Juggling

I have never dated more than one person at a time. I’m telling you this now because I doubt you’d believe me after reading this. But it’s true! I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of dating multiple people, no matter how casually. This once pushed me into the extremely awkward position of calling a guy I hadn’t heard from in two weeks just to make sure he wasn’t going to ask me out again before I accepted a date with another guy. Yeah. Any way you can imagine that conversation going smoothly? Neither can I.

Apparently, something changed. As proof, I offer you a short guide of Current Interests.

Boat Boy. Yup, he’s still around. I keep holding out for being astonished. And while I’m holding out, our conversations continue to be rather slow and demand a certain level of effort. I have yet to determine the source of this, and I have yet to give up hope that some logjam will suddenly break leaving us twittering away.

That and I’m really attracted to the guy. Did I mention that part? Kinda rounds out the picture, doesn’t it?

As our third date was ending we stood out in a parking lot under a soft spring rain. (This guy has unbelievable luck with the romantic weather.) Having swooped down onto him on our last date I was determined not to make the first move this time. So a painful string of “…okay then,” “…yeah,” “…thanks again,” “…mm-hmm,” and the like transpired. Finally he worked up the courage to…give me a hug. Oh, you want to do the hug into a kiss thing? Okay. Go ahead. No, it’s fine. Oh, you want to do a hug into a makeout session in a parking lot? Wait, really?

Yup. We were that couple standing in the middle of a parking lot under a soft spring rain, making out, onlookers be damned. At one point someone drove in, parked, walked by us to get takeout from the restaurant we just came out of, walked back to their car and drove away, while we kissed like fools. Alright Boat Boy! Maybe he can astonish me!

After that date he wasted no time in securing the next one. I think he smells that sex might be near. Now, based on this exciting possibility, you would likely never guess that less than 24 hours after making out in a light spring rain with Boat Boy I would be on a date with…

Frizzhead. This fellow emailed me to compliment me on my profile, even pointing out a couple of flourishes that I am most proud of. Completely flattered, I was determined to like him, despite his paltry profile and TERRIBLE picture. He looked like a stoned Fozzy Bear. Which, now that I think about it, would be a fabulous addition to a party.

Frizzhead admitted to be bad at online communications and suggested we meet for coffee. I squeezed him in one afternoon, thinking that this was going to be a throwaway date – one of those dates to say I gave the person a chance for, I don’t know, the karma of it. Embarrassingly, I thought so little about this date that when I wrote down his phone number I also wrote down a couple of hints from his profile to jog my memory and give me something to start a conversation about. I didn’t expect to enjoy myself as much as I did.

First of all, he was interested in what I do. Amazing. And I’m interested in what he does. Preposterous! Our conversation flowed without the need for my cheat sheet. And, for the second time in a row, a horrible picture had little reflection on the man in the flesh. He was neither Fozzy Bear nor stoned. He did, however, have this one shock of hair in the front sticking off at a near impossible angle. As if it was showing which way was northwest. I honestly couldn’t decide whether this was by design for the sake of some fashion that is obviously outside of my narrow purview, or this was the classic “I’m a grad student and 10 minutes before coming here I was asleep on a couch.” Luckily, our conversation was so interesting that I was only allowed a couple of distracted glances.

It seems there will be another opportunity to investigate this, as an hour and a half after our date ended he emailed me to say that he had a great time and he DEFINITELY wanted to meet again. Awww. Cute little Frizzhead.

The 22 year-old was unexpected. Now, I am not so extremely far away from 22. Let’s just say that if you adhere to the pop culture rule of you shouldn’t date anyone who is less than half your age plus seven, then he is just within the dangerous red zone. When he first emailed me I thought that my retort of, “You’re 22! What are you doing hitting on me?” would be enough to dissuade him. Wrong. The challenge bolstered him. Why was I expecting any other response from a 22 year-old?

But he returned with this irrefutable argument: “Why not? All you lose is the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. And you might be surprised.”

I turned to my friends for help in crafting an explanation to this pup. No dice. My friends replied with various versions of “Why not? All you lose is the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. And you might be surprised.” I think I am right to be distrustful of such advice. One friend, who for the purpose of this blog post requested to be referred to as “Wise Sage,” went so far as to use the terms “limber” and “supple” to argue on behalf of the 22 year-old. Having finally agreed to a date, I have no doubt that these same friends will turn around and call me a cradle robber. Because that’s what I would do.

So have I proved my point? Would you believe me if I now told you that I have never dated more than one person at a time? Perhaps this is from a new outlook of not taking dating too seriously. But one thing I am serious about: I could NEVER be polyamorous. This takes so much time! There’s so much scheduling and emailing and reminding myself which one is which. Having a meaningful relationship with all these boys? Jesus. How’s a girl supposed to sleep? And blog?