled by a guy to believe that he feels more than he does, I tend to find that women who are in this situation are invariably in it because they decided that they were crazy about someone and don’t want to let that, and the fantasy go ....

"You’ve decided that you want him, love him, and to hell with it, you’ll find a way to show him that he should notice and love you too. You’re gonna ride this imaginary donkey of love till it collapses."

Wow.  Can't think of a better way to describe making an ass of one's self and self-esteem.  :-) 

(Good to remember the next time, if ever, I get another gander at C-2.)

BBC 11: Old friend

It was only because I had gone to run TMIRCE track workouts at Harvard Stadium last night after which I really needed a fresh bottle of Bolthouse Farms Vanilla Chai Tea and thusly stopped at Cambridgeport Whole Foods, where I lingered in the bulk food display sampling the 10 varieties of granola (and buying none), and then decided to walk the beer aisle even though beer doesn't fit in my backpack when I'm biking, that I could come around the corner and lock eyes with the 50-something match.com match I went out with 4 times in May 2009 so we could say each other's names at the same time and, after a hug, run down each other's checklists to make sure we were both working the same jobs and running routines and piano music (we were) and enquire as to each other's dating lives without providing any real details, then ride the escalator out together and wish each other well without pretending we wanted to make future plans, and as I rode down Putnam Ave on quiet streets, could once again be glad that a) this city is small enough that I can be somewhere I'm normally not and so can someone else I know and b) sometimes I let things that shouldn't go on end, but amiably enough, and that's always better than any other alternative.

The CFO (Redux)

From the Single in the City archives (2/2/09):

"So....we left it with a kiss and a goodnight and I wrote him a note that night to say thanks.....but I haven't heard back yet. Not worried about it, either, and that itself is a weight off. Really. It seems important that we had a reunion....for me to realize that I still liked being with him but could live without him."

I know I wanted to tell you yesterday all about the boy from San Francisco, who dominated the weekend and deserved the space.

But I didn't mean to not tell you the details of my CFO date on Sunday afternoon, our first since November 2009.

(We reconnected via e-mail after I thought July 4th was his birthday -- it isn't -- and wrote to wish him a happy one.)

I saw his apartment, saw photos of his 2 sons for the first time ever (one recently graduated from college and one from high school), and he gave me the book I picked up while browsing his bookshelf, not expecting its return.   We then cruised out towards the Lynn Woods Reservation for pajama brunch at the place of his longtime female friend.   Him indeed wearing pajamas. Me too, recalling this is how he rolls: taking one woman he used to date to a party given by another woman he used to date -- everyone wearing pajamas, everyone totally fine with everything.

Brunch was decadent and tasty and the afternoon quite nice.   The CFO still oozes joie de vivre and ranks as a gregarious and giving conversationalist. Unchanged in his conviction that he's already been married and raised his kids and wants to date as many women as he has time and energy for without commitment. Still as frank as ever about his (still) varied dating life and skilled at drawing frank details about sex and other assorted wildness out of mine.

What our "date" came down to be was the equivalent of a couple hours of road-trip girlfriend chat. He asked for my take on perplexing females in their 50s. I bemoaned men in their 40s who had never settled down and didn't seem to ever want to. He drove me home and we left it with a kiss and a goodnight again -- followed with a solid, lingering hug -- and I went off to go running and watch the sunset with the boy from San Francisco. It was the CFO who wrote me later that night, saying thanks for making the date. We haven't (yet) made another.

With all due respect to my past self, it amuses me now to read how I wrote about the CFO in 2009 with such heartbreak because we weren't working.  (We certainly wouldn't work today, either, despite his being a guy who commits to reading the Sunday Times cover to cover.)  Three years younger, yes.  But that level of naïveté doesn't feel like an emotion I remember having. 

Of course, though, I did.

Am I more laid-back since then? More circumspect? More seasoned?

Maybe more of a realist, most of all?

