dating

You may have noticed a certain silence here around a certain Marathon Date with a certain Smokin Hot Mae. We ate good food, we lounged in bed, we read papers, we napped, we engaged in some Hot Damn Pants Removal. We went to a barbeque, glaze-eyed and yawning from all the day’s hard work; left early. We walked home with our arms wrapped around each other, I dropped her off at her house and walked up the stairs to mine.

I was exhausted. In my brain and heart. But doing okay.

Until I went to bed. I picked up my book, thumbed to the right page, and started bawling. I turned the light off. I kept bawling. I curled up, wishing I could fall asleep and wake up and not feel like my organs, vital and vestigial, were hovering on precarious stilts over a large body of salty water.

++

It was a hard decision to make, but I emailed her the next day. Told her I freaked out, told her I couldn’t date anyone.

I know, I know. Email? Not classy. Not my best move. Though I like to think that I’m good enough with manners of the heart, that I am in the Advanced Class, and thus know when it is appropriate to break rules that have been put in place for a very good reason.

Mostly, it turned out okay because Mae is a nice person, and moreover, she was feeling the same way. Had felt, even. Her Sunday night was tired and melancholy too.

This is why dating sucks. Because you meet someone you like, and you go out with them. And that’s nice, so you do it again. And they’re a really good kisser. So you do it again. And then it turns out that they embody all those things you said you wanted. So you keep on doing it.

And then one day your heart folds in folds in folds in on itself, into a pinprick black hole and you’re hurting numb all over. And you just can’t do it again and it just totally fucking sucks.

You know what is a very nice thing?

I will tell you.

A very nice thing is to have emailed the person with whom you are currently involved in intermittent, but very fun, pants removal, and to have told them that your visit with your family was stressful and it was very difficult to leave your grandmother not knowing if you would see her again, and then to open up your door and find a bouquet of lilacs on the step.

I think these will be a very lovely addition to the Marathon Date.

Smokin Hot Mae and I have had one of the oddest starts to dating I think I've had. I asked her out for a coffee, which turned into a beer, which turned into two, which turned into a tipsy walk home through the snow. So I asked her on a date date. The soonest we could schedule it was two weeks after. It was a smashing good time, so we decided we'd like another. In 10 days. It ended in a torn skirt and was very much fun. We decided we should do that again, though perhaps leaving out the ripped seams. We only went 7 days, that time.

This weekend, we're going to make up for it. Our next date, 10 days after our last date, goes from 6:30 pm on Saturday to sometime in the evening on Sunday.

We're making up for lost time, seems like.

I can't quite say how I feel about these gaps. I find them frustrating, for sure. That's a lot of time in between the kisses of someone whose kisses you quite thoroughly enjoy. And email, I do love email, to which anyone who has any kind of a relationship with me can attest, but, well, it's just not as easy to get to know someone that way as it is in person.

But I am enjoying that I want to see her again, and that the longer the gap, the more frustrated I become. It'll simmer down for a while, but I'll get an email, or see a picture and think, fuck, how many days?

It's all I can handle, as well. I can feel my heart struggling to come back alive, a thick ka-chunk as a bout of adrenaline shoots through its twisted veins and arteries and it lands hard in the bottom of my ribcage. The slow stretch and snap of a romantic feeling winding through.

That sounds dour and hopeless, but I don't mean it that way. I find it encouraging. I'm surprised I even have these jolts of actual feeling for someone else.

Whatever organ let me believe in Fate and True Love and The One is dead, starved of oxygen at a key point, perhaps. Maybe it'll grow back. Maybe it won't.

I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Because if what I get out of it is a day of backgammon and the newspaper in bed with a hot girl who is solid and thoughtful, funny, smart, creative, community-minded, warm through her core and a fucking great kisser, the kind of girl who will leave lilacs on my doorstep and offer me tea and hugs at just the right time, then I think that organ may have been vestigial.

If you are quite aware that a Smokin Hot Girl is going to show up at your house between 5:30 and 5:45, you should refrain for those few minutes from nibbling at the edges of the vegetables you have been thinly slicing, because as soon as you put a piece in your mouth, the knock will knock on the door, and instead of the smoothly torrid greeting you had planned, you will open the door slightly sheepishly, with your hand held in front of your mouth, chewing fast, and hoping to christ that she likes the taste of fennel.

Before he had either, David Scrimshaw once said that his policy was to never blog anything that might hurt his chances at getting either a job or a date.

Here's an apt equation for you: dating + blogging = funny tricky thing.

Especially the kind of blogging I do, which leans more towards let-it-all-hang-out than circumspection. Not everyone likes that so much.

So I'm not going to dish the details I might have on the music-date with the Smokin Hot Girl or the date-date with the other Smokin Hot Girl, except to say I am lucky. And then mum's the word on dating till further notice.

