Three

Angry girl music is on. Calorie-free tea is being sipped because I ate all of my calories in one meal today. A 1500+ calorie lunch at Chipotle. What, you don’t believe me? Fine, 1555 calories to be exact. A burrito with rice and fajitas and carnitas and corn salsa and lettuce and (here’s where it gets ugly) sour cream AND guacamole and CHIPS for crying out loud. You can add it up yourselves, if you want. It really happened.

This is the point in the dating process where I would normally throw in the towel and go back to writing short stories in the evenings instead of hunting out half decent men at all hours of the day. This is the point, three men in, where I’d shrug my shoulders, declare myself exhausted from the fifty-eight emails exchanged in a matter of days and the arrival at the other end without a decent man to write home about.

But LUCKY ME! I have forty-nine to go! Four is tomorrow! And five is the day after that! And LUCKY FOR YOU, my sleep deprivation is kicking in and, aside from causing a nearly projectile puke situation at the gym tonight, it’s making me a little KOOKIE. (Funny, if you attempt to spell that with a “C,” it’s just cookie, and that’s not at all the point of that sentence. But if I were a cookie, I’d be a snicker doodle, and I would eat myself because I’m starting to think that NONE of these men are ever going to get a second chance, let alone a third of fourth in which something of that nature would ever be appropriate.)

So, okay. I’m hungry and tired and horny and on high alert for hot men in every corner, picking them out on the train, getting mad when they have their left hands in their pockets, getting a little tingly when the man walking by me at Starbucks RIGHT NOW just happens to be halfway attractive and smelling deliciously of some kind of cologne. Excuse me, Mister? Can I sit on your lap? Your face?

Three was so-so. I wasn’t feeling enthusiastic about Three to begin with. He wasn’t entirely communicative in the days leading up to the date, and I anticipated a cancellation. But I am a woman on a mission and OH NO, DELICIOUSLY SMELLING MAN, DO NOT LEAVE! COME BACK AND STIR YOUR COFFEE BY MY TABLE SOME MORE!

Back to the sad smell of coffee grounds.

But meet up, we did. He chose a nice wine bar in a nice suburb and we both got lost on the walk over. It was 499 feet from the place where I parked and somehow I still got lost. And, as I waited for him by the hostess’s stand, he texted to let me know that he was either lost or blind.

He wasn’t blind. Just lost, and the bar happened to be down a small alley that wasn’t on our respective maps. We were looking for it on the main street and continuing to walk right by.

We sat down in the lounge area, large armchairs surrounding square coffee tables, on which we rested our glasses of wine. I sat in one next to him and turned my body so that I was facing him, leaning on the wooden arm, sacrificing the soft surface of my back to face him. He faced forward, only looking at me occasionally, when I was talking, when I was looking away, when I would touch his arm. I wasn’t a fan of that. I also wasn’t a fan of the fact that he didn’t take off his jacket for the entire time we were there. And it wasn’t like he was getting ready to run for the door. No, he was enjoying himself, he was asking questions, we made good conversation that lasted for four hours.

Time flies when you’re having fun, I suppose. Except it wasn’t an entirely rip roaring good time. He was attractive and normal and nice and well-dressed and smart and well-spoken and picked out a great place to meet, but he kind of spoke like my dad, in that rambling history major kind of way. It’s not anything I would deem a deal breaker, but it was my most tangible complaint.

I attempted this time to learn from the book of the week. In The Dog of the Marriage, Hempel describes the difference between how dogs love and how humans love: “I told him about the way [dogs] get to know you. Not the way people do, the way people flatter you by wanting to know every last thing about you, only it isn’t a compliment, it is just efficient, a person getting more quickly to the end of you. Correction—dogs do want to know every last thing about you. They take in the smell of you, they know from the next room, asleep, when a mood settles over you. The difference is there’s not an end to it” (63). It was one of those reading moments where you realize the words could have been written about you. “That’s me!” you may as well declare. “I ask questions to get to the end of people!” So I took the opportunity of being inadvertently shown my behavior to try something a little different. This time around there were fewer questions from my end. The boiling line of fire was simmered into a ebb and flow of conversation about Greek life and the war crimes Lincoln committed during the Civil War and traveling around Europe and Harry Potter books. (Another complaint: he hated the seventh book. How can you hate the seventh book?!) It was all nice. Nice conversation, a nice hug hello, a nice walk to the car, a nice hug goodbye, and a nice “I had a really great time” and “I’ll call you” from him.

What I expected from this year was an onslaught of hilarious blog fodder, the likes of Three-ish. Crazy men with crazy back-stories and crazy attempts to get in my pants. And, while I’m sure there will still be plenty of those to come, what I was not prepared for were the fairly decent ones. I’m used to the crazies. I’m used to using their certifiable insanity as sound reasoning for blocking their numbers. What I am not used to is getting into the nitty gritty of finding someone who is more than just so-so, more than just nice, more than just eloquent and smart and cute, all qualities that are important, sure, but not the be all and end all of who I am supposed to be with. Dating the crazies is easy. They seem to flock to me. It’s the dating of normal men that has proven to be the most difficult so far. The men who don’t call, the men who I don’t feel like calling. I think a lot of people would find no fault in Three. He was fine, he was nice, he was great on paper. But I have forty-nine men to go. Would I forgo all of them for him? Naaaht so much. Would I go on a second date to see if there is something more there? Sure.

Let’s see if he calls.