Playing the %s

I often berate old flames for checking back in with me after the fact, especially those who dumped me.  Having no patience and mocking them for being alone on a holiday and getting either nostalgic (or horny) or regretful.

Well, that was me today. Facing a solo holiday weekend (which I'm actually looking forward to, mind you) and slightly curious, there I was after work ... back-checking the old flames who still have OKCupid profiles.

Yes, many of them still have profiles.  Yes, I'm being flamingly mildly hypocritical.

OKC "matches" folks based on many factors, but most specifically by age, location, and "match percentage." This is reached when respondents answer anywhere from 20 to 2000 questions on all manner of topics, ranking each question's relative importance. Through an algorithm that I cannot summarize in more than 25 sentences, OKC takes the results of:

1.  Your answer, compared with

2.  How you’d like someone else to answer, and

3.  How important the question is to you.

Your answers are then compared to everyone else's on the site and when you look at a profile, the resulting match percentage supposedly summarizes how much your and that profiler's answers made each other happy. "Friend" and "enemy" percentages are also gleaned .... a calculation that, even after a thorough scouring of both Google and the OKC website, I don't see explained.

Anyway, it was fun to revisit how I matched up with some of the more memorable men I've encountered. No surprise to see who tops the list (and why my heart still breaks a little every day).

C-2: 
86% Match / 78% Friend / 21% Enemy

But even those I had either spectacular flame-outs or fizzlings with were uniformly positively ranked:

Sunday-Night Man: 
79 M / 67 F / 27 E

The Almost-Date: 
79 M / 73 F / 30 E

Young Politican from Brooklyn: 
76 M / 71 F / 27 E

Mr. Reach The Beach Relay: 
72 M / 77 F / 25 E

Likewise, I knew immediately that these were not going to be possible, which also bore out:

Mr. Craigslist: 
51 M / 59 F / 38 E

Canoe: 
36 M / 51 F / 54 E

Besides, they're all now in the past.

Since I'm feeling on the feisty side this weekend anyway, I decided to search for some high-% men, write them, and point out that we're perfect for one other. See what happens. In a test run a few minutes ago, I came up with some starting data by searching the pool of:

1.  Guys who like girls

2.  Aged 35 to 45

3. who live within 25 miles of Boston and

4.  have been online in the last month,

5. who show a photo and

6. are single.

I found:

My Best Friend: 

Age 39, Watertown

81 M / 94 F / 10 E

The most private thing I’m willing to admit:

I have a crush on Michelle Obama...

My Worst Enemy: 

Age 36, Boston

28 M / 33 F / 90 E

The most private thing I’m willing to admit:

i love desperate house wife

Perfect Match: 

40, Somerville

94 M / 88 F / 15 E

The most private thing I’m willing to admit:

I'm not nearly as serious as this profile makes me sound.

Hmm.  While it should follow that I need to now write my Best Friend and Perfect Match to beg for our imminent togetherness(es), I should also note that above-mentioned Perfect Match is someone I already took the initiative to contact back in February ... and who never replied.

Hmm indeed.  Wonder if it is worth trying again.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

I knew Bill wasn't going to be satisfied with a cryptic and über-crusty Guinness photo as the only description of my weekend:

Bill: What was up with the blog entry? Did that guy no show?

Karin: Nah. It’s a more involved story ... We hung out both Saturday and Sunday. Didn’t end well last night at 12:30 and I was pissed so I drove over to Foley’s to unwind with a Guinness. Surprisingly, just doing that rather than going home and going to bed being angry was a good approach. I e-mailed him today and apologized – he was a bit of a quirky guy in person and the fallout came because of my frustration with that, which is hardly his fault. He doesn’t seem aggrieved and said he’d write more later. Which is fine. It was good for us to hang out. We’re definitely not worth dating or even romantic involvement, but we do have a lot of shared interests and I’d like to stay in touch.

B: Sorry it didn’t work out so well. Sure this guy is really worth your time?

