Savoring

Recently a friend of mine was minding her own business and WHAM! She fell in love.

It happens. I’ve seen it happen to many of my friends. They will meet someone they have a connection with unlike any connection that they have ever experienced before, and within a few weeks (or in this recent case, a few days), trajectories have changed and minor details like city of residence, owned property, number of future children and pets have all been discussed and decided upon.

It’s been wonderful and astounding to see this happen to my friends. It’s like seeing them win the lottery. Or suddenly get a physical condition that they will have to deal with the rest of their lives. Or some strange combination of those two.

It could happen to me. It could happen to me tomorrow. Am I full of silent, passionate pleas that it does? Nah. I can’t even imagine what that would be like from this vantage point of chronic short-lived internet interests.

While I am putting myself out there to hopefully increase the possibility that I meet someone who upends my life in such a way, the randomness of it does make singlehood suddenly seem fragile: that at any moment it could be taken away from me. And it makes me appreciate all the good things about being single.

Yes, I heard your question. All the good things about being single? Here ya go:

• Never having to check in with someone else’s schedule.
• Control over when your home is a place of solitude and when it’s time to crank the music.
• Letting your apartment go to shit for a few days without a sense of guilt because you’ve got better things to do and it’s not like you’re leaving it for someone else to clean up.
• Taking that phone call from a friend and talking as long as you want without wondering if you’re ignoring your significant other or what they’re thinking listening to your part of the conversation.
• Three words: Bad movie marathon.
• Absence of the thought, “I love him/her, but sometimes he/she drives me absolutely crazy.”

Obviously I would be willing to forgo all of these for a great connection with someone. But it’s true that there are aspects of singlehood that I miss when I'm in a serious relationship. I especially love the simplicity of getting an invitation and saying yes. Done. No consultation needed and no lag time. I also love that I am the sole music master of my abode. Do I need six straight hours of Jason Mraz? It shall be so! Who’s going to stop me? The repair guy who’s spending all day fixing my plumbing? Suck it up!

And to my gracious lovely, and now in love, friend: Wholehearted congratulations, my dear!

Why you should occasionally give a religious person a chance

Because they might turn out to be an atheist.

Having grown up completely outside of organized religion, and in adulthood taken quite seriously the t-shirt that says “Militant Agnostic: I don’t know and you don’t either,” it never even crossed my mind that I would date someone religious. But when Ham Radio Girl sent me a message and offered to help me get into ham radio (an unscratched itch of mine), the unimaginable happened: I went on a date with a Christian. 

Prior to the date, these are the ways that my friends helped me justify this decision: If she’s gay, she can’t be that Christian. She messaged you, so it must not be that important to her. Hey, Christianity is a spectrum!

Apparently that spectrum goes all the way to “atheist.”

I had prepared myself to talk about Christianity. To ask a lot of questions to determine where she was on that spectrum in ways that she wouldn’t feel attacked by a militant agnostic. To be respectful and diplomatic, like I was a guest in another culture. So when she said, “I’m really an atheist Christian. I pretty much just like the music and the community,” all of that diplomatic prep was for naught. And then it pretty much turned into a normal date!

And, unfortunately, a normal date for me includes the other person talking about themselves the whole time. She did ask me a few questions, but they were all asking back a question that I just asked her. Ugh. I feel like giving workshops on how to hold a conversation. As a service to the community.

But, funny enough, I seem to mind it less when the person talking about themselves is really freakin’ interesting! And I’m not just talking ham radio. This girl has performed CPR multiple times, saved a choking baby, and used to be on a rescue team that would go get injured rock climbers and ROCK CLIMB THEM TO SAFETY. This girl has more balls than all the men I’ve dated combined. 

Add to her balls: she’s smart, she’s funny, and she’s cute. So once again I’m headed to date #2 to test my assumptions from date #1, but really holding out the hope that it was just first date nerves.

