Just got home from watching a movie at a make-shift theater in a downtown artist’s studio. I was late, but walked in just as the movie was starting. “Great timing, ” the host said meeting me at the door, but for me it was a little weird sitting there for two hours wondering who else was in the room.
Certainly not S__, who I met there a few weeks ago, who stopped me on the sidewalk to chat and give me her card, who didn’t really answer my invite for coffee, and really didn’t answer my are-you-going-to-M__’s-movie-night email.
But I don’t mind.
Yesterday, I was feeling disenchanted with singleness and hipNewOnlineDatingSite.com, and neurotically decided that the answer was changing my profile image. I changed it, drove home, and by the time dinner was over, had something like six new visits. C__ and I had tentative plans for a drink, and I was killing time on the site beforehand. Emboldened by fate or fortune, I sent out a message or two, and to my huge surprise ended up chatting with a wonderful woman from C__ town, about 25 miles away.
C__ called in the middle of an incredibly entertaining chat, and when I told her (H__) that my beer had called, she said, “Wow. I wish a beer would call me. You should invite me for a beer.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said, “I should. Want to go for a beer?”
“When / where?”
“Downtown R__ town in fifteen minutes!”
And she said ok! Not only did she actually show up, but she was absolutely fantastic in every possible way. I’d give details, but you’d think I’d turned to fiction. She’s just that awesome. C__ hung out longer than he’d initially planned, but he’s cool and going through a hard breakup. I wanted to be annoyed at not getting 100% of H__’s attention, but I just couldn’t be.
H__’s profile made it clear that she’d recently moved to the area and was looking to make new friends mostly (though romance wasn’t completely off the table), and her experience with the site in other cities had been that it was used a lot more casually and platonically.
But I don’t mind.
As wonderful as it would be to get laid, and my scare quotes cannot stress “wonderful” enough, I would gladly trade a sure-thing hook-up for another evening like it.
I just hope I don’t have to prove it.