K: Well, yeah, enough so. Considering our level of interaction the last 3 months, I don’t want to make an enemy and don’t want it to end badly. Even if we just get square and then the relationship trails off because there’s nothing romantic going on….so be it. Better that. Interesting guy, smart guy, definitely eccentric – which, again, is something not entirely apparent until you hang out. Kind of like what happened with C-2, I’m glad to have erased ambiguity. Frustrated to have wasted time on a level, but it’s all a learning experience and this taught me something about me too.

B: Well, what’s wrong with cutting ties now? If you’re going through the motions just to “not make an enemy”, it just doesn’t sound right. Don’t waste more time if there is no potential, your time is too valuable.

K: We’ll see. I’d like to end it on a good note if nothing else. I’m a bad person when it comes to regrets.

B: Well, you probably regret too much in general. You’re a good person that way in that you care about how you treat others, sometime regardless of how they treat you.

K: I know. He didn’t treat me badly. He didn’t misrepresent himself. It just took meeting him to understand that him being quirky made for great e-mail exchanges but less chemistry in person. I didn’t have the patience for his real-life persona. So I don’t have to. I think we’ll just go back to swapping YouTube videos.

Actually, I did that last night, sending along this link of the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing Handel. It closed the loop on our brunch at the Algiers Coffee House, where we sat for 2 hours on Sunday afternoon dissecting the text and origin of the Bach cantatas playing in the background. Which, again, seems like the kind of relationship he and I should and could have. Those 2 hours of Bach minutiae, in that (speaking of quirky) Harvard Square relic, were easily the best 2 hours of the weekend.

Lesson learned.

(The regret comment probably requires reflection and a separate entry at a later date.  As does my curiosity about whether or not he thought I was an eccentric, too ....)

Meanwhile, The New Yorker yesterday revealed this 10,000-word essay by Nick Paumgarten on online dating, with a heavy focus on OKCupid -- interviews with and discussions of the dating lives of its creators and all.

Well, it's about time .... 2 of my most regular reading habits in one handy location! (Highbrow and lowbrow meeting in the middle, perhaps?) Mr. Paumgarten is gifted and clever and did a mountain of research. I particularly enjoyed learning about the Technical Automated Compatibility Testing (TACT), the first known "computer-penpal" service that originated around the time of the 1964 World's Fair. Nonetheless, that everything (but TACT) sounds like something I've heard before, even in a piece of this length, is a testament to both my well-documented history and the over-ripeness of still writing about it.

Mr. Paumgarten is married. For research purposes, rather than creating an fake online profile, he made coffee dates with women who had OKC histories. His conclusion rings of accuracy .... particularly the highlighted line at the end...

"I talked to men, too, of course, but there is something simultaneously reductive and disingenuous in most men’s assessments of their requirements and conquests. Some research has suggested that it is men, more than women, who yearn for marriage, but this may be merely a case of stated preference. Men want someone who will take care of them, make them look good, and have sex with them—not necessarily in that order. It may be that this is all that women really want, too, but they are better at disguising or obscuring it. They deal in calculus, while men, for the most part, traffic in simple sums.

"A common observation, about both the Internet dating world and the world at large, is that there is an apparent surplus of available women, especially in their thirties and beyond, and a shortage of recommendable men. The explanation for this asymmetry, which isn’t exactly news, is that men can and usually do pursue younger women, and that often the men who are single are exactly the ones who prefer them. For women surveying a landscape of banished husbands or perpetual boys, the biological rationale offers little solace. Neither does the Internet. "

And here's a take on a gender issue:

"Good writing on Internet dating sites may be rare because males know that the best way to get laid is to send messages to as many females as possible. To be efficient, they put very little work into each message and therefore pay scant attention to each woman’s profile. The come-on becomes spam and gums up the works, or scares women away, which in turn can lead to a different kind of gender disparity: a room full of dudes. “There is a fundamental imbalance in the social dynamic,” Harj Taggar, the investor at Y Combinator, told me. “The most valuable asset is attractive females. As soon as you get them, you get loads of creepy guys.”

