#6 Two dates in 2 hours or less

After the emotional whirlwind that was my visit with the Italian, I thought it best to dive right into the dating scene. I decided to be proactive and meet up with a couple of match recommended guys. I was beginning to realize that it was best to meet up quickly and not spend too much time chatting details via email otherwise upon meeting, I’d be forced to stare blankly with nothing else to talk about because we’d already exhausted our charming second grade stories about accidentally sitting on a pencil. Yes, that happened, and yes, I often say things deemed inappropriate by others. For this reason I sometimes try to overcompensate by showing off a stronger personality than I’d like to.  If my biceps were as strong as my personality comes off, they’d ignore the words coming out of my mouth and just rub oil on me.

I’ve learned that although I say things that I shouldn’t and make bad jokes, I also shouldn’t censor or change what I say just to get someone to like me. I want to be with someone who is either amused by me or is ready to bring the sass right back. Perhaps unconsciously I’ve known this and thereby turn up the personality dial a few notches on the theory that if my date can handle me in the extreme, then he can most certainly handle me on a normal day. On my next two dates I exercised this theory.

Broadway Producer walked in apologetically explaining that he’d gained 20lbs since he posted his pictures but that he was on a new diet allowing him all the protein he wanted. I barely stifled a bad gay protein joke as he told me about his job and high salary while snagging every piece of salami on a meat tray too quickly to find any of my quips amusing. I got to eat the cashews on the tray, as they weren’t listed in his all meat diet. I began to feel that he was more interested in the meat tray and his successful life to pay any attention to me at all, which is when I decided I could be completely honest. After his boastful career update was complete was when I thought it would be fun to talk about how I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’ve learned that nothing turns off an ambitious, career identified person more than someone who is unemployed and having an existential crisis.

 I knew that I didn’t want to see him again and wanted him to decide the same thing about me so I tried to make that decision as easy as possible for him. Although the thought did occur to me for a second that maybe I should keep him as my boyfriend for the Producer contact…These thoughts occur sometimes but my conscience always gets the better of me as in the case of the other Match.com perspectives like the flight attendant who’s frequent flyer miles had me chat with him for several more emails than I regularly would have or the boring 40 something Doctor who wrote more words in his emails than he had hair on his head. In the back of my skull I have a Jewish mother shouting, “Doctor! He’s a doctor!” which is weird because I’m neither Jewish, nor has my mother every expressed any interest in my dating life.

Broadway producer turned out to be a bust, but I optimistically made an early afternoon coffee date with the first guy who actually looked like his pictures. 

Composer walked in after first casing the joint 10 minutes before our date. He was easy to spot with the scruffy red hair and distinctive glasses. He almost looked like a hipster version of Ron Howard. “Happy Days” Ron Howard, of course, not present day as I don’t have daddy issues. Before starting his interrogation-based questioning of all aspects of my life, he insistently pursued the “meeting” that I had in East Midtown before our date at 11:30am.
Composer: “So what were you doing down here?”

Me: “Oh, just a meeting.”

Composer: “What kind of meeting? What do you do?”

Me: “Oh, I’m a singer.”

Composer: “So were you at an audition? What auditions were over here?”

Me: “No, not an audition. Just a quick meeting. No big deal.”

Composer: “For what? What were you meeting about?”

Me: “THERAPY! I was at therapy, ok?! Me and my Therapist!...ahem…so yea…”

Composer: “oh….how was it?”

I responded with some joke about how it’d done me a world of good since I was ordered there by the judge to deal with my rage issues. This of course was completely false, but probably not the type of joke to start off a date with. Although, who wants to start the date with the admission that they just finished with therapy? Sliding his chair back a few inches, Composer proceeded with the rapid-fire part of my date questioning. We started with where I was born, continued through my formative years and finished the water boarding with where I wanted to be in the next five years. I ignored the existential part of the question and simply said, “New York.” The whole interrogation was over within 30 minutes and we both found ourselves in the awkward position of trying to continue the conversation. What else is there to talk about when I can write a 300-word biography of you already. It’s all surface and I have no amusing anecdotes to tell or ask you about as I feel that an anecdote wouldn’t compute in his world. The most interesting thing about him was that he was rehearsing a musical that he composed starring a Broadway star that I pretended to know as I usually do by saying, “hmm, yes, I know the name. Beautiful voice.”  The musical was a comedy about Cancer, which of course was too tempting for me to not make a terrible joke. Note to self: don’t make jokes about Cancer or molestation…they don’t go over well. I brought up religion and politics in a last ditch effort to get some sort of passion out of this guy, but alas after 43 minutes, he looked at his watch and suddenly realized how late he was going to be to his next appointment. I didn’t ask what the appointment was, but I could only assume it was therapy.