Category Archives: dating

On the 30 – 50% Rule and the date.

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“People only listen to 50% of what you say,” I tell J.

We think about that for awhile. Half of what you say, you’re saying solely for yourself. That’s alright, because 50% of what you say isn’t being processed by your audience.

It’s the 30-50% rule.
And it’s awesome.
You never have to worry about what you say in front of people, because it doesn’t matter. Chances are, they weren’t paying attention in the first place.

***

“You’re not at all like I expected you to be,” he says. 

“How so?” I ask.
“You wear a lot of black…You’re not conventional at all. You look like you would be. You don’t even have any tattoos.”  
Inwardly, I groan. I hear the “not conventional” bit so often that I’m not sure it’s even a compliment any more. 
Outwardly, I laugh. “I have two,” I tell him. 
He’s got me pegged: “Such a strong personality coming from such a petite girl,” he says. “People don’t expect that. I bet you don’t get along with girls.” He’s not wrong. I don’t. They scare me. 
As last night wore on and the bar got slowly more and more crowded, I found my eyes wandering. I love to look at people, to watch them shift uncomfortably, embrace happily, stand still sipping drinks. I watched the businessmen come in, all shiny shoes and Oxford shirts. I made eye contact, then shyly looked away.
He was telling me stuff about his passions, his dreams, his art, and I was listening, sort of.  Conversation was good, time passed easily. I got tired – it’s the vicenarian curse. Adolescence slips away and all we’re left with is the hope of eventual maturity. I’m doomed to be tired from now until the day I die.

It wasn’t as horrible as I’d predicted. In fact, it wasn’t horrible at all. He would like to see me again. I will. But I’m not sure I’m feeling any sort of promise, any sort of legitimate future frisson. As we said goodnight, I wondered what it’d be like to kiss him. Then I realized I didn’t want to.

It got me started thinking about sparks. Instantaneous sparks. There are great moments in life when something beautiful begins. It begins with a look across a dark bar, a chance comment at a party, the fortuitous arrangement of time and place. Sometimes it begins with an internet email. A first date gone well.

I’ve never forgotten those beginnings. That couch on Carmen St. That New Years’ Eve. That party in the snow in Chicago. That night we walked around the city. The night in Cape Town at the pool hall. The road trip where we stayed up most of the night. The first date that never ended. The first time you feel the frisson, the slow curling inside your stomach, the safe knowledge of feelings. I’ve not known those for some time now. Am I doomed to stir up those memories in the hopes of never losing that feeling?

That feeling is what I crave. And what I’m determined to wait for. Patiently. Or at least until I’m 25 and I get on match.com, whichever comes first.

***

Today’s song:

West Coast by Coconut Records
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlYGEaeoBWw

On [has] been

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He is not my forever mate.

I think I figured that out some time between our second date and now. The first two dates were really great. But then again, drunk me likes most things.

I’m realizing that there is a lot of stuff he hates. (I don’t like hate. I think we shouldn’t hate so much. I really only hate a few things. Toe-walkers and mouth-breathers, mostly.)

Fat people, for instance. One of the things he likes about me is that I’m skinny. Great. Flash forward seven years, to the birth of our first child and subsequent divorce based on the baby-weight that I haven’t had a chance to lose.

He also hates wiggling. R once told me that me and his six-year old self would have gotten along famously because he once told his mom that “if you aren’t moving, it doesn’t count.” I wonder what kind of strange six-year old snuggler he was.  I wiggle while we’re snuggling, or before we fall asleep.I’ll be adjusting, slowly shifting myself into sleep, and he’ll say, “Just sleep!” as though I’m that obedient. The other night he said that and I kept wiggling long after I was comfortable just to annoy him.

When we’re watching tv, if I say something – anything – he’ll grab the remote, pause it, then go “shh!” at me and rewind to before I talked. If you want to hang out alone, do that. If you want to hang out with me, you’re going to have to deal with side commentary. Especially when you’ve seen the episode at least once before.

He makes his bed every morning. Not usually a red flag, but if you know me, you know that this might present problems. Although, for the last week, I’ve been trying to at least return my bed to some semblance of order and have been successful. Worse than the making of the bed is the sheet tucking. He tucks it into the bottom like you’re in a hotel. We switched spots one night for television-screen viewing purposes and I went to pull the sheets out and he screamed. Actually yelled “NO!”

But to be honest, it’s not any of those things that proved to be the deal breaker. Minus the remote aggression and the fat-people-hating, there are compromises that exist. I’m a very adaptive person. I’ll mimic your habits, tune in to your needs, find myself a niche in your life and fill it pleasantly.

It really ended for me when he moved my toothbrush.

I don’t like the way he talks to me. I find his patronizing attitude frustrating. We argued about how your credit score is calculated and I found myself backing down because I wasn’t 100% sure. I should have held my ground. I wasn’t wrong.

So when he told me that he moved my toothbrush under his cabinet because he didn’t want it to get dusty, I got mad. That’s not even a smooth lie. I hope by “dusty” he meant “noticed by the other girl I’m bringing home” because that’s how I translated it.

I woke up at his place at 5:57 that morning. I wandered around in the pre-dawn, unable to close my eyes again. I stood in the kitchen and watched the sun rise on another wonderful day. It was a moment of utter calm.

Nobody puts my toothbrush under the sink…

(…unless it’s to prevent it from being literally contaminated by strange things. I personally don’t like exposed toothbrushes, but that is beside the point.)

We went out together, rode the elevator in silence, and I kissed him goodbye.

Also, sidenote: Band of Horses is awesome. So awesome.