take two

So, it's been more than a year, but that last character I wrote about is on the radar again.

Last year's accidental date turned into some real dates, but then didn't work out due to geographical circumstance. He called me a few weeks ago because he was planning to be in town and wanted to see me. I figured he'd just come by and see the new digs.

In the afternoon, his friend dropped him off at my house along with a bicycle in need of repair. We had drinks on the porch in the rain (my new favorite pasttime), then went and fixed his bike. A bike ride to the shore (all my dates, real or imaginary, seem to involve water these days), he bought me dinner and followed me to the movies and ice cream. Started to feel like a date after the bike repair. Felt wildly like a date at dinner, ice cream, movie. Then he wanted to get a drink, which sounded promising, but the bars were insane, so we went down to the river and sat in the dark on a park bench until midnight. Sounds romantic, right? But no good night kiss, no hand holding, facebook tells me he's got a girlfriend back home....

The next day we met up for lunch during my lunch hour. He was elsewhere for a few days, called me at work from there to make plans to get together during his last night in the city. Today he phoned to ask if he can stay at my house tomorrow.

It's a date, right?

penny postcards

I love penny postcards. I wish I could use them for all my emailing needs, but it's not always practical. Also I might get sick of them. (Unlikely!)
Anyway, just wanted to give a shout-out here to them, as I am always stealing their images.

first accidental date of the new year

So tonight's accidental date is different from the rest in that I was on the other side of the fence, maybe. It reminded me of one of my first accidental dates with my ex before he was my boyfriend, when I thought we were just hanging out. It wasn't that I didn't want to make out with him, I was confused only because I didn't think I was his type.

Anyway, back to the present. So there's this guy I think is cool, and I saw him recently and today he invited me to New Year's Day brunch at his friends' house and said yes to a movie that I had invited him to. I didn't feel 100% that it was a date. I felt like we were still trying to figure each other out in a kinda old-fashioned pre-date kind of way. But after brunch, it felt more like a date, and we fixed up a bike to bring to the movie theatre, and then as we were going out the door there was a third person with us, who is really nice and I was glad he came, but I would have also been happy to have been one of two. The next thing I knew we were 4 of us seeing movies, which was also great, but I was confused. Did this guy like me or not?

There was a quick moment of hand-holding during the movie, which was encouraging, but I still didn't have the script laid out in front of me, had to continue with the confusion and potential comedy / humiliation of improv. But at the end of the evening he said he'd call me & told me when he planned to do so (which I tend to think is better than "I'll call you sometime") and he punched me on the arm, which is totally something I would do, so we shall see.

Either way, pal or smooch, is fine, he's a peach.

dinner and a movie?

I have lots of male friends who are not single. I'm not interested in dating them, for the most part, and I would never put the moves on someone who's involved. I think it's fine to have friendships with people of all genders without assuming romance.

I have a married friend I go out with now and then. I don't intend to date him, we just pal around (have you heard this before?) and he was nice to talk to when I was busting up with my squeeze. One of those guys who's willing to give advice and be nice to a girl in need.

One night we were out, just drinks and chit chat. He invited me back to check out his studio space, which I'd never seen but always wanted to. We did, it was cool, but at one point I felt like we were on a date. I left, no weird goodbyes, I forgot about it.

Anyway, one night we wanted to hang out, and he suggested dinner after work. I suggested any of a half dozen cheap joints I haunt; he suggested a restaurant near where I work. I'd never been there. I'm not picky (apart from being a vegetarian), so I agreed.

Unusually, I got there early, The joint was hardly such, low lighting and a menu with entrees over $10 each, hardly my scene. I waited outside for my pal, who was not so late.

Next thing you know, we're killing a bottle of decent wine of a type I'd never had (he ordered), he's looking too intensely into my eyes as he talks about whatever. He tried to pay for dinner, I threw down half. A girl I kind of know was at the restaurant, & I said hi. She was acting like a complete weird-o. Dinner done, we left and parted amicably and unromantically outside.

