In Pace Requiescat

July 28, 2003 - 5:55 p.m.

Last Five Entries:
The Party's Over
July 11, 2004
The Next Day
2004-03-31
My Nervous Breakdown
2004-03-30
True Confessions: My Life as a Female Impersonator
March 15, 2004
Bite Me
February 29, 2004

Contact:

I went out a date Saturday night. As you recall, someone with whom I corresponded through an online personal ad asked me on a date.

Our phone conversation on Wednesday night went fine. I hated it, because it was the phone, but I sounded like a well-adjusted person. And she did too. After going over options, we initially settled on a bar/restaurant/pool hall on Saturday night.

We met there. I wasn't sure how casual or formal we were to be- I went safe with my business-casual attire, so I was dressed up but overdoing it. My fear was that I would over-dress and look too serious, and she'd show up casual and I would feel idiotic. That didn't happen. She showed up dressed for a date. A conservative sweater and skirt combination, but definitely nice. The perfume I didn't like, but I've never met a perfume that I liked. I'm just not into people smelling like flowers. (Not like the perfume mattered anyway; it only took five minutes for cigarette smoke to overcome all scents.) But overall, I got the impression that she was trying to impress, and that impressed me.

And that's where everything positive ends. Well, not everything, but almost. We started playing pool. I had been under the impression we were there for dinner and pool, but she had eaten a late lunch. So of course I starved. But that's not really a big deal.

We are both unskilled in pool. She's a beginner, and I've had lots of practice and I still suck. To give you an idea, it took us two-and-a-half hours to play five games. All but one ended by one of us scratching on shooting the 8-ball.

So while we played, we were mostly making jokes about how poor we were playing. Starting off with that kind of semit-witty, light mindless banter is probably what one should expect from a first date. But we started off that way, carried it through the two-and-a-half hours, and ended that way. For both of us, I think, the laughs started as genuine, turned into polite, and ended forced.

I'm self-conscious of the fact that I resort to making jokes about everything when I don't have anything else to say and I'm just trying to avoid awkward silences. So I tried starting actual conversations. Nothing heavy; such as, "How long have you lived around here?" She answered briefly that she had just recently moved there after living in a another nearby place, and then the topic was over. That's okay. Since we had written a lot about music in our e-mails to each other (both of us have in common that we are very amateur bass players), I tried a few conversations about music. When that awful remake of the Boys of Summer started playing, I asked her why she thought bands did remakes like that, because it seems to me that most remakes are far inferior to the originals. All she answered was that she didn't know. (A disppointing answer given the enthusiastic e-mails about music.) I tried a few more attempts at conversation, like asking about what else she likes to do, mentioning things that I thought were interesting about me and waiting for a reply or counter-story. I always got short, dead-end replies, or nothing at all, and she would return to joking about the pool game.

I'm not a good conversationalist, I'll admit that readily. But it sure did feel like I was trying, and she wasn't. At one point I wondered whether I was assuming too much- maybe she didn't want for us to get to know each other, maybe she just wanted someone for an activity like pool for a few hours and nothing more. However, (a) that wasn't the context of our e-mails or our phone conversations- it seemed we wanted to get to know each other rather than just casually waste time together, (b) her e-mails to me were actually very positive, particularly in saying she thought I would be a "cool guy" to know, and (c) she was certainly dressed too nice for casually playing pool. (In fact, a sheath-type skirt is not conducive to playing pool. It's hard to bend over to take a shot in one of those.)

So after two hours, I felt like we were going nowhere as far as getting to know each other. When she asked at that point if I wanted to continue playing, I had a hard time figuring out if that was a signal she wanted to stop, or if she really was ascertaining my tolerance. I said let's play one more, so we did, again with joking banter about the game but no conversation.

I wasn't sure whether after the game, she intended that we might go to another setting to talk (like a coffee shop), or whether she was ready to go home. She had never seemed bored, but at the same time she never seemed too engaged in the date, either. As we left the bar/restaurant/pool hall, I tried once more to converse about anything (I mentioned the humid weather- yeah, a lame attempt to start a conversation, but I was out of ideas). She didn't have anything to say about the weather. At that point, I figured that this date was over. I walked with her to her car, and then told her that I had fun but I had wished that we had had more of an opportunity to talk to each other. She didn't answer that directly, and told me that she'd catch me online. We did one of those minimal-contact hugs and that was it.

I'm not sure how to explain this date. The thing that perplexes me is that it seemed like she had been looking forward to it, but then during, she just avoided conversation at all costs. That just doesn't seem congruent.

One explanation is just that she's mega-shy. And I use "mega" as the adjective, since anyone who is more shy than me has to be mega shy.

Another explanation is that she got one look at me and decided "this isn't happening." I have no doubt that I look worse in person than I do in my picture. But geez, the picture should have given her advance warning not to expect Brad Pitt.

I know this is a one-sided, incomplete account of the date. But anyone who can explain this to me gets my nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize.