Is "Soviet Laundry Corps" funnier?
I don't really care; I'm done reading the Wikipedia article on red flags for today.
So, anyway, Internet, remember when I used to go on dates with girls and post about it on a blog? Well, I recently started doing one of those things again, and figured I might as well do the other, too.
I've actually been on a handful of one-off Internet dates since I resumed paying attention to my now-decade-old OKCupid account. A quick recap goes something like this:
1) Mostly asked her out because she seemed like a sure "Yes", remembered why we don't aim low.
2) Date went mostly okay, but not well enough for either of us to contact the other again.
3) Met at the CC Club, drank one drink and parted ways, got a message indicating things were not "sparky." Didn't really need the rejection letter after one 45-minute date, but courtesy is nice, I guess?
4) Black Forest with a short girl with 900 Facebook friends and a hangover. Mostly went because she messaged me out of pure curiosity, presumably at not already knowing me? Probably not a "date."
5) CC Club for early afternoon drinks, this time with my own hangover. Mostly a "meeting a like-minded weirdo" meeting, but had a really good time and shared chilli fries. Drove her home to save a bus fare, handshake.
6) Jimmy's on a Sunday night. Weird scene. Lots in common on paper. Talked mostly about cooking. Sort of seemed like a conversation I would have with a co-worker while standing outside during a fire evacuation.
Which brings us back to #5...
We kept messaging back and forth through OKCupid, and eventually exchanged Gchat information. We're not fundamentally similar people, but we're amenable to each other's unfamiliarities, and she doesn't seem intensely proud or protective of the things about her that would concern or even just annoy me about someone newly met. There's an archetype of a girl you might remember from your 20s... The kind of girl who Comes From Circumstances (which, for those of you not up on your geography, is usually in Florida), and generally lives in a swirling shit-storm of chaos and bad life choices. Well, this girl is relatively freshly out of her 20s, and it seems like most of those life choices weren't hers; she just lacked the foresight or upbringing or cold Scandinavian detachment from the misery those around her to grimace and sidle out of the path of other people's bad decisions.
None of this apologia is to imply anything about "long term prospects" (the lady seems not a whit interested in being prospected in any case), but only to explain why she doesn't, in the immediate term, trigger the proximity defense alarm I had installed to warn of the approach of an Elise, or Sarah, or Laura, or, or, or...
It's enough to tip the scale from "toxic disaster" to just "in a transitional phase." When I was 30, I was living in my parents' basement and was freshly out of a fairly disastrous relationship.
We've gone out (or stayed in, as inclinations dictated) a couple times since. We spent most of the weekend together. I used think of dating as largely a means of promoting self-improvement. But seeing as how, in the intervening years since I spent much time at it, I've become a home-owner with a steady job and a 401k who washes forks before I'm out of clean ones, I guess now, if nothing else, it's nice to have a reason to make Hollandaise sauce from scratch. As often as I speak aloud the words "Who am I trying to impress?", it's pretty much never as an explanation of something awesome I was doing; it's usually like, why I was eating cereal for dinner?
Actually, cereal sounds good, but that's neither here nor there.
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