Anniversary of the beginning of a relationship that went nowhere fast

A year ago yesterday, Friday October 27, 2006, I had my first date with Rolly.

I was thinking of it yesterday, a year later, because the days turned out to be superficially similar. Of course I would have no way of remembering what I’d done a year ago if it hadn’t been for that famous/infamous first date, which fixed every detail in my mind.

So here’s what happened a year ago:
– it was raining;
– Sophie (of Peter and Co. on 34th Street) did my hair;
– I had a swing-dance lesson in Chelsea;
– I went back uptown, took a bubble-bath, and got ready to meet Rolly for the first time; he had contacted me via jdate on September 4, and we had had an intermittent email correspondence since then. As you can no doubt tell, and as I should have been able to tell, he was hardly in a hurry to meet me.
– We were to meet at the restaurant pictured above at 8 pm; rather later than the average dinner-date, but — to repeat — he was hardly in a hurry to meet me!
– at about 7:15 pm, when I was getting ready to go out the door, my cell phone rang. It was Rolly. We had never spoken on the phone before. He pretended — oh, he pretended lots of things. He pretended that his cell phone had just rung and asked if I had called him (I hadn’t). Then he said he was ‘running late’ and would meet me at the restaurant at 8:15 instead of 8. I said ‘okay’ — what option was there?
– my response was mixed: first I thought, ‘running late’? from what? (I believe I’ve posted about this before, but it made such an impression that here it is again). What is a retired septuagenarian (I had already discovered via peoplefinders.com that he wasn’t 69, as his profile said and in fact still says today, October 28, 2007, though he’s now half a year from 75) whose grown children no longer live at home going to ‘run late’ from? But then, Rolly always ‘ran late’; it was a sign of his deep ambivalence about being with me.
– but my second thought was, What a beautiful voice! He sounded like Roosevelt (FDR, that is); he had one of those classy old-fashioned upper-crust New York accents. I think most of the people who spoke that way are dead; there must be very few of them left. I only know one other person now who talks that way, and she’s 86. If you want to know what I mean, listen to a recording of FDR giving a speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8ujMc1LH0U
[Well, Rolly doesn't sound exactly like FDR there, but that's the general idea.]
– And my third thought was, Gee, maybe there’s something to be said for dating a much-older man. With a voice like that…(men’s voices have always been important to me).

* * *

This is getting much too detailed. I had only four more dates with Rolly — Nov 12, Nov 18, Nov 26, and Dec 1 — and then one more after we had broken up, on Dec 10 — but I am cursed with the memory of almost every detail of each one.

* * *

But what I’m trying to talk about is the similarities between the Friday of two days ago and the Friday when I met Rolly.

It was too late to decide to leave later, because I was ready to go out the door when he phoned. I had nothing left to do, and already had on rain gear to protect my first-date gear. So I thought, Why don’t I stop at my mother’s to say hello? She lives on the route between the subway stop and the restaurant where we were meeting (see photo above).

So I called her and told her I was dropping by. I think my excuse was some new pictures of my children, which she’s always happy to receive, of course.

* * *
Then I walked to the restaurant, but I was about 10 minutes early. I had already decided what to do with the time: I would recover from the rain and make myself perfect in the ladies’ room. I did. It was one of those dates (my first date this time round, in June 2006, was the only other one) when I looked in the mirror and thought, Okay, this is my best. I’m looking the best I possibly can, and it’s pretty good — for me! Let’s hope it looks good to him.

And I thought of the mistakes (as I took them to be, and I think they were) I’d made in the previous couple of months on dates, not really paying good attention to the men, not making good eye-contact, not opening my mind enough to them) and I looked at my face in the mirror and vowed to be the ideal woman his profile had described, one who would smile at him in bed in the morning.

I wrote an unrhyming sonnet about it the next day. It began,

In the ladies room at Trattoria Dante Ristorante,
Before we met, I vowed to be the woman
His ‘Profile’ said he wanted, who would smile
At him when he woke up, ‘and I would smile back,’ it said.

When I returned, he had arrived and was already
Seated, his dark eyebrows just like the picture’s, a hearing-aid
In his left ear, his manner mild, apologetic, not quite as dry
And funny as his email prose.

* * *

Clearly I’ll have to say more about this later. This is too much detail.

It was still raining when we left the restaurant. We walked to the Astor Place station and took the subway uptown together; I got off first.

* * *

So this past Friday, October 26, when it was raining most of the afternoon and evening, I was reminded of last year, that very Friday, and noted these similarities:

1. It was raining.

2. Sophie did my hair.

3. I had a swing-dance lesson.

4. I was going all over the place, uptown, downtown, retracing my steps, taking lots of subways.

5. I was even wearing the same jacket, in both cases the first time this season I’d worn it, a warm but not too heavy black hooded jacket that is fairly waterproof.

6. I dropped by my mother’s for a visit at night — actually at almost the same time: last year 7:30 - 7:45 pm, this year 6:40 - 8:20 pm (world’s most fascinating statistic) — before going on in the rain to something more exciting (last year Rolly, this year my dancing school’s Halloween party).

* * *

In a sonnet I had written (dated October 26) before our date, I imagined Rolly wondering why on earth we were going out:

He’s thinking: how did I get myself into this?
Why am I having dinner with this woman?
All I did was send her a few sentences
Over email, analysis of Casablanca

And The Third Man. Then I forgot about her.
Then I wrote again. And she wrote back. And now,
Seven weeks later, God knows why, I’m meeting her.
Too late now to back out. Three hours or four:
How bad can it be?

After I had gotten to know him a bit, I showed the sonnet to Rolly, who wrote back, ‘The voice you gave me was right on the money, except your last line was more charitable. The reason I called and said I’d be late is that I was dawdling, postponing our meeting as long as possible. And as I finally headed out the door, my thoughts were along the lines of, “Great, now it’s fucking pouring, just to complete the picture.” So the evening turned out to be a pleasant surprise.’

* * *

And you’re thinking, Hey? what is this? what about Performer? isn’t he still in the picture? aren’t they lovers and in love? why is she writing about Rolly?

* * *
Good question.

Well, Performer is still away performing; he’s returning Sunday afternoon, today, and coming over here to spend the night.

And I often think about Rolly, because the experience was intense.

Performer is a million times better for me, and there’s absolutely No Comparison between the relationships. Quite simply, P wanted exactly what I wanted, lots of intimacy and lots of communication. R never wanted either. But at the time, I thought it was the beginning of something that would prove important (well, in a way it did) and maybe permanent, and I was in A State, that is, A State of High Anxiety and Nervous Uncertainty, Big Highs and Lows, the whole time, the way I never was with P, because he began calling me regularly within 12 hours after the end of our first date.

So I don’t know why I’m writing about Rolly. I no longer feel any attraction to him, and I knew the moment we broke up that that was right.

I don’t have an answer.

But, in the absence of Performer Friday and Saturday (and for the past week), that’s what crossed my mind.

* * *
To those who reached this blog by googling Trattoria Dante Ristorante: yes, the food was good, as were the service and the prices (and the ladies’ room mirror). Go eat there.

Explore posts in the same categories: Sophie of Peter & Co, first-date restaurants, first-dates, rolly