As the story of my date has been recounted, blogged and told to death. People were coming up to me yesterday and asking, “So how’d your date go this weekend?” Ugh.

Anyway, as I was telling my Manager about it and she was laughing, she brought up a really good thing to think about. In regards to the guys at the strip club who were approaching me and in Maurice’s case actually asking me out.

What energy are you giving off?

It totally stalled me – because I have absolutely no idea. It’s like my tell. I have no idea what I look like to other people, what energy I am emitting and what my body language is saying.

Ordinarily, I would say I give the “back off” vibe.  Certainly I radiate, “Don’t touch me”. But per my experiences at the Lucky Devil on Friday night I can now assume I am not giving that vibe as strongly as I thought.  So what am I putting out there that is getting received? Good question.

Also after I told her the story of the guy who reached a hand toward me and said, “Hey Baby, what’s your name?” to which I responded. “It might just be me, but when I reach a hand out to introduce myself I think it’s polite to offer my name in good faith rather than demanding something from a stranger without providing anything in return. So what the fuck is your name?”

He looked down at the table then back up and said, “Curtis.”

“Hi Curtis! Nice to meet you I’m Athena.” I shook his hand and smiled. He then turned away from me, drawing his shoulders in and played the rest of the game without even looking in my general direction.

My manager shook her head. “And you wonder why you never get asked out?”

I shrugged sheepishly, “Weeellllll……”

“I think you need to come up with some things to say and have them in your pocket to use in these circumstances.  You’re witty. I’m sure you can think of something witty to say that will set your boundaries firmly.”

“Hmm.”

She smiled in her mother knows best way and said, “You really need to find a happy medium somewhere between, Mary-Jane/Pollyanna and Touch-me-and-I’ll-kill-you.”

I laughed because, she is right. I’m just not sure what that happy medium is. Furthermore, what I worry about is that this journey of taming myself to be a more appropriate partner is going to be messy.  I don’t foresee this being graceful, as I was seemingly born with a serious lack of tolerance for douche baggery and I suspect/fear embarrassing my friends or others with my clumsy attempts to become a member of the civilized masses for dating.

While I believe I can have my cake and eat it too; I can have someone who respect my need for independence and freedom and so on… I am not unwilling to make the steps toward becoming a less wild creature with the ability to compromise and meet a person half way.  To do this I am guessing I need to teach myself to be less verbally and emotionally, uhm…. Opinionated.

Even as I write it I’m laughing, thinking, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

And so it begins, this attempt to rejoin the dating world.

Date number one – 1 star

Maurice, the poker dealer who asked me out while I was at The Lucky Devil with my peeps.

It started off weird because I’d agreed to go to a movie, feeling like that was a nice public venue with people and such.  During the day about 5 or 6 hours before we were going to hang, he texted me and said he’d changed the plan.

I wrote back – what’s the plan.

To which he responded that he didn’t want to tell me where we were going but wanted it to be a surprise.

RED FLAG! Danger, Will Robinson. Danger!

(For you guys out there who don’t recognize the red flag nature of this statement let me fill you in… a girl gets picked up at a STRIP CLUB, and her date who is significantly larger and stronger – whom she has never met refuses to tell her where they are going, when or what. A surprise is great, but not on a first date.  A smart independent girl is going to want to let her friends know where she’s going, who she’s meeting and maybe even set up a checking time. The second half of the red flag is that it is a bully move that totally disregards the woman’s opinion or interest in what the date is about. I felt disregarded.  In a game of poker it would be like saying “all in” pre-flop.  You want to know who’s got something worth keeping, but really all it did was show me he had no real interest in communicating to me what he thought I might like or need to feel safe.)

So I let him know that wouldn’t work for me and he asked me then if Grand Central Bowl would be okay. Which I agreed it would, so that’s where we met.

Over the course of the next three hours he assumed a familiarity with my energetic space that I allowed in an effort to push my comfort boundaries.

By the time the date ended and I went home, I curled up in bed and sobbed.  I am so not cut out for this dating thing.  By 3am I still couldn’t sleep, I was too distracted to write and so I pulled my sword out of the closet and slept with it – which I haven’t needed to do in nearly three years. I haven’t needed to feel that protected since my divorce.  Like a charm, as soon as my hand was on the hilt I fell into a deep, sound sleep.

(For you guys who want to know what he did wrong and right on his first date with me I will explain – Otherwise skip to date two.)

A sense of humor is a definite bonus and he absolutely had one, the level of humor is important. While I am a vocal advocate of be yourself, there are certain heeby-jeebie kinds of humor that rub a woman just ever so wrong such as, “What’s the matter, you don’t like the artichoke dip? You should have some more, it’s where I hid the Ruffies.” Funny, on like a third date, but not so much on the first for most.  I happen to have an off sense of humor so I could laugh about it – but I sure as hell was not going anywhere not public after that. Even if it was just a joke.  Another point of interest was the emanating expectation that he felt about how long I would be with him, even possibly all night in his mind, which even though he said it wasn’t – I am a woman, I knew it was there. I mentioned at 10 that I would need to leave in an hour and he replied, “But I cleared my whole night for you.” I looked at him and tried to press the issue onto the table, “It sounds like you have some expectations that I need to know about.” He shook his head, “No I don’t have any expectations….” Then he went on to talk about sex and how he had no expectations and that it’s very easy to get women and so on and so forth. But as a woman, I was not alluding to his expectations for sex – I was alluding to his expectations about how I would spend my time with him; bowling, walking around town, going out to another bar, etc.  The very fact that HE thought I meant expectations about sex when it never actually crossed my mind – was very telling.  Then he said, “I don’t see why you can’t hang out with me tonight, it’s not like you have to work tomorrow.” Holy pushy and rude, Batman! “How do you know I don’t have to work tomorrow?” I asked as thoughts about my script and all the work I still have to do and even the idea of the other date I had planned with guy number two circulated through my mind. “Come on, what’s so important that you have to do tomorrow that you can’t hang out the night with me?”

