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Living Vicariously

3/27/05

Okay, you are right--I have been out of the dating scene for quite a while now.  But, as someone who is very single--much like my friends who are very married--you still have to love living vicariously through your friends that are out there in the game.  Some of the better times I have had over the last couple of months have been by just listening to all that has been going on with friends of mine and their dating lives.  Of course, not all of these stories are much fun for the person being talked about, but you've got to pay the piper sometime...and, now is sometime.

(All names changed to "exotic dancer" naming structure for privacy purposes.)

UnHarmonious

My good friend Dakotah recently gave the online dating scene the college try by using eHarmony to meet guys a few months ago.  This is the site that takes a slightly different road to success--you've got to fill out this long questionnaire to get started, and then you can go through a bunch of anonymous communication over e-mail before you start to hang out in person.  This site seems to really stress long-term relationships over the short-term hookup that a craigslist.org or Match.com meeting provided for so many of my friends, so I was excited to see how this worked out for Dakotah.

Right off the bat, Dakotah met someone that seemed like a truly great match.  After moving from the anonymous online communications to phone calls, Dakotah was raving about how well this was all going.  Just two weeks into it, after maybe three dates in person, Dakotah was sold--"This is the most fun I have had dating since I left college!"  A number of the updates I got from Dakotah ended with "We stayed up talking until 3 AM...he's so great!"

It sounded all good to me, but it was all going so well so fast, I had to play devil's advocate a little bit to feel out what else might be going on that might be a sign of things to come.  There were a couple--

1. This guy was divorced...and he had a family, and by "family", I mean "kid."  The important thing was that Dakotah was okay with this, so that meant that I was okay with it.  Just a little worried.

2. About three weeks into this thing, Dakotah recounted a conversation that she had with the guy that led down the path of "I can really see us together for, you know, a long time...I hope this doesn't scare you?" and this conversation DIDN'T scare Dakotah.  Whoa, I was thinking, someone needs to tap the brakes here!

About two weeks later, the guy dropped the hammer on Dakotah--he was having second thoughts about all of this, because of the whole family thing and feeling a little weird, especially with the kid and the prospect of confusion over daddy's new ladyfriend.  Understandable, but just as understandable, Dakotah was crushed.  I was crushed, too...she seemed to really be into this one.  But, the personality fit can't be denied, and it gave someone like me renewed hope that dating online might not be the anti-Christ after all.

The Grace Period

To some degree, everyone does it with a person that they have just started dating--the Houdini act of disappearing when you first start dating someone new.  You miss the gym a few more times than you'd like, you hang out with a new partner instead of playing all of those video games, you cook dinner for two more often than you have in months.  But, the biggest change almost always deals with your friends--you have a sick tendency to become "that guy" that starts skipping social functions with your boys.

This is cool for a while--"Yeah, Justin, about your birthday party...I just started hangin' out with this girl, she's HOT, I'm real sorry bro but I'll make it up to you..."--but after a little while, you start to realize that the girl is taking over your boy's hang out time.  My buddy Rock and I had dinner recently and he mentioned this very issue to me:  "Justin, don't let me be that guy that starts missing out on shit because I'm dating somebody new...I like to have that balance between hangin' with my friends and hangin' with a beautiful woman."  Not two weeks later, Rock turned into that guy, and in a recent call, I called him on it.

Background:  Rock went out with a girl twice over two days (always a great sign) and by the middle of the following week, he was referring to this woman in e-mail communication to me as "my girl."  This raised my already-twitchy eyebrow, but it was not alarming--some guys just fall in quick, and I'm down with that.  Rock was excited because he wanted some of us to meet his new ladyfriend at his cousin's birthday party last Friday night.  So, Gordon "The Professional" Stokes and I showed up in part to meet Rock's new friend...but he was a no-show.  I got the call the next day.

"Justin, what up, man...listen, sorry about last night, my girl and I were working out some issues, but we're cool now, so hey, gimme a call back and maybe blah blah blah"

I wasn't concerned, because this fell within The Grace Period--that window of time where you give your friends a Get Out of Jail Free card for skipping out on nearly anything you plan because they've got new candy in the house.  From informal polling, most people I talked to said that The Grace Period should last no more than about three weeks; three weekends ought to be enough time for your friend to enjoy the fruits of new labor before remembering not to skip out on your real friends at nearly every turn.  There are exceptions to The Grace Period, of course...maybe your girl is not regularly in town, as one minor example will attest, or you still see your other buddies over poker or basketball during the week but skip out on weekend activities, things of that nature.