Next day I got an email from the girl apologizing for acting like a spazz, but she thought she was interrupting a date. (Why would it be ok to act like a spazz if someone's on a date?) I said she hadn't, but then I realized I was accidentally dating a married man.

good neighbors

This story is difficult to tell. It's way too fresh, but it is the reason for this blog.

I have this funny next door neighbor, an old guy about my dad's age (75-ish). He lives with his daughter and granddaughter (who is my age). We chat over the fence a lot, but when the weather gets cold and the days get short, I don't see much of him. He's a complain-ey old coot with an opinion about everything. He's got good stories about the neighborhood and about his younger life as a world traveler.

He's having his hip replaced soon, and it's difficult for him to stand up for long stretches, so I feel bad about having to talk to him over the fence, because he winds up in pain from standing. A couple months ago he gave me a standing invite to come over for a drink. He alluded to some gross apple liquor the neighbor made, it sounded pretty chill. I kept not having time, and he goes to bed at 6pm or something, which makes it difficult to co-ordinate a time to hang out.

I was going to go over a few weeks ago, but didn't get home in time and he wasn't answering his phone anyway. I told my friend who was staying at my house about it, and he said "well, is this something I need to worry about?" I said no way, we're just hanging out.

Tonight I finally got it together to call him from work. He said we'd have to wait until his daughter left, I said why not 5:30 since that's the earliest I could be home from work anyway. After we got off the phone, that business about having to wait until his daughter left bugged me for a second. I ignored that weird feeling.

It's dark around here at 5:30. I rang his front doorbell, noting the windows were all dark, which is not unusual. I thought maybe he had blackout curtains on all the windows. Of course, the alternative explanation would be all the lights might be out.

He came to the door in his PAJAMAS! Nevertheless, I went in. He lives in a crazy old Victorian like I do, and I was interested to see the place, wondered how much it had been changed since it was built. I love old houses. However, I couldn't really get a good look because ALL THE LIGHTS WERE OUT!! There was a little nightlight on in the hall that stopped me from walking into anything. Anything like a wall, I mean. I was definitely walking into something.

He said to turn left, so I turned into the living room, which was completely dark. "No no," he said, "down the hall!" He opened the door to his bedroom which was also dark because it was only lit by a dim blue bulb!! I said "Look, what's going on here, this isn't what I had in mind," and yet I walked in. He said "oh now now, just make yourself comfortable," as he walked over and lay down on his bed! Fortunately, there was a chair over by the lamp, so I took that. He motioned that I should sit on the bed. "C'mon, make yourself comfortable!" "Oh, I'm fine here thanks."

Now, I shouldn't have taken that chair, I should have just gone home. This was completely out of the blue. He's not even a flirty old man, for crying out loud, he's just an old crotchety one! Yet there he was, reclining on the bed in flannel PJs, telling me I should be on the bed with him!

I figured if he tried anything I could kick him in the busted hip, and there were plenty of blunt objects at my disposal in the room. I'm young and fit, he's a broken down old man.

We chit chatted about this and that, the usual stuff we talk about in the yard: his fishing trips, excursions to other countries, etc.. The room was about 90F, typical for an old coot. Again he made with the "make yourself comfortable" and I replied in no uncertain terms, "look, if I made myself any more comfortable I would make myself very uncomfortable. You don't want to make me uncomfortable, do you?" He seemed to get this and it didn't come up again.

Any fly on the wall would have been a little confused, I think, by the situation. Obviously it was weird, but neither one of us was speaking any differently than usual. He was lying on the bed, inviting me to join him, and telling me the same stories about fishing as ever, in the same tone of voice. I made my feelings clear, but didn't get upset and didn't leave. None of this made any sense.

The situation was weird in the extreme. I didn't want to be rude and bolt, but I was constantly planning my escape. I ended up staying for 45 minutes and listening to his stories, which is why I was there in the first place. At 6:15, at the end of his tale about visiting Columbia in the 1980s, I said, "well, gotta hit the road, I'm meeting someone to fix my sink in a few minutes." He got up and let me out of his room, actually turned on the light in the kitchen and let me out the side door.

