February Frozen Tundra of Socialness

I just want to get through this friggin' day without hearing the V-word one more time.

If it's not people wishing me a happy one, or obnoxious lovers going all out to celebrate a manufactured Hallmark holiday, it's angry single people making fun of it. I can't go anywhere-- to Facebook, to blogs, to the radio, to TV, to work, to the Co-Op, to my favorite websites-- without having it rammed down my throat. (Although I have to admit, this is pretty funny.) And all I ever wanted was to boycott it, to ignore it, to pretend it doesn't exist. I wasn't going to give it any power by acknowledging it.

FAIL.

Even when I was in a relationship, I was never a fan of this day. Flower shops were sold out, restaurants were overbooked. It was impossible to make any plans. It's stupid to have one day when everybody celebrates something so personal. I don't like being told when I have to be romantic. When I'm in love, I want to be spontaneous and/or celebrate events of personal significance. Why let a stupid card company dictate that to me?

So while I'm failing miserably at my attempts to ignore it, I might as well say how I'm feeling: Go fuck yourself, V-day.

*****

You wanna know how I'm celebrating today? I'm getting angry. Angry at K for not appreciating how awesome we were together. For not getting how valuable "comfortable and easy" is in a relationship. For being yet another person to let me down. Then I get sad and terrified that she's found someone else. That I was wrong and she really has found someone better than me.

Today is sponsored by this memory: SnarkEx telling me point blank, "I don't love you." The most devastating words she could utter (after she routinely told how happy she was to be married to me.) I never said anything half as cruel to her. For that sentence alone, she deserves a lifetime of misery. But she won't get it. She can charge through her life leaving destruction in her wake, but it won't matter. She'll just go rut around blissfully with her disgusting troll of a boyfriend. (The person, mind you, we were talking about when she uttered those four famous words.)

This isn't really about V-day, I'm just using that as my lightning rod. Since yesterday I've taken a nosedive. I don't know what happened. I know February is the most depressing month, but it seemed like I was doing really well this year. I wasn't complaining about the weather nearly as much as everyone around me. I think I've just had too much alone time lately and it's making me crazy. I'm just so fucking tired of having to put myself out there again and again and again and again. If I don't fight like hell to be social, plan ahead and initiate, initiate, initiate, I drown in my own juices.

Although the weather is warming this week, when I look at my calendar, I see a frozen tundra of non-socialness stretched out before me. That is what I have to look forward to. A lifetime of fighting like hell just to maintain the status quo. It just gets so tiring. The only time I feel good is when I'm lost in fantasy. When I think about how things could be, rather than how things are. What kind of way is that to live?

It's not natural, the way I live. I'm a human being with social needs. We aren't meant to live as isolated individuals.

Only 7.5 more hours, then I can be done with this day.

Immediate Gratification

Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in Star Wars and the wise-cracking best friend in When Harry Met Sally, wrote a book in the 80's, Postcards From the Edge, which was also made into the movie. The neurotic protagonist in the book once says the famous line, "Instant gratification takes too long."

*****

I'm not quite that neurotic, but that line has been in my head this weekend because my quota of instant gratification is not getting met. I ran around all day yesterday trying to run errands and accomplish things, and it felt like one thing after another was a FAIL.

I skipped the tennis workout Saturday morning because I wanted to get serious about my writing projects. I thought, naively, that if I just took one day and Got To It, I could knock out my minor writing project (an essay about my cruise) so that then I could start concentrating on my major writing project (my love-ography in fairy tale form.)

I got as far as opening up the cruise essay file on my computer. Then I didn't write a single word. Not one word.

This morning I'm going to a later "church" service so that I can sit at my computer and write, but as you can see, it's not my essay I'm working on, but this blog post. So why am I writing this instead of working on the other thing? It's about instant gratification.

I have no idea if anyone will read or care about my cruise essay. I don't know when I'll finish it, so anything I write now, it may be weeks or months before I get any gratification out of it. But for my blog, I know people will read it sooner. Also, there's not as much pressure on a blog post. This is mostly me just letting off steam. It doesn't have to be polished.

*****

I'm so tired of not having a primary audience in my life. There have been so many things that have happened to me this weekend that I want to talk about, but no one cares. My tennis shoe saga, shoveling frustrations, couch-buying adventures, the strange winter abdominal pains that have returned, gossip about someone I know. When I think about the last thing, I realize it would have been the perfect thing to tell K. And she would have had an interesting or insightful reply. She gave great conversation. Sigh.

