surely this will work eventually

[shouldwesplitit]

Khalil the Actor

I almost bailed on this date yesterday. We were supposed to meet when I was in Portland already for a TB test, and then he ended up having early rehearsal, so he wanted to meet at 9 instead. There was no way I would have driven back and forth to Portland twice for a guy I didn't know, except that I had already done my eye makeup and it looked really good and if I didn't go on a date it would have only been for the benefit of the TB test guy.

So I get to this bar (I have now been to the same bar on three separate dates with three separate men and it's only so long before the bartender ladies start winking at me, but I decided it's my good-luck bar since it's right next to the Center) and wait. I always get there before the date, because the only thing worse than waiting for him to arrive and nervously adjusting your clothes every five seconds is nervously walking over to him and not having time to adjust your clothes at all. He ends up sneaking up on me (not on purpose) and tapping me on the shoulder.

He has a lot of bright colors on, which fits the exuberant personality type I expended from his Tinder info (actor, stupid jokes) but it turns out what doesn't fit that is his actual personality. He does make stupid (good) jokes, but his overall demeanor has a weird tinge of gravitas and he speaks in a way that is measured but with weighty pauses just short of being stilted, kind of like Obama, and also like my ex-friend Nassim, which wigged me out a bit, but we'll get to that later.

I am VERY awkward on dates. People I know who think I'm more or less well-adjusted have never been on a date with me. And it's not even cute awkward because I try super hard to pretend I'm not being awkward, like somehow neither of us will notice. And at the end of the date I'm wiped out from faking it and have set a precedent for faking it on the next date. It's not surprising that I don't accept a lot of second dates.

But I have decided that I'm sick on going on ten million first dates that go exactly the same way, and so I'm going to do something fundamentally different for every date. This time I decided to embrace the awkwardness. Own it. Rock it. And hope it came out more Jess from New Girl than Rebecca from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. "I'm super awkward around new people," I announced boldly (lied; not awkward around new people, awkward on first dates) after the first incredibly awkward thing I said (pretty sure I asked him if actors just cry all the time or something). Boom. Now he knew and I didn't feel as much of a need to maintain a conspiracy that he was meeting a normal human being in this bar.

He had really pretty, deep brown eyes and he was big on eye contact, which meant I kept getting flustered and acting like I was suddenly fascinated by the bumper stickers on the wall and forgetting what I was saying. He had a tiny bald spot (scar) in his stubble exactly the size of the pad of my forefinger and I really wanted to poke him in it. He had a giant shoulder bag made to look like a box of Nerds that definitely didn't go with his weirdly somber-ish-but-not-in-a-bad-way demeanor. He kept using the word 'fool' but once substituted it for 'nimrod.' He told me the most bizarre story I have ever heard on a date (including the campaign manager who got a call about the media release of his candidate's kinks), about how some old guy demanded to know his ethnicity in the gym one time when he was nineteen and somehow became his 'patron' (he actually used that word) and did things like buy him cars and give him thousands of dollars and take him out to dinner and shave his back (yes, actually.) He said he liked my hair. He asked very formally outside the bar if he could kiss me on the mouth, and he STILL DID after I took like a five-minute shrill giggling break before saying yes. He held my fingertips lightly while he was doing it.

Part of me wonders (and all of me is annoyed about it) if part of my attraction to him is because of his similarities to Nassim. (Like a hotter version.) I am so so sick of having any sorts of thoughts or feelings about Nassim, but they still crop up from time to time, like herpes. Maybe I DID have some sort of feelings for him and that's why our relationship felt so intense. I wish the want-to-fuck divide (he did, I didn't) wasn't such a make-or-break-it for defining emotions and the arbiter of what is and isn't considered romantic. I still miss him, WHICH IRRITATES THE HELL OUT OF ME, but he really was basically my non-sexual boyfriend after Amit. Our friends even called me his platonic wife. And even though he was insecure and neurotic and obsessive and the definition of a shitty male feminist, he was also there for me when I needed someone.

ANYWAY. Khalil (KhaLIL not KhaLEEL, which I am so relieved I read on his instagram before the date because I totally read a book recently with a character named Khalil and I was saying KhaLEEL in my head the whole time) makes me feel how I think you're supposed to feel after a good first date, kind of excited and wanting to know more about them. But I've also felt this way about other first dates and had it fizzle on the second. And I don't know how much of it was actual fizzling and not just me letting my anxiety and hesitations ruin everything. But since owning up to my awkwardness helped on this date, maybe I'll just stick to my guns and fess up every time I feel nervous or scared if we end up hanging out more. Which will be a lot.

