Getting Turned Down

A friend of mine has a cute roommate, and he and I always had fun chatting when our paths crossed. But asking him out was more difficult than you might imagine. I could never find the opportunity to ask him without my friend standing right there (she lives there, after all), or without just walking into his room and closing the door behind me. Now THAT would have been a good impression. Perhaps enhanced if I held a gigantic knife.

Anyway, I finally just emailed him asking him for coffee, telling him that I’ve already been vetted since his cat likes me. He replied that he’d be happy to have coffee with me, but made it clear that it would not be a date. It would be a non-date. He included that in his first sentence. “Non-date.”

Well, at least he was straightforward. Maybe he read my mind that I was thinking about walking into his room with a gigantic knife.

So what to do? I’ve learned my lesson not to go on non-date, date-like situations with people I’m interested in, especially if I don’t know if they’re organ donors. So I write back and tell him he’s off the hook, and I move on to feeling really bummed.

Being turned down sucks. You’re putting yourself out there, and essentially asking for someone’s opinion of you. For their approval. It’s taking a risk, and in that moment of being turned down, I truly thought that it was not worth the risk.

So! What does this sound like to you? Why the beginnings of a scientific experiment, of course! How would my assessment of my level of risk-taking change over time? Translation: how long would it take me to get over feeling bummed? So I started the data collection:

Day 1, 8:30 a.m. Feel bummed. Totally not worth it.

I was going to keep tracking it, but at noon I realized that I hadn’t thought about it since 8:30 and I didn’t really care.

End of experiment. Conclusion: go for it.

The Baby in the Meeting

I will not go into the explanation of how I ended up at a meeting with a coworker and a three month old baby of no connection to either of us. It is enough to say that my coworker was thrilled to be babysitting at work for three hours, which happened to be exactly how long we were supposed to meet for.

As I am not good with children, you can imagine how much help I was. And as my coworker could simply not get enough of this baby, you can imagine how productive we were. At least I got to check my email during a diaper change.

One of the various times my coworker tried to get the baby to stop fussing so we could again look at our agenda and wonder aloud how we weren’t making any progress, my coworker decided that the baby was hungry and heated up some milk. With arms full of baby, she asked me to stick out my wrist so she could test the temperature of the milk, which I absentmindedly did while trying to maintain a thread of a productive conversation.

“Too hot,” I said, and went back to discussing event logistics.

But then I saw all the paraphernalia laid out: the bottles and nipples, the pacifiers, the pan for warming the milk and the strange, IV-drip looking bag that the milk was stored in.

And then it hit me. I had breastmilk on my wrist. I was standing there with someone’s overheated breastmilk on me.

Maybe other people know what to do in this situation. Maybe this is common. Maybe there is some socially correct response. But for a single girl who’s not good with kids, I stood there staring at someone else’s bodily secretions wondering what the hell I should do. Do I lick it up? It is just a couple drops of milk; perhaps that is the polite thing to do. But there was no way in hell that was going to happen. Do I wipe it on my jeans? I just washed these jeans, and I don’t want to go around the rest of the day thinking about the dried breastmilk on my jeans. Do I go find the nearest sterilizing equipment? Perhaps overkill.

In the end I pulled a high school boy move and wiped it on my sock.

Now, I’m pretty good at not being awkward and taking things in stride. First dates don’t get to me anymore, and I’m willing to stick out a three-hour meeting with a random baby. But when the baby’s mother showed up to reclaim said baby? I had trouble making eye contact. Seriously. I knew if I looked at her only one thought would be in my head:

Your boob juice is on my sock.

How My Non-Date Was Like a Date

So Friend Boy and I went out for dinner for our non-date, date-like friend auditioning situation. Maybe I just haven’t been in many non-date, date-like friend auditioning situations, but it sure felt like a normal date. For these reasons:

Awkward meeting: First few minutes were date-like awkward. “Is my nervousness showing? Do I have something in my teeth? How the hell did we get on this topic immediately? I don’t want this to be his first impression of me!”

Basic questions: Instead of getting into subjects that are fun to talk about or diving into common interests like I would with a friend, our conversation focused more on the getting-to-know-you stuff. “How long have you lived here? What did you get your degree in? Where do you work? Do you still have all of your fingers and toes?”

Internal monologue: Every five minutes I thought, “Do I like him? Am I having fun? Is he good enough for me? Should I wait another five minutes before I determine this?”

Going dutch: I know this is backwards for most people, but with friends I’m happy if one of us grabs the check and with dates I always go dutch. With friends I know it will eventually come out even. With dates, I don’t want to feel obligated to anyone, even if that obligation is just being nice to them afterward. I made sure Friend Boy and I went dutch.

Constantly looking for dealbreakers: With friends I tend to find commonalities and build from there. On dates I tend to look for potential dealbreakers. Guess which approach I took with Friend Boy. (Hint: I found out he’s not an organ donor. And he doesn’t have a good reason for it. He just hasn’t really thought about it. What the hell? The ability to save someone’s life hasn’t ever been important enough to you to think about? Dammit. I think I just discovered another dealbreaker.)