But I think I’m learning. While I am working toward my first goal of determining if we are a good fit, I am also working toward a second goal of getting my ham radio license. Hooray! Dating as multitasking!

My Dating Life is Getting in the Way of My Social Life

Let me start out by saying that I take to heart the saying, “Bros before hos.” 

That didn’t come out right. 

How about if I put it this way: the promise of a new date will never trump the proven strength of a good friendship. I am blessed with troves of great friends. Maintaining those friendships comes first; dates can be sprinkled in around the edges.

But.

There is a point of exhaustion.

Like any good pagan, I had three invitations to celebrate the Summer Solstice. Originally my plan was to attempt all three. A tall order, I know, but hey – the sun sets at 9pm these days! If the start of summer can pull that off, I can be a dues-paying pagan for a day.

But after a sleep-deprived, packed social weekend with seeing lots of friends and 24 fabulous hours alone with Ms. Booty, I was fried. And had somehow managed to pull a muscle in my tongue. By 5pm on Monday I was one step away from “audibly growling” on the crabby-o-meter. I imagined what state I would be in at 5pm the next day, when I am scheduled to meet my latest internet find: Ham Radio Girl. Doubtless I would be well past “audibly growling,” and likely at “barking at children.” NOT recommended for a first date. Maybe the third.

So I did the responsible thing. I backed out of all my invitations and went to bed. So I guess you can say I stick to “Bros before hos,” but I also stick to “Sleep before barking at hos.” And really, wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone followed those words of wisdom?

Getting Tested

With booty on the horizon, it was time to go get tested. So I took a little excursion to my local Planned Parenthood and was a little too eager when filling out the questionnaire:

Do you have a sexual partner? YES!

Have you or your partner have any of the following symptoms in the last 90 days? Wait, you want me to check if I’ve had a fever in the past 90 days? I had the flu, but I wasn’t screwing anyone at the time so I don’t think you care. Wait, you want to know about abdominal pain? Like gas? I have no idea if Ms. Booty has had gas in the past three months. I assume so. Do you want me to call her?

Please circle the kind of sex you have engaged in with your sexual partner in the last 90 days: Oral, Vaginal, Anal. Oh, well, I haven’t engaged yet, I mean, I did, awhile ago and we did…wait, probably not relevant now. Do you want to know what I am intending to do? Don’t you just have a box for “No, I don’t have a reason to think I have anything. I’m just a responsible adult and getting tested between sexual partners”?

Okay, FINE. I don’t have a sexual partner. My doctor was confused to see “yes” scribbled out and “no” checked, and essentially asked me why I was there. I began to explain and as soon as she caught on she waved off the rest of my explanation with, “Oh, new relationship.”

“See?” I thought to myself. “Your form should have a responsible adult checkbox!”

But can I take a moment to say how much I love Planned Parenthood? And not just because they play sexy surfing movies in the waiting room. (Although, just the act of saving me from daytime TV would be enough.) I looked around at the 10 other women in the waiting room and tried to guess who else was there to get tested. I turned out to be a bad guesser, since from the conversation among them (apparently most women go to Planned Parenthood in pairs, especially when still in high school) they were mostly there to get birth control. I felt a little swell of pride of all of these women empowered to decide when they will have children and with whom. No parents or men to be seen. This was their decision.

Another thing I love about Planned Parenthood: two of my tests, including HIV, were free. FREE! 

Oh, they also send me emails saying what candidates they endorse, so I don’t accidentally end up voting for some schmuck who wants to tell me what the hell I should do with my body. Thanks, Planned Parenthood!

I am getting laid this weekend

Holy hell. I’m getting laid this weekend. 

Did you hear that tremendous sigh of relief? That’s me, knowing that I’m going to get laid this weekend.

Now usually I’m one for the “enjoy each day” attitude, since leaning forward for something in the future just leads to wishing your life away and then wondering where the time went. Despite that, I hate this week. This week can roll over into a ditch. This week is what is standing in the way of me and a good lay.