Finally, this story was my favorite: a woman in her 70s, with a PhD, married and divorced twice and who lives ... outside of Boston. She's in her 70s, I'm in my 30s, we're both internet dating, we're having similar experiences.

"She met a mathematician who lived in Amsterdam, and flew over to meet him but discovered within minutes that he suffered from full-blown O.C.D. She drove up to New Hampshire in the rain for lunch with a man with whom she’d been carrying on a promising e-mail and telephone correspondence for a few days, but he told her that he found her unattractive. She met a financier on Yahoo’s dating site. They got together for coffee at Café Pamplona, in Cambridge. (K: Just down the street from the Algiers, of course!) He was handsome, charming, and bright. He was also, as a friend’s follow-up Google search revealed, a felon, and had served time in prison in a RICO case. “I did see him again,” she said. “And then I realized how crazy he was. He wasn’t nice, either.” For two years, she has had an off-and-on affair with a forty-seven-year-old man she met on Yahoo, and she recently met a man on Match.com who showed up for their first date wearing a woman’s sun hat, slippers, and three purses. He invited her to accompany him to Norway to meet the Queen.

“You have to learn the rules,” she said. “But there are no rules.” More often than not, she initiates contact. “At my age, I have to.” She also feels that, in her profile, she has to shave a few years from her age and leave out the fact that she has a doctoral degree, having concluded that men are often scared off by it. She has gone online as a man, just to survey the terrain, and estimates that in her age range women outnumber men ten to one. “Men my age are grabbed up immediately by friends,” she said. “Or else they believe that younger women are more interested in sex.

“I’ve learned, forget about writing,” she said. “Meet a person as soon as you can. Anyway, the profiles you read, they’re like bathtubs. There’s no variation.”

Well. That happened.

And furthermore.

Guinness is, seriously, like medicine. 

Thank God.

(And thank you, J.J. Foley's, when healing is required.)

6/27/11 - 1:33 a.m.

Kiss for the road

Before you chastise me
for doing it again,

Let me confirm
I didn't plan to end up
again
sharing my passenger seat with
C-2 
on an early Monday morning,
kissing
(and doing other things).

I didn't know until Sunday
that
he was in town until Monday.

I didn't know
he'd apologize
for never being around
or
tell me
he and his girlfriend were
on the outs.

I can confirm,
however,
that he had kissing me
on his mind
from the moment
he texted
and
invited me to Foley's.

I can confirm
I had the same
from the moment
I got the text.

I can confirm
the kissing
still wins every award
and that
physically connecting
to a lover
after too long apart
is like stepping into a
hot bath on a
cold night.

At one moment,
me lying back on the seat,
him lying full on me,
me grasping at his hair,
I said,
"I love being just like this."

And I meant it.
What else to say?

It doesn't mean
I didn't realize
this was just
for old times' sake,
that he was leaving,
that he might be back
sometime
and
he very well might not
and
even if he does,
it doesn't mean anything
more than
kissing.

Expectations are
temporarily
safely
uninflated.

Even if
the kissing is
very, very nice.

Rebuffed (or rebuffing?)

