Playing With Matches

Maybe Fozzie?

November 20, 2008 · No Comments

I spent my entire coffee date last night trying to figure out which one of the Muppets his voice reminded me of.

My date kept shaking. He said he wasn’t cold. He said he had too much caffeine. Then he drank two, big cups of coffee.

I started to wonder if he had Parkinson’s.

A few hours after I got home, he sent me this e-mail:

Subject: gotta tell ya
Hi, sorry for being a nervous wreck tonight. It’s rare I meet
someone smart, interesting, witty, pretty and can call out on my
bullshit (a compliment). Typically my jdates consist of me trying to
weasel my way out after 10 minutes! ;) Got another one tomorrow. Who
knows, maybe she’ll lack self esteem and I’ll be thinking jackpot!

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Two Guys and a Girl

November 20, 2008 · No Comments

An intensely beautiful Jew im-d me on JDate. 

I asked him if those were really his pictures, or if they came with a picture frame.

He asked if he could call me. I didn’t really feel like working, so I said sure.

I wish I had recorded this phone call. Because I’m sitting here in shock. I don’t even know where to begin….

So, it turns out — he and his roommate are sharing their JDate membership. They want to meet me at once. And then we can all go out together on dates, or I could meet them both and then go out on individual dates with them. “It would be like a reality TV dating show,” he said. “Because we’re going to come home and talk about you anyway. And if you like one of us better, there would be no hard feelings.”

But, ideally, they’re trying to score a three-way. They’re both former models — and strippers. The guy who called me says he’s only stripped like 5 or 6 times. But his roommate does it ALL THE TIME. Not for money, but for fun. Because they don’t need cash — one is an attorney and one is an accountant. They just like taking their clothes off for girls. That makes them hot. The guy told me that my accent on the phone made him hot.

Uhm… I’m not interested in a three-way. A friend of mine had one with two guys 10 years ago and that’s the greatest sex story I’ve ever heard. But I don’t want to. I’m too old for this.

If that’s what you’re looking for. I don’t want to stop you, I said.

Oh, you won’t, he said.

He asked me where my friend lives. 

Does she look like you? he asked.

No, she’s African American.

I’ve never been with a black girl before. And I definitely want to, he said.

Yeah, she’s seeing someone. I don’t think she’d want to do you and your friend.

I know that on JDate, everyone is pretty much dating a bunch of other people at once. Everyone goes home from a not-so-great date, logs on, and finds someone else to go out with. Everyone is exploring their options –but usually not at once. And I’m really a one-guy-at-a-time type of girl. I work alone.

He was telling me about this male strip club in Canada he and his friend want to go to. “But we have to take dates,” he said. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I heart male strippers. I think they’re fun. In college, I edited the women’s center’s magazine. And we were trying to think of an event that would bring women to the women’s center (because a lot of girls didn’t know where it was) and I suggested male strippers. (My idea got vetoed, instead we had a poetry reading and the five girls who knew where the center was came.)

But I don’t want to date strippers. And then I got this weird feeling that maybe this guy was already dating his “activity partner.” The answer he gave when I asked him was really not as firm as I’d like.

He said he really wanted to meet me because we have so much in common.

What do we have in common? I asked. That we’re both from the South and we’re both 33?

It takes a lot to shock/surprise/stun me. But, he wins. I didn’t expect a Cinemax-after-dark-style conversation at 2 p.m.

Are you actually Jewish? I asked.

Yeah, he said. I’m reform.

 

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Way to Go

November 18, 2008 · No Comments

“I just want to die in my sleep,” my J-date last night said. “Actually, I want to die while having sex.”

That would be so awful. I would never want someone to die while we were, uhm, intimate. (Didn’t that happen to Rose on Golden Girls?) 

He said it hadn’t occurred to him to think about how it would be for the person he was with if that’s how he went out.

“Wow,” he said. “I’m so selfish.”

