Cavemen

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 14^th 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.