Hopefully he REALLY likes my hair.

[shouldwesplitit]

The Libertarian’s House

Like any good New Years Resolution-making person, I want to work on conquering some fears in 2018. Some fears will probably never go away, like the fear that I'll accidentally shave off my labia when trimming the hedges, but there are some things it would definitely be useful for me to not be afraid of. Like driving. And sex.

The key to conquering my fear of driving, it turns out, has just been to drive. Pretty simple. So I'm hoping the same principle will apply to my fear of sex.

Which, incidentally, I've decided to rechristen as a fear of intimacy, because that sounds more normal and adult in a reassuring boring way, like divorce and taxes.

I decided to use the libertarian for this experiment because I found him objectively attractive and hypothetically that should translate to wanting to have sex with him. He also owned his own house, gave me free weed, and told me embarrassing gossip about his Republican campaign candidate which I could theoretically compile and then release to the press like a sexy spy.

A lot of my fear of ~intimacy~ comes from the idea that I'll feel obligated to have sex I won't want to have, aka my whole relationship with Phil. But after Serena nicely explained to me that dinner doesn't mean I have to have sex with someone, and I watched a bunch of adorable Planned Parenthood consent videos as part of a volunteer training program, I figured there was only a partial chance that I would freeze up and let someone stick stuff in my vagina because Society.

Ideally I would be exploring my sexuality with someone I was in love with, but people I'm in love with are in short supply these days, and it doesn't appear that anyone else in the universe is interested in love BEFORE sex, so here we are.

Sex prep is time-consuming. First I had to go buy something cute to stuff my boobs in, because getting winter-fat in Maine has bumped me back up to a C-cup and my everyday bra is turning gray. I bought a two-pack of lace bralettes at TJ Maxx and had to sew the bands tighter because they only had a large. I had thought bralettes were only for small boobs, but these were actually really comfortable and it didn't seem like my boobs would flop out of them every time I tied my shoes, which is what normally happens when I try to wear cute bras.

I shaved off the thick fur coat that had sprouted on my legs, which made it look like a hedgehog had exploded in the bathtub, and tried to make my vagina presentable. I don't understand how anyone gets hyped about a vagina, as they are objectively gross - but penises are too, otherwise I would feel real awkward about it.

You have to be a little more careful about sex makeup, because someone will potentially be very close to your face and you don't want them realizing your eyelashes look like spiderlegs because you were too lazy to take off all your old mascara. I put on leggings and a shirt that was cute but not so cute it would make my parents realize I was lying about going to dinner with Sarah.

"You can't fool us. You're going on a date," my mom announced as I was putting on my boots.

I try not to tell my parents when I'm going on a date because they'll start asking about the guy constantly, and I'll have to come up with an excuse that isn't "I'm afraid of intimacy and can't seem to connect emotionally with any guy these days", and "I just wasn't that into him" sounds fake after the fifth time. So I made up something really embarrassing about how Sarah was bringing some cute guys from her work to dinner, which wasn't that great of a replacement, because now I would have to explain how I just wasn't that into the guys from dinner.

In the car on the way to Portland, I tried to give myself a cute pep talk like girls on TV do, only in real life it made me sound pathetic instead of adorable, so I stopped. I parked way too far away from his house by accident, greeted him at the door, and immediately ran away again under the guise of reparking my car. He was a little confused but went with it.

He showed me his room, which was very clean and adult-looking, like an AirBnB room. There was a giant mirror facing his bed like the one in Patrick Bateman's apartment. I spent so much time petting his sweet cat that I forgot I should probably be making eye contact with him sometimes.

He opted to make breakfast for dinner, which was probably a way of being more chill about the fact that we were having dinner together on Valentines Day. He had a second cat that was very fat, and I kept making jokes about how fat the cat was, which I couldn't seem to stop even though I was worried I was hurting the libertarian's feelings. I got quickly drunk on some really good mead and befriended his roommate and roommate's girlfriend, who I had a lot more fun talking to than the libertarian. I have a bad habit of liking my date's friends more than the date himself and I wish there was a mechanism for ditching the date and keeping the friends.