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Material Girls

November 17, 2008 · 1 Comment

There’s a guy on JDate, who I’m actually looking forward to meeting. Well, at least I was looking forward to meeting him.

We like a lot of the same music, read the same books, and he seems to get me. He’s really funny.
“I’m actually a deep, sensitive guy with a melancholy streak, but I could tell bringing the funny was the way to your heart,” he e-mailed me.
Like I said: He gets me. 
But when he called last night, he was in a melancholy mood. 
I went to a 1-year-old’s birthday party today, he said. There were a lot of attractive single women there.
Uhm.. great? Good for you? Why are you telling me this?
It’s really an untapped resource. Who knew, right?  he continued.
You should write an article for Maxim or Playboy, I said. Score a lot of numbers?
No, I didn’t like them, he said. They were all really materialistic, suburban JAPs.
Ah.
Am I digging myself a hole? he asked.
Well, I mean, I like my stuff. But, I wouldn’t die if it was gone.
Oh, of course you’re not materialistic, he said. You’re a freelance journalist.
We’re supposed to meet tonight.
I don’t know why he told me about the hot single girls at the toddler party. Did he forget who he was talking to? When I told a friend of mine, she said one of her girlfriends went on a Match.com date Friday and asked the guy how Match was working for him. (I always hate this question. I kind of hate telling bad date stories on first dates.)
“I had a date last night,” he said. “It went really well.”
It’s okay, my friend said. She didn’t really like him.

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Rawrrrr

November 17, 2008 · No Comments

I went to a friend’s birthday party last night.

Check this out, the birthday girl said handing me her iPhone.

There was a message saying, “Hey Cougar, how’s the party?”

That’s what I get for teaching my mom how to text, she said.

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Train Man

November 17, 2008 · No Comments

Friday morning I took the train from Philly to New Haven.

There was a really cute guy who kept smiling at me (like, when my cell phone started ringing really loudly when I was sitting in the quiet car.)

When I went to buy a bottle of water, he was in the snack car. We talked for a minute, we didn’t even exchange names, and then I went back to my seat. (It was an early morning train, I wasn’t wear any make-up, my hair was a frizzy mess, and there isn’t a Starbucks at the Philly train station.)

Back in my seat, I pulled my coat over me and closed my eyes. Maybe an hour later, he walked over, shook me awake and handed me his card. 

It was nice to meet you — this is my stop. E-mail me, he said. He wrote his personal e-mail address on the back of the card, flipped it over to show me, looked really intensely into my eyes and told me twice more, E-mail me. 

Later that night, I Googled him. He works at a prestigious law-firm, he went to the same university where my parents met and he’s a Fulbright scholar.

Check, check and check.

I sent him an e-mail saying it was nice to meet him, and asked if he’s ever in D.C. 

The next morning he sent me 9 enthusiastic e-mails. The first said he had a long day Friday, “but you were a bright spot!” He says he used to live in DC and gets there a lot, and hopes to see me soon. He said he had wanted to invite me to sit with him, but he didn’t want me to watch him eat. While I was on the train heading home Saturday, he kept e-mailing me: He said he was dropping off his dry-cleaning, doing dishes, getting a hair cut — he thought he would have more fun if he was on the train with me (but he had gone home the night before.)

Before I got a chance to respond, he sent me another note saying he was now flirting with the girl at the plant store.

?

That doesn’t make a girl feel special.

Then he e-mailed me saying:

“The train doesn’t really have any excitement or romance that one assumes it must have had. All of my train trips have been without excitement. Not that planes are much better but at least the stewardesses flirt.”

Hmm.

When I met him, I thought he was wearing a ring. But, I was very sleepy and it wasn’t a simple, standard wedding band. It was a thick, patterned silver ring. When he kept writing me (with so many !’s) I told myself that maybe it was just a souvenir he bought on a beach in Mexico. 

I wrote him back saying I know a lot of flight attendants who met their husbands on planes. I said I was guessing he wasn’t married.

He responded:

“Who told you that you stop flirting once married? I’m married but still me!”

