dating: the beginners' corner

I've talked a little bit here before about what the word "dating" has meant for me in the past. Excessive Facebook stalking, occasional name-Googling, maybe a few creeper night-time drive-bys of the house or apartment.

If you're now wondering if I've ever been on Dateline, the answer is no. At least not yet.

But to temper the psycho factor in all that just a little bit, this is how college-aged people interact romantically here in the great bright future, year of our lord 2009. Well, maybe everyone doesn't do the drive-by thing, but I was taught that by a very seasoned professional and sometimes the temptation to just swing through a guy's neighborhood and see if you can catch him taking his trash to the street in his underwear is just TOO great. But let's be honest, if you actually DID catch him, you'd hit the deck like you were in Kabul and that Hefty bag was an IED, and probably wreck your car into a ravine trying to make sure he didn't pick up on the fact that you were cruising his block for cheap thrills.

So we'll table that for now. But the Facebooking and the Googling? Very real. Very, very real. If you meet someone at a party and he even looks at you sideways, you're home that night, still half-drunk reading every insignificant WORD on his Facebook profile and dissecting his lists of favorite music and movies as if you were making a life commitment to one another tomorrow and you needed to choose the perfect wedding song. From the moment you meet, you're doing your research. So by the time the first date rolls around, you already know this guy up, down, backward and forward. You know his favorite TV shows, his likes and dislikes, his religious and political views and you've probably even examined all of his tagged photos (and tentatively pre-selected the one most appropriate to copy, save and e-mail to your parents should this thing get off the ground).

I guess what I'm getting at is that as a college student -- which I've been for most of my adult life, and with access to Facebook for most of those years -- you typically don't have the standard first date interactions. You don't have to play "getting to know you." You've got the vitals and you're ready to move into the next phase of testing: actual compatibility.

So, here I am on this crazy little blog making a whole lot of big bold statements here recently about grandiose sounding things like "diving into the dating pool" and then, even more recently, "not having the mental energy" to go quest out a mate. Let it be known that I have made these statements many-a-time in my life and nothing, NOTHING has ever happened. But this time? Something actually did.

I went to sleep one night and The Date Fairy left a Facebook message underneath my pillow! Or something like that. And next thing you know, it's last Friday night and I'm out on a date with a guy I don't really know from a ham sandwich, but I've asked around enough to be sure he's not an axe murderer.

We had sushi, we saw a play, we had wine and cheese afterward -- I had what I consider to be my very first "first" date. Through five relationships and a few little stops along the way I've never been privy to the traditional guy sees girl, guy asks girl out, guy and girl get cream sodas and talk about Ed Sullivan kind of dating routine. But I made it through the first date without doing anything too ridiculous, so maybe the second date (Eep!) will be just as easy.

Okay, I'm gonna need to back the train up for just a minute, because you know me well enough to guess that the last little bit about not doing anything too ridiculous was only partially true. See, when I say I didn't really know this guy, I mean it. I did this thing a while back called PowerPoint Karaoke (long story, Google it like you would a future boyfriend) and he was there, too. I saw him do his PowerPoint and he saw me do mine, he Facebooked me the next day and that pretty much brings you up to speed. We'd never even had a conversation before Friday night. I SHOULD HAVE BEEN TERRIFIED. But for whatever reason, I wasn't.

And maybe it was that oddly comfortable feeling, maybe it was NOT being completely nervous about the whole thing that did it. I got too relaxed. I didn't over-analyze my own potential to be awkward enough to circumvent any situations. And so, there was one. When I walked in the restaurant, he was sitting down and, like a good Southern gentleman, stood when I came in. That's when the terror struck.

I'm walking toward him, slow motion in my own mind, thinking, what do I do? Do I hand shake? Do we hug? Do I do a light arm touch? Do I just stand there smiling and fidget awkwardly because I AM PRETTY DAMN GOOD AT THAT. No. No, instead, I decide to go for the side hug. The weird, we're-not-hugging-but-we're-touching hug that really requires both people to be aware of the side hugging, only he wasn't really aware so basically I side-hug-attacked him and our arms just sort of touched and it was Welcome to Awkward Town, Population Two, I'M THE MAYOR.

Our next date is Thursday. Brace yourself.


cheers,
elizabeth