Some of us blog about politics and there is always something going on in that world to blog about. Some of us blog about our daily lives, rants and such, and since our lives are in constant motion, there is always something to blog about. Some of us blog about a topic such as my own ~ Dating & Men. While I ensure you that I do my berrie breast to put myself in all sorts of places to meet men, I’m officially out of material, uh, men. I don’t expect the dry spell to last long, mostly because I so enjoy the torture, but for now, I will resort to a flashback post.
Since I’ve been somewhat bitter and jaded as of late, it’s going to be a happy blog.
Dating hasn’t always been this much work with this little reward. My friend Holly and I were talking recently about how easy it was when we were in our early 20’s and living in Connecticut. We both had regular “I-went-to-college-for-this?” day jobs and waited tables at a sports bar at night to supplement our paltry income. Men were everywhere, and they were nice men. Holly thinks that it was better because we saw the same people come through week after week. The town had about 100,000 residents, so it wasn’t exactly a small town. You knew about a third of the people in the bar by name, and another third by face.
Regardless, I’ve had some very good experiences in the man department – back in the days when they didn’t, as a collective gender, consistently let me down. Some stories of note follow.
1) In the more recent past, MotorcycleInstructor, despite his flaws, was incredibly giving when he wanted to be. Yeah yeah yeah, scoff if you will, but he did blow off an afternoon of work to pick up my Harley in Gaithersburg and drive it back to Dupont Circle. He did come back later that night to lock the bike up for me in the public garage. He did also come back to my apartment at 5 a.m. the next morning to drive it to inspections for me since I was too chicken to drive it there myself. Ok. Enough said.
2) My first true love, AlwaysDrunk, went on to date many many women after me. One of them was a girl named Tammy, who I went to high school with and who worked at the IT Help Desk when I worked for Nine West after college in 95-98. I had a special shoe catalog design program installed on my computer at Nine West that she had to constantly help me with. One weekend, I bumped into AlwaysDrunk and he said, “You know I’m dating Tammy, right? She said she sees you practically every day.” I said that she had never said anything. (She hadn’t.) But the next day I saw her and told her what he said and she just rolled her eyes. I said, “What? Sore subject?” And she said, “He never stops talking about you.”
3) I’m not so sure this falls in the category of “good” but it illustrates the lengths a man will go to for a woman. When TheCop and I broke up for the 157th time before my Senior Year of College in the Summer of 1994, he suspected that I broke up with him for someone else. He needed to know if I was home, alone. He climbed on to the roof of my parents house by way of a ladder and sat outside my bedroom window watching me sleep. That relationship should have ended with a restraining order.
4) Billy K. My second love. Sometime in 1996. By far the man who set all standards for how all men should behave when they really like someone. On our first date in N.Y.C., we met at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. We both had our cars with us. He stopped on the way out of the city and filled up my car with gas and he gave me his cell phone in case I needed it. On other dates, he would drive from Queens to Connecticut to pick me up, we would go out in the city, he would take me back to CT and go back home to Queens. This is the suicidal equivalent of driving from Annapolis to Baltimore to get someone, take them out in D.C., then back to Baltimore to drop them off, finally retiring back in Annapolis. Wow.
5) Billy again. He really deserves a category, uh, entry, uh, blog of his own. Did I mention he was Greek and one of the only ones my parents let beyond the threshold of their front door? Anyway, I went to Mardi Gras in February of 1996 and he dropped me off and picked me up from LaGuardia. On my flight home, Elle MacPherson was a few rows in front of me in first class. They don’t call this woman “The Body” for nothing. So I get off the plane, barrel in front of her, find Billy at bag claim and jump in his arms. Then I say, “Look! Elle MacPherson!” And Billy says, “Who fucking cares? You’re BACK!” And I said, “Just look! You have to look. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” And he said, “I don’t care about her. So what? How was your trip?” That man did not take his eyes off me the entire time. Who does that?
Ok, look. I was 23 and he was 33 and he thought the age difference was too much and eventually went back to his old girlfriend. I wonder how that worked out. Sometimes I think about looking him up. Damn he was hot.
All right. I’m done with these stories. I’m depressed now. Though, I wonder if there’s a theory to be had here. Most of this intense wooing by these men happened when I was much younger and much more naive. Is it possible that men don’t expend this kind of effort on a woman in her 30’s because she’s supposed to be more independent or is it because he’s tired from having spent all his 20’s doing the things for other women that were done for me by other men?