Fifteen First Dates @fifteenfirstdates - Tumblr Blog

Date 15: DONE FOREVER

So I finished. It took approximately a year longer than it was supposed to, but I did my 15 dates. Something to be proud of? Hard to say.

I don't know if I'm any better at dating than when I started. I learned how to grit my teeth through an awkward encounter with a stranger, but that too was probably more a result of a lot of practice doing awkward interviews as a journalist. Perhaps I've learned something about my own personal dealbreakers: A lack of ambition, someone who can't stop talking about themselves, someone who references our future sex life within the first 20 minutes of meeting me for the first time. Hard to say.

The last date went well. We met up for drinks in Evanston. He was shorter than I expected--by a pretty hefty margin, to the point where I think my jaw dropped a little. But he was funny and clearly smart and most importantly, I could envision kissing him without recoiling, which has been shockingly absent from most of my dates. He may have also dropped a few feminist insights I could get behind.

I wanted to see him again, even though he technically lives more than an hour away, and that's basically long distance. A few days after our drink he texted me and asked if I could hang out. I wanted to...and yet. I've barely seen most of my friends since I returned to Chicago, and I really don't need anything else keeping me from leaving here after graduation. When I started this, I was looking for a real relationship, I think, but at this point, I'm not actually capable of dating someone for real. I'm a big fan of fleeing the state to get out of a relationship, but that's just such an emotional commitment.

This being a growth exercise, I tried to be mature and kind about it and not just freeze him out or send one word response texts for weeks. No one likes that, and I certainly tend to miss the memo when other people try to let me down gently. So I tried to be honest (ish) and thanked him and said I had come to the conclusion that I just couldn't date right now. It wasn't the whole truth, but at least it was some version of the truth, one that wouldn't mislead him. Baby steps.

I'm a part time student/part time mushroom cultivator.

The perfect way to break the ice.

#okcupid

Date 14: Back to Chicago

I'm pretty sure no one normal in Chicago dates online. My one New York date went well enough to renew my faith in OkCupid, but...now we're back to awkward coffee dates.

I tried to read in between some profile lines here and assumed this guy lived in Evanston, a way more convenient dating commute than Chicago. Alas, no, his northern suburb was even more suburban than I had imagined.

More importantly, by the time you reach your 20s I feel like you should be able to carry on a conversation with a stranger. Ask questions, listen to another person speak, realize you've rambled on for 15 minutes about something inane. Is there an algorithm to determine whether or not someone has sexy hand gestures? That's what I'd really like out of OkCupid's forays into the science of dating. Tell me if someone's awkwardness is attractive or just uncomfortable. So far, its mostly been the latter.

On the bright side, he wanted to see me again, so perhaps I've at least accomplished what I wanted -- to become good at first dates, even if I didn't necessarily meet someone. Can you believe I've been at this for more than a year?

#okcupid woes

Date 13: It happened.

I went on a date. It went well. We'll go on another.

I like your shirt. My little kid sister has one just like it. haha

The worst OkCupid message ever written from a man with a profile that states, simply -- poetically, even -- "I like to exchange sexy messages."

Furthermore, there is no picture of me wearing anything more notable than a colored tshirt.

Date 12: Baaaack

After a summer without OkCupid, I decided to get back on the figurative horse and finish this damn thing. Someone finally responded to my blind messaging, and off we went. The plan was to get coffee, then wander around in Millennium Park. He was kind of a wild card: His pictures were just blurry enough to not be able to tell if he was cute or not.

Since I've been out of the habit of random interviews with strangers, I found myself surprisingly nervous as I rode the train across the Loop from work. I felt the need to run to Walgreen's and buy some Band-Aids to cover a weird looking wart I'm sporting on my thumb. I took a sample from Mrs. Fields on the way there and promptly starting worrying about my breath. I killed some time in the men's section of Macy's because it was the closest to the street and I was too paranoid to stray far from my destination. (Men's underwear sections have the strangest mannequins.)

With promptly 5 minutes to walk half a block, I headed over to our arranged meeting place, ducked inside, realized he wasn't there (although I made some misleading eye contact with someone on a computer) and took a seat outside. At 5:05, I became convinced I had missed him inside. But he showed up a few minutes later and recognized me immediately.

He led with "so do you like coffee?" I promptly revealed a hatred for his favorite beverage, iced tea. But it got better. We talked journalism and reporting (he works for a small paper I'd never heard of), and I found out he's Turkish and speaks German. I probably complained about my job too much. At a certain point it became unclear if we were dating or networking, but it was pleasant nonetheless. I only had an hour, but it went by quickly.