Here’s the part that sucks about it not being a date: if it had been a date, turning him down for a second date would be much easier. I know that seems counter intuitive, but it’s true. If I turn him down for a second date it could be for all sorts of reasons -- different values, different lifestyles, the fact that he’s a dog and not a cat person, whatever. There are all sorts of reasons for romantic incompatibility, and as such romantic incompatibility is likely not a personal statement on the other person. But an audition to be a friend? If I turn him down, there is no other way to take it other than I don’t like him.

God. I’m just sticking to dates from now on. With organ donors.

To Hide or Not to Hide

The online dating site I use will let me choose whether or not other people can see that I’ve visited their profile, but the site gives me an ultimatum: I can either let people see that I’ve visited and I can see who has visited me, or I can go stealth and no one will know if I’ve looked at their profile, but I don’t get to see who has visited me.

It’s fair. And it makes me feel like I’m a kid whose mother is trying to teach her a morality lesson. “You can get the set of blocks if you share it with your brother, but if you don’t share you don’t get any.” Yes, I just compared an internet dating site to my mother. And, come to think of it, I just compared all my potential dates to my brother. I’m not going to think about that too long.

Anyway...like most morality lessons, there is of course a way to game the system. While I was blithely strolling along, content to see and be seen, a fellow internet dater and I were trading war stories when she asked me, “So do you have a fake account?”

Blink.

“What?”

“A fake account. Basically a blank profile so that when someone visits you you can go read their page without them knowing that you’ve read it since if they look at who has visited them they will just see an empty profile. And then you don’t have to run the risk of reading a profile of someone that you end up not liking at all and having them know that you’ve looked at them.”

Blink.

That seems like a lot of trouble. You would have to go back and forth between accounts all the time. And that takes, you know, moving my fingers around on a keyboard. Effort, people. EFFORT.

But every so often I get visited by a blank profile and I think, “Somebody never learned how to share their blocks!”

The Boy Looking for Friends Part 2

In the cathartic activity of blogging, I realized that I had nothing to lose by telling Friend Boy the truth. He might take offense or misread it, but as long as he had at least moderate self-confidence I figured that letting him know that I wasn’t looking for friends was better than the void of silence at which we throw all of our self-conscious fears.

Whoa...how the hell did I end up in that sentence? Oh. Friend Boy. Right.

So I emailed him a chunk of what I explained in my last post, and concluded with:

Problem is, the only way to determine someone's fabulous quotient is to meet them in a very date-like situation, which it seems you are trying to avoid.

And this is his response:

I have no objection to a date-like situation. In fact, I would say that I function at my best one on one. Historically, I keep few friends, but those friendships tend to be quite close.

Currently, I am just coming off of a long term relationship. While it ended it basically the best way that such things can end, I want to be careful that I do not enter a new relationship with undue haste. I also think it's better to find a solid friendship and build from there than to get into a situation where you might be overly intense with someone before really knowing them.

I would be glad to take you out to dinner or find a comparable activity where we could get to know each other. If this isn't really something that interests you right now, I can understand, but hope this is not the case. I'm just here to try to meet awesome people.

What is one's fabulous quotient divided against?

Okay. First, I just want to say I totally called the just-getting-out-of-a-relationship thing. Second, did you catch the nerdy math joke he ended with? Total win.

Thus I responded:

Creepiness. Fabulousness needs to always be given as a ratio to creepiness. Otherwise the far end of the bell curve is engorged with the smarmy.

I appreciate your candor. Dinner sounds great, and so does a comparable activity if something presents itself.

So what does one wear to a date-like, friend-auditioning situation?

The Boy Looking for Friends

Re: Good evening!

Do you have any interest in making new friends? I'm not currently looking to date, but I get the impression we might have a lot of fun together.

You have many interests but you must choose between them when you decide what to do with your weekends and such. What to you tend to do most frequently? What do you wish you did most frequently?

Feel free to write back and we can swap contact info if you'd like to chat. Hope to hear from you soon!

What are you doing on an internet dating site if you don’t want to date? Oh, wait. Not currently looking to date. Got it. I’m guessing recent breakup or wanting to play the field without having to endure the high-pressure situation of The Date. Which, if you want to meet people through the internet, is impossible to avoid.

But all of that is irrelevant. The answer to his first question is no: I don’t have any interest in making new friends.

I know this makes me sound like an asshole. What kind of shallow person am I that I would go on a date with someone but not hang out with them as a friend? “It’s all or nothing, baby! I want to know that at the end of the day I either get to turn you down or sleep with you!”

Here’s why it’s true: I’ve got friends. Fantastic friends. Oodles of ‘em. There aren’t enough days in the week to hang out with all the amazing peeps that I got. Okay, I just learned that I can’t get away with saying “peeps.” But you get my point. Why would I go out looking to add people to this list?

I would absolutely make room for somebody fabulous. And who can tell? This guy might be fabulous and I would want to make room for him as a friend. But the only way I’m going to find that out is if we meet in some situation where we are both allowed to determine if we like each other. A situation like, say, over coffee. Or dinner. Or taking a walk on a fall day with the leaves crunching beneath our feet...