Surprisingly enough, it has been awhile for me. By the pop culture definition I’ve been remade into a virgin. And while the thought that a half-year without sex makes you a virgin again never made any sense to me, it does provide the best explanation of Christianity’s whole “Virgin Birth” thing. 

Anywho…despite the stream of dates I’ve been having, I have yet to find chemistry with any of them. This is really a statement of the dating streak I’m on, since my standards aren’t that high. I definitely have my little list of, “Ugh, really? I slept with that person? Okay, I’m just going to chalk it up to I must have felt it at the time.” 

I don’t think I’m doing anything different now. I’ve just been feeling…well…nothing.

So when a previous booty call, let’s call her Ms. Booty, was freed up to be a booty call once again, the only appropriate response is to coordinate schedules and clean off the toys. And then stare at the calendar and wonder what the hell I can do to make the weekend arrive faster.

So the thing that I love about masturbating (like that segue?) is that even when you feel that nothing can satisfy that craving, you have a good orgasm and that craving is spent. Suddenly your mind is freed up to think of other things, like how you should put together a fundraiser for the community center. I swear, the world is run by satisfied people. Ever wonder why so many politicians end up screwing around? I say we cut them some slack. It’s better to have them thinking clearly.

But sometimes masturbating does not provide this relief for me, and instead turns into this cruel positive feedback loop that grows immunity to cold showers and thinking about Margaret Thatcher. And I had been doing just fine! Despite the dryspell, or perhaps because of it, whatever hormones are at fault just sat back and played cribbage for awhile. It was only when Ms. Booty started considering what she would pack for an overnight bag that cribbage didn’t cut it anymore. 

Goodbye, clear thinking! Hello, frustration! I wonder if this is what it is like for guys all the time.

The Movie

I highly recommend having a single girl partner in crime. Mine is…let’s call her Shroom. 

Shroom and I have seen enough damn romantic comedies, thank you. So we decided to write our own.

How hard can it be? And who better to write about the realities and adventures of a single girl looking for romance? And the inherent comedy therein?

So from a simple conversation of how I’m running out of cafés to have first dates at, we came up with the Ultimate Single Girl Romantic Comedy. Look for it in theaters as soon as we get an agent. Oh, and write it.

Synopsis:

Fade in on Hope’s Café.

Date montage.

Our protagonist, the inexplicably unlucky in love Lea, always takes her internet first dates to this café. She gets her tea for free if her date brings up sex, she has a special signal to the staff for them to call her cell phone if the date is going really badly, and the café owner, Hope, has been giving Lea dating advice including who to ditch and who to see again. Meanwhile, Hope is having her own dating woes. Her on-again, off-again relationship with Tammy the tow truck driver is less than satisfying as the breadth of Tammy’s conversation topics are confined to the lack of truly gruesome car wrecks in this town with only one highway. Hope doesn’t see any other options in her Lesbian Small Business Owners’ Book Club, the only other place she’s willing to come out. While the other book clubbers urge her to, she fears that since everyone in the community talks to her about their issues, she will lose her place in the community, and her best customers, if she comes out. She finds herself admiring Lea’s sense of freedom, as well as Lea herself, as Lea continues her string of misfit dates. 

Lea sets up these dates while at her job as assistant to the mayor. She often marvels at how she can keep the town functioning under a truly bumbling mayor who can’t even get the roads paved, but she can’t get her lovelife functional. She realizes how much respect she has for Hope, who is not only a competent, successful entrepreneur, but uses her place within the community to help others, and she tells Hope exactly that. She also tells Hope that she’s just about given up on dating, but she’s going to give it one more shot. She’s got a date with someone that she met – not online – but at a meeting earlier that day with the road maintenance crew. 

Just then, in walks her date, Tammy, who apparently is in the “off-again” phase with Hope. Hope watches in disbelief, not because Tammy is on a date with someone else, but because Lea, the person she wanted to be with all along but never admitted it, even to herself, was on a date with a woman. She’s relieved when the date tanks and Lea gives Hope the “call my cell phone and save me from this date” signal. 

