When the sixth bell rang, I took my own heart, now tender after my interview with such an innocent soul, and went to the bar for another beer. By this time my glasses had gone from snug to unbearable. They had the hemispheres of my brain in their unforgiving vice grip. I decided at that point to designate the first six men I had met as the "experimental group." I would thus be permitted to shed the glasses and conduct my final six "dates" sans specs. The latter six would make up the control group.
Slipping my disguise into my purse, I looked up and batted my eyelashes against the fresh, barrier-free air. In doing so I met the glance of another bar-goer. He smirked and started stroking the strange sculpture that some bauble-loving interior decorator had been loony enough to poise atop the bar. It was an onyx-colored concrete cat.
"Shhhh!" he hissed at me. "He's sleeping."
This guy, evidently a speed-dater who would make his way to my table after our intermission, won me over immediately. I don't know if it was his affection for the concrete cat, his coarse Boston accent or simply the booze taking its toll, but I decided to lay my cards on the table.
"You know...Eric," I said, pulling up on his droopy collar to see his name tag. "I have a confession to make. I'm here under false pretenses." I then proceeded to tell him about everything--the glasses, the "reflection paper" I planned to write, theeeeese fooooooolish games that I had been playing with everyone.
"You're an impostor," he grimaced, seeming genuinely peeved that I would dare intrude upon an event that others were taking very seriously indeed. I tried to defend my behavior, albeit unconvincingly, by claiming that I really *was* having a good time, and that I was so taken by the experience that I decided to chuck my project altogether and just live in the moment--as myself.
I wanted to change the subject. I felt I had injured him.
"That cat." I pointed to the chinks in its smooth surface. "It's all scuffed."
"Like my ego, knowing what you tried to pull here tonight."
He was clever. There's nothing more attractive than a clever man. I may never fall in love at first sight--that phenomenon is a total crock. But I fall in love at first well-timed, acerbic quip about once a week.
When the games resumed, he ended up sitting with me straight away, so we got to continue our conversation without interruption. I was afraid I had fallen forever out of his good graces and I spent the duration of our interview trying to claw my way back in. But if he did believe that I had profaned the event, his resolve to make me pay for my affront wore slowly away, and he eventually opened up.
"Yeah, I thought it was kind of a joke at first, too," he finally conceded, referring to the speed-dating ritual. "My ex-girlfriend used to run these things, and she'd beg me to come join and be a seat-filler. That's when I realized how fun they are. I started asking her if I could be a seat-filler all the time. Then she broke up with me for a guy she met on one of the nights I wasn't there for."
"Wow. That's a book waiting to be written."
"Or not."
"Yeah, or not," I concluded.
The bell rang and Eric got up to sit with the femme fatale at the next table. Yeah, every guy who survived his five-minute commerce with me got a prize: five minutes with the supermodel sitting to my right. Red hair, full lips, no glasses, all legs. Eric and I...hadn't we forged something--a dream, perhaps--during the 13 total minutes we had spent together? So what happens to a dream deferred? A dream deferred because he got to go ogle a voluptuous maiden? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? In other words, how long would the moment that Eric and I shared stay foregrounded in his mind? For how long would the memory of me--my laugh, my imposture, the concrete cat--remain crisp? Wouldn't it just dissolve as the image of this new, stunning specimen of a woman washed over him? In other words, what's the shelf life of a memory of ME? I go to Safeway about once a week and I generally get the same cashier every time. Even though he reads my name from the receipt--"Thank you, Ms. Str..etcher?"--he doesn't seem to retain any recollection of my person. So my guess would be that my face can linger in another's consciousness for about three minutes. Maybe four. Five tops.
So blah, blah, more of the same, more of the same.
I scampered out as soon as time was called on the last interview. I was hungry and excited to dish to Jon and Jay. (I wanted some fucking French toast.)
A note on Jon and Jay...
Like the secondary stock characters in Shakespeare's tragedies, these two may appear at first glance to play minor roles in the drama of the evening. In reality, however, they ended up being the spokesmen for Truth, uttering the maxims and advice that will resound long after this weblog has gone defunct. For example, when we broached the issue of a famous rapper--I no longer remember whom--Jon actually said "He's been pimpin' since been pimpin' been pimpin'." Priceless.
So now for an ugly confession.
A despicable thought took possession of me as I was speed-dating. While I was entertained by the likes of Doug and Sam, I sensed within my heart, within my soul (or wherever my reckless pride is housed) a depraved kind of pity for them. The poor things, I thought. I couldn't help but feel that, unlike them, I, Sarah, would never actually need the mechanisms of speed-dating to find a relationship. I loathe myself for letting this attitude animate me that evening. That said, it DID lubricate my interactions with the men; since I wasn't really looking for a date--I could totally get one on my own--I didn't do and say the stupid, awkward stuff that you do and say when you're seeking someone's approval or reciprocity.
Why, you might ask, was I so deliriously unconcerned with their reactions to me that evening? Simple. Floating in the warm, whimsical seas of my fancy was the image of Josephus. The very Josephus whom I would dream about later that night. I've been crushing on him like crazy-and-a-half (in my sad, pathetic, taciturn way) and had been given subtle hints from him that seemed to indicate a mutual attraction. I thought I had him in my back pocket, you know. Sewn up in a little bag round my neck. Whatever we had together was immature and still very much at or even below the initial flirtation stage, but it would develop into something...right? It had to! Meanwhile, I thought, who gives an F about strangers at speed-dating events?!? I thought I would be seeing Josephus later that night. We would exchange sexually charged glances, I would be happy...right?