Once, many years ago, my ex was playing a show at Babylon. The show was over, the crowd had thinned, the band was hauling their gear; I was standing around, finishing my drink, in stasis, not quite bored, but with nothing to do. A few feet down the bar, I saw this guy I'd seen around our neighbourhood a bunch of times over the couple months prior.

I went over to him and said "Hey, you must live in my neighbourhood, I've seen you around Somerset and Preston a bunch lately." He hadn't seen me, but indeed, he did live in the neighbourhood, just two blocks away, in my ex-roommate's girlfriend's ex-apartment.

We chatted a bit, friendly-like. He swayed a bit. And a bit more. His friend came up to us and the three of us continued the pleasant conversation. The first guy tried to put his arm around me. Right. Girl by herself? Talking to a boy? Of course I would want him to put his arm around me. I slipped out, but he stayed close.

"So," Friend says, "How did you come to be here at the show by yourself?"

"Oh, I'm not by myself. I'm waiting for the band to pack up."

He looked confused.

"I'm dating the singer."

First Guy took a big step away from me, reared his head back, blinked hard, turned and wove off. I narrowed my eyes. Friend shrugged his shoulders.

If there is one thing in the world of Relations that I hate, it is fucking that. You don't have the fucking decency to finish the conversation once you decide you can't fuck me?

For years, Nile has been my male interpreter. When I ran this past him, his response was "But if he wanted to get laid, and knew you two weren't on the same page, why would he hang around and lose another opportunity?" and "He was really drunk, right?"

Okay, second point, whatever. I have done my share of too-many-beer things that I've been sorry for, but I do not excuse my behaviour on that basis and I do not excuse his.

First point, sure, it's late, at the bar, you're really drunk, this girl you don't know starts talking to you, it's your lucky night. And then it's not. But finish the fucking conversation, jackass.

Because you know what is not going to get you laid? Rudeness.

I bring all this up because a mild version of this story happened to me today. In the melee of the rama lotus hallway at 7:20 pm, I ran into a guy I'd seen around before. He had just been to a hot class and was sweating up a storm, bare chested and cut and quite aware of it. I'm sure lots of people would think he was handsome.

We chat a bit about this and that, get our coats on, our shoes. Out of the blue he says "And your Significant Other is into yoga too?"

Now, props are due.

Even if I am not excited about the person hitting on me, I generally feel very kindly towards them. It takes guts to do that, and I appreciate the effort. It's flattering.

He also gave me an easy way out, no matter my relationship status. If I'd been in an open relationship, say, I could have replied "Yep, but he's at the movies with his other girlfriend tonight."

Last, there was no gender assumption. I could just as easily have said, "Yep, but she does Mysore," and I know from the way the guy asked the question that it wouldn't have been a big deal.

Excellent all around. Until.

What I did say was "Yep, he really likes it." And buddy smiles a tight smile and turns away without saying goodbye.

I narrowed my eyes. Motherfucker.

Over the phone. Not verbatim.

"So I changed my status on OKCupid today."

"Yeah? I noticed a few days ago that you changed your Facebook to In A Relationship. And then your MySpace."

"Yeah, well I figured we'd kinda talked about it. And I kinda wanted to wear it around."

"Oh, you are nice and you are nice. But for some reason I kinda came away from that conversation with the impression you thought the whole categorization thing was a little lacking."

"Huh. Nah, not really."

"Well I liked it. That you changed your status. It made me happy."

"Ohhh. Good."

"I changed my status on Facebook pretty much as soon as I noticed you had. I was waiting to talk to you before changing my Myspace and OKCupid."

"So I guess we're, uh, In A Relationship, hey?"

Silence while we both smile at our headsets.

"Yep, that's what it says on the internet."

It was bound to happen. Between 90% of my coworkers having been sick last week or this week, and making out with a cute boy with a cold, it seemed unlikely that I was going to escape being sick. So here I am at home, with a sore throat and a head full of stuffing.

The brilliant thing about being sick today is that my page-a-day grammar calendar came yesterday, and I have about a month and a half of Common Errors in English to go through. Highly entertaining and something I can do cozied up in my bed. I might also have a bath and will most likely sleep some more.

And then I'm going to drag my ass to get tattooed, because I figure that my head doesn't have to be clear to have needles jabbed into my tender flesh. For those of you who have been following along, tonight is the last appointment. The whale has been finished for a while, but I wanted to wait for the finishing touches and post photos of the whole thing. By the end of the weekend, I hope.

*

I am finding it much harder than I thought to not write about dating. So here's a mini-date update.

The Saturday night date was not a hot date. As I wrote to him on Monday, he's a handsome dude and very nice. But if there's no chemistry, there's no chemistry. He agreed.