It seems both a good and bad thing to have reached a level of self-awareness in my interactions with men, in that I can see exactly what I'm doing and how it will probably play out. Even if I can't decide how I want it to. Current case: Piano Man, who for many weeks has been faithful in checking in just to say hi or see if I feel OK or to share a YouTube link of Bach transcriptions or ask if I want to talk on the phone later. I've gotten used to him writing and find myself disappointed if he doesn't. But through the drama and exhaustion of tech week, I wasn't always prompt to reply. Sometimes from sheer logistical complications; sometimes out of annoyance. Despite our geniune admiration for certain qualities in each other (which is there, no doubt) as well as real curiosity about what we could have in person, we reach towards each other in unequal measure. The more I know him without the chance to meet him, the more I think he at most would be an excellent friend to drink wine with, attend concerts with, and pretend to be erudite with, because he's smart, well-spoken, and interested in things I'm interested in. But the more he knows me, even if he's still glad to go multiple rounds about piano transcriptions, he even more wishes we would return to the first 3 times we talked, which were the 3 times we most graphically spoke about sex. When he wants to talk in person in the early a.m., he wants to talk about sex. I used to feel similarily, but I find without meeting him I can't summon the same interest. Perhaps because I want to mean more to someone than being the go-to-girl whenever the mood strikes. The last time we talked -- late at night, late last week -- we hadn't been on for 5 minutes and he tried to persuade me to get on Skype and undress on camera, and I was so not interested I couldn't fake it and I told him so. He joked that it was OK, that I simply "owed him one later." But he was then uninterested in talking further. Of course. So here we are. Yesterday we exchanged e-mails, but only at my instigation. Today, it's now his turn and he's visibly online and not responding, and now I'm frustrated because he's not writing. He hasn't texted since the last time we talked. Because he's now either distracted elsewhere or he has moved on. I know that I, in a manner of speaking, rebuffed him first by my antipathy, then by unwillingness to go where he was asking me to go -- so I should be OK with his inattention. One would think.

Always, with this confusion.

An expensive Tuesday

I was in bad shape last week, what with rogue illness and 6 consecutive nights of rehearsal.  Then Friday came and was good, and Saturday I did yoga for the first time in forever and slept a lot, and Sunday was cool. Which means I started this week with a calmness I haven't felt in forever. Didn't silently curse one person yesterday. Or gripe about either another rehearsal or the $20 for 5 gallons of gas last night. And didn't get cranky when 5 men I went out with or otherwise planned to date in the last year used the holiday weekend to say hello again, per the routine. (Boredom, nostalgia, latent desire .... how the urge to reconnct always strikes simultaneously.) It's calm. Which came in handy this morning when my mechanic called to say, "Well, we've got your car up and you need upwards of $1000 in repairs before you can renew your inspection sticker and you wouldn't dare drive this without them," and I paused and then replied, "Oh, well, OK, I guess I expected it, so go ahead," and thanked him as I hung up and logged-on to Citizens Bank to raid my savings account. Don't know who, or what, to thank for the calm. Probably won't try to analyze it, because it does feel good for a change. Might just focus on continuing to stay so.

Day 25 of 30: 3.31 miles

April Total: 50.41

2011 Total: 204.4

And .... just like that.

I've told y'all, right, that one of the highlights of my OKCupid profile is my admitting to loving the movie Tootsie more than life itself?

And do you remember that I got into a quick and (non-) dirty conversation back in November with a guy who said it was his favorite movie too -- and we decided we should watch it together?  Or go for coffee?  Or both?

And are you surprised that we never did?  I can't remember who stopped talking to who, or if we just turned each other off after the initial conversation.

And are you surprised that this morning at 9:37:

Biking Guy: Hey stranger! :)

Which I responded to about 7:30 this evening:

Karin: Stranger, indeed.

And the rest of the story:

BG: Let's get coffee!

K: Sure.  I'm in Davis for rehearsal quite a bit these days.

BG:  Awesome! :) When are you free Ms. Marathon runner?

K:  I'm up in the square Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings for 7-10 rehearsals. Something on either side of that?

BG:  1015 outside the XXX Tuesday....thanks again for reconsidering!

K:  Reconsidering? I don't think I ever didn't not consider. You rather disappeared.

BG:  Okay well good then! :)

And I'm not sure if it's Okay Well Good Then! that I didn't not consider or that he rather disappeared.

And I guess I just agreed to drink coffee at 10:15 on a Tuesday night.

Lord help me.

Day 21 of 31: 2 miles

Day 22 of 31: 1.5

Day 23 of 31: 2

Day 24 of 31: 1.8

Day 26 of 31:  5.93

March Total: 44.31

2011 Total: 147.37

You can say that again

C-2 and I are only very occasionally in touch since he moved more or less out of state in December.  He said hi at Christmas.  I wrote him late one night mid-January, in beery nostalgia.  Otherwise we're silent.

