Saturday, January 20, 2007

2nd Date, Part I: The Dodd Announcement

Oh boy. Oh no. Okay, I've really dug myself in deep this time.

It all began last night when I had my second date with this guy. Let us call him P. Our second date consisted of attending a Chris Dodd for President rally in Hartford, after which we were planning to have dinner "someplace quiet." He asked me to pick him up from work so we could drive to the rally together but I didn't want to do that. I am really afraid that this guy is much more into me than I am into him and I was trying to discourage him a little.

Ugh. I need to shower before I continue this story. I feel so dirty. Back in a bit.

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After a shower and changing the sheets, I realize that my introductory paragraph is perhaps on the alarmist side, a bit of an overreaction. Here is what happened next.

So we were at the Old State House, enjoying a glass of red wine and munching on appetizers, and we really didn't have too much to talk about. Luckily, we found a mutual friend and sort of latched onto him for a bit, and the conversation picked up with three of us. It quickly became apparent to me that he was here to see and be seen, as he went around finding the Speaker of the Ct House, the former Lt. Governor, several State Representatives and State Senators. I do believe most of them knew him, so bully for him.

I was there to see the announcement because I like political things, and to say hi to friends. I didn't realize I was there to be introduced to all the big shots by P., implicitly as his new girlfriend, even though we were only on the second date. He put his arm around me quite a lot and held my hand quite a bit. Once, I did not follow him across the room as he went to say hi to the former Lt. Governor, because a. I do not particularly like the man and don't want to be introduced to him and b. He was in the vicinity of another person I know well and definitely would have preferred not to see. P., when he realized I had not followed him over, called to me across the room so that I would join him and be introduced. I felt like such arm candy.

Then after the announcement, we had to stay around and chase Senator Dodd for 45 minutes so P. could meet him. I really don't care about meeting the famous people. I would have been fine just leaving. I mean, Chris Dodd is not going to remember me after meeting me among hundreds of people anyway.

So next was what to do afterwards. We were supposed to go, in P.'s words, "someplace quiet" for dinner, and it was my responsibility to choose a restaurant. Well, given the fact that I was still recovering from a cold and the cough medicine was wearing off, on top of the fact that I had (skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to hear about girl problems) a bladder infection which caused me to have to pee immediately when the urge hit, well, I just wanted to go home.

Since P. really does seem like quite the gentleman, I invited him home, so long as he was okay with my messy apartment. I also thought on my own turf where I'm more comfortable, I'd be better able to have a frank conversation with him, something I needed to do if we were going to have a third date. I needed to be able to tell him some things about me and know that he accepted them.

I had a bit of wine. He had a beer. Unfortunately, I forgot about the cough syrup and got much too tipsy due to the combination. So after about 90 minutes of television watching interspersed with a bit of snogging and some polite conversation, I finally got up the nerve to start playing Questions. Questions is my little game for calling off the normal rules of conversation and getting right at the crux of what you want to know about each other. The rules are pretty basic: You take turns asking each other any question you want and the other person must answer honestly. It's like Truth or Dare without the dare.

This is getting long so I'm going to split the post up. Stay tuned for the interesting part, where you say to yourself, Yes, Tina really is crazy.

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