God I love the spring.
Monday evening, J and I had planned to meet up in the west village to see a play with my cousins. I reached the meeting point before he did and I gave a call on his cell phone to see where he was. As it rang, I realized the meeting place we’d picked actually could be interpreted as correct from several locations and I wandered around craning my head to see if I missed him standing elsewhere. Across the way, a guy wearing sunglasses and holding up a bike waved in my direction. I ignored it, left a message for J, and positioned myself in the most noticeable place possible.
I stood there for a bit in the warm air letting my thoughts roam, when suddenly sunglass guy was gliding towards me on his bike. “Shoshana?” He asked. Startled, I just shook my head. He paused for a minute then nodded and circled back to his position across from me. All of a sudden, I was flooded with these awful memories of my brief internet dating attempt. All the build-up and disappointment, the weird embarrassment and awkward meeting. I didn’t believe in emailing forever before meeting, thinking it basically amounted to a giant waste of time if you didn’t have any chemistry the first time you met. So the dates I had were brief drinks, a dinner here and there, a walk through the zoo. Aaaand none of them worked out very well. Mostly because within 10 seconds of meeting them I would know that there was no chemistry. But instead of doing anything about it, I felt obligated to be nice, and would self-consciously go through with whatever charade we’d planned.
So standing on the corner, “Shoshana” nowhere in sight, I suddenly got very panicky that sunglass guy would think I really WAS Shoshana and had dismissed him on sight. What if Shoshana never showed up? Then he would really think I was her and that I’d been awful. Poor sunglass guy! Also, why was he wearing sunglasses at 6:30 at night in a shaded area? It was creepy. I began to think he was STARING at me, willing me to be Shoshana and grow up already, and FACE THE BLIND DATE! I called J again and told him to hurry up.
When he finally did get there, I was overcome with relief and was all, “Oh hel-lo, lover!” kissy kissy, which translates roughly to: Hey sunglass guy, I’m not your internet date that stood you up and also I am a desired woman who doesn’t go on blind dates anymore, which is why I’m kissing this guy, who belongs to me.
I know some people have really good experiences internet dating, but I realized somewhere between the neurotic paranoia and the over-affectionate assertion of non-single status, that it mighta scarred me a bit.
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