I wish I had a BFF to call up to talk to tell these things to, or even better, someone who would go couch shopping with me. I'm so tired of being single. I'm glad I have this blog, but it doesn't provide the immediate gratification that a face-to-face conversation does.

*****

When I was in college, one of the many majors I cycled through was Journalism. I even won a scholarship for it, and I worked on the school paper as a reporter. I was pretty good at it and won an award for best new writer one summer. But I couldn't stand reporting, and here's why. Most of my time was spent calling people for interviews and waiting for them to call me back.

Ultimately, I decided that I spent too much of my personal life waiting for people to call me back, I didn't want to do that in my career, too.

The online dating thing is getting frustrating. So many women just never write back. Not even to say, "No thanks." Or if we do exchange a few messages, they just suddenly stop writing. So I'm left to agonize over what it was I said in my last message that turned them off. Every time I log into my email and see no new messages, it's another dagger in my confidence.

I don't have anything new to report since my last post. I did write Mystery Girl Friday morning, and as of Sunday morning, no word. Her profile did say she hadn't been on the site in 3 weeks, so maybe she's just not that active. But still, you'd think she'd receive an email notice and check it out.

Girl #2 still mails me sporadically. The messages themselves are encouraging, but the frequency makes me think she's not interested. I've been trying for two weeks to set up a coffee date, but she's being really coy. At some point I'm just going to lose interest.

Whatever. I hope all of this frustration and rejection is just setting up the scene for the perfect woman, my WorthIt.

In the meantime, I'm waiting impatiently for my immediate gratification.

Good for Chess, Bad for Dating

I don't play a whole lot of chess-- I've maybe played about 30 games in my life. But I know enough about the game to know that the best chess players anticipate how the game is going to play out. They have the ability to look four or five or seven moves into the future in order to trap their opponents and win the game.

So the ability to look ahead is a useful talent in chess.

In dating, not so much.

In fact, I think it is my penchant for looking ahead that makes me such a bad dater. I can't just get to know someone and enjoy their company for its own sake. I have to think about what my future with this person will look like.

Yesterday I found Mystery Girl on Match.com and I've been trying to figure out if I should contact her or not. Part of me was thrilled that I was able to find her at all. I spent much of last November/December trying to figure out how to get in contact with her, and here I've cracked the code. Of course I need to keep going!

But my mind races ahead to us dating, living together, sharing a life. What would that look like? I imagine her and her son moving in with me. Maybe my purpose is to support a young single mother as she raises her child. But is that what I want? Will that allow me to be the person I want to be? Maybe. I could think of much worse fates, like being single and lonely the rest of my life.

When I look into the blackness of my soul, I suspect that the main reason I want to contact her is that I want to prove to myself that this is an option. That I could have that life if I wanted it. Even if I'm not sure that I want it. But I might!

I got a lot of good comments from people about this predicament. (Thanks, everyone!) Some felt that it would be creepy for someone you know in real life (IRL) to contact you on a dating site. Others said, go for it! What have I got to lose? And that's true, especially since I hardly ever see her in the library anymore, so it's not like we'd be having lots of awkward interactions if it didn't work out.

To answer your questions, this is how I would approach it. I would definitely say, "Hey, I know you!" (We've had two three-minute conversations, and I had hoped to have more, but then she stopped coming into the library.) I would acknowledge that I know we might not match up, but I wanted to let her know that I think she's very cute and that I admire the fact that she's so dedicated to raising her son. If she had any interest or time, I'd like to take her out to coffee sometime. Would that make me sound like a creepy old dude? According to Match, we do actually share similar views on politics and religion, so that's something.

At the very least, all I want to do is let her know cute I think she is. I don't know if that's stupid or not, especially if I'm not sure what to do with that cuteness. I keep thinking ahead and wondering if I'm just wasting my time on something I suspect won't work out. Here is where my age comes in, because I feel like if I were 10 years younger, I'd have all the time in the world to "waste" and could take more chances. The problem is, it's by taking chances that we discover great things.

So that's where I'm at.

*****

I still haven't heard from my two fizzling online prospects, so I think I'm ready to put myself out there some more. Last week I had a long list of potentials that I wanted to approach, but now I'm feeling hesitant or uninspired. Like maybe I should take a short breather before I jump back in.

I was about ready to send a message to someone yesterday, a new one I hadn't noticed before, but then I saw a tiny thing at the very bottom of her profile, under "Smokes: daily." I could handle the pet hair from her three cats and one dog, but I don't know if I could stand to date someone who lives in a cloud of smoke. There I go again, looking three moves ahead.