As has been discussed in this space ad nauseum, this is not a bad thing.  He and I are known to have highly above-average makeout sessions on occasion. Beyond that he is a badly-behaving distraction who, when given the excuse, I yearn for fruitlessly.  I know he doesn't want to (or can't) give me what I know I want even in a friendship, much less anything more.  Haven't seen him since October.

Hm.  But a few days ago, I was moved to include him on the e-mail invite to my upcoming birthday drinks outing. Within minutes:

C2:  Oh crap, I'll be back in (out-of-state city) by then. But I'm here for a week...Foley's at some point?

Within minutes:

Karin:  But of course.

Bad girl. (Slaps hand.)

Based on our track record of proclaiming we will be together and not being together, I find it unlikely this purported meeting will happen, which is (maybe / maybe not) why I so readily replied.  Although I probably have to admit I'd like it to happen.

So last night I was (surprise!) up very, very late, working on a volunteer editing job for church.  Lo, at 2:53 a.m. (surprise!):

C-2: mornin
K:  indeed
C-2: :)  how r ya
K:  I'm cool. I got caught up in a project. What you up to?
C-2:  just got home
K: Good night? (as in, did you have a good one?)
C-2:  one
C-2:  sec
K:  O
K:  K
C-2:  :)

Eighteen minutes pass.

C-2:  ok, back now
K:  Cool.  I think I have about 5 minutes left in me.
C-2:  yeah, probably true with me too.  Shall we just say g'night?
K:  Sure.
C-2:  less fun than we used to be  :)
K:   Hey, I'm up. That's got to be worth something.
C-2:  it's something

Ain't that the truth.

Floored (Redux)

From the Single in the City archives (8/13/10):

"You know me ... Queen of Cynicism. Surprised by nothing. So much never surprised that I would hate to disappoint everyone by admitting that sometimes, I am.

Naw, I'll admit it. Tonight I got floored.

"Just home from Rooftop Thursday with the Michigan folks, chilling on the patio with a bag of popcorn and the Gmail account, and up shows an erstwhile boy who, in April and May, I chatted with enough to matter. The classic he's-10-years-younger-but-we-have-so-much-in-common type. (Yes. Mock if you will.) We had two Almost Dates. May was the last failed attempt and we hadn't talked since."

During the chat we went on to have,  he asked if I had found true love yet. He said he had not. He said he day-dreamed about me all the time. How even though we were both busy, he wanted to meet so we could both have some excitement in our lives.

He didn't realize that as we chatted, I was reading his blog. A blog that talks about his competitive recreational pursuits, mostly, but also references a woman he calls his wife. It shows pictures of their wedding, which had happened just months before.

Incredulous he didn't remember sharing his blog address with me, I decided not to make a scene. He has problems enough without me taking it personally. The conversation trailed to a close, and I knew I would ignore him if he were ever to contact me again.

I'm still planning to do that.

However, I admit to reading his blog. Pretty regularly, actually. The subject is a recreation I'm well familiar with, and he's passionate enough about it to make it interesting. He admits to a long history with depression and medication and how his devotion to his recreation has helped him get healthy. How he's looking forward to moving from New England after finishing school in May.

It made me empathetic for his struggles rather than pissed at his lying to me and attempts at cheating on his wife. Having been lower myself than I like to be for a number of months now, I've wondered if the depression issues probably contributed to his bad behavior. (Kind of like how mine have contributed to double-digit weight gain and insomnia.)

This past Sunday at 2:35 a.m., 8 months since Erstwhile Boy and I last said goodbye, this OKC message arrived.

"Hey,

Miss talking to you.

How have you been?"

He still claims to be single. He still doesn't lie on his profile about his age or where he lives or make any effort to hide his identity.

And I was sad. Both for him and his wife. But it also gave me pause. I think to the dozens of his blog entries since the new year. Touting challenges set and met. Excitement for his life after school and the new job and new town, for goals, for integrity. Yet at the end of the night he is lonely, quiet, trying to find his fantasy outside of all these things.

