O-o-h Child

So, in the Lab Notes, I talked about an amazing girl who I'd been chatting with on match.com. I said I'd never been out with a girl as attractive as she. In my mind, there was an issue of whether this would result in me being even more uncomfortable on any date with her. In this post, I will take you through our offline "relationship" (I know, I know) from beginning to a probable end.

It progressed, and I soon had her telephone number, and a request to call her to finalize a date for tonight. I cut short my Meetup.com event so I could head to my car and dial that number.

I tried my new strategy of not "building up" to making the call. I just dialed and pressed Send. She answered, and the reception was awful. I was totally off - I suffered from The Voice Thing and general awkardness (forgot to tell her who was calling, and forgot to check to see if it was a good time to talk - she was on the other line!). She said she'd call me back in about 10 minutes, and in the meantime, I'd decided to try to relax and take my time when I talked to her again.

I was less awkward when we got on the phone again, but my voice was still out of whack. What! That's going to need some work in the Lab Notes. But at any rate, I offered my usual Starbucks date. She said we needed to go somewhere that had more than coffee. Indian or Ethiopian food. Cool...this girl knew what she wanted. None of my other 10 (!) dates had ever been unsatisfied with my original suggestion. I told her we'd go with Ethiopian, and we talked later that night to set everything up. I improved a little on our third call - it was easy to talk to her - but was still a little awkward.

Tonight was the night. We met up at an Ethiopian restaurant.
This time, I wasn't going to make the same mistakes I did with date #1 (another first-date dinner date). I was determined to open the restaurant door, pull out her chair (no such chair existed at the Ethiopian place however), and most importantly, walk her to her car (the fun part! read on).

And so, I won't go into much detail, because this date was just like most of the others. I suffered from The Voice Thing. I was a little awkward, but had no difficulty keeping the conversation flowing. Before the date, I had been determined to go for everything. I was going to use my silly conversation topics, but I somehow failed with the Inhibition post plan. I'd even planned to open by asking, "So is this the first time you've gone out with a celebrity?"

It was a little different from just being inhibited from doing what I wanted. Thinking logically, it just never felt like the right time in our converstion for some of the silly things. It didn't seem like they would fit! I'm not sure if this is my inhibition, or if that's reality. Will work through it later in Lab Notes.

So this is interesting. This girl was amazing. I could say that she's the most beautiful girl I have ever laid eyes on, and actually believe it. And she had a personality to match! The sweetest girl I could imagine. About 10 minutes into the date, I thought to myself: I'm going to marry this girl if I can. If there is some sort of divine intervention that will allow that to happen, I might be open to taking it.

Since this shockingly beautiful girl was so sweet and so unintimidating, I was also thinking how I couldn't imagine this being another one-and-done. I was a little awkward and all, but she smiled and laughed the whole way through, and there was no indication of her having lost interest in me.

Hmmm.

I didn't much like the Ethiopian food. I didn't eat much, and she said that I was going to be starving later, and that she would pay, since I hardly ate anything. I told her no! But she said yes.

I told her no again! She said yes.

The bill came out. I reached for it, but she snatched it. She did so rather quickly. I wasn't fooling around - I really wanted to pay. She put her credit card in the container, and placed it on the table.

I went for it. I was going to take her card out and replace it with mine, but I didn't wait long enough after she had put it on the table. Her reflexes were pretty quick, and she grabbed up the little leather folder. I grabbed at it in her hand, but she was serious. There was no way I could get it out of her hands without using my masculine strength to physically overwhelm her and pull it away! I decided that probably wouldn't be good, so I gave in. She put the bill over on her side, out of my reach.

Hmm. I have no idea what this means. The other 10 dates scarcely even offered to pay. I could pick it apart - was it because she was still interested, because she wasn't interested, or was she just that amazing of a girl? She works for a nonprofit and doesn't have cable television, so she's not exactly made of money.

Now it gets interesting.

Modulo my Voice Thing and a little awkwardness, the date had been pretty good. I didn't use many of the fun conversation topics I was so determined to try (used lottery, but not updog, popped collars, supernatural, etc.), but there was never any difficulty keeping the conversation flowing. Awkward silences? Nah, I've hardly seen any of those on the Mission.

We chatted for a while after the bill was paid, until she finally asked if I was ready to go (I would have preferred to end it myself, but didn't quite get to that point).

She popped a stick of gum. She didn't offer me any - rather, she just gave me a piece ("Take this"). Hmm. So of course I thought, OK, I've seen this before - giving gum is a likely indicator that a girl suspects there might be a kiss soon.