In another case, I got excited about a profile until I saw that she was "very" allergic to cats. There's always some little thing that trips me up like that.

I'm not sure how to respond to profiles who say that they're looking for someone who "loves kids." I don't have anything against kids. They can be entertaining and cute. Some of my favorite people used to be kids. But I would never call myself a kid enthusiast. They're not a hobby of mine or anything. At the same time, if a kid were to come into my life, either through natural means or by proxy, I could see getting into it. Especially since I dated K, the first person I ever thought I might want to make babies with.

But it still gives me pause when I see a profile of someone who "loves kids."

It's yet another thing that has me thinking seven moves ahead.

Matching Mystery Girl

Just for shits and giggles, I did a search on Match for the the demographic that I thought Mystery Girl would be. Only four profiles turned up. And one of them was her.

I found her! Holy shit! What do I do now?

She's 23, divorced, and has a son who appears to be her whole life. All the information from her profile matches perfectly with what I already knew about her, plus the picture is the obviously her.

On paper we don't match up at all. Although there are no active dealbreakers (for me), nothing she writes in her profile would have stood out to me if I hadn't met her in real life. But I just wrote about how maybe I need to take a chance with someone completely different. And she really is adorable.

Should I contact her? Or would it be inappropriate for the creepy old dude who works at her college to hit on her?

Who Do I Want To Be? Vol. 2

My experience with online dating is once again dredging up the question of who I want to be.

As I consider all the different potential mates, I think about how different my life could be with each of them. Every individual offers a unique experience that would affect my life in different ways.

In particular, I'm thinking about my "online dreamgirl," AKA Bachelorette #3, AKA the 28-year-old grad student from 3 hours away. Her profile is very similar to the profiles of previous girlfriends I've met online. She's short and cute and brainy and clever and lives the life of the mind. Her pictures even look like a cross between SnarkEx and GF #3.

I'm very attracted to that. But is is really what I want? GF #3 and SnarkEX were very much like her, and they were the 2nd and 3rd craziest women I dated. (That top honor goes to GF #2, the Crazy Swabian. And that's not just my opinion. My sister-in-law once spent an hour talking to her and afterward told me, "Snark, she's crazy." And she's a therapist, so she doesn't use that word lightly. Anyway.) We fought a lot and they were angry at me all the time.

It's been eight and seven years, respectively, since I met those exes online. Haven't I grown at all in that time? Why am I still looking for that same mold? Maybe it's time for me to look for a partner who's out of school, has a professional life and income, has figured out some of her issues, and knows what she wants. The only problem with that plan is that most women are already taken by that time. I date the less mature ones because they're the ones who are still single.

There are women on the dating sites who are more my age, and while their profiles don't excite me as much, they might give me a chance to be someone new. If they don't challenge me intellectually, maybe they will allow other aspects of my personality to bloom: the carnivore, the tennis jock, the goofball, the cat lover, the bad sitcom fan, the horndog.

Maybe it's time to step out of the mold.

*****

Of course, this is all a moot point if none of these women are interested in me. Attraction has to be mutual, and maybe I've only dated grad students up to now because they're the only ones who are attracted to a nerdy and brainy guy like me.

It feels like things are fizzling out with both of my online prospects. While I guess I'm still technically in contact with #2, it seems like we lost steam over the weekend. A message I sent her got lost in her spam folder, and even though we sorted it out, she's only sent me one short message since then and hasn't responded to my short response. She ignored all the questions I asked her before the mix-up. Last week she was being much more attentive.

As for dreamgirl, #3, I haven't heard from her in two and a half days. In my last message I gave her my email and asked her to write directly to that, so I don't know if that scared her off or if it's possibly another case of a message lost in cyberspace. (This has happened before.) I just went onto Match and saw that she was online at the same time, so I don't know if this is her way of blowing me off. It's strange though, because why bother to engage me in conversation at all, only to ignore me after three messages?

But, whatevs.

My original plan was to write to one new woman a day until I got some responses. There are a few more profiles I like, but I was waiting to see what happened with the current two before I continued with my plan. I don't want to get into a situation where I'm juggling too many women at once. (Yeah right, I should be so lucky.) So I wish the others would just be upfront with me if they've lost interest.

Names

In the ninth grade I had a crush on two girls at the same time who were both named Amanda.

In my early 20's there was a period of my life when I knew six Jenny/Jennifers. I had a crush on half of them, and dated one of them very briefly. This was before I met the Jenny who I would date for two years.

My clique in grad school included four Amy's. Three of them even had the same middle name, so we had to differentiate them by using their last names.

