Romantic Spontaneity

Well, so much for my romanticized sense that breaking the silly rules and rigid scripts of first dates would be fun and stimulating. Also so much for my brilliant idea that seeing a movie I want to see anyway would make a first meeting more efficient. (Romantic efficiency: how's that for an oxymoron?) The latter doesn't work because no one would meet you in the lobby and go right to the movie; no, you have to have coffee first, which means meeting an hour or more before the movie starts. The documentary started at 5:20, I met up with J/aka-L at 4:10, we sat down for coffee at 4:20, and by 4:30 I knew this was a mistake and I was stuck.

J/L greeted me with the non-encouraging words, "Hmm. You look very different from your picture."
Here's what followed:

Me: "Really? You're the second man to tell me that. This is so odd. What's different?"
Him: "Never mind."
Me: "No, I'm concerned, I want to know. You must mean I look older or fatter in real life? It's obviously not a difference that's flattering to me."
Him: "We shouldn't be discussing this. You're an attractive woman. Never mind. It was just one of the pictures, really."
Me: "Can you just tell me which of the three pictures I don't look like? So I can take that one down? Because I don't want men to think I'm deliberately deceiving them. I honestly thought they all looked like me."
Him: "We shouldn't discuss this."

Okay, probably true, but may I remind you (and him) that he brought it up, approximately .01 seconds after meeting me? This was not a good start.

I tried again: Let's discuss something else. It was attractive that he is a passionate environmentalist, organizes and does volunteer work (he's not employed at the moment, so has lots of time), and is knowledgeable and ethical about all this in ways that I am not. So I tried to get him to talk about that. BP? Nope. His vegetarianism? Nothing new or interesting there. Recycling plastic bottles? I recalled how I tried for years to be virtuous by reusing plastic bottles, only to learn that it's practically fatal to reuse plastic bottles. He was not amused. Then I attempted to engage him in an ethical argument about killing mice; is it right to put our own repugnance before mouse suffering? (I personally love that sort of thing.) He wouldn't discuss.

Finally, finally, it was time to see the movie, the documentary on the life of Joan Rivers, called A Piece of Work, which I enjoyed very much. I would have loved to talk about the interesting parts of the movie, e.g. the line between what's funny and what's off-limits to laughter and why, but let me tell you, that wasn't happening. Did you enjoy the movie? I asked. No, he said. That was it. Yet he wanted to extend the date, walk around the Village, and seemed let down when I said I had to go home. A different way than he was going.

A very sweet man, a nice man, but we live on different planets as far as sensibility goes. I sincerely hope he finds a fellow non-verbal environmentalist.

Here's another one of my dating ironies: he didn't look at all like his attractive picture either. And I think his listed height of 5'6" was a hopeful exaggeration. But unlike him and the first guy who told me I don't resemble my picture, I never would say so.

Ah, Match.com. I resigned my membership in a fit of disgust about ten days ago. Yesterday I checked to see exactly when the subscription was up, and it seems they never processed my resignation, which means I will be automatically billed for another month. There goes the decision about whether to continue or not. I plan to protest, but if I have to stay, I think I'm going to be Narrowing the Scope from now on. To geniuses who are drop-dead gorgeous, and witty, and have British accents. But are not gay.