We then all went to his bedroom and smoked some weed. I could tell he was a little annoyed that the roomie and girl were hanging around for so long, but I was fine with it. I did some poses in front of the mirror of what I imagined the libertarian to do while admiring his muscles, which the roommate greatly enjoyed. I was bummed when they finally picked up on the libertarian's cues and left.

The makeouts started out pretty good. I wasn't turned on exactly, but the sheer physical closeness was so nice after months of only cuddling with my rabbit. He wasn’t a bad kisser, but earlier when brushing my teeth I'd run the brush over my lips to remove dry skin and accidentally ripped a scab off a chapped part, and I kept running my tongue over it to make sure it wasn't bleeding again, which he probably thought was a come-on.

Making out is best when I can get into a focused state, like when I'm doing a body scan meditation, and pay attention to what is touching where, instead of spacing out and thinking about random things, which happens if I'm not careful. Turns out my boobs did flop quite easily out of the bralette, which was annoying, because there's no subtle way to stuff a boob back in with your shirt off, but it's also very distracting to have half a boob dangling outside your bra before the boobs have been invited to the party.

Turns out I didn't even need to worry about whether or not I'd be able to say no to sex, because apparently he had herpes and was having an outbreak that made sex impossible. I was kind of relieved. He offered to eat me out, which I didn't want, so I had to awkwardly over-explain that I didn't think I liked that even though I hadn't had it in a long time, which of course made him want to do it more. It's so much easier to come up with an excuse other than "I'm not comfortable with that right now", which sounds so pathetic and lame to me for some reason. But then if the excuse is something they think they can fix, you have to do it all over again.

He started poking around my vagina, which wasn't wet, a combination of overenthusiastic cleaning earlier and not being that turned on. At one point he was stroking it through my panties and asked if that felt good. I was so surprised that vague over-panties stroking was something worth asking that question about that my automatic "yeah" came out extremely sarcastic-sounding, so he paused altogether and looked at me in bemusement. "What?" I said, for lack of anything else. He shrugged. "That was a weird answer."

We cuddled in bed for a while, which was mostly good except I folded my arms too close to my body at the beginning and then felt too awkward to shift around even though it was uncomfortable. When I was almost asleep he started making out with me again, so I drowsily tried to get back into the spirit of things, only this time the kisses were much spittier for some reason and it was kind of grossing me out.

He offered to let me sleep over, but I made something up about my parents needing the car and drove home still somewhat high. Luckily there was no one on the road, and I went five under the speed limit the whole way. When I got home, I ate some meatballs and went to bed.

Not sure if I'll see him again. Probably not, since he's anti gun control and the Florida thing makes me feel somewhat anti-him. Also, it wasn't a particularly hot experience. But it also wasn't a bad one, and parts of it felt nice, and at no point was it terrifying, just occasionally awkward, which I can deal with. So, with some admittedly low standards, I'll call it a success.

[shouldwesplitit]

I hate tinder

[shouldwesplitit]

David the Libertarian

One of the most annoying things about first dates is that I have about fifteen minutes of nervousness before the beer kicks in. Through a happy accident, I've realized I can circumvent this by arriving early and getting halfway through my beer before the dude shows up. I've also figured out that if I schedule dates at the bar across the street from the Center for Grieving Children after my training, I don't have to re-park and I arrive with a general attitude of warmth toward humanity, which helps circumvent my general attitude of distaste toward men. It's all about efficiency.

I also did something cool with my hair beforehand. Noticing the effect that looking good has on my behavior drives me nuts, because rational thought dictates that A) I shouldn't care what he thinks of my appearance, B) I should feel like I look good no matter what, and C) confidence shouldn't come from something external. But at the same time, it's nice to have access to that kind of drive-thru self-assuredness that only costs a couple minutes of twisting my hair up in a braidy thing.

Good things about David: he was decently cute, he actually asked questions and carried the conversation at times, he didn't have that fog of social anxiety that activates the same thing in me, he bought my drinks even though I offered to pay, he called me pretty partway through the date and it wasn't weird.

Bad things about David: He was a libertarian. I haven't really known a libertarian since my high school friend Ian who wore a trenchcoat to school and had a basement full of guns. So my first instinct toward libertarians is to make fun of them. Remembering through wincing experience this past year that political men don't enjoy teasing, I (mostly) held this instinct in check and immediately started clearing him of possible dealbreakers.