Notable things: I may have uttered the phrase "I don't really do exercise." He found this more honest than I meant it to sound. As we were leaving, he asked me "Do you have a phone number?" I may have been condescending about the fact that of course, I have a phone number, I live in the 21st century. But still, I gave it to him, and he texted me a few hours later. I would feel very hopeful about this if he didn't live all the way in Hyde Park.

Today in weird messages:

Happy Friday! I'm Henry and I am here with some friends of mine to chat. How are you doing?

I'm sorry, is online dating a group activity these days? What does that even mean? Also, it wasn't a chat, it was a message.

It's been a long summer with a distinct lack of dates. I apologize, but I had given up on ever reaching 15. Mostly because I wasn't finding anyone interesting, but also because I gave up on the notion of random dating. So much work for so far almost zero reward. It seemed easier to just find someone the old fashioned way -- you know, get drunk, find a friend of a friend at a party and put your face on theirs. No dates involved. But a deal's a deal, and 15 dates must happen. So I'm working on it. Let's finish this thing.

Date 11: Was a long time ago

I haven't been on Tumblr much lately, partially because I've been working full time and can't find an excuse for why scrolling through mostly cat pictures is related to the task at hand, and partially because I feel guilty that I went on this date 2+ weeks ago and never wrote about it.

On basic plot level, it was the picture perfect date to tell the grandkids about. We went to a bar to play boardgames and drink beer, but decided to forgo the games in favor of chit chat and pizza. We stayed for two hours. It was dimly lit and mostly pleasant. He was cute and our conversation for the most part did not devolve into hapless staring into space. He was great--except for the moments when he wasn't. As it goes.

First, there was the admission, with a definite hint of pride, that he bummed around Chicago playing videogames and letting his parents pay the rent for months before he finally even tried to find a job after college. There was the fact that he led with a discussion of my online profile, and worse, that my messaging style was "terse." The showing me of a picture from his own profile, which I hadn't looked at in a while because why would I? Then there was the minutes-long tirade about how great of a shoe salesman he was. The too-soon mention of ex-girlfriends. The assumption that we would go on a second date. And, at the end, the way-too-soon joke about us having sex.

In between, he would redeem himself. Realize that he had been talking for 10 minutes straight or share a nice analysis of Community. We shared a pizza and we ate and talked comfortably, without that much regard for looking perfect while trying to cram an oddly shaped, floppy mound of cheese into your mouth. But toward the end of the date, things got weirder. The silences grew longer, probably because we had reached a threshold of things you can ask a stranger in one sitting. But instead of just looking away like a normal awkward person, he stared at me with this loving look on his face, the kind of face I've only seen on the countenance of long-term boyfriends who do in fact love me. Too soon! Too soon! I plead an early workday as an excuse to leave.

Outside the bar, he lingered a bit. Touched my face, stroked it really, and leaned in to kiss me in a way that fully took to heart the "meet me halfway" style of makeout. Which is, to be frank, not very attractive. Really, I don't want to stand there and look at your makeout face from a foot away, just hanging in the air. It begs the question: Am I allowed to just be like "nah" at that point? I prefer to be "attacked in the face," as I later told one of my roommates. Surprised, ever so slightly. Not in a non-consensual way, just with a sense of timeliness that does not give me the opportunity to overthink things or re-examine whether I even find you attractive. Either kiss me, or don't. Don't just put your lips out there and assume I will find my way to them eventually.

None of my other OkCupid dates have kissed me after the first date. To be frank, no one has ever kissed me a on a first date period. But it was more awkward to run than to just kiss him, so I did. To his credit, it remained fairly innocent, but still. Anyone sitting near the windows of the bar could watch this, and I'm 90% sure I'm a bad kisser, at least on the first go. I crumble under pressure. Still unsure what to do as he looked at me with his weird loving face, I offered to give him my number. He asked for my last name. He kissed me again, stroked my face again. Blarg. I tried not to do weird shuddering things until I was out of sight.

Two weeks later, and I still make terrible faces thinking about it. He never did text me though.

But here's the real kicker: I was comparing online dating experiences with a friend last weekend, and we were talking about how we always feel we have to do all the work in the conversation. As she described her last experience, familiar themes began to pop up. It took only one or two shared characteristics to realize we'd been on the same date. He didn't do weird things to her face, though.

Man, I'm tired of this shit. Four dates to go.

I don't know if this comes as a shock to anyone, but I have 5 dates left and 7 days until the previously assigned deadline. That math isn't going to work out.

Date 10: Full of surprises

This weekend's date started out disappointingly similar to Date 9. I saw him lingering on the sidewalk outside our meeting place, an Ethiopian coffee shop in Rodgers Park that was the failed destination of Date 7. Creature of habit. His hair was shorter than in his pictures. He was shorter than in his pictures. Most importantly though, he had paused to finish his cigarette. So not my scene. I just kept walking, fingers crossed that it wasn't him. No luck, he followed me in.

