Recently I heard from a guy named Tommy. He seemed normal, and in his written profile was clever and punny. He lived in my neighborhood and seemed intelligent. He was good looking without being overly groomed. He seemed to be genuinely interested, and I’m a sucker for flattery.
One of the problems with online dating is that it quickly subjects you to someone’s literary skills. Despite the service I use having spell check, the spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors other people make are completely out of control. Since there is a uniform template that people fill out, it’s also easy to tell which people are fans of proper capitalizations from the get-go. I might see three men with the same name, but one states that his name is Jason, the other jason, and the other JASON. I always pick “Jason” and am likely to delete the other two. I liked that, despite Tommy’s name was “Tommy” (which I thought odd for a man of 32), his capitalizations were sound.
I agreed to meet Tommy at one of my favorite bars, which was in our general neighborhood. We were meeting on a Saturday night, just late enough to be considered trendy, and early enough to not feel seedy. After dinner on Saturday I began prepping. This involved a shower, plucking my eyebrows, exfoliating, moisturizing, blow drying my hair, working in styling products, using a hair straightener, splashing on a half-dab of two perfumes, applying makeup, and locating matching earrings (ooooh…and socks – a long standing problem of mine).
I zipped up to the bar, walking through the door at exactly the arranged time, found a table, sat and waited around for “Tommy” to show up. Thank goodness the days of people ringing up a restaurant to tell you they are running late are long gone, there is no situation in which I would want to be told “Ma’m, you have a phone call from ‘Tommy’ on the house line.”
Still, I was excited and a little nervous. Tommy strolled in, bumbling away, in what I thought was a little uncomfortable chatter. As it turned out, this is just the way Tommy spoke and operated. We were meeting a little late because he coached youth basketball, which I thought was charming. He spoke in short sentences, and smiled frequently, forcing me to wonder if Tommy blew through life a little on the high side.
Since we were running out of things to discuss, I brought up work. He informed me he was in marketing. This is not a field I understand, so I asked what aspect. He shrugged his shoulders and said “ya know, marketing.” I moved on to other conversational topics. It was becoming obvious that we had little in common, and my beer was two-thirds empty.
Crap.
Then I said something about night classes at Wayne State. Tommy’s eyes lit up. A talk about college days sparked something in Tommy. A 32 year old man getting that excited about college was a little frightening. Tommy’s eyes danced and he formed run-on sentences about people named Tubs, Ganja Donna, and Dan-Ahrrea He started talking about drunken evenings in small towns, and I realized that Tommy and I not only had little in common, I actually thought he was a ridiculous version of an adult.
Tommy was speaking at an enthusiastic pace I reserve for overpriced bath products, Christmas decorations, and the show Dexter. I had been tuning out, wildly trying to flag the waitress down, and dreaming of liquor. While I was waving my arm, nodding, smiling, and pretending to listen, I kept hearing one word over and over and over again. The key word was “boobs.” As readers of this blog might know, I have no objection to talking about anatomy, but I prefer to do so with friends and/or people the cyber-world detaches me from. This is not first date material.
My cocktail made it to the table, and I was trying to look intrigued and figure out where this “Boobs” conversation was going. All of the sudden, Tommy was talking about his Mom. There was still talk about the boobs.
I wanted to flee.
I chugged my cocktail, ice cubes smashing into my teeth, threatening to smack me in the forehead and smudge my near-perfect make up. My throat burned.
“…but Boobs just lives with my Moms now…”
Huh?
All of the sudden, I flashed back five minutes to frat boys, and realized that Boobs was a dog. Boobs had been adopted by Tommy to be his frat’s mascot, and he had been bragging that the idiots at the shelter “just let me take ‘er.” Boobs was kind of a pain, and believe it or not, never properly trained, so now she lived with Tommy’s mom. I’m sorry, his “Moms.” Boobs had been there since the end of Tommy’s senior year, since he never really wanted a dog, and he was graduating soon, and all those parties and things were happening…
I’m a dog person. I have a dog that I picked up from the Humane Society. She sleeps in my bed, has a better balanced diet than I do, and is always up-to-date on her shots. As an adult, the first dog I had was a venture in dog sitting gone terribly wrong, where the dog’s owner never reclaimed his pet. Naturally, I kept the dog. I have taken in pitbulls I found in the ‘hood. I’ve pulled days-old kittens out of a shed and fed them with an eye dropper. A guinea pig made its home in my bathroom for a few days, a few summers ago. I am a softie, and I could never obtain an animal and give it away, because it was inconvenient to my summertime activities.
I didn’t like Tommy.
I am not used to this feeling. Usually, when I date men, I’m attracted to the person, and hardly feel the feeling is mutual. Usually, I am not dating the person I am interested in. I am too reserved, and too afraid of rejection, to express that I’m interested.
Then, on a perfectly decent Saturday night, there I was, with Tommy, a ball of misery. Tommy was talking about heading to another bar, where he had made plans to meet his friends. I had no idea whether or not these plans included me. Tommy had returned to his smiley, short sentences, and I found him hard to follow. Throwing fifteen dollars on the table to cover beverages, which he insisted was unnecessary (at least he was polite), I quickly left. There wasn’t, really, anything wrong with Tommy. It occurred to me that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. I just wasn’t interested. I doubted he was interested. This is not something I am used to. I am used to feeling rejected and dejected, not ambivalent.
This ambivalent feeling was fantastic.
Ambivalence got me home with time to crack open one more beer, watch the evening news, and curl up with the dog. As tired as I am of being single, single and happy sure beats attached and ambivalent, even at 9:44, Saturday evening.