My Friday night date, though, we need a laboratory and safety goggles.

Of course, this has me thinking a lot about dating in general, and getting to know someone new, and what I've done wrong in the past, and how fucked up relationships can get, and how scary it is to actually like someone and feel that back from them, but what a high it is too. And how to enjoy the high without losing your head so that in four years you're not picking shards of your heart out of the carpet.

I am putting the cone of silence down on the dating talk for a little while. I had one date last night, and have one date tonight. They both read this blog.

Also, blogging the Great Dater was a bit of a lesson for me. It's too much pressure, I think, to write about a new relationship. Writing a blog entry requires re-packaging life, figuring out which threads you can pull out and braid into a good story.

That rush at the beginning of a new relationship often has as much to do with seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who doesn't yet know your faults as it is about sharing a connection. That connection, that double bond, has to be there first, and that's a thrill too. But it's also a rush to feel like a clean slate.

Blogging exacerbates that: you're looking for the shiniest pieces; the most solid timber. I think at the beginning of a new relationship, to go searching for those things is maybe not the best thing to do. It's hard enough to keep perspective and your head on right.

And so, the Cone of Silence.

The one thing I will say about my date last night is that I broke one of my own manners rules. We went to the manx for a beer. I should have suggested somewhere else. I haven't been to the manx in a while, so I thought that maybe I wouldn't know tons of people there. That was a silly thing to think. I ended up playing the social butterfly- "Oh, hello. Oh, helllooo. Hey there. Yes, good thanks. And you?"- and feeling like a bit of a show-offy ass. And doing a lot of introducing. He was kind about it.

I don't seem to be able to leave the boys in bands alone.

Creative types in general, really. Once, for six weeks in 1998, I dated a computer programmer who was really into trains and had the biggest cock I've ever seen. But the rest have been writers or performers or musicians, possessing genitalia of various sizes. Since Chris in 1991, though, most of my boyfriends have been in bands.

Here, I would like to make a fine but important distinction between "boys in bands" and "band boys."

Boys in bands are well-rounded individuals who funnel their creativity and passion into instruments and amplifiers. Sometimes they're just in it for fun and are kind of bad. Often they're in it for fun and are really good. Sometimes they feel compelled to share the whole package with an audience, sometimes they don't. They may be driven, but they put people first.

Band boys are obsessed with music, their gear, their band(s) and usually have a voracious need for attention. They are single-minded and, in Greg's words, possesed of a toxic mixture of narcissism and insecurity. That mixture will gradually encroach upon your free time and energy as you try to fulfill their needs. Though I've met the occasional band boy who's got nuthin, they're usually highly talented. Their creativity is magnetic and can be super exciting to be around. Music and the rush they get from performing come before relationships with partners, lovers, and friends.

My options are to stop dating boys in bands so that I don't get suckered in by the band boys, or to develop a list of rules to keep me from getting suckered in by the band boys.

Since it seems highly unlikely that I am going to stop dating boys in bands, it behooves me to figure out how to do it sensibly. I'm sure there are those of you out there who could use this list as a template for your own. Writers don't have bazillion pound amps, but some of us have pretty heavy baggage nonetheless.

Qualifications: This isn't about any one person. Some of it is from my own decade and some of experience, sure, but some of it is intelligence gleaned from talking to other women, or watching other relationships. And I don't think that band boys are terrible awful people. But I do think that if you don't have pretty clear boundaries about what you will and won't do for them, their creative work can take over your life and you might find yourself working at every show instead of having fun.

With no further ado, here are my personal rules for dating boys in bands:

• I do not haul gear.
• I do not work the merch table.
• If he plays a lot of shows, I will probably not go to all of them.
• If I am tired, I will not wait for him after a show. If he tells me his gear will be packed and stored in 10 minutes, I will leave in 10 minutes.
• I will not hang out with him in the smoky gross basement of a bar.
• If we're on a date and he starts an involved technical conversation about gear or the current recording project to one of his friends who happens by, I will go home.
• I will not give up getting groceries because it will take "just 20 minutes" to get his gear from the bar.
• I will not lend him money.

However,

• I will help him write lyrics and arrange songs.
• I will listen to rough mixes and give an honest opinion.
• I will give him kind and truthful feedback on his shows.
• If the show is over and I'm not tired, I will stick around for a beer.
• If we're on a date and he starts an interesting conversation with me about gear or the current recording project, I will stay.
• If he plays shows irregularly, I will probably go to all of them.

I think that's it. I feel like there are some things I'm missing.

The above, of course, may go for girls in bands too. I've only ever been on a couple of dates with a girl in a band. None of my friends have dated girls in bands either, at least that I've heard. Do "band girls" exist? If you know the answer, drop me a line to tell me if you think this list would apply to them too, or if it would need fine-tuning.