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Me at 5 - Stanford Student Housing, Palo Alto ,CA - 1973 |
This particular adventure is currently titled "The Runner." Enjoy. :o)
Some time in 2008…
My first foray in to OKC-ville was in 2008. I had been separated from my ex-husband since late 2005, had taken some time to “find my center” again, and was finally feeling ready for the challenge of a relationship. Or at the very least, it was time to get laid.
So – what was it, exactly, about his online persona/profile that established him, in my mind as a potentially acceptable suitor, if not, simply, just a *good time*...or - at the very, very least, an experiment.
Well, he was cute – old enough. I had just turned 40, he was I think, 32, or 33, maintained some kind of a stable job – I remember at the time thinking it sounded legit. Oh, and then there was the casual mention in his profile about being a practitioner of “Tantric Yoga.” At least I think it said tantric yoga. And at the time (to be more precise, up until just 3 days ago), I only had the very vaguest idea of what tantric yoga actually was, but at that time, and given a whole host of other circumstances, it sounded intriguing in a provocative/provocateur way, plus there was yoga involved, right? so #winning.
I think the first indication of the person i was going to be dealing with for the next 4 or so hours was when we met in front of the bar he had suggested for our initial outing together. It was a mid-afternoon date, 2pm on a sunny summer afternoon in beautiful Oakland, CA, U.S.A., (photo below) and he suggested we meet at the diviest of dive bars - at least from the outside - I have ever seen.
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My Beautiful City, Oakland, CA, U.S.A. |
Seriously, I rolled up before he did, and was sooooooo glad when i saw that the bar was closed. It’s not that I’m against a good dive bar, but for a first date with a total stranger?!? I really don’t want that initial blind-date moment to be in a place with dank lighting, less than clean surfaces, and suspicious smells. I need to SEE you, i need to be able to smell what’s (not) you, right? I want to know what I am signing up for on a first date, and meeting in a place where you would rather NOT deal with the realities of meeting a stranger, opting instead for a muddled, muffled version of said stranger is NOT my idea of a good time. Actually, blind first dates off the inter-webs are not my idea of a good time, so let’s take some of the guesswork out of the experience, shall we?
We opted instead (or I suggested) that we walk over to the other side of the lake to the Lake Chalet, a higher-ended restaurant/bar that’s nice because, even though the concept of the place is a little overdone and pretentious, it KNOWS that it is - plus, there is outdoor seating right on Lake Merritt, so there are views to be had, not to mention - it's really good people-watching. I knew, based on where he had suggested we meet, that this substitution was not likely to be his second or fifth choice, but whatever. I figured that the spot would test his ability to be flexible in the face of adversity, plus he was a tantric yogi, so he should be able to go with the flow, no problemo, right?
Wrong! (best possible Trump impression i can do here).
The date started out OK, we got seated outdoors, there were drink specials and good bar food to be had, so away we went, ordering our first drinks and some food, and got down to the business of getting to know each-other.
I say “first” drinks, because there were more to be had, several more, and I think that if there is one thing I can say about getting so lit-up on a first date its this: your potential life partner will be really easy to suss out, once they've gotten good and liquored up, have become completely transparent, and you get a real-life "no holds barred" glimpse of what your true reality might look like with this person if you were to, say, invite him into your life. Not a 'bad' thing, mind you, i suspect that this is likely why we think that going out for drinks can be a good way to meet someone...if you keep it to, say, one or two drinks, rather than 4 in 4 hours time, with snacks thrown in as a buffer. But what can i say, this was a time when i was still drinking, and my, shall we say, "priorities" were a bit different.
So anyway, off we went, getting to know each-other. Starting off with the benign questions, where are you from, what you are doing now, what are you looking for in an online date, etc. etc., and as time goes by and the drinks start warming things up a bit, going a little (or a lot) thicker into the woods.
And then, by the start of the THIRD round, just after I had mentally confirmed for myself that this person was most likely NOT a love connection (in short, he turned out to be an arrogant know-it-all, who really didn’t seem that interested into getting to know very much about the person sitting right in front of him), he starts to get a little bit *aggressive* about date #2.
And this is just a little snippet of how that conversation/confrontation went down (or at least as close as I REMEMBER it going down, considering this was damn near 10 years ago, and memories/details of this date get a bit sketchy from here on out):
him: so – am i gonna get a yes on a second date with me or what?
me: um, ah….(feeling extremely caught off guard by what seemed like a very unnecessary question, and at any rate, a completely inappropriate one at this time) well – quite frankly, I am wondering why you want to discuss a SECOND date right at this moment? I mean, we are still on our first date.
him:(not liking my answer to his question, perhaps sensing now that he is skating on some pretty thin ice): well lets face it, I mean, i’m pretty sure you know by now whether or not you want to go out again.
me: (again – caught off guard to the boldness and immediacy of the question, and his demand for an answer) But I thought you were a tantric yogi?
him:(shooting me a completely bewildered look): What does that have to do with this?
me: well it seems to me that you would want to stay in the now. Right? I mean isn’t it all about appreciating the present moment?
him: (setting aside my snarkiness in favor of his high - and mighty - pursuit of whether he was potentially going to get laid anytime in his near future): well it sounds like maybe because you don’t want to answer my question, you are giving me your answer, right?
me: (now feeling slightly put-off and emboldened with a sense that I had very little to lose at this juncture, plus i was quite drunk and was really discovering how much i didn't like him by now): well what I can tell you is that any thoughts i had of entertaining a second date with you before you asked me that question are quickly fading away.
him: huh, yeah.
Around this time, the bartender came around again, so we ordered a fourth round. I don’t exactly know what either of us were exactly thinking about why it was a good idea to order another round at that point, rather than to just end the date, but I vaguely remember thinking that the answer to my current predicament was in that fourth drink...in some strange way.
Well, it was - just not in the way that I had anticipated the events unfolding:
I think it was mid-way through this fourth and final round, when, after an unsuccessful attempt to try and get me to admit that I had had known from the beginning of the date (not true) whether I wanted to go on a second date (it was all no-bueno and crazy-town from here, and the three women from the table next to ours were starting to look more than a little bit interested in the trainwreck that was happening before their very ears), he abruptly stood up from the table and announced:
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“OK” I said.
He never returned.
Our food + bar table totaled $85 - without the tip.
After about 5 minutes of sitting there, it finally dawned on me that he wasn’t returning and I began to chuckle.
One of the women from the other table looks over at me, I look at her and she says:
“What the hell just happened here?”
I said, still fairly stunned : “He just pulled a runner on me.”
“A runner?”
“Yes, a runner…he’s not coming back!”
And for the next 15 minutes or so, I replayed the entire breakdown of the events (from my very limited perspective, of course), and we all ended up in unanimous agreement about the very most important part of that experience, which sums all up as:
I just dodged a bullet.
and homie scored himself a LOT of free drinks.
so win/win. :o)
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