Isn’t his wife lucky?

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Jesus Loves Him, I Don’t

November 14, 2008 · No Comments

She told her husband, she wanted to leave. He knew she was gay. She told him eight years ago.

“I loved him once,” she told me, a few minutes ago.

But when she wanted to leave, he said no. “I was all he had,” she said. So he started hitting her. Again and again and again.

“He tried to break me,” she said. “Well, he did break me. I wouldn’t do nothing. I’d just walk by and he’d blacken my eye, or break my jaw.”

She says she’s finally left him. She’s living in a shelter. He doesn’t know where she is. 

He told her people could tell she’s a lesbian by the way she dressed.

What? I asked her.

She was wearing a button down shirt, a blazer and khaki’s. She had big diamond studs in her ears. 

This is a men’s coat, she said.

So? This is a men’s coat, I said. (I was wearing my uncle’s pea coat from when he was in the Navy.)

That’s different, she said. That’s a pea coat.

We stood in the cold and the rain and the wet talking. I’m not a big hug-strangers person. But I gave her a hug and then another.

Please, don’t let anyone hit you ever again, I said.

I won’t, she said.

I’m not sure I believe her. I walked back into my hotel and bought a Hershey’s with almonds. I wish I had a keg of beer. No wonder this woman has been hard to reach for interviews for the light, happy article I’ve been working on. No wonder she’s always napping when I call. 

She says it would be okay for her to be in the article. But, she also says that her husband doesn’t know where she is. And I don’t want to be the one to help him find her.

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Hanging Up

November 11, 2008 · 2 Comments

My phone just rang.

Hi this is X. from J-Date, a guy said. I hate introducing myself like that. I guess I could have told you my last name.

What is your last name? I asked. I don’t know it.

Let’s keep that a way, he said.

And then he hung up on me. 

?

A few minutes later, he called back. As he talked and talked and talked, I kind of wished he hadn’t. He made me so sleepy. I kept hoping my other line would ring. Or maybe a fire alarm would go off in my building. My dog walked over and started making loud I’m-going-to-die-any-minute whimpering noises (she’s such a good wing woman). 

He went on and on and on and on. He spoke about the run he takes from work, and the different route and the scenes and how boring it is and how he has an ability, that’s also a curse, to over hear people’s conversations. (I told him to get an iPod.)

This call made last night’s “fine” date seem better (It would make for a bad blog entry because there really isn’t anything much to say about a perfectly nice human being who was easy to get along with.) When I got home, a friend asked me how it was. I told her that at no point in the evening did I want to leave. 

That’s good for you, she said.

Yeah, I guess it is.

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Too Much

November 3, 2008 · No Comments

I bit the bullet and re-joined J-Date.

I have been deluged by 50-year-old men. I’m 33. No.

No. No. No.

I just got an e-mail from a guy who lives across the country who said that he’s decided that he wants to share his life with me. I haven’t written back. He keeps writing.

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My Dad…

October 29, 2008 · 1 Comment

… Never ceases to surprise me.

    While my dad was in town this weekend, he cut all my dog’s treats into tiny little slivers (even though she’s perfectly capable of eating them whole).

    When we went to dinner, I mentioned this to my friend P.

    Why? she asked.

    His dog doesn’t chew much, I told her.

    Dad reached into his pocket, pulled out a plastic pill-for-every-day-of-the-week carrier, opened it, took out one of his dog’s teeth, and put it on the table.

    I was not expecting that. I thought he might just talk about his dog’s dental issues. Instead, he had a visual aide. He said a friend gave his dog a pig ear. His dog chewed on it furiously for two days, then one of his teeth fell out.

    Why do you have it with you, in your pocket, dad?

    I want to show it to the vet, he said.

    His vet is 400 miles away.

    Leave it at home, and take it with you when you have an appointment. I can’t believe he’s carrying his dog’s tooth with him wherever he goes. He had about five of those little pill holders with him. I don’t want to know what are in the other compartments.

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