Pro-choice? Check. Anti-Trump? Check. Pro social services? Check. Unfortunately I forgot to ask him about immigration and trans rights (the terminology that people use when talking about trans people is hugely telling) but I was two beers in at that point. He ran the campaign to get weed legalized in Portland, which is a plus. He moved to Maine initially as part of his work on the Ron Paul campaign - big minus. The last date I went on where the guy voted for Ron Paul, I never texted him back again, but something made me reserve judgement on David. Maybe it was the two beers.

He was open about doing something afterward, which was maybe an invitation to hook up, I don't know, but after two and a half hours of sitting on an uncomfortable bar stool and talking to a libertarian, I pretty much need to go home and eat pizza. He suggested we meet up again but didn't try to kiss me goodbye, which no one ever does?? Do I give off anti-kiss vibes?? (Probably.)

All in all it was one of the more successful dates I've been on. I really want to start checking off those areas of my life where I've been a late bloomer, like driving, sex, dating…and I'm getting a lot better at driving. I would even consider texting him first if he wasn't a libertarian, which bumped him just down to the I'll-go-on-another-date-with-him-if-he-asks-but-won't-really-care-if-he-doesn't category. Which, honestly, is the best that most guys can hope for.

I just don't understand how anyone could have voted for Ron Paul over Obama, but I mean, everyone fucks up sometimes.

[shouldwesplitit]

Ben the Bird

The restaurant was very busy, and I squeezed past the line for tables to fit between two couples at the bar. One remarked on my ice cream phone case, and I extended the interaction for a minute or two in the hopes that my date would arrive to find me wittily entertaining strangers.

My date turned out to be my height, with the kind of face that looked like it had been sheared down at the bottom - slightly bulging eyes, a hooked birdlike nose, and a tiny, pointed mouth and chin with an unappetizing tuft of hair nestled below his lower lip. Either he was cuter in the pictures or I should have looked at them more closely. It's a testament to the power of physical appearance that even though my rational mind is dedicated to body positivity and I insist that everyone is beautiful, even though my attraction is rarely initial and mostly emotional, even though I've loved far uglier, I wrote him off pretty much immediately.

I rushed through the initial exchanging of questions, the stakes rising as I tried to calculate when it would be appropriate to risk the silence as we figured out what we wanted to order. Procrastinating on this could lead to us being unprepared for the bartender's attention and an unnecessary prolonging of the date. This wasn't because he looked like a bird - this was a pretty typical concern for me. Perhaps, next time, a perusal of the menu in advance was in order.

There were several awkward silences as the bartender asked for our IDs and then abandoned us, leaving us both holding the cards in our extended hands to an empty space for far too long as I pleaded mentally for her rescue. I talked to him about beer, knowing men love to explain beer to women, and pretended I lamented slightly more than I did my dearth of beer knowledge. I picked the cheapest beer while acting like it wasn't because it was the cheapest. Beer isn't supposed to taste good - it's supposed to do its basic job of getting you tipsy enough to facilitate conversation, and a relatively tolerable taste is a high achievement.

This beer performed its duties admirably, and we slipped into an easy enough conversational flow, discussing his housing situation (garage next to his brother in Freeport), his job (Spanish teacher, Spanish major - I harbored a suspicion Spanish was his best grade in high school and he just rolled with it, all the way to the ripe old age of thirty-one), California, the election, and my career. I discovered to my pleasure that people ask far less questions about the novelist thing if I quickly segueway into my social worker aspirations.

I had spent the entire day at volunteer training for the Center for Grieving Children, an emotional freedive of an experience where tears had trickled down my face at the story of a woman whose twelve-year-old son had hung himself, and I'd wondered if that climate would lead to any particularly meaningful sharing on my date. Turns out: not really. The training had reminded me that everyone has their own painful story, their strengths and inspiring qualities, and I'm sure this guy did too. But he looked like a bird and he'd moved from Portland to Freeport instead of the other way around and while he was perfectly nice, like every other online date I've had, I was content with the idea of never seeing him again. His rich internal depths would remain a mystery to me. It was both a relief and a frustration that this date had turned out like every other one, and I had my usual ten-minute internal struggle that maybe I was doing something wrong, maybe I should just get to know him better, maybe online dating was inherently inimical to my purpose, etc etc.

I tossed down some cash when the check came, nodding at his after-the-fact mumble of splitting it. He said something about another date and I affirmed vaguely enough that he'd question if I actually did when I rejected him over text. We headed off to our cars, where we must have been fairly close on the road, both of us driving separately back to Freeport.