Expectations

A week ago there was no Dimple Girl. I had an online prospect that I was lukewarm about, but mostly I was learning to be happy and single.

Then I met Dimple Girl and everything changed. A real live, flesh and blood woman paid attention to me! Since then I've been consumed by a project to get in touch with her. Stalking her on Facebook. Googling her friends. Consulting with my trusted advisers.

This morning I made it happen. For the first time since February, I have asked out a woman who I didn't "meet" online. A live, organic one. Okay-- I sent her an email, so the asking out part wasn't live and organic, but I'm taking baby steps here.

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If you believe in signs, you might think it significant that as I was leaving the Unitarian church on Sunday, I saw someone (from a distance) who looked an awful lot like "Heather," Dimple Girl's friend who I know from tennis, going into the church. Dimple Girl's friend, who I never see outside the tennis center, and I see her twice in two days? Here was another opportunity for me to find out more about Dimple Girl. But I chickened out again and didn't talk to her.

I was, however, able to parlay that almost-meeting into an excuse to email Heather. Online, I found an old Unitarian church newsletter that had Heather's email in it, and sent her a message asking her about the church. "Hey, was that you I saw going into the UU church on Sunday? I just started going and really like it..."

I also asked her if she could do me a favor and get me in touch with Dimple Girl.

She found my request to contact Dimple Girl "very random" but said she would pass it along to DG, who is one of her best friends. She warned me, however, that DG is "a bit nuts" and was really drunk the other night, so she might not remember me.

Oh, shit, I thought. I didn't care about the "bit nuts" part. (Only a bit? Bring it on!!) But I was worried about the part where she might not remember me. Could it be that I'd only imagined her interest in me? Is this another case where I've taken a lady's attention and blown it all out of proportion? Could I be an idiot for two reasons-- 1.) for not talking to her when I had the chance, and 2.) for thinking she was more into me than she was?

Later in the day Heather passed along DG's email address, without any comment about whether she remembered me. She added that she's really curious about what I have to say to DG. (Wow, thanks for the added pressure!)

So over the afternoon I crafted a message to DG that I thought was charming and harmless. First, I asked if she remembered me from Friday. (Let's establish that first.) I said that I noticed her at the bar, and thought that she had noticed me noticing her, but it was a crazy night and I didn't talk to her as much as I wanted. (Left off the "because I'm a wuss" part.) So I asked if she wanted to get a drink some time. I ran the text by some of my advisers, and after a good night's sleep and some editing, I sent it off this morning.

I have logged off my email so that I won't check it every 30 seconds.

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Heather thought this whole thing was "random." A different word I would use is "crazy." I know nothing about this girl, other than she returned my gaze in a bar. Why am I going through all this trouble to get in touch with her? I don't even know if I want to date someone right now!

This craziness that I exhibit when I ask a girl out-- it's standard. It's simply a gauntlet that I have to get through before I can date someone. The first few dates always drive me crazy because I'm second guessing myself. I did the same thing with AG. Women have to go through labor to give birth. I have to go through craziness to get a girlfriend.

Only this time, I'm not even sure I want a girlfriend. So it's like I'm going through craziness just for the hell of it.

Or mabye I'm just learning to how to date better. Yeah, I'm obsessing, but the truth is I have a lot else going on in my life right now and I won't be crushed if this doesn't go anywhere. In fact, part of me will be relieved.

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Someone told me recently, "Expectations are the devil's highway." I totally believe that. Your enjoyment of a moment is always determined by your expectations. You can have a great time but be disappointed because it wasn't as great as you thought it would be; and you can have a bad experience go well because it wasn't as bad as you thought. Expectations are the key to happiness. It's why a starving man can be elated by a spam sandwich and a millionaire can be unhappy with a seven-course dinner.

And for someone like me, it's even more true, because I don't handle adversity well. So it's better to just keep my expectations low and be pleasantly surprised when good things happen.

Last week, my expectations were low. Then that damn adorable girl in a bar had to check me out, and my expectations soared. I'm really trying to keep things in perspective. I might meet her and not like her at all. All I'm looking for right now is a date. We'll see what happens from there.

In the movie Contact, they build a space ship to contact the aliens. When the space ship is blown up by religious extremists, you find out that they had secretly built a second space ship just in case something happened to the first one.

I have my own secret space ship. All the while I've been focusing on Dimple Girl, there's been a second woman on my mind. (Cue the Eagles song: "I've got seven women on my mind...") The second girl is someone who I haven't told anyone about. I'm thinking about two woman so that I can use one of them as a distraction from the other one. The thing is, I don't know which one is the distraction and which one is the real thing. Or maybe they're both distractions.

I recently read an interesting quote from Bill Maher, of all people. It was in a book of stories of people getting fired, and he wrote:

"One of the main lessons people should learn in life is that you can never tell when something happens to you whether it's ultimately going to be good or bad. It may seem bad at the time and it's really good, or it may seem good and it's really bad."

So true. Time will tell whether the Dimple Girl episode was good, bad, or neutral.