But, nothing is worse to me than that friend that is always around when they are single, but the second they start dating someone they fall completely off the radar.  Shit, I know that people link up with other people and you're going to see them less...but, not at all?  Not for me, partner!

"Please...Help Me"

I took pleasure--GREAT pleasure--in hangin' out with my friend Cheyenne recently up in New York, not only because she's always a great time but because she decided to go out on a first date prior to meeting up with me and then brought the guy with us to dinner and a club.  The guy was one of those grand storyteller types; he had a story to respond to almost any situation, kind of like that guy in your office that has seen all 200 episodes of "Seinfeld" and can link any human activity to something that Kramer did in Season 5.

The fun part for me was that I was getting the sense that Cheyenne was not too happy that the guy invited himself along for the night's festivities, so in being unhappy but being a nice woman, she didn't know how to give the guy the boot!  I kept looking over at Cheyenne and saw varying degrees of "How did I get myself into this?", which made the whole thing amusing to me.  We got to the club (Starfoods, which by the way was a great time that night) and when this guy went off to the bathroom for a moment, Cheyenne leaned over to me:

"Please...help me!  I told the guy I had a friend in town, but he just wouldn't take no for an answer, and now he's here...I'm really sorry..."

I wasn't sorry in the least--this was good shit!  And, I (along with two other friends of mine that were in attendance...no, I was not the proverbial third wheel in all of this) was really impressed with this guy's stick-to-it-tive-ness; he was pushing hard for a solid ending to the night.  I haven't been that aggressive in the last few months, some of that due to confidence but more can be attributed to not being really into someone to the point that I'm going to force the issue throughout an evening.  But, for one night, it was fun to watch--Cheyenne put a great face on things and she seemed to have a great time with the group that night.  Of course, who knows if her date that night got a second chance...

The Cold Reality

I was hangin' out with Mr. Stokes at a bar the other night, and it was not far from the norm for me--hip-hop in the background, some mix of my club friends living it up on the dance floor, and lots of beautiful ladies and gents in attendance.  I was looking good, Mr. Stokes was looking better, and we were commenting on all manner of things--the NCAA tourney, that Indian woman two tables over that seemed to be falling out of her blouse, the fact that one day Gordon is going to be superintendent of the Fairfax County school system, etc.

It really hit me that my time at these kinds of functions is quickly running out, a common theme this year for some reason since I've come home from Miami.  But, the bigger reality is that over the 10-or-so years I have been going out to clubs and bars, I have met and hooked up with a woman at one of these things exactly twice, and that's not going to change, so I only approach nights like that as chances to hang out with friends and not make conversation with anyone that I don't really know.  You know how people always say to you

"Hey man, you just never know what's going to--"

Yes, I do, actually.  I DO know what's going to happen when I go out to the club tonight--I'm going to dance for three hours, I'm going to have a couple of drinks, I'm going to lose my voice talking shit to somebody standing next to me, then I'm going to drive home, watch "SportsCenter" and then hit the sack.  It's happened like that almost to a T every time I have been out on the weekend for ten years now, and now that I'm officially older and wiser, I don't have to make those silly assumptions anymore that something truly different is going to happen tonight!

I actually caught myself when I was getting dressed the other night before heading out; I was cleaning up my room just in case someone were to come home with me that night, then I immediately stopped and threw shit back onto my bed.  Who am I kidding?, I thought.  I live in Rockville, which most people think is in Minnesota.  I drive a Saturn--do guys really pick up women at clubs, drive them home in their Saturn, and cross the plate in real life?  And, I have no game--if I don't break off some seriously great lines in my first five minutes, I can go ahead and call it a night.

Thank goodness I've got friends who do have some game...without y'all, I don't have any material!

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• Elite Eight games this year:  Opening Weekend

• "Eyes on the Prize":  $9.50 Show

• 65° and sunny...you're sitting behind a desk:  Matinee

• $50 for PSP games?:  Rental

• The real cold reality--you've got to floss every day:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com