POST MORTEM
Now what? Well, I certainly won't be accepting any more invitations from that character, but I'll still shoot the shit with him in the driveway. I don't imagine he'll bring up this evening ever again, and I certainly won't, but he hasn't acted particularly predictable so far. For now I'm avoiding him.

What can be learned from this situation?

What were the signals I missed?

Obviously I should have listened to myself when I realized the comment about his daughter was weird.

Was there anything else that could have tipped me off?

Is it simply due to me being a young woman and him being a man that led to this ridiculous scene? If he were younger, I wouldn't have stuck around. I would have probably not knocked on the door of the dark house, and wouldn't have gone inside when I saw his outfit. Or is this man just old and off his fucking rocker?

Why did this go as far as it did? Nothing happened, nobody touched anyone, there was no inappropriate (really though, what is appropriate in this bizarre situation?) talk, no nudity, no violence nor threat thereof. But why did I stick it out and chat with him for a while? The entire time I was freaked out and staring at any of the 10 clocks in his room, waiting for a decent period to have passed so I could go.

I have a history of getting into tense situations.

This evening is, perhaps, a call to re-evaluate how I deal with weirdness and how I could better handle the unexpected. In retrospect, although I feel I did a good job of being completely clear about how I felt about his overtures, why didn't I just leave right away? I guess I didn't want things to be weird later (!). If I see him in the driveway tomorrow, I'm going to be ok with it. If I had left immediately when he opened the door to his bedroom, which I should have done, then I would probably always feel weird about seeing him. And I do see him a lot when the weather is nice.

And seriously, who invites a girl over, comes to the door in pajamas, and lets her into his dark bedroom? No drinks were offered, no music, nothing to set the tone besides the mood lighting. Not to suggest that any of those things would have made the situation any less weird, but they are kind of standard bachelor ploys. I can only imagine he hasn't had any interactions with women who are not prostitutes since he busted up with his wife twenty some years ago.

Anyway, I'm still freaked out. I'm going to have to watch some WonderWoman episodes to feel better. Some good fun pop women's lib in a cute outfit. It's nights like this that make me wish I had a roommate.

Please use the comment button, below.

S&M

I was living in a dorm in college and I was sort of friends with this hippie who lived in my hall (well, in truth almost everyone in my dorm was a hippie).

We went out to the movies and got drunk on Fresca and vodka while watching John Waters' Serial Mom, a movie that had been protested by a crazy woman on campus who decried it as anti-feminist because everyone knows men are far more likely to be serial killers. Now I'm a feminist, but I am one with a sense of humor, and that woman gave feminists a crazy bad name. After the movie we went to the cemetery and continued drinking on Emily Dickinson's grave, behind the fence under the tree.

Was this a date? If I wasn't dating someone else and if I wasn't totally against dating hippies and if I had ever looked at this particular hippie with anything resembling lust, I might have thought so. We went back to our dorm and parted amicably and both lived through the night, probably regretting it the next day.

Shortly after this (date?) my boyfriend broke up with me for about the millionth time.
I vowed to drink that night until I couldn't see, a state of extreme drunkenness I had not yet achieved in my short life. My hippie friend secured the bottle, and before long I was fighting him in the hallway, howling like a banshee, unable to see.

Somehow I survived this night, too, went to bed alone, didn't even consider making out with the hippie. Probably puked my guts out at some point. At least I hope I did, considering I had poisoned myself with vodka or something.

Next day I was hating life and the hippie was covered in scratches and bruises from my violent blind drunkenness. I apologized sincerely, but he was a good sport.

Years later I was in that college town visiting with an old professor, and we ran into the hippie. Much to my horror, he told her I had both satisfied his curiosity of and turned him off S&M!

I guess if the result is making up someone's mind about sado-masochism, then it's a date, accidental or not.

first things first

When was my first accidental date? Hard to say. Many of my relationships started with accidental dates. At least once I invited a third wheel along on a first date, obliviously. In fact, I had three dates with that person before I was forced to recognize it was a date at all. I think with those dates I didn't recognize them until there was kissing involved. It turned into a longtime relationship, but I was definatley clueless at the start.