Saturday, October 06, 2007

The Musician, Part I

I hear--ha ha, quite the pun, as I can't hear right now, due to my ear infection--I hear that if your eardrum ruptures, while it is briefly quite painful, it will shortly thereafter relieve the pressure in your ear from an ear infection and begin to heal. So I am, as an American with no current health insurance, left with the question: To puncture, or not to puncture? (As I hold a sewing needle between thumb and forefinger...) But alas, besides that, I have had much more fun with boys of late...sarcasm overwhelms...
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The Musician is a man I met about a week after I ended things with Crazy Andy. I met him online. (In case I didn't earlier mention it, I have been experimenting with online dating for the last several months.) He was older than me, which was a first since the Big X (well, okay, I lie--a first since the man I had a one-night-stand with in Seattle a few months after the Big X), a musician (clearly), and someone who seemed to share a lot of the same interests and values as me.

He had a great sense of humor, which was a big plus with me. He also readily admitted to currently talking with another girl as well as me, which was a double plus with me: 1. He was honest about things; 2. He was talking with another girl, which to me meant, NOT serious! NOT serious! And so, we talked for a few weeks and then we went on a first date.

Here are the things I first noticed: 1. He had a much longer beard than the picture indicated--like, 6 inches longer; 2. He had quite ugly glasses, which again, he wasn't wearing in the picture; 3. He is very, very shy when meeting in person.

Now, I am shier on a date than I might be in the rest of my life, but he was by far shier than me. He told me that beforehand, so I was being lenient about that much, but I was not at all prepared for a 6 inch goatee. Additionally, I feel the need to point out that the waitress complimented him on his glasses.

His glasses were round with thick, tortoise-shell rims, which are, admittedly, cool. On a tiny, little girl. Okay, not even little girl, but these were way too tiny for the size of his head. The combined effect of his beard, glasses, and shy personality were enough to throw me off. He kissed me on the lips at the end of the night-- closed lips, mind you--but his stomach got in the way. Now, this is not to say that my tummy is little. It is not. But his tummy was a buddha-shaped tummy, where mine is sort of curvy. The end result was a man whose lack of physical attraction and in-person personality could not overcome the online chemical attraction. I did what I do with all my life-altering decisions--presented it to my friends.

I did, admittedly, agree to a second date. I blame this on the fact that I am unable to deal with first dates longer than 1 hour, which is why I usually only agree to a drink. However, Richard got me to agree to dinner AND dessert, rather than a drink, because our online chemistry was so great. We were supposed to go out again the following week. While discussing with my friends, I did have one or two more conversations with him, in which he told me that after our one, single date, he had decided to not talk to the other girl anymore and pull his profile from the dating website, and also had told a friend that he "may soon have a girlfriend." All this did not play well against my commitment fears, particularly after Crazy Andy. I (read: My friends) decided that I would just cancel the second date and leave it at that. I didn't owe any big explanations, as we had only been out once. Not all agreed about this, but the majority did. Rose wanted me to give him another chance, since he was a nice guy.

So I canceled the date, stating that I needed the time to prepare for my mother's memorial that weekend (which was, incidentally, true), and I did not talk to him anymore. After four days, I received an email from him asking what he had done wrong, why I wasn't talking to him, and telling me all sorts of nice stuff about how much he liked me, and filled with compliments. It was so nice I decided to give him one more shot. I wrote back and told him all the things he had said that had scared me off, and told him that I would like to go out with him again, so long as he could take things slow on the relationship front. I was busy with Whitney's wedding and then house-sitting for her while she was on her honeymoon, so we had to wait basically 3 weeks before our next date...

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