In certain ways he is just like me with my public face as a kicker of asses and my private nights, which rarely display the same person.

So, I think, I understand why he wrote.

Day 9 of 31: 3.1 miles

March Total: 12.45

2011 Total: 115.51

Dumped (again)

Maybe when I first meet a guy, I should inform him that if he's just going to eventually dump me via e-mail mid-afternoon on a Friday in January in a wishy-washy tone, he's going to get whatever response I decide he deserves.

Believe me.  I do get tired of trashing guys that I date.  I don't enjoy it.  I'd actually rather be dating them. 

Speaking of, I thought I had a good time with Sunday-night man last Saturday.  He kind of had a good time, but not good enough:

"Hey Karin

Had a fun time...always do with you. But I’ve been thinking about things and realizing that I want to have a an emotional connection with someone that I am being intimate with and I don’t really feel that between us. Honestly, I really do enjoy being with you, but I think I want something more – but not necessarily something serious – I’m a bit up in the air about this so not sure how to convey this correctly....so I think I need to take a bit of time to figure this out. Also, I’m stepping the job search up and I tend to get distracted by women – big time! Oh and if you see me on okcupid, it’s really out of procrastination and boredom – plus it’s a bit of a turn on for me with out having to engage further.....make sense?"

Yeah.  It does.  Fancy way of saying you're not interested.  You were initially hoping we could get together for makeout sessions but because you decided already to take yourself emotionally out of it because you're ostensibly pursuing a career, you're surprised to discover that, voila, we don't have an emotional connection.  That makeout sessions without a connection don't connect nearly as well.  (Funny. Tell yourself you're going to close yourself off to emotions .... and you probably will.)  But you'll probably troll around for sex-chat buddies because better to be bored and procrastinating with girls who don't require anything from you than putting any effort to connecting with someone that you already invested in.  (Guys like toying with women online to get turned on?  Color me speechless.) 

I should have probably said this. 

Instead I did what I thought I needed to do, which is to turn around 10 minutes later and reply: 

"No, your ambiguity is confusing. You have fun, but you don't feel the connection, you enjoy me, but you want something more, but not something serious, but you don't know what, but you're up in the air.

Blah, blah, blah.

When you get around to figuring yourself out, how about not leading someone on for months at a time. Total waste of my energy and that's 3 months of my life I don't get back."

Of course, I don't get that reply back, either. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon wishing I could send a follow-up simply stating:

"Oh.  And also:  you're an ass."

That would be lamer than my initial e-mail.

Besides, I'm exhausted, drained, and feeling foolish for even letting it go on as long as it did.  Mad that he had to go and ruin the start of my weekend.

I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

Well-said.

Tonight I finally wrote the e-mail to Sunday-night Man that I've thought about writing for the last week.  When after a seemingly awesome date on Dec. 17, after an e-mail a few days later to say thanks for it, and after a text a few days after that to ask about his holiday weekend plans, he had failed to do that thing which he said he would as he kissed me goodbye, which was to talk to me later.

"So hey:

I thought it was kind of a good date. I was under the impression we might get together again.

But then it's been obviously quiet on your end. So I'm wondering if I was mistaken.

Mind commenting either way? That'd be cool."

Wonder if he does mind. I'm working on staying levelheaded about either what he responds with or how I might respond if he chooses not to.   It's a learned skill I'm quite good at.  Still, when I've invested a couple months of emotional energy in a scent grown cold, I can't be entirely sure I won't get pissy about it despite all intentions to the contrary.

(It's something about that two months of emotional energy irresponsibly doled out.)

I got a good laugh today, though, while sitting on the toilet.  My current bathroom reading (which, admit it, we all have) is Amy Cohen's The Late Bloomer's Revolution: a 2007 memoir about a Single in the (New York) City writer, about her family, about a facial rash, and a lot about her dating maze.  Kind of like the book I'd write if this blog were a book and I actually had a book deal.