The next day Lea is despondent and tells Hope she’s giving up on dating. Hope convinces her to try one last time and come back to the café that night for a blind date. When Lea arrives she finds that her blind date is Hope. Lea is shocked and Hope is nervous, both because of her excitement about Lea and as her first foray into living as an out person. The date goes horribly. They find they are horrible at small talk, and Lea finally demands to know why Hope never told her before. Hope gets angry and accuses Lea of not understanding what it’s like to be a real lesbian. Hope then thinks she sees Lea do the sign for “get me out of this date,” and Lea storms out. 

Two weeks go by, as shown by a montage of both of them, melancholy, at their respective jobs. As the song ends, Hope tells her Lesbian Small Business Owners’ Book Club that she’s closing the café and moving. As much as she loves this town, she believes she has to move to a large city to live the kind of life she wants to live, and she believes her only chance at love is to leave. The next day, Lea is walking to work in the rain, hiding under her umbrella as she walks across the street from Hope’s Café, but peeks out long enough to see the “Out of Business” sign in the window. As the music swells, there is a long shot of Lea staring at the sign, until she finally ditches the umbrella and runs for it. She runs home, grabs her bike (and bike helmet – safety first!) and books over to Hope’s house, just in time to see Hope’s overpacked station wagon turning the corner at the far end of the street. As Hope’s packed car blocks her review mirror, she can’t see Lea racing behind her, and she mistakes Lea’s yelling for something wrong with her Indigo Girls CD. Lea finally takes a shortcut but hits a patch of mud on the street the inept mayor couldn’t get paved, flying out onto the road right in front of Hope’s car. Cut to overhead shot of Hope running out to cradle Lea in her arms, promising her everything is going to be okay.

One year later.

The camera follows a bouquet of flowers into Hope’s café, and Hope exclaims that it’s a terrible day to remember. Lea is holding the flowers, and explains that although it took her a few days to get out of the hospital and go on their first official date, they should celebrate today as their anniversary. Hope hands Lea her morning tea and they both walk out the door and up the street. Everyone they pass greets Hope, their new mayor.

Fin.

See? We came up with that in 20 minutes. What a racket.

Funk

I’ve been trying to deny it, but it’s time to admit it: I’m in a dating funk.

It happens. Especially when I find myself in a routine of:

1.) You look interesting!

2.) Coffee, or series thereof

3.) Uh…no thanks.

Looking for a connection and repeatedly not finding it is tiring. It feels a little “Sex in the City,” if I may use that as an adjective, to say that I’ve been dating so much that I need a vacation, but…yeah.

So I’m taking a break. Just for a week or so. A friend of mine says there’s no such thing as “choosing not to date for awhile” (I put in the quotes because she does the airquote finger motion when she says this), and she’s right. There is no such thing as taking a break from dating. But there is hiding!

So I’m hiding for a week. I’m hiding from internet suitors, I’m turning off my radar for people checking me out, and I’m even going to stop bugging my friend to set me up with her roommate. And while I’m at it, I think I’ll run to the opposite end of the spectrum from dating.

A nunnery.

Kidding.

What is the opposite of awkward first date conversations? Old friends. And grilling.

So I headed to our local metropolis and spent the weekend in Chicago. I packed in seeing as many friends as possible. As for what we did and what we talked about, who cares? They’re my old friends. We could have been talking about the evolution of the toothpick and I would have been happy. (Did you know that Maine is the leading producer of toothpicks in the US?)

By the end of the weekend I was so filled with good food and so lavished with hugs that I felt like I could sail through the week.

Oddly enough, the fact that the most common topic of conversation was my adventures in dating did not detract from my vacation from dating. Laughing about awkward dates is so rewarding that often just being able to share the story with friends is enough to make the awkward date worth it. By no means am I seeking bad dates, but laughing hysterically about them post mortem? An excellent consolation prize.