But we actually had fairly pleasant conversation. Though he had a bit of an abrasive vibe (also known as "he's probably an asshole"), he could hold up the other end of a dialogue with decent skill. He's a poet working on a master's in English, so we could at least talk books, and we shared a fear of bodily harm through athletic activity. I felt signature weirdness about waxing lyrical about my life as a suburban undergrad to a semi-real person. He was going to spend the rest of the day finding a wedding gift for a friend. I wasn't sure if he would understand the discomfort I feel in the fact that I'm at an age where my friends are allowed to get married. Eventually I admitted to him that yes, I was still insanely hungover from the night before. He, in turn, admitted that he had taken to drinking to cope with the stresses of grad school, and had to lay off recently. At least he has a passion for whiskey?

After an hour or so, he announced that he was going to get more coffee and some food. None of these dates have lasted into a second cup, and even though I had spent most of our conversation thinking "NOPE," I also wasn't in a rush to leave. I ordered lunch, but they were out of whatever vegetarian sandwich he wanted. "Are you a vegetarian?" I inquired.

"A vegan," he told me. Womp. I hoped he wasn't going to mind the giant bowl of greasy Ethiopian beef chunks I had just ordered. He went with just coffee, so he would actually just have to sit there watching me shovel meat into my mouth. He didn't seem to mind, though. I'm not sure you can look sexy eating Ethiopian food, but I figured it didn't matter at this point. He went outside to smoke another cigarette while I paid my check.

I decided to walk north to the next El stop rather than south to the one he would need. He asked for my phone number, though, and I was happy to give it to him. No word yet.

Date 9: Blarg

Note to potential suitors: If you pick the right brand of comedy Tumblr as an icebreaker, I will go on a date with you. Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate.

This was my first experience with expecting a completely different person than who reality presented me with. I don't know how it happened, but the person in his pictures looked barely anything like the man that was standing outside the restaurant waiting for me. I was 10 minutes early, partially because the train schedule dictated that and partially because I feel that waiting gives me the upper hand. But so was he.

I could tell it was him from a block away, because no one else would be leaning against a bike rack with no bike, outside a perfectly air conditioned restaurant on a 90 degree day. I had to wait a few moments for the light to turn green so I could cross, and he hadn't seen me. My first instinct: run.

Has the internet made me an asshole? Yes. I'm tired of wasting my time on people I never want to hang out with again, much less sleep with. But I'm not usually hung up on looks. Swearsies. Yet I find myself crossing people off my list because they're under 5'9", because I can only see a profile of their face in their picture. Minimizing the bad-date risk. Also known as being a picky bitch.

I didn't run. That would have been cruel, I told myself. But the minute I heard his voice, I knew it wasn't going to be good. Having a somewhat sexy voice is actually pretty vital. Maybe online dating profiles should have audio samples. When are these things going multimedia?

We went to a deep dish place, though I wasn't in the massive cheese consumption mood for once. I rarely go to restaurants with wait service on these dates. The initial chit chat is interrupted by the fact that you have to figure out what you're ordering, then you have this awkward gap where you just pray for bread to arrive to have something to do. And he did not talk. He kept giving me these mournful glances, like "isn't this awkward, I can't help it," but I was the only one supplying conversation starters. I would ask him something about his life, and he wouldn't even go with the "And you?" After we had eaten a suitable amount, I started giving the waitress pleading looks, which she apparently took to mean "I'm having so much fun never bring the check." Blarg.

We both had to head to the train to go home, but he was a pretty slow walker and I couldn't exactly leave him behind. Even though he wasn't speaking to me. We missed both our trains by seconds and had to stand around awkwardly on the platform. He apologized to me for the very loud, very public screaming match going on in the street below, as if the city of Chicago was somehow his responsibility, as if I was a tourist seeing all the wrong things. God forbid my pure line of sight be tainted by the lesser elements of society on his watch. He didn't ask for my number, but said we could go see a play in the city sometime if I wanted to. I bolted for the train before the doors had even opened.

Date 8

Titles that came to mind for this blog all rhymed, conveniently. Super late. Not worth the wait. Mild hate. Etc.

Just kidding, I didn't hate him. But he was half an hour late. For the second time in a row, I tried to go to a nice independent coffee shop only to have it unexpectedly closed for one day only. So Starbucks it was. I needed to get out of the house, so I armed myself with a few books and got there an hour early. I like to be the first one there, what can I say.