Which means it is worth quoting.  In some form the following paragraphs have appeared on this blog many, many times.  In fact the second is so spot-on that I wondered if it were something I did type but just forgot to push print after finishing.

Thanks, Amy, for writing this instead of reading Proust.

"Although I seldom heard it discussed, I had noticed in my thirties a certain divide between women and their single, childless friends.  We cared about one another and were still close, but often without even realizing it, we seemed regularly to make assumptions about one another...  My single friends and I complained that many of our friends with children thought we had nothing but free time, never understanding how difficult it is to organize your life when you always have to keep it flexible...

"It wasn't that I had so much free time; it was just that unlike my married friends with children I had very little to show for it.  In fact, if I added up all the time I spent setting up the first date, choosing what to wear, meeting for drinks or dinner or coffee or brunch, coming home not sure I was into him, but wanting him to call anyway, getting the call, anticipating the second date, choosing what to wear again, going on the second date, deciding I kind of liked him, going on a third date, deciding I really liked him, going out a few more times, fantasizing about our bike trip to Italy, getting more serious, feeling happy to be alive, wondering if things were getting weird or whether it was just my imagination, obsessing over why things didn't work out, chastising myself for not trusting my instincts in the first place, losing a week or four to mild then extreme depression, slowly feeling better, vowing to forge ahead and not get jaded, starting the whole process all over again, I could have gotten my M.D.  Read all of Proust. And written an opera.  In German.  Twice.  That's what I wanted to say when these women asked me what it was like to have so much free time."

-- The Late Bloomer's Revolution (Amy Cohen), pp. 157-159

I stand corrected

In the interest of full disclosure, I must amend a previously asserted inaccuracy in regards to my outing a few weeks ago with Student Driver:

"I cannot top her with the sheer number of different men I've dated in the last year."

This morning I did some calculating and got back to her with concrete numbers, and she got back to me with some too.

Me: 15 (for a total of 29 outings. Thirteen containing quality-and-more make-out sessions. And one or more dates pending with Sunday-night Man, whose schedule might just be freeing up.)

Her: 34 (and, she's ending the year with the one she's been seeing regularly since July.)

She wasn't lying when she suggested I might be off in my estimation of victory. Snaps, my friend. Thirty-four men in 7 months is full-press dating.

Is less than 3 dates per month a lame average? Perhaps. Regardless, it wasn't unenjoyable to scroll back through the many hots and colds that have brought me to my current state of lukewarm:

-- The months of July and August .... where I was entirely dateless but super-social, including dozens of fruitless nights fantasizing on chat with HBI and doing the Rooftop Thursdays thing that produced dozens of new friends, mostly from the great state of Michigan.

--Valentine's Day Weekend .... when I didn't have a date but found myself first consoling a good friend who had just gotten dumped, only to end up in a hot embrace with another friend who didn't deserve it because he was part of the reason for friend #1's dumping and the hot embrace developed while he was apologizing to me for his role in said dumping, only to then end up more-or-less dumped by the man I was actually kind-of seeing and for no reasons related to my hot embrace with friend #2. Oy.

-- March / April / June/ October .... whose make-out sessions with C-2 must still be deemed the wickedest and most dramatic (Spy Pond grass or handprints on the windshield, anyone?) and, despite his flake-out at the finish, still the most visceral. I'm still working out why, and why I'm still attracted to him in spite of him.

-- My general failure to have dated any men this year because of politics. Or work. Or church. Or musical endeavors. Or bikini-wearing.  Or running (when allowed to spend 2 days bonding in New Hampshire with a vanload of talented runner-engineers, discovering only one would be single and he would not be interested). Which are the activities I spent the most time doing. Evaluation of my activities may be in order.

In any case, please swing over to Student Driver's blog entry summing up her year of Learning to Drive Stick.  Do congratulate her. After trying on 34 men, would you agree she might be able to shed her training-permit status in the new year?

(And, SD, please take that as a compliment.)