Wrong.
When Jay, Jon and I got to the party to which Josephus had invited us, we found the latter with Babette upon his lap. Yeah, they were pretty much dry humping at the kitchen table. Of course that's not the truth. Impartial observers would have seen a couple sitting at the table together and talking cute. Through my lovestruck, thunderstruck, supersauced lenses, I saw more...much more. Whatever innocent canoodling was going on was blown into monstrously pornographic proportions. I had to look away.
I flew into a blind though silent rage. Then I got sad. "So I guess I need speed-dating after all! I'm just as crippled in the looks department and wanting in the charisma department as your average Doug! Oh, I'm lost and to be pitied!" This is what my insides were screaming.
I vented to Jay and Jon. I reviled myself, I confessed, for being so pitiable and love-starved. I reviled myself even more, I continued, for being too proud to reject the stigma associated with on-line and orchestrated dating. I was caught in a vicious circle of self-laceration.
"You know what, though?" asked Jon.
"What?" I wanted the WHAT to be that Josephus was madly in love with me and that he was disgusted by Babette's persistent dry-humping attentions.
"It's hard to meet people. People don't speed-date and stuff because they're losers. They do it 'cause it's just hard to meet people."
He was absolutely right. His words were so right that they stung.
We left the party. As we walked toward the door, I was no longer feeling so cranky and unfulfilled. There was a refreshing, growing optimism in my soul, due in part to Jon's wisdom, Jay's companionship, Doug's heart, and the thought of a certain Eric and his concrete cat. I wanted to embrace humanity, to start afresh, to have a new and exciting dialogue with a stranger and put into practice the lessons I had learned about connecting to another person.
As we stepped out onto the porch in front of the party's apartment building, some people were smoking. One particularly sassy girl was talking about how it was her birthday. "Happy Birthday," I said, taking my new congeniality for a test drive. "Capricorn or Aquarius?" I knew she was Aquarius. I just asked because it felt more clever than anything else that rose to mind. "Aquarius." "BOOOOOOoooo!" I jeered. (I'm a Capricorn.) If it is true that it's simply hard to meet people, it's equally accurate that we all utter the stupidest stuff for the sake of seeming like sociable people with interesting things to say. I actually "booooed" at someone because her star sign was different than my own. Classy, real classy. You know what a "boo" is? It's a malediction, a potent, poisonous malediction.
"Omigod," I thought. "How do you reverse a malediction? I must reverse it!"
I scrambled for words.
"Well. Bless ya!"
That's what I said to her as I took leave of the smokers. I could hear them making fun of me as I distanced myself. "Bless ya? Bless ya? Ha ha ha ha lol lol lol etc. etc. !!!"
Growing furious, I screamed. I don't know what I screamed. Ask Jay, he might know.
"Bless ya!"
I've never said it before and I'll probably never say it again. I wrote the words above but I can barely even look at them now. The only thing I want to do with those two words is this: I want to tattoo them onto the calloused pads of my feet and then donkey-kick that smoking birthday girl in the face. I want those to be the last words she reads before getting disfigured.
Then I felt ashamed of my self-consciousness. I should have let her snide remarks roll off my back. I mean, I make fun, we all make fun. It feeds us--it's our bread and wine. We exist to be the objects of one another's mockery.
So the night of speed-dating and misadventures came to an end, but not before we stopped at the Doubletree Hotel in Burlingame and stole a tin of welcome cookies.
"Last night was fun," I told Jay in the morning. It definitely sounded more like a question than a conviction when I said it aloud. I was actually terrified at how I had behaved, and I worried that my childishness had gotten in the way of Jay's good time.
He agreed, then paused.
"You had some crazy mood swings."
I laughed. It made me feel good to hear him put it so delicately.
So...
In light of The War on Perfect, what purpose did my Crash Course in Speed-Dating serve? Well, after a few days, Cupid.com posted my compatibility results. I had spoken with 12 daters, right? Each had been asked to indicate on-line whether he wanted to talk again, or whether he'd prefer to suspend commerce with me. Guess the fuck what!?! All 12 wanted to continue talking to me! Or at least all 12 clicked on the "Let's Talk Again!" radio button. With or without specs, I'm appealing? With or without specs, they're desperate? With or without specs, they need their green cards? I don't know what to think. I'm not sure if the experience truly helped me to feel more comfortable in this imperfect skin of mine. Not really, I suppose. I mean, that very night I dreamed that I was unworthy of Josephus, and worse yet, that I was unworthy of sincere affection. I'm clinically afflicted. It's going to take more than the Oregon Trail and Cupid.com to get me to slough off my perfectionist burden. O, but it weighs so heavily!
But the bi-weekly challenges will continue. Challenge 3 involves the following:
-Rush hour at the gym
-A capella stylings by yours truly
Arrillaga Sports and Recreation Facility, Thursday, February 15, 5:45 p.m. Be there.
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