live-blogging from the frontlines of manhattan dating

TUESDAY 8 JANUARY

5:54 p.m.
I read encouraging comment on most recent post from Melissa of domesticirritation.com.

6:15
I start getting dressed for the date with RB.

6:50
I leave to walk 11 blocks to the restaurant where we’re meeting at 7:30. Leaving this early so I have time to comb my hair (which always, always, no matter what the weather, gets messed up when I’m outside; it’s that kind of hair — doesn’t lie flat) and freshen up my make-up. Ever since first date w. Rolly, 27 October 2006, have tried to do this when possible, because I like to look my best.

6:55
Man on NE corner of xxth Street & Xth Avenue asks me for money. Superstitious, I think that generosity to beggars will help me meet the right man, so I dig in my pocketbook and find a dollar to give him.

7:00
Arrive at restaurant, check my jacket, and make bee-line to ladies’.

7:05
Realize I’ve arrived way too early; go to coatcheck area to wait.

7:20
My date arrives; we first view one another from about 2 feet away, I in surprise that he has arrived so early, he in greater surprise that I have arrived even earlier. Both of us slightly unsure that the other is really the one we’re meeting.

7:22
We sit down at a table for four and size one another up. He’s older-looking than I had expected but very pleasant and handsome. Also, he’s shyer than I had anticipated. He was direct, sexy, and witty over email; in person he’s at first very quiet. Feel I need to make him relax, though I had thought the situation would be the reverse.

7:30 – 8:45 or 9
We eat dinner together. I’m asking myself, So, what do you think? is there any attraction there? and my answer each time is, Maybe. It’s possible. Not yet sure. Still surprised that after all his ‘bold’ sexy emails, he’s somewhat shy, though at the same time not untalkative.

The inevitable, predictable question arises (from him): what have my experiences been with internet dating? I brace myself for the inevitable, predictable stories of women who were older and uglier than self-described. I listen to those stories, as I have from almost every man I’ve dated, including Rolly, Performer, and many others. I don’t tell all my best stories — don’t want my blog to be findable — but tell him a few.

9 – 11:45
We go to his apartment nearby and he gives me tea, as we had discussed in great and amusing detail over email beforehand. His apartment is enormous and elegant in a rather formal way. At first we sit in the very formal living room; then we move briefly to his study to listen to some music, and finally to cosy sofa in diningroom / den to watch the NH primary returns. This is a good idea, because the sofa gives us a more informal space to be together, and the continuing returns give us lots to talk about. When our conversation gets more intense, we mute the returns, and then when we pause a moment we listen again to the news.

He brings me another cup of tea.

At first I talk about leaving around 11, but he says, why so early? I say, okay, it can be later, but around 11:40 it’s clear that — well, I don’t know exactly how to put it, but no significant physical contact has been made, and he seems to get shyer and shyer. Or something. I don’t know. I like him more and more, but the electricity isn’t there. I keep trying to put out of my mind my first date with Performer, when within minutes of arriving at my apartment we were making out intensely.

That kind of connection is not here.

We discuss our families, our children, aspects of our background, and American politics. We touch lightly on Hillary R C and feminism; we discuss the jacket she wore during her post-primary speech (NH). (It’s I, not he, who brings up that subject.)

11:50
We go downstairs, and he accompanies me home in a taxi. At my building he gets out of the cab to say goodbye and turns to embrace me. I kiss him briefly on the lips, because that’s what most of my recent dates have done to me. Figured it would signify that I liked him — somehow — and had enjoyed myself. After our lips meet, for a fraction of a second, he says something like Oh! with great surprise.

He then gets back in the cab and I enter my building.

WEDNESDAY 9 JANUARY

12:10 a.m.
Once I’m home, I realize that there were no visible photos of his late wife (his only romance, a singularly happy one, from about 1953 in high school through her death in 2002) in his apartment. There were lots of photos of his son — a lot — and quite a number of his grandchildren. Unlike Dan, at whose apartment I ate dinner last March, RB seems to have hidden them all.

