I generally reserve this forum to air my grievances about
bad dates and hopefully entertain some of you in the process. Mercifully, I’ve recently
been able to enjoy a bit of a respite form the more disheartening side of
dating. In no way does it mean I’ve heretofore shared all the terrible tales
there were to tell. Rest assured, I have
not… not even close.
Sometimes people’s freak flags fly so freely and so high, you
mentally block out what you’ve been through. I liken this to how how I imagine
women with more than one spawn deal with the pain of childbirth. Except, for a
single girl, this sort of self-inflicted suffering has the potential to take
place 7 nights a week, 365 days a year. Lucky us.
Before we dive into the ex-file archives, I’d like to bring
to light a conversation I had with the raison d'être for the namesake of this
blog. I was in a real “what the fuck is wrong with me - I do NOT understand
men” place and she said to me:
“Think of dating like you live in a
cave. Men come by and sniff into the cave. They check things out. They’re
easily scared if the animal inside the cave makes any sudden movements, but if
they like what they smell, they eventually decide to hang out in the cave.”
Her point was essentially to reassert your independence and
you’ll always be in a good place. Great advice. That, along with patience, goes
such a long way. Next, I’ll move on to working out an agreeable, bipartisan
solution to address climate change and then cure cancer. I still don’t understand men. At all. What follows is just one of a myriad of
reasons why I feel that way.
Coffee Meets Bagel is easily one of the worst dating apps
I’ve ever tried. For those of you fortunate enough to not know, it’s an app
that spits out one potential match each day and if you like one another, sets
up a private conversation line that expires in a week or so whether or not you
use it. If it’s unattractive, un-dateable
people you’re looking for, then CMB is your jam. Despite my track record with
the latter, I don’t actually seek these people out. They simply find me.
One day, they sent me someone who seemed agreeable enough.
The dbag-o-matic meter should have screeched right off the charts when I
scrolled to the picture of him with a shit-eating-grin in the back of a Bentley,
but I think I caught a quick case of best-of-what’s-around syndrome (plus, if
I’m honest, I wanted to hear what life is like as a broker at Sotheby’s – so
premium) A connection, as they call it, was made.
The dbag-o-matic meter, henceforth known as d-bomm should
have slapped me upside the head once again when the first thing he said to me
was, “Hi hunny. Text me at 917-463-(I’m
not actually mean enough to show the rest of his number) this app is so slow.” I am not now,
never have been, nor will I ever be anyone’s “hunny.” I ignored. He followed
back up a few more times, so, as he suggested I do, I texted him something
along the lines of “Hi, this is Jennifer from CMB – how are you?” He quickly responded saying he needed me to
send a picture so he could tell me apart. Apparently, he had more than one
Jennifer texting him at the moment. In no uncertain terms, I assured him I was
one less he needed to worry about.
If I were a betting gal, I’d bet “Abraham CMB D-bag,” as he’s known in my phone, is not the kind of guy who gets told NO very
often by girls. He very quickly, profusely apologized for offending me. I made
it clear I wasn’t offended and told him he just sounded like a pompous asshole
(not an exaggeration – I actually said that) and I’m not interested in dealing
with it. We made plans to meet the next
week.
Sometime in the following day or so he decided we should get
together that night. I said I had plans,
which was a lie. Proving The Rules theory that men love a chase true, this set off a string of texts where Abraham CMB D-bag
implored me to cancel my plans and meet him that night. No. He answered saying Thursday would be freed up
if he takes an earlier flight home from his biz trip, and could I meet then?
No, brah, sometimes I like to drink wine alone, hang out with my cat and sing along to the
soundtrack of Les Misérables at the top of my lungs. I said I’d meet him next
week, as planned.
The could-not-be-less-eagerly-awaited chosen day rolled
around and he texted me at the crack of dawn saying he’ll meet me later in
Dumbo, where I live. After telling him not to worry about coming all that way, I’m
happy to meet in the city (provided we have a mutual understanding that “in the
city” means below 14th St,) he told me, “I don’t mind coming to you.
You can give me the tour…” HA! I wasn’t born yesterday and I’m certainly not
sleeping with you tonight, but thanks for playing.
He asked me if 9:00pm worked. Umm, grandma needs her sleep. I have to
really like you to meet at 9:00pm or later on a Monday and right now I’m
hovering somewhere around Skeptical As Fuck on the scale of Love to Hate. I lied (again – is this becoming a problem?)
and said I was taking clients to Soulcycle at 6am. He responds saying sex with
him can be my warm up. Why some guys think it’s acceptable to say shit like
that to anyone, much less someone they’ve never met, absolutely blows my mind. Ick!
I told him absolutely not. He asked if I was worried I wouldn’t get enough rest
and then this happened:
I told him I don’t find talking about sex inappropriate, but
the context in which he brought it up was off-putting, unsolicited and
unwelcome. It soon became very clear his freak flag flies too high for me. I
couldn’t do this, not even for the story.
I’ll go ahead and beat that dead horse. What is the matter
with people? Is this what New York does to men or were some of them simply
raised by a pack of wolves… or, dare I say, in a cave?
As I continue to navigate my way through NY’s pool - at times, a cesspool - of available men, I
try to be patient. Patient, knowing there
are good ones out there, who just might come out of their cave and hang out in
mine for a while. Patient, knowing they’ve probably left some skeletons behind
in that cave and might have even dragged
over some more to mine. But that’s ok. We all have lives to live.
