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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Last night I met a boy...

I think probably 90% of my blog posts could start that way. It seems like every day in this fair city, I meet a dashing new gentleman who has a lot to bring to the table. But always, there is something lacking. He isn't Catholic. He isn't funny. He reminds me of an ex-boyfriend. He reminds me of a polar bear. The list could go on. Everyone seems to be a trade-off, a choice between options like "cute and great with kids, but unemployed" and "funny and smart but arrogant and self-satisfied" No one is just right. Am I not just right? I always keep an eye out for that eventual "perfect match" who I expect to come along, but maybe there is no perfect match? You see. These questions go back and forth. It's enough to make any reasonable girl want to head for the nearest nunnery rather than play the dating game any longer.

It helps to remember that it is, after all, a game. Not in the sense of "playing games" or anything manipulative like that, but that it's supposed to be fun, playful, and light-hearted. He (the boy from last night) wrote his email address on a napkin. It was a daring gamble, throwing down his dice to see if I'd take the bait (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). I emailed him after a decent 15-hour interval. I thought that perhaps I should wait longer, but the game is still new to me and I wasn't sure. He wrote back right away. Now it's my move again, and I'm holding my cards and considering the next play. First I have to read the poems he sent me. We're talking about poetry, by the way, because he majored in English. He loves the post-World War I period of American ex-pats in Paris. He's bringing me his copy of A Moveable Feast next time we meet (I haven't read it yet). My sister loves that period too and A Moveable Feast is her favorite book. What does this all mean? Am I looking for someone like my sister? Or maybe this guy would get along better with my sister? I don't know. Right now he seems so nice but I barely know him, and I am fairly sure that with him, as with so many other guys, the pleasant first impression masks something I don't know and don't want to know, coyotes lurking hidden in the sunny field, waiting to scare me away from wanting to enter and build.

That doesn't sound much like a game, does it? I don't know what's up with me today. Actually, yes I do. It's the weather. Grey and stormy, a wild and windy day. I am most unhappy to be outside of my cozy bed when the outside is rebellious like this.

I suppose what I am trying to say here is that it doesn't matter. So maybe this guy will turn out to be really weird and undateable, like so many before him. Then he will be gone and the next one will come along faster than a train on the DC Metro. In a way sometimes I think that guys are like Medea's dragon teeth army, popping out of the ground like daisies, replacing each other immediately - and all seeming to be exactly the same. The game will go on, I guess, until someday one of them isn't exactly like the others. Doesn't have hidden coyotes that scare me away from dating him. Until one of them is real, and worth it, and here to stay.

Post-edit: One of my friends emailed me to ask if I want to go see Oklahoma! tonight. So now we have plans for dinner at her place and then this delightful show. I am quite excited, and no longer in such a glum mood. What little things can turn a whole day around!

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