“I have a date tomorrow.” I said, flatly.  With all the freight train intent behind it to shut him the fuck up about the topic.  It worked only so much as it led him to a place where he felt it necessary to later inform me of how easy it is for him to get women and how women pick up on him all the time at the club and how I was an exception…. Yadda yadda.

Here’s the thing – he was very flattering and complimentary and I am a vain and silly creature sometimes. I admit I was flattered… until this point when it the irritation with his manner finally snapped and I felt myself tightening against his presence and wanted to escape. I am a woman, not an idiot.  I know the difference between an honest compliment, a Jedi manipulation and a back-handed comment.  And he used them all throughout the evening… interchanging and dodging and one minute being entirely sincere in which case I was flattered, and other times when the honest was so buried beneath his ulterior motives that I had no recourse but to smile and say thank you, and hope he’d just stop.  He was a salesman, and it showed, and I being me have a built in bullshit meter to sales people.  I am not easily swayed by them and the harder they try the more angry and shut off I get so the longer I was with him the more firm in my mind that I would not let him anywhere near my vulnerability.

Then he asked for my hand and I let him take it. “Wow!” he said, “You are so cut off and un-reachable.  So walled away.”

“It’s a first date.” I responded. “What do you expect? I mean really?”

“I just think it’s sad. Sad that you are so unable to let people in. I’m sad for you, because you are so hard to reach.”

That did it. We had officially hit my PNR. My breaking point. I am entitled to take however long it needs me to take to warm up to someone. END OF STORY.  I am allowed to be as reserved as I want, as choosy as I want, as protective as I want.  I am free to be as careful as I need to be and as defensive as I see fit until that time or person comes that I can let it go with grace. I foresee that someday I will know an amazing love, a powerful passionate and loving relationship – but it sure as fuck will not be with someone who tries to foist the failure of their dating and schmoozing tactics onto me as MY weakness for not giving into them.  My Bullshit meter fired red flag and I shut off. Done. Up to that point I allowed a lot of things to slide, even being “jokingly” called an “Independent Fem Nazi”.

He asked to walk me to my car and once we were there I did give him a hug and he rubbed his chest against my chest and said – I shit you not- he said, “Firm, full breasts. I love that.”

Oh.

My.

God.

I think he has mistaken me for a stripper at his club. I slapped his shoulder and laughed in a protective way.  All the work I’ve done over the last 90 days to become comfortable with my body was challenged in that instant. All the daring it took me to leave the house without a bra last Friday vanished under my plastic smile and the immediate mechanism I usually have of “Run. Hide your body. Eat. Wear baggy clothes.” Flared to life as though it were a banked ember and someone just poured gasoline on it.  

One thing I am grateful for is that I can have fun.  I can find things that I enjoyed and accept that the greater portion of my three hours was entertaining.  All in all obviously, it triggered me very poorly and it took most of the night to discharge the energy and most of the next day, but I learned a lot about myself and about the process of opening myself up to the dating game again.

Date number two – 3.5 Stars
A response to my craigslist ad.

I met him on Sunday for coffee, and to be fair I was still reeling a little from the enormously painful date the night before.  Gratefully, he was much older and wiser to better date etiquette and observant of my comfort levels, which in turn made it so I felt like I could reach a little higher and meet his own comfort levels in turn. 

It was laid back and I tried to keep it to two hours which is about the time is takes for coffee to wear off and my energy to shift.  I wanted to keep it on a good note and I also needed to check in with Awesome and Adorabella, who were acting as my safety.

He was courteous and smart and had delicious blue eyes.  Coffee turned into an offer from him for a second meeting and I am currently a little bit overwhelmed. I think he’s nice and I wouldn’t mind seeing him again but this is where my head is at….

I have a week to get my project completed and in the mail. Meme will be here on the 2^nd and I will be trying to recover from the biggest project deadline I’ve completed since Ghosts of Seattle.  Any project completion comes with exhaustion and release of anxiety and a little depression. My thirtieth birthday week will be busy and I will also be hoarding my time with Meme. AND I am a little freaked out at my latest attempt to accept the idea of dating again.

So freaked out in fact that I actually slept with my sword, kind of like a woobie for comfort. That’s pretty bad.

Anywhoo, the long story is that two dates, lots of boundaries pushed and I’m still recovering. I am fighting every response I have to wear baggy frumpy clothing or eat fatty foods. I’m fighting my internal freak out, and that may take me some time and space to accomplish. I’m not ready to give up on the idea of opening myself to the universe, but I am suddenly aware it might not be as easy as I thought it would be.