Second Date with the Slowest Talker in the World

I am not going to turn somebody down because they are the slowest talker in the world. I’m just not going to do it.

So I’ll have to find some other reason.

I was already doubting myself for asking the DJ Chemist for a second date. Yes, I eventually enjoyed our conversation, but that was only after much annoyance at his professorial airs. And plus, that was on a beautiful, lazy Saturday. Would I enjoy his company after a long, busy workday?

On our first date I wrote him off 15 minutes in. This time he was much more efficient. I wrote him off in five. He was just so smug, and he launched into an explanation of his day that seemed practiced. As if it were lecture material that he already laid out. Handouts in the back.

Was this enough reason to not go out with him again? No? How about the fact that we don’t agree on whether research skills are part of learning critical thinking? No again? What about how he sat a little too close to me and bumped into someone while we walked out of the café because he was looking intently at me? Wait, those are just signs that he’s really into me? Dammit.

And then, once again, he started growing on me. We talked chocolate and rotating statues. He told me about a research project during WWII to train sea gulls to poop on submarine scopes.

And then…he mentioned skateboarding. Shit. I have a weakness for skateboarders. Now you’re telling me that he’s not only a chemist and a DJ, but his most used mode of transportation is a skateboard?! It’s times like these that make a belief in a cruel god seem like the only reasonable explanation.

An hour and a half into the date I made the excuse that I needed to go. The reason I gave? Because I was sleep deprived and needed to go to bed. As soon as it was out of my mouth I felt like such an ass. It felt like one step above, or possibly parallel to, “I have to wash my hair.” I backpedaled, or tried, but there wasn't much room for backpedaling. In my defense, I am sleep deprived. If I wasn’t, I could have come up with a much better excuse. But he seemed to take it in stride.

I honestly don’t know what to do with this guy. While some part of my brain worked during the entire date at searching for reasons to write him off, he is the most interesting person I’ve dated in a long time. I’m all for dating someone interesting until they become annoying, but what do I do when someone is annoying before he gets interesting?

The Single Girl at the Wedding

It’s the day after Memorial Day, which means that 87.2 percent of you were at weddings in the past three days, officially kicking off the wedding season in the Midwest.

The wedding I attend this weekend was absolutely beautiful. The ceremony was so incredibly touching – a true celebration of two people who fit each other so well – that I only had room for a couple of fleeting thoughts of, “Why the hell can’t I find someone like that?” before snapping back to the ceremony before me.

But there was no doubt that I was The Single Girl at the wedding. And by the Single Girl I mean THE Single Girl. While there were other unmarried women there, they had dates to the wedding, or love interests back home, or at least someone to ask them to dance during the slow songs.

Of course, the lack of dance partners is my fault. A dance floor at a wedding, where I have room to dance and an opportunity to shock the relatives, is simply too tempting for me. I readily make a fool of myself. I especially made a fool of myself when, despite not yet hearing back from Beyonce, I danced my tookus off to “Single Ladies,” even throwing in a few movies from the music video. Yes, I am THAT girl at the wedding.

So who the hell would have the balls to come ask THAT girl to dance during one of the slow songs? No one, is the short answer. A slow song comes on, the dance floor completely fills in with couples, even the bride’s 10 year-old nephew asks someone to dance with him, but I am forced to sit one out. I’m not complaining. A girl’s gotta hydrate sometime.

Perhaps most notable, from a single girl at a wedding perspective, was that there was no bouquet toss. This was a first for me, and wonderfully refreshing. While I think it’s a fun tradition, I didn’t have to be paraded out on the dance floor with all the other single women in a mass, competitive display of the assumption that all women want to get married. And I have to say, from bouquet tosses I’ve seen in the past, that assumption seems to be fairly well supported by women willing to make fools of themselves.

So I now find myself a fan of the no-bouquet toss. Why would I want to make a fool of myself among all the other single women when I’ve proven that I can make a fool of myself all on my own?