Six

Sixth time’s a charm? Who knows. I think it’s fair to say that, considering what’s already happened in this experiment, that anticipating the worst is to be expected. Getting ready frantically at the last minute, throwing on a shirt that doesn’t quite fit as it should, noticing the clump of eyeliner in the corner of my eye, and covering up a stain with a cardigan becomes all that I can muster.

I didn’t care about Six. I didn’t care about this stupid date at this stupid coffee shop. And I certainly didn’t care if I looked a steaming pile of shit when I walked in to meet him.

Let me elaborate: I had on a button down, camel-colored shirt that I bought at H&M ages ago and hadn’t worn in years. I threw on a J. Crew floral cardigan to cover a stain on the right side of my stomach and to hopefully hide the fact that when I sat down, the buttons down the front of the shirt gaped open, revealing the magenta of my bra, the pale white of my skin.

But really, who gives a fuck? Just another stupid date out of fifty-two. I was getting sloppy. I was also coming off of an afternoon of packing up my life and my dog into the back seat of my car and transferring it all to my mother’s apartment because my furnace stopped working, and I was left with a house slowly sinking into the low 50’s. With the idea of a multiple thousand-dollar home repair looming in the somewhat near future, I was in no mood for being fun and flirtatious.

I left late. My mother was not pleased with me depositing my skittish dog in her new apartment, on her new carpets that she had bought THAT MORNING. I don’t blame her. So I did my best to empty the dog’s bladder on every fire hydrant and sign post that we could walk by, and when I left twenty minutes before 4pm, knowing full well that it took me thirty minutes to get to where we were meeting, I didn’t care. I looked like shit. I felt frantic.

At ten minutes before four, I ran into a nasty stretch of holiday traffic and came to a standstill. Shit.

Luckily I had Six’s phone number, so I called him from my stopped position on the highway.

He picked up the phone and said, “This is Six.” Hm. His voice was kind of hot. How is it that I’m old enough to be dating men who sound like such MEN? I remember when I ran the risk of dating some boy who sounded like a chipmunk. Now they all sound SEXY. I faltered a bit. Shit, I thought. Maybe I should have put on a more flattering top. The truth was that my breasts were everywhere in this shirt, and there is nothing that I hate more than being self-conscious of my cleavage. It’s a more recent acquisition in my life, my small B’s turning resolutely into D’s during the year and a half I took birth control. Even though I have been off of it for a number of years now, the breasts have stayed, a constant reminder of my past promiscuity.

I don’t like them. I think they’re just another part of my body that is fat, is oversized, that struggles to fit into clothing. So when I say that my boobs were all over the place in this shirt, it’s not a good thing. It’s a situation that makes me highly uncomfortable, and when I feel physically uncomfortable (in too tight pants, too high heels, too short a shirt), I am miserable. I get a little obsessive. I have a hard time focusing on anything other than my boobs all over the place or the pain in my feet of the waistband digging into my stomach.

You see where I’m going here, right? I should have rethought my outfit entirely.

But I didn’t care. I was meeting him for a short hour, if that, and getting the hell out of dodge.

Except now his voice sounded sexy, and when we moved towards the end of the conversation he added quickly, “Thanks for calling to let me know.”

Hm. Polite. Sexy voice.

But no worries. I am bitter and jaded, remember? I still figured it would all go to shit when I got there. He would be awkward and uncomfortable and ugly and I could go home after an hour and spoon my pup.

I didn’t arrive as late as I anticipated. I was about ten minutes late, and when I walked in and saw him across the room, I REALLY regretted underestimating the outfit.

FUCK! He was ATTRACTIVE! I think a very safe generalization is that people put the best pictures of themselves up. Pictures that don’t capture the extra inch of fat around their stomach, the awkward way in which they walk or carry themselves, the way their eyes constantly blink when they’re talking. But somehow Six had missed that memo. His pictures didn’t do him justice at all because here he was standing up from his high stool and pulling one out for me and he was confident and tall and smiling and smart (like, intimidatingly so) and, damn it, he was attractive.

I’ve definitely learned from every date that I’ve been on so far, and if I have learned anything from this one it is to anticipate the worst, but dress for the best. Because, as much as I tried to fight it, what always happens when I feel uncomfortable happened: I wasn’t at my best. There were some moments of silence. There was loud jazz playing in the background. And all I could think about was how slouchy I was, how much my shirt must be gaping open, how my breasts were EVERYWHERE, taking up my ENTIRE BODY, covering my stomach and my legs and my feet and my face and how can he not be staring directly at them because they are ALL OVER THE PLACE.

I’d say the best part was when we got up to leave and I gratefully zipped up my jacket, covering the whole shirt debacle. Walking out to the car and standing by the back of it was, by far, the most comfortable I had been the entire night, in spite of the cold. We talked freely and easily then about Pixar and Civics and the Patriots. Here’s hoping that will be a more lasting impression than the one of me scrambling onto the tall stool like a little person and my ridiculous Dolly Parton breasts pushing and craning to be seen, because, um, I totally texted him when I got home.

Yeah, that’s right. I contacted him first. And we all know what that means.