Multifaceted

This was date two with The Archeologist. He was surprising-- in a very good way. The sushi thing went okay. We ate slowly, and thus I wasn’t able to eat the gargantuan amount of raw fish that I usually do. That’s probably a good thing. As soon as we sat down, a group of my good friends from high school sat down at the bar next to us. I was very excited to see them. I was the kind of excited girls get when their voice goes up an octave and they just squeak and hug. I don’t do this often-- these girls are some of my all-time favorite people.  I’m not sure The Archeologist was so excited to have company... a second time (refer to “Remember Shawn” from June 16^th). Poor guy. Bad luck; but we enjoyed dinner and I don’t think he was too distressed.

It was exciting to get to know him. He’s the type of person you think you can pin down, then you learn something new and have to shift your whole perspective. Here, I’ll simulate it for you. Build a picture in your mind of Shawn from Boy Meets World. You got it? Here we go...

So he looks sixteen, but you’re wrong-- he’s actually in his late twenties. 

Okay now you’re picturing an old Shawn, but make him cultured and slightly rugged like an archeologist...because he is an archeologist. You with me? 

Next you learn that he owns a house and a Mercedes. At this point, you’ve got an older, rugged, cultured Shawn that is also very stable and grounded. Good. Nice work.

Now how does he finance his outstanding stability you ask? He wins poker tournaments. 

I told you. Full of surprises.

I really appreciate that about him. I feel like I’m a little bit the same way: multi-faceted. I think it’s a good thing. He’s kind of the whole package I’m looking for: intelligent, loves his job, grounded, cultured (he’s from the East Coast so he’s practically a foreigner), has a little accent (only a coowutuh of the time), and he plays poker. Matt Damon plays poker. It’s pretty hot. Then he used the word "morpheme" correctly. Wow. Huge bonus points. I love morphemes. 

He might be my favorite. This makes me feel really bad for The Hunter. Not bad like “awww, poor guy”, but bad in the pit of my stomach, like I ate sixteen mountain rolls at sushi-- but I definitely did not. It’s the guilt. I ate too much guilt. 

I don’t know what I expected from this whole challenge. I guess I expected to just know on the first date whether it was meant to be... or to not...to be. I need Shakespeare on my dates, evidently. There have only been a couple of dates that were immediate no’s. Readers, you know the two. I expected the internet dating guys to show up with some obvious trait that would eliminate them from a possible second date. I thought they would have missing teeth or greet me with a Vulcan salute. I also thought that most of the men would meet me and think “she’s nice” but wouldn’t want a second date. Nope, they’ve been pretty skilled at recognizing my awesomeness (again, I never wrote “modest” in my profile). In my mental image of the Try Twenty-Five Mission, I thought I would have a clear favorite. In reality, there are a lot of guys that have several traits from my “Ooh” list and it’s harder than I thought. Maybe I’ll start my own church that allows reverse polygamy. That may end up being the easiest option. It’ll be just like this picture in a blog I found about “polyandry” (thethinkingblog.com). Genius.

Too Comfortable for Comfort

I suck at this game-- and it’s my own game. I went out with The Hunter for the fourth time. Four is way too many. I’m beginning to get comfortable. Not comfortable like I would burp in front of him, but comfortable like when I see something funny on TV or have my car die in the middle of a parking lot (I hate you, Pathfinder), one of my first thoughts is to text him and tell him. 

The problem is that once I get comfortable with one guy, it gives him a completely unfair advantage over the rest. I will be comparing each of the next nineteen dates to him without even being conscious of it. This “comfortable” thing is just a sneaky form of settling that I didn’t see coming. I don’t want to stop seeing him, and I can’t undo “comfortable”. I can’t be like “Oops, sorry. This really nice, relaxed thing we have going here is just not what I’m looking for. Will you take your flowers back?” 

I’m going to have to come up with some sort of solution for my inner turmoil. Maybe I’ll tell him I have multiple personality disorder to scare him away. At least it would be a guilt-free, clean break.

On the Chaco front, things are looking up. He looked up a few dance studios and emailed me their schedules. The only time that worked for both of us was Saturday evenings, which will seriously interfere with the overall goal of The Mission. But I love to dance. I love to dance like Nathaniel loves to dance (if you did not get that joke you need to youtube “Nathaniel loves to dance” immediately). So I’m going to spend four Saturday evenings learning to west coast swing with Chaco. I wonder if he’ll wear the sandals to dance class. That would be epic. I might step on his naked Chaco toes. Here’s another interesting factor: we have not touched... at all. I hope Chaco knows that you have to actually touch your dance partner. 

My date prospects are waning. I’ve been sick and have let a couple of emails and texts fall through. I’ve decided that today I’ll be a little more proactive and try to add a couple of new dates to the calendar. Tonight I’m going to sushi with The Archeologist. You remember, the one that used to look like Shawn from Boy Meets World? Sushi is a tricky date. The more I think about it the more I realize it’s a bad idea. If I eat as much sushi as I can, I risk scaring him. If I eat too little, I appear incapable. I’m hoping I decide I don’t like him. Then I can eat six orders of upside-down shrimp, get sauce all over my face, and not give a shit.

Spotted

One of the greatest reasons to internet date is that I get to meet all kinds of people I’ve never met, and will probably never meet outside of our double-blind, top-secret codenamed online dating universe. Online dating doesn’t just expand my pool of prospective partners, it gives me a whole new pool. Or it’s supposed to. 

I just checked my email and found that a classmate from my high school had found me. I was discovered-- exposed. Now someone from the real world knew that I was looking for dates in the digital world. It felt like running into an acquaintance in the “family planning” section at WalMart. Eek! Stay calm, I thought. Reno’s a small town. It makes sense. I probably just came up in his matches-- it happens to the best of us. He probably just enjoyed a little chuckle and we will both pretend like it never happened. It’s all going to be okay.

Except that it’s not-- because he saw my profile and clicked “Yes, I’m interested!” 

Holy hell. I really don’t think it’s possible he didn’t recognize me. I’m not one of those people who has changed since high school. I look exactly the same as I did when I was eighteen. And my screen name has a recognizable section of my first name in it. Nope, there’s no escaping it. I’ve been spotted.

Self-Supremacy and Antiseptic

Chaco and I went on a second date. It was horrible. Not because of him-- because of my stupid cough that I have. The whole time I was either coughing, or wanting to cough. He was justifiably grossed-out and it was hard for me to even contribute to the conversation. And there was no touching. We could have been on a school field trip. We stayed at antiseptic distance through a thai food dinner and two beers.

Needless to say, this second date was not as promising as the first. It wasn’t entirely the cough, though. The night started off with him pointing out the tan line on his feet from his Chacos (see? The name totally fits). The kid IS his shoes. Then there were little points in the conversation where he seemed like a self-supremacist. This is a term I use for people who think their opinions and insights are superior and more worthy than the opinions and insights of others. These are the type of people that would argue something like “mixed berry muffins are better than blueberry muffins” and be truly devoted to the belief that their opinion is the all-knowing truth. I’ve been guilty of this on occasion, but I find it irritating even in myself. Chaco wasn’t that bad, either. He had just a hint of self-supremacy-- a sprinkling, if you will. 

So the night was not awesome. But we still managed to talk and get to know each other better. At one point we had talked about taking some dance lessons. When he walked away at antiseptic distance towards his car, he said he would look into it and give me a call. I’ll have to try not to cough into the receiver when he does.