With that in mind, I've been pretty amazed by the diversity of women's names I've met, friended, corresponded with, dated, pursued, or blogged about since my divorce. With one small exception, none of these names have overlapped. That seems incredible to me.

The list includes Alison, Anita, Ashley, Beth, Breanne, Charize, Desiree, Emma, Emily, Heather, Jackie, Jenna, Jenny, Jolene, Julie, Karen, Kathleen, Kelly, Kim, Lane, Laura, Marisa, Margaret, Melissa, Miranda, Misty, Natalie, Nicki, Nikole, Rachel, Rebecca, Robin, Sabrina, Sarah, Tiffany, Tonya, Vika. That's 36 different names! *

Seriously, how many more names can one man encounter without having any overlap?

When I started this list, I thought there was just one small exception: a new blogfriend shares the name of the First Meeting Lady, who I went on two dates with 2.5 years ago. But since compiling the list I remembered that I think FutureLibrarian (FL) shared the same name as TennisGrrrl. I'm just going from a hazy memory, though, so I'm not 100% sure. And one of my blogfriends also shares a name with someone I've met on two occasions who I friended on Facebook.

So maybe it's not that remarkable after all. But it still feels weird to have all these different names swimming around my email folders, and with online dating I'm adding new ones every day.

*UPDATE: After sleeping on it, I remembered another name, which puts the list at 37. However, the whole "no overlaps" thing kind of falls apart the more I think about it. For some women, like some anonymous blogfriends and Mystery Girl, I don't even know their names. So there could be a lot of overlap that I don't know about. Also, I have cherry picked who I include on this list. I can think of two women I've met since my divorce who are named Samantha, one who I friended on FB, but I didn't put that name on the list. Not sure why. Oh well, it's a fun list, anyway.

A Tale of Four Dancing Nurses

Note: All names have been changed.

The first one I noticed was Sherri. She was the shortest of the dancing nurses on my cruise, the younger Filipino cousin. I spent three nights admiring her, watching her dance with her friends and trying to work up the courage to introduce myself. When I finally did talk to her, on the deck party Wednesday night, I was full of liquid courage (beer) and adrenaline from having just karaoke-ied "Cheeseburger In Paradise" at the top of my lungs in front of a lounge full of strangers.

Sherri told me that they were all nurses from the Bay Area. We talked for a short while, and then she introduced me to one of her friends, Lindsay. I remembered Lindsay because on Monday evening she had won a "single mingle" dance contest by grinding up against some lucky guy she didn't know. Tall and blond with long thick curly hair, she rocked it. I told her she had been "amazing" during the dance contest, and she said thanks, she hadn't even been drunk! We talked a little while longer and then Sherri and Lindsay went back to dancing.

Later that night, as I was walking through the casino bar back to my cabin, it was Lindsay who shouted my name, "Snark! Come hang out with us." She was in the middle of a group of about eight people, so Sherri was the one who stood at the edge of the group and introduced me to everyone else. They each waved and said hello, but I didn't register any of their names at that time.

As the group got ready to leave the bar, Lindsay asked me if I was going to Playa Mia the next day (when we docked in Cozumel.) Um, I hadn't thought about it. She told me they were going, but then her friend said only if they could get up in time to buy the tickets.

I slept in, so I didn't go to Playa Mia the next day. It was stupid, because instead of spending the day at the beach with dancing nurses, I walked into downtown Cozumel by myself and got bombarded by annoying vendors.

Thursday night I saw the nurses at the dance club again. Lindsay was there with two of her friends, but Sherri was nowhere to be seen. This was the night I finally got enough balls to join them on the dance floor. Afterward we went to see a midnight burlesque show. The two others went ahead to grab some seats, and I waited behind while Lindsay kept dancing, so I could go with her to the burlesque show. At that point Lindsay was my connection to the group.

Later that night I got to know the two others, Angela and Shantelle. Angela is the only one of the dancing nurses who's married, and she's here with her husband. She's also kind of like the ringleader of the group. A fun and fiery Texan who's not afraid to get "all Latina" on people who piss her off. I opened up to her and told her about K and she was sympathetic. I liked talking to her the best.

Shantelle was Sherri's older cousin. She was quiet, but she talked more when all four of us (me, Lindsay, Angela, Shantelle) got some pizza at 3:00 AM after the disco closed.

