On the train headed up to the Compound for Thanksgiving, it hit me that it's been a year since I forced the itinerant sailor to break up with me. He was feeding Salem for the weekend while I was away, and we were going to get something to eat before I left for the Holiday. He had been either ignoring me or making excuses not to see me for a couple of weeks, and in general, I was miserable. That's right, I did say forced. Why didn't I just break up with him if I was so unhappy? I think I just wanted him to stop being such a weasel, man up, and tell me he didn't want to be with me anymore. He couldn't look me in the eye as he was telling me he had a lot of stuff going on in his life, he really needed to be alone, and at the end of his explanations and excuses, it was just a relief to know where I stood.
Silly me thinking it was a simple break up. Over the next couple of weeks, lies were discovered, there were threats (not by me, but by a very protective friend), the vagrant sailor was reprimanded by the Museum Director (although that was ridiculous - why anyone got her involved is still beyond me, but I think someone was trying to cover his ass), and there was a 3AM argument at Fresh Salt right before Christmas where Jesse told us to stop yelling at each other. I had never had such a drama fueled post breakup, and I was still miserable and my self esteem was pretty low.
For it being a short relationship, a number of things were life-changing:
Hanging out with him was the final straw for a friendship between another volunteer and I that was already very strained.
The state of my self esteem after the breakup finally made me go to therapy to deal with why I had such issues with relationships. There was a dichotomy between how I felt inside and what I projected to the public. It was a puzzle to me how people had an impression of a really confident self-assured woman when I felt so small and insignificant and invisible.
A friend challenged me to a bet - 15 dates in 10 weeks. If you're not familiar with that story, you can read it here.
The therapist thought the bet was a great idea. It did help me listen to my gut more (instead of my overactive brain), and having that many men 'interested' in me (it was mostly on-line dating) helped with the self-esteem problems. I was able to sift through all the options - it was like shopping.
Date number 12 seemed the most promising, but after two rounds of dating him with a five month lag between rounds, I saw him for what he was. I'm still not quite sure what that was, but I know that it wasn't anything that I needed in my life. Too many questions and that all too familiar sinking feeling surrounded the last date and the following week of unclear texts - too tired, too busy, too unable to plan.
He disappeared for a second time, and I won't go looking for him again. It was also a relief that the last evidence of the bet was gone - how to explain to someone why they were referred to as number 12? How would they react to the bet? It would either be "I was one of 15!" or "I was one of 15?"
Around mid-October, between only being contacted by men in their 20's and men in the 50's, I had had it with OK Cupid. I was giving up on dating until at least the new year. This time it wasn't so much why don't they want me, but that I was just so tired of what was available to me in this limited fashion. There had to be something better, but I was ready to just be by myself for a while.
In my new free state, I went to meet Heidi B at the New Museum one evening. Her friend Eric had sent her an invite for a book signing of one of his former professors at SCI-ARC, and I tagged along. He wasn't someone I'd typically be interested in (somewhere along the way I had decided that guys in the profession were off-limits, they were so self-absorbed usually), so we chatted a lot about working in New York, about grad school, the economy, and then the question: So, are you dating anyone? Since I was so adamantly not looking for someone, I immediately took it as he was just being friendly, just making conversation. A couple of us went to dinner, we ended up sitting next to each other, the conversation kept on, and I figured that something was happening that was more organic than catching a glimpse of someone's thumbnail photo on a website.
A couple of days later, he casually emailed asking if I wanted to meet for a drink. Sure, I've been wanting to check out the Standard. We met for drinks and then dinner that night, and then drinks two nights later, and then a movie at his apartment two nights after that. I feel like I've been caught off guard, but in a really good way. Being male, he could always disappear like the rest of them, but we'll see.
So after a three month hiatus, I'm back to looking on OKCupid.com, better known as shopping for dates. After the disappearance of date #12 back in April, I realized I was exhausted, and longed for a sense of normalcy in my life where I wasn't constantly focusing on how many dates I could get in one week, whether I would be kissed, and having a ticking time clock going the entire time, knowing if a date didn't hit the 120 minute mark, it wouldn't count. For a couple of those betting dates, things I'd rather have been doing with 120 minutes:
1. Seeing a movie. 2. Having drinks with friends. 3. Working (oh right. Those dates WERE work). 4. Rust busting with a needle gun. 5. Coloring my hair/doing laundry/vacuuming.
Some of you may know vacuuming is not something I love to do, although some of the other five were tasks I spend time doing after the bet was done. I enjoyed them. Especially the rust busting. Seriously, if you've never done it, there are very few things more satisfying than freeing a large expanse of metal from rust. Same goes for scraping paint with a heat gun. Lettie is now free of that awful Admiral Blue paint thanks partially to my efforts.
First there was a 33-year old recent graduate from an intense MBA two year program at Columbia. As a general rule I don't mix with MBA's; guys who work in investment banks don't appeal to me in the least. He seemed to have a more interesting pre-post-graduate life - he was a set designer - so I decided to give him a chance. There was a flurry of emails, he caught my interest, and even though one of his daily companions was a small dog, we set a date. I'm always wary of guys who live with a pet that is smaller than my cat. On the Friday that we were supposed to meet up, he emailed me wanting to postpone. Since I was dealing with a deadline at work, and was exhausted and not really in the mood to be pretty and charming, I agreed. There were a handful of emails that followed, and then, nothing.
A couple of weeks later I got an email from OKCupid.com saying I had a 4 or 5 star match with someone else on the site. He was a rare book appraiser for a small non-profit, had great taste in music, film, and books (not a big stretch), and was attractive. We met for drinks one night, which led to meeting again to go explore the High Line and more drinks and making out on a street corner at a subway entry. A third date was scheduled. I had my reservations , there were some things that just didn't click with me, but I put them out of my mind, wanting to be open to different types of people. I figured a third date wouldn't hurt. For the third date, we met up for dinner in my neighborhood. After dinner, I said good night. We made plans to meet up again a couple of days later, but that morning he texted saying he was hungover, and didn't think he would make it. This was at 11AM. We weren't going to meet up until 7PM. I set aside the distinct possibility that he was blowing me off. A couple of days later he confirmed what I had tried to put out of my mind: he'd decided to spend time with someone else. This wasn't a big surprise, nor was it in retrospect a big disappointment.
I have to applaud this guy for having the guts to do what a lot of guys (and girls, I have to admit) just can't quite drum up the courage to do when online connections just don't work out - be decent enough to reject someone, even if its over email. More times than not, guys just disappear without a word. In the past, I would endlessly wonder what happened to them. It would depend on what I knew about them, but some of the things I've considered have been:
The all too common falling off a cliff / under a bus / onto the subway tracks (morbid, I know).
His work piled up so high on his desk, that it fell over and buried him.
Deportation.
A rare case of amnesia.
A crashed server, loss of my email, phone number, and OKC account information.
Luckily, I don't really dwell on these things like I used to. That much pondering takes up way too much room in my thoughts, and its exhausting. I do occasionally wonder what happened to #12. He was genuinely busy with an insane work schedule, and when we just couldn't schedule that third date due to his work interruptions, I stopped making an effort towards getting him to see me again. After no contact for four months, on Saturday sometime between when I got up and when I needed to be down to catch Pioneer's lines at noon, I decided to send him an email to see what he was up to. I did not expect a response, I just needed to satisfy my own particular nagging question.
