#2 These bruises aren't just emotional....

I had my first Match.com date on Saturday night. My date, who will be referred to as "Long Island" (pronounced Long-guylind) came across as very nice and really interesting via email. We had no trouble navigating the sometimes awkward road that leads to the phone number and subsequent night out for a drink. It went fast from the first email to the actual date night. Fast is good because the last thing that I want is for the budding relationship to stagnate and die in a pile of pointless emails. The point is to meet someone, so let's meet. Besides, chemistry between two people doesn't necessarily come through without the face to face meeting. And I'd much rather get to know a person as they talk than read a heavily edited and revised email that makes them sound perfect. I assume that they are revising and editing as this is exactly what I do. If I were to simply write in the stream of conscious that I speak in, the email would exceed the maximum character count and reveal run-on sentences that began with my job and ended with my thoughts on interior design with a smattering of apple dumplings and Nancy Pelosi wedged between.
So, Saturday arrived and we spent the day texting about where and when we would meet up. Long Island had bragged that he worked for a high end concierge company and was being promoted to the head of nightlife, so I suggested that he would probably know a quiet bar where we could relax with a glass of wine and talk better than I would. He accepted the challenge and at 10pm, I found myself walking into a swanky, upscale hotel bar on the north side of Washington Square Park. Worming my way through the maze of little black dresses and ex-frat boys in sleek tailored pants, I immediately felt I'd be discovered as the poor kid from Ohio walking into the country club afraid that at any minute I'd be asked to pick up a tray and "get back to work." Taking a deep breath and ordering a glass of wine from the hipster bartender with a precision-cut ragged beard, I searched the crowded and noisy bar for my date. On a side note, a friend of mine told me that Long Island might be bad at his job since he didn't follow my specifications for a place to meet (See above "quiet bar"). I excused this as I assumed he was trying to impress me with this hip place.
A few sips into my wine (yes, I was sipping now as I had shot-gunned a glass of wine before leaving my house in a frantic state of nervousness), Long Island appeared at the opposite end of the bar. I recognized him almost immediately as I had looked at his "model" shots so many times on his profile. As the sea of social elite parted, the man that ate the model in the pictures rushed over to delicately hug and kiss me on the cheek. Now, it's not that I have a problem with the weight he had gained since those pictures were taken. But 30 pounds didn't just happen yesterday and all of my pictures are recent. I feel like it's product misrepresentation. "I ordered a cheeseburger. Why did you bring me a basket of kittens?"
This honestly wasn't the biggest issue for me. It was that I felt slightly conned by his personality, too. He had been so interested in finding out about me via email that I assumed our conversation would be a give and take too. It became immediately apparent as we sat to have a drink together that we weren't a match as he remembered nothing about me from our emails. I began asking him about himself which sparked a seminar on how great his life is. Occasionally, I interjected with a sarcastic joke to which his surprising reaction was to hit me in the shoulder while shouting, "Shut uuuuup! ohmygodihateyou" while simultaneously going in for a flirty grab of my leg. I sat in stunned silence as this process seemed to repeat itself each time I spoke. This is when I began planning my escape and missed most of the last 10 minutes of his monologue on his fabulousness in his old modeling career. After spending over an hour together, I decided that I had put in the appropriate amount of time for the date, so I told him I needed to go home although I had every intention of running to the straight bar that my best friend bar-tends at for a very strong margarita. Long Island insisted on walking me to the subway, which was needless as my planned margarita was just a few blocks away. As we hugged goodnight, I knew I wouldn't see him again. He was a very nice guy, but I felt more like he'd be the gay best friend I'd need to tell me how "fierce" I looked rather than be the one I'm dressing up for. Also, there was still something bothering me about him looking so utterly different than his pictures. I don't want to be shallow but I feel like it was a breach of trust from the very start having misrepresented himself. The next day I told him that I didn't think we would work out and he wished me good luck. This felt like the better way to let him down than just punching him and saying, "Shut up! ohmygodihateyou...no seriously, shut up, please."
the end, by sean