I also assume that he has figured out by now that my quick but lippy kiss does not signify uncontrollable sexual desire but just a nice warm goodnight.

9:00 a.m.
I read light, jokey, pleasant email from RB, sent around 7 a.m., and respond in kind, thanking him for dinner and the evening.

His email contained this sentence: “You’re a fun person.”

So I guess I followed Roy’s first rule correctly.

3:00 p.m.
Status quo of RB & self: hope to hear from him and get together again. Maybe he’ll be more relaxed next time, and maybe I’ll be too, and maybe something can develop. I haven’t entirely ruled him out yet. I like him and want there to be more attraction. We both ‘want the same thing,’ but whether we can have that ’same thing’ with one another remains to be seen. Attraction could develop….but I don’t know.

I wish it could have, or rather I hope it does, but I’m doubtful. Will see.

This may be — to use a phrase I learned to use in this context from Rolly — a ‘near miss.’ Too bad, if so.

3:20 p.m.
Skimming jdate quickly, I notice that my date for tonight is online. Of course, he may have noticed that I am, so we’re even.

5:15 p.m.
FG (Film Guy, tonight’s date) calls and asks me which subway to take to meet me. He asks me to meet him at the subway station, but I suggest a local wine bar (one I’ve wanted to try) instead. I ask him to call me on his cell when he’s out of the subway, but he claims he’ll be there in half an hour, and says we should just meet at the wine bar.

5:45 p.m.
I leave to go to the wine bar.

6:10 p.m.
FG finally arrives. I’m chilly (it was warm and it turned cold), my hair is messy, and I’m irritated that he’s so late, though I assume he probably can’t help it. I didn’t wait inside because he brushed aside my precise directions (SW corner) and said he would stand outside the place. Of course, now I’ve been the one standing outside… FG looks at me and greets me with a very warm smile.

6:11 – 9:05 p.m.
FG and I sit over drinks and then serious snacks at this very nice wine bar — quiet, pleasant, good and unobtrusive service, not very expensive, good temperature, definitely the perfect choice for a date.

Soon he is giving me the same goofy smile that Yellow-Tie gave me over drinks and dinner a year and three days ago, and complimenting me in the same way, telling me that I’m beautiful, that I have a terrific body, just the kind he likes, that I’m everything he wants in a woman, that he’s going to fall in love with me etc.

(Aside to readers who don’t know the non-virtual me: this never happened to me when I was a teenager. And I barely danced with anyone at the first dreadful freshman-year mixer in college. The older I get, the more men seem to like me; I’ve gotten more compliments since June 2006, when I started dating, than I have in the entire rest of my life.

Then why the f*ck can’t I find anyone?!? Okay, back to the story.)

So in our roughly two-and-a-half hour date, these are the topics we cover in continuous conversation:

1) how beautiful I am and how I am just the woman for him, when am I going to be free to see him again, etc. He asks me what age men usually think I look, implying that I look much, much younger etc. etc. I say I don’t know because I never asked, but that is a lie: Performer used to tell me in bed that I had the body of a twenty-year-old.

I guess I should have known the relationship with Performer was going downhill when he told me I had the body of a twenty-five-year-old.

At one point FG asks me what I’m thinking, and I say to him, ‘You have to stop giving me those goofy looks. They remind me of a dreadful date I had last year, a man I never wanted to see again after the first date,’ and I tell him the story of Yellow-Tie.

And I’m also thinking, And your fate may be similar, even if there’s a second date.

And like every other man I’ve dated, FG tells me internet dating war stories. I am getting very tired of these. I could do the whole men’s-internet-dating-war-stories thing myself, I mean, telling their stories before they tell them to me.

2) his professional life: he’s not doing anything right now. He has done various somewhat interesting things over his career, none of them really fascinating to me, but passable, if otherwise things about him were better. But I’m not really interested in getting to know better a man who’s not doing anything. RB is retired, but he’s very active in many ways.