I spent all Friday walking around the boat hoping to see one of my new friends. It wasn't until late afternoon that I saw Lindsay sunning herself on deck with one of her other friends (whose name I didn't know.) We had a very awkward encounter, and when she walked off to get some coffee, I wasn't sure if I should follow her or not. I did for a little bit, but she took off so fast I started doubting myself. So I left. (Later, she asked me what had happened to me. I said, "You were walking really fast." Her friend said, "Yeah, she DOES walk fast.")

So after that awkward encounter I decided to get drunk on my last afternoon on the ship. Then I ran into Angela, who was happy to see me and we talked for several minutes. She told me to come by their table at dinner so we could all hang out afterward. So now it appeared that Angela was my connection to the group.

The last night on the boat was spent at the casino bar with my new friends. Sherri (remember Sherri, the original one?) sat next to me on a stool and we talked for quite a while. I bought her a drink. But then she was the first to turn in for the night. After that I went and sat next to Shantelle, Sherri's cousin and the only one of the four nurses who I hadn't had a one-on-one conversation with yet.

That was when I got smitten for the first time all week. I really enjoyed getting to know Shantelle, and just when the conversation started getting interesting-- about online dating-- the rest of the group decided it was time to go. (It was 2:00 AM and we had to leave the ship in about five hours.)

At the elevator I hugged Shantelle and Angela, told Angela to look me up on Facebook, and waved goodbye to Lindsay (it might have pissed her off that I didn't hug her too, but since we'd been having awkward interactions all day, I didn't know what to do.)

Since the cruise I have Facebook-friended Angela and Lindsay. Lindsay accepted my friend request, but doesn't really seem interested in FB communicating with me. (Furthering my paranoia that I pissed her off.) Angela is a good FB friend, commenting on pics I posted from the cruise and stuff. Shantelle appears not to be on FB at all, or if she is, her security is set so high that I can't see any evidence of her.

I asked Angela to forward some pics on to Shantelle, and have her send me an email if she wants to say hi, but I never heard from her. I guess the drunken crush I had on her was not reciprocated.

*****

This story has a point. If you walk into a room, say a dance club on a cruise ship sailing through the Gulf of Mexico, and you see a group of people, you can hardly ever tell which one(s) will end up being significant to you. And sometimes each one will wax and wane in importance as you get to know them in turn.

My first connection to the group was Sherri. She handed me off to Lindsay. Then through Lindsay I met Angela. And on the final night I got to know Shantelle and I got a big crush on her. When I came home I was convinced that Shantelle would be my big cruise connection.

Post-cruise, Angela has become my best cruise buddy.

You just never know.

*****

The same is true of online dating. When I first "walked in" to Match.com, there were a lot of women who caught my eye. Odds are, they will be the duds. It's impossible to know which one will be significant and which one, if any, will be the female lead in the story of Snarkbutt's Quest For Love VII. Some of them will be bit players, some will be supporting characters, some will be main characters and one lucky lady will be the female lead. I just don't know which is which yet.

So, trying to tease all of that out, I'm currently in touch with two lovely ladies. I should probably start to give each of them identifying numbers, like my blogfriend Jolene did when she was online dating. [didn't you get up to 14, J?]

Here are the three I've had mutual contact with:

#1: Coffee date lady. Met for coffee, didn't match, and I was relieved about it.

#2: Restaurant manager. Lives an hour away. Same age, marital status, kids-wanting status ("Not sure".) She seems to be interested, but setting up an in-person meeting may be difficult. Haven't heard from her for two days though. Don't know if that means anything.

#3: Going for a half-court shot, I sent a message to my online dreamgirl, a 28-year-old grad student who lives in my old college town, about 3 hours away from Snarktown. I'm five years old than what she's looking for (11 years older total) and 100 miles further away (150 miles total.) She also wants a never-been-married. But her pictures are adorable and her profile is smart, clever, and witty. It was the kind of profile that the last three girlfriends I've met online had. (And strangely, her pictures looked like a cross between SnarkEx and GF #3.) So without much hope I sent her a clever and witty message anyway. She didn't respond, so like all the others who don't respond to my clever and witty come-ons, I assumed she wasn't interested. It happens.

Then Sunday morning I'm checking my Match mail to see if #2 had written. Instead, there's a message from #3! She's sorry she didn't write sooner, but she was recovering from surgery last week. I scan the message for the polite rejection. Oh, here it is: she admits that I'm a bit too old for her, but she likes the joke I made about only reading at a 34-year-old level.

But.

Then she goes on to ask me a bunch of questions. If I'm too old for her, why is she trying to keep up the conversation? I think she might be receptive to a geezer like me.

So, since then we've exhanged a few messages. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, I'm enjoying the conversation.