It's not like we can just hope that we end up being assigned to the same homeroom. Ask a mutual friend to invite us to the same dinner party. Wait outside the other person's door and then "accidentally" run into them. That seemed to stop happening to me when I took my home address off of my profile...hmm...

You can take smooching off the table, but if we're going to meet, we cannot avoid The Date.

The Feminist

After we set up a date, the signs started coming out that this girl was crazy. First she sent me to her website expounding on the type of feminism she studied. (If you didn’t know that feminism had multiple subcategories with separate research tracks, you are in good company. With me.) I got a few paragraphs in, but after having to look up 12 words I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere. Just put that on the list of things to ask her about.

Then, before we met up, she sent me this:

I've currently got on blue jeans and a rather playful t-shirt with a somewhat wild print featuring turquoise, black, taupe and white. I don't imagine that I'll change clothes between then and now. But I'll certainly throw on a jacket. It's too cold out there to be walking around without a jacket!

Really? I mean, I once jokingly sent a note to someone saying, “I look like the girl in my photos.” But that was a joke. And I certainly didn’t give an update on weather-appropriate outerwear.

When I finally sat down across from her I was ready to have this first impression before me supplant any previous first impression, and I soon asked her about her studies in feminism.

I still could not tell you what she studies. Not because she continued to use obscure words, but because she didn’t explain it at all. Perhaps she misunderstood the question, or perhaps she just thought an appropriate answer was to talk about a previous professor who sexually harassed her but she couldn’t report him because she was in love with him and he had incriminating emails from her.

Huh? Completely confused but without any standing in our five-minute relationship to ask for a thorough explanation, and a pretty strong feeling that I didn’t want said thorough explanation, I decided to let myself remain completely confused and move on to other topics.

We ended up having a fine conversation, although I remained forewarned about the crazy. A couple of times my mind wandered to a conversation I had with a friend and fellow Madtown internet dating girl. My friend is, in her own words, “having lots of fun.” This girl is getting action. Where the hell is my action?! I’ve been internet dating for the better part of a year, and I’ve been to first base with one of ‘em! I’m meeting hot people, so it can’t be a lack of opportunity. The barrier must be allowing myself to take that opportunity.

Funny, but the couple of times that popped into my head during my date with Feminist Chick corresponded with when she would lay her forearm on the table, lean forward, and place her breasts on her arm, causing them to slightly pop upwards.

Do girls do this? Is this some technique I never learned? Is it code for something? Was I a complete douchebag for staring at her breasts when she did this?

Damn boobs. Making me consider a second date with a crazy chick. 

The work date I wanted to turn into a date date

So...cute guy that I know from work-related stuff runs into me twice in one weekend. Hmm...common interests. This should be investigated.

Figuring that we have enough work-related stuff to talk about, I invite him out to a work lunch, hoping to leave it open to being a not-so-work-oriented-and-I-think-you’re-really-cute lunch.

So here’s the problem with dating in the real world versus the virtual one: I know nothing about this guy. Nothing! No profile to read. Was he single? Was he straight? Does he want children? Am I just supposed to find all of these things out on my own? Like, get to know him? That seems incredibly risky. And a potential colossal waste of time. As opposed to the rest of my dating life...right...so....

Our work lunch started off by talking about what we did on our respective weekends. I chose to believe this was more date-ish than work lunch-ish, this choice not based in reality but in sheer eagerness. Then we turned to work.

We do similar work although in slightly different fields, and it was like the veteran reporter talking to the gumshoe. He kept asking me questions that began with, “Have you done...” “Have you thought about...” and “Are you planning to...” I walked the fine line between truth and trying to slightly mask that I was feeling more and more inept at my job. He must have sensed this because he said, “I don’t want you to feel I’m attacking you. I’m not doing all of these myself. I just want to see where I might be able to help you.”

Okay, he’s just super enthusiastic. No offense taken. In fact, he gets points for that. But it didn’t stop the onslaught of questions. At one point he asked if I had “planned when to do a tracking flipper mooga mooga mooga.” I looked at him while three thoughts battled for my next move: should I ask him if he could repeat that in English, should I pretend I knew what he was talking about so I didn’t look like the one idiot who didn’t have her tracking flipper mooga mooga mooga set up, or should I simply look at him and say, “You’re now making shit up to see if I’ll go along with any crazy word collage that comes out of your mouth.” I went with admitting that I didn’t know what a tracking flipper mooga mooga mooga was, while admitting to myself that this wasn’t even slightly resembling a real date.

We did get on some more neutral topics and I was impressed by his passion, a rare trait in the online dating world in my experience. And just as we parted he put forward that we should get drinks after work sometime. Hmm...is that date-ish?

I haven’t been on a real-world, offline date in a long time. How does this work? I just let this naturally go where it goes? And along the way, if it comes up, answer those big questions about relationships and kids? That seems...inefficient.

Hrumph.