This kid was one of the first people that messaged me when I got an OkCupid account back in the winter, but he doesn't go to school in the Chicago area, so our conversations petered off somewhere in January, though they had been funny and charming for a while. But he's back for the summer, so we decided to meet up.

Maybe I've just become jaded and bored with first dates, but it did not go well. Though he could talk for minutes at a time, most of his conversation was peppered with likes and whatevers. He asked me perhaps one question about myself in our 30 or 40 minutes. He did regale me with a lovely tale of how he almost failed a class for academic dishonesty, and somehow never noticed that his group project somehow sounded a lot like it had been written for an entirely different class than the one he was in. I wasn't particularly impressed.

To give him some credit, part of my unwillingness to fake interest on this one was that I had been sitting around and people watching for an hour and a half, so I was fairly ready to get up at that point. As I saw a southbound train go by, I decided I had to book it out of there before the northbound left without me. Between wanting to catch the train and being nearly certain I was having major lady-issues, I essentially ran from him.

In fact, I did run. Didn't want to get stopped at a red light!

Resolved: Must stop going on dates with musicians. Why is everyone on OkCupid a musician?

ilovecharts

-meghanwaslike

fifteenfirstdates

I would add in another step called "realize finding a boyfriend would mean having to end blog." Then back to "Multiple bad dates."

Date 7: Still can't get it right

I wonder if the lack of sexual tension on my dates has anything to do with the fact that I keep scheduling them for as early as humanly possible. Or do I keep scheduling them for as early as humanly possible in order to squash any potential sexual tension?

I rolled out of bed this morning for a 10:30 am date in Rodgers Park, reluctantly, pulling on my best pair of hipster shoes. I find that I obsess most about my footwear before a date, as if all a guy needs to see in me is a sweet pair of kicks. So far, I can't even confirm any of them have seen my feet.

Remember how I learned to get someone's number before a first date? As always, I thought it wasn't that kind of day. I got to the coffee shop about 15 minutes early. Closed for a private party. All day. It wasn't quite drizzling, but it was certainly damp. I grabbed a metal chair with a reasonable amount of dew on it and pulled out my book.

I had just gotten really into it when I heard someone say my name from behind me. I screamed a little. Unreasonable? Yes. Embarrassing? Completely. More importantly, the surprise kept me from confirming his name. I wasn't sure if it'd be important, anyway. This isn't making me jaded, no.

We relocated to the Starbucks down the street, which was operating at nearly full capacity. Not like, Unicorn late on a Sunday morning, but the line was long. Lines do not make for good "just met you what the fuck are you all about" talk.

Pluses: he was (and most likely still is) tall. Ever so slight southern twang. Has fantastic taste in movies. The only reason we were on this date was because he mentioned loving Twin Peaks on his profile. Spoiler: I love that shit. A few minutes into the date, I realized that he kind of looked like an ex-boyfriend. This made me like him more. Familiarity is comforting.

The date itself was a little stilted though. Awkward in the way we could laugh about on subsequent dates, maybe, though, rather than just atrocious. Not all of us are on top of our dates with strangers game. Some guys also just look really nervous holding an empty paper cup, too.

To add to the tension, the only person from my hometown living in the Chicago area lives a few blocks from this particular Starbucks, and halfway through my latte she came in for a hangover cure. I was torn. How was I supposed to explain why I had spent 20 minutes on a train to hang out in Starbucks? Was I going to introduce him? Did I remember his name? I tried to catch her eye anyway, but she didn't see me until she was halfway out the door. At which point we talked for a few minutes, hopefully proving to him that I can be socially competent and whimsical and jokey, which isn't usually easy to convey over coffee no matter how many times I profess my love for Harold and Maude.

I ended up playing the "busy with school" card and ending the date a little early, just because it seemed like he couldn't think of anything else to say. But as we parted ways outside, he asked for my number. I was glad. His hands shook a little as he fiddled with his phone. I hope I made him nervous. That's how you know someone cares, right?

Sometimes I wonder if I would have had a more successful blog/life if I had gone with "Fifteen First Cover Letters" instead of "Fifteen First Dates."

Practice...makes adequate? Stay tuned for Date 7!

After enough of these dates, I've started to regard every one-on-one interaction with a male as a first date, then rank them according to whether or not I would go on a second with them. The answer has almost always been yes -- so apparently I meet way better dudes through not-the-internet.

Of course, halfway through the conversation I wake up to the fact that this person is not trying to date me -- then spend the rest of the time trying to make completely normal conversation sound as sexy as possible so that they'll change their mind about that. Thus far I've been unsuccessful, if you can imagine.

I wonder if blind dates, which take almost no effort in terms of seduction, have ruined my ability to flirt. I also wonder if I ever had that ability.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Fifteen First Dates