3) his health: some potentially serious problems. He has had surgery recently, and he’s not in great shape.

4) finally — and this is the deal-breaker for me, though I think I’ll see him one more time, maybe — his very sad family life. He has essentially no family whatsoever, because he cut off contact with one close family member in a fit of pique at something trivial and lost touch with another. When I asked him about the possibility of getting back in touch, he said, “They know where I am.” He is the 30th man I’ve dated, and not one of them has had so very, very sad and empty a family life. Even REG, whose dead child was never mentioned during our dates, at least had a mother and aunts he was in close touch with. This is The Saddest. It upsets me.

* * *
I tell him that I prefer to keep my private life not entirely visible to my doormen, so we should say goodnight at the other end of the block. We kiss — briefly, lips — and he gives me another somewhat goofy smile, and off he goes to the subway.

* * *

Now this block is beginning to be haunted, like the block I lived on a year ago, with memories of all the men I kissed goodnight and never saw again: here’s where REG and I kissed goodnight, and here’s where I kissed RB goodnight, surprising him, and now here’s where FG and I kissed goodnight. I hope to see RB again, and I know I’ll see FG again (if his health doesn’t interfere), but I feel nothing much will come of either of those relationships. Edna St. Vincent Millay says, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, / I have forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten. I know exactly where and why.

9:25 – 10:00 p.m.
I sit at my computer to write this post, soon realizing, as I list the depressing topics of my conversation with FG, that I’m going to have to disappoint him. There is nowhere for this relationship to go. He was somewhat attractive, and I liked him, and he talked a sexy line (lots and lots of references, quick ones, to sex, and other references, separately, to my body and how much he liked it blah blah blah), and I can imagine making out with him if I were full of desire or slightly silly for some reason, but there’s no hope there.

Why not just be prepared to refuse a second date?

I don’t know.

At the moment, I’m thinking that I don’t have the energy for that conversation. It might be easier to have a second date. But then either I’d have to be ‘cold’ in some way, and that wouldn’t be pleasant, and would probably lead to a face-to-face conversation about what I felt about him, or I’d have to fake and seem warm and friendly (a little making-out) and then disappoint him when the third date was mentioned.

I feel sorry for him. Should I do this with quick, direct pain? or what?

He’s funny and sort of attractive, but his health is terrible, he’s not doing anything much, and he’s alienated from every member of his family. And oh yes, when I asked him if he had friends, he said no, though he does (it appeared from some of his conversation) have a few.

Doesn’t he realize that all these issues make him unattractive as a potential partner or even date?

I guess not.

I know that everyone hearing this will think, Why go on a second date with him at all, given all those liabilities? what would be the point? or why not lie and say you’re busy? It’s not as if he’s suddenly going to start doing something interesting or get back in touch with his family.

And then I might have to tell him to his face that I didn’t think this was going to go anywhere, or turn away his enthusiastic advances, or something. Isn’t it better not to get his hopes up?

I’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

* * *

Some combination of RB and FG might be good, a man who is jolly, happy, positive, healthy, with wonderful relationships with his family and lots of friends (like RB), but (like FG) sexy, knows how to talk sexy and come on to a date, someone with experience flirting and courting. Both last night and this night, during the dates, I’ve had to fight the memory of better first dates, with men who have seemed livelier, more interesting, more fun to talk to, and sexier.

So much, alas, for numbers 29 and 30 (men, not dates), even though I’d like to see RB again somehow, some day. But I fear he’s a bit clueless about the subtle steps that lead to physical connections; and anyway I may not ever be really attracted to him.

Ho hum.

* * *

Okay, well, this wasn’t really live-blogging, because I didn’t have my laptop with me, but the form of this post is modelled on the NY Times live-blogging accounts of the primaries: 7:45 a.m.: Hillary has a cup of coffee with milk and addresses 25 teachers. 8:01 a.m.: Obama has a cup of coffee with milk and sugar and meets group of students. 8:03 a.m.: McCain has a cup of tea etc etc.

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