excuses and alibis

I was using my fake email address that I use especially for online dating. Which is different from my real email because it does not have my last name and different from my blogging email because it has my real first name. Ravi popped up in gchat, a surprise since I’d only been out with him once. It must have been at the beginning of the fall when I was annoyed at Cooper and trying to date other people. I say,

-Online dating is pretty awful, mostly.
-Yeah. I agree. I didn’t go on that many dates. I could count them on one hand.
-So what you are saying is that having dinner with me was pretty awful.
-No. You were one of the better dates.

He gives me a lot of excuses for why he’s been busy for the past, I don’t know, six months, and asks,

-Was dinner with me awful?
-No.
-So how did I rank?
-You were good. Above average for sure.
-But not top of the class.
-It didn’t hurt that we went to one of my favorite restaurants.
-So it was the food you liked and not the company.
-Geez. I liked the company. I didn’t hear from you, so I assumed it was you who didn’t like the company.
-No, it wasn’t you. [Excuses and alibis] And I hadn’t heard from you, so I wasn’t sure you liked the company.

The truth is the company was great, but by the end of the first date I knew why Ravi was not my person. Without a doubt. I just thought he’d call.

I made plans with him anyway. Plans to eat pizza and watch some basketball on tv. I was debating whether to bring over beer or dessert when he texted to cancel.

No more chances.

~beatrix

p.s. I replaced all the “u”s in Ravi’s messages with “you”s. You’re welcome.

drinking and dating

I keep hoping he just won’t call. I can’t believe I’m already having dating burnout, but I just really really want to put on my pyjamas and stay home.

My phone rings as I’m unlocking the door to my apartment. Of course.

I don’t change clothes. Instead of doing something to my hair, I just re-ponytail it. I make sure I don’t have smudges under my eyes and put on some lip gloss. Done. That’s all I care.

He wants to get coffee, and we end up at a Starbucks. Lame.

I hate dating because I’m so tired of drinking things. In my non-dating life, almost all I ever drink is water. Would it be rude to order water on a date? I can’t do coffee. I grab a bottle of some juice blend. He orders a something-iato something-accino something something Starbucks concoction. With whipped cream. Super lame.

Add to the ever-growing list: I want to date a boy who drinks his coffee like a man.

I should have just gotten some water. I pay because I have a gift card. Super-duper lame.

“I guess I’ll get the first round later.”

Does he really expect me to go somewhere else and drink more things? Not gonna happen.

There’s nowhere to sit, so we go sit in a park. It’s cold. I hate this juice. I hate dating. This is going poorly, and it’s my fault.

We walk around a little. He should have had a plan.

I just want to go home.

I say I don’t feel good. It’s sort of true. I mostly just want to go home. And I really was sick earlier in the week.

We part ways. I go to the grocery store, then home to cook dinner for myself.

It is delicious.

~beatrix

good luck

I meet up with this pediatrician from Brooklyn at noon. We meet in Union Square. I think I’m getting better at recognizing these boys from their pictures, but maybe I’ve just learned to recognize the look people have about them when they are waiting for someone they don’t know.

He’s a little awkward, a little shy.

He has a plan to go to some coffee shop, but it’s closed, maybe closed forever. We go to a different one. I’m not supposed to be drinking coffee, but I order a café au lait anyway. I figure there’s calcium in milk so it’s good for me. He doesn’t like coffee at all, so he orders hot chocolate. I’m not sure why we are here.

We talk. Mostly I talk. It’s like he’s never done this before.

“So. . . what do you do on the weekends?”

I think it’s the third time he’s asked me this.

And I’m hungry. He says he thought the other place, the closed place, would have food.

We walk back to Union Square. He says he needs to buy new shoes.

I wish him good luck.

~beatrix

just saturday

I had things to do when I left Gyan’s Saturday morning, but not urgent things.

So while I’m lounging around in bed, I get a message from Christophe:

“Hi, Beatrix. Can we talk? I don't want you to be upset with me. I'm sorry.”

In a way I’m flattered that he thinks I’m such a prude that I’d be offended by his grampa cheek-kiss. I wonder what he’d think of me if he had any idea what happened last night at Gyan’s.

And then I feel terribly guilty. Cooper reassured me that it was better to just let him think it was the kiss, to let him have a reason so he could just move on. But I don’t want to scar the boy into never kissing a girl on the cheek again.

I don’t know what to do, but I do what I always do when things are hard: think about something else. I meet up with my boss, run an errand at the Plaza, talk to a boy and set up a date for Sunday, and go to Barnes and Noble to sit on the floor with Pete.

Pete would be a recurring peripheral character on the Harper and Beatrix Show. As I’m having trouble with a desperate and needy boy, Pete’s being one. I read a few million lines of a chat he had with some girls he’s crazy over and try to tell him gently that he needs to calm down a little and not scare the girl away.

He knows, though, and the conversation turns to more Overheard-in-New-York-worthy topics. Pete once slept with a girl on a first date after they played hangman. And, unsolicited, he’s trying to help his pretty friend make extra money by hiring her out as a wingwoman. His Craigslist ad is brilliant, and has already gotten two responses. I’m laughing so hard, I seriously hope other people are enjoying this conversation.

“You want cookies?” he asks me.

We have some pre-dessert dumplings, then head to Milk Bar. I’m not feeling great, so he won’t let me touch the cookies we get. Instead he breaks them all and gives me halves.

“You realize the kind of relationship it looks like we have, don’t you?”

Before I go in the subway, he asks me when my next date is.

“Tomorrow at 12. No plan-- I’m just supposed to meet him in Union Square. The real question is should I go hungry or full?”

He assures me that there will be food since the date is at prime brunch time, but advises me to eat something small (he suggests a yogurt) before I go.

~beatrix

my perfect match

Match.com, you’re crazy.

We share culinary interests and find skinny-dipping a turn-on. (Do I?)

We both enjoy gardening and landscaping. (Did I really check that I like these things?)

But he’s wearing no shirt, clutching the underpants that are sticking out of his jeans, lives in the Bronx, and has kids.

As for his favorite hot spots, he says, “i’ll take her to apple bees or oliver garden or wherever she want to go.”

Hmm.

I’m pretty sure I do not need the internet to help me get boys like this.


~beatrix

1 2 3 GO

So now that I went a month without kissing anyone, I need a date as soon as possible. Everything else is all set, I just need to start back.

1 2 3 Go.

I was thinking about it anyway, and there was a poster for one of those free dating sites in the subway. I decided to look into it.

I had looked at the other free one, but there was a little too much of a Kid Rock vibe there: too much waist length hair and shirtless-ness.

This other free one? Too much of a desperate vibe.

You have to write approximately four sentences about yourself while you are signing up. Mine was filler garbage. I just wanted to have a look at the boys before I made an effort to be clever and flirty.

Within seconds, I got an instant message from a guy telling me, “Nice profile.”

What? Did you even read it?

And I didn’t post a picture, so it wasn’t that.

The boys on that site aren’t from Manhattan or even boroughs. They’re from suburbs. Gross.

I guess I’ll have to go back to free internet dating the old-fashioned way: making up new email addresses and doing free 3-day trials on Match.com .

~beatrix