What I didn't tell you is that before the date, I weighed the question of whether or not I should try to kiss her at the end of the date. My general policy was to never even think about it on a Starbucks date, but to always go for it on a dinner date (I thought the mint and chapstick from date #1 were an indicator that the girl wanted to kiss me). I wasn't entirely sure if going for the kiss was the right thing to do this time, because it would be the first time we'd seen each other, and we'd only spoken on the phone for a total of 10-15 minutes. But I decided that if it went prettty well, I would just go for it. What was there to lose?

And so, the chapstick came out. I decided then and there: chapstick and gum, I'm definitely going for it.

I don't think I really blew anything between the very end of our date and the time the chapstick/gum made their appearance.

I told her I'd walk her to her car. She said oh, she had been planning to walk me to my car. Huh? I said no, that was okay. She asked where I'd parked, and a weird sign and alley setup confused me slightly so that I wasn't 100% sure. (I'd looked like a fool not knowing where I parked in date #1, where the chapstick/gum had also come out). She asked if I was going to be able to find my car - something like that. Alertly trying to avoid the same blunder as before, I confidently told her yes, sure, trust me, I have good sense of direction, no problem. Ha.

So this was it. We'd arrived at her car. I was going for that kiss...

She hugged me. Then she started to say something again about me finding my car. I thought she was finished her sentence, so I put my hand on her cheek. Then, damn it, she started talking again - she apparently wasn't finished.

Yep. She was talking, but my hand was already on her right cheek. It was weird, but I'll reserve the word awkward for the next moment of this little fiasco.

In an instant, I thought it would be even weirder to retract my hand without doing anything. So I kept it there a moment, sort of interrupting her speech, waiting for her to end the sentence. I then moved slightly toward her for the kiss.

"Oh nooo. Never kiss on the first date."

Ha! I'd anticipated this earlier as a possible reaction.

What on Earth was I to do? I was finally experiencing one of the things - "first kiss rejection," lets call it - that most guys encounter way before age 24.

I just laughed, and sort of brushed my hand on her jacket at the same time. She said have a safe drive home, or something like that. At this point, I had decided that our relationship was completely over. Dead at age 94 (minutes!). R.I.P.

I said "Alright. See ya," turned, and walked away. I grinned, and I bore it.

My attitude was great about this at first. I was thinking how funny it was, and how good it was (in a way) to finally be getting my first experience with that inevitable little situation. I'd been convinced by internet love experts to always go for the kiss on the first date (but 45-minute Starbucks dates seemed to me an obvious exception). I figured it just meant she wasn't interested - I had nothing to lose anyway. Plus...isn't it amazing that I am at the point where I even have the guts to attempt that?

Keeping with the actual order of events, I grinned and bore it all the way home. I felt a tiny bit down about it, and felt like giving up the romantic attempts on my mission and just focusing on the platonic stuff. The thought was...I was never going to find another girl this amazing, and these things are failing too darn often. The only good news there is that it means I'm officially "over" that girl I went out with four times (Sunken Ship) and was so crazy about.

Driving home, I heard the song O-o-h Child, by The 5 Stairsteps. It goes something like this:

Ooh-oo child, things are gonna get easier

Ooh-oo child, things'll get brighter

Some day, yeah

We'll put it together and we'll get it all done

You just wait and see how things are gonna be

I concluded that this song should be the official anthem of The Mission. It's going to take a lot of time, and a lot of heartache, but someday, things are gonna be good.

All the way home, I was convinced that I had done the right thing by going for the kiss. My logic? At worst, it shows confidence and a little aggression. Positive male qualities, right? Well, I wasn't sure at all. So I googled it up a bit.

One site said not to go for the kiss on the first date if it's the first time you're meeting the girl (e.g., online dating). I got very depressed after reading this, thinking how stupid I had been to not realize this, and how I may have blown what would have been a second-date with such an amazing girl (I'll try not to sing her praises anymore than that, since I don't think I'll ever see her again!).

But I did some more googling. I'd met this girl on match.com, and I came across this page on match.com that took a survey of 500 online daters, and asked what kind of "action" they expected on a first date:

• Peck on the cheek — 16%

• Peck on the lips — 22%

• Open mouth kiss — 25%

• Nibble on the neck — 6%

• Wake up kiss ... the next morning — 25%

Okay. So it looks like at least 72% of online daters expect some sort of kiss on the lips (mine would have been minimal) on the first date.

According to this information, what I did was -perfectly- reasonable. I didn't go through with it smoothly, but it looks like she would have reacted the same way regardless.

So hmmm. Since it then didn't seem quite so egregious, I started thinking that I'd cut this girl (and myself) some slack. Maybe she was still actually somewhat interested (for some reason) and really just has that rule. Which is not unreasonable.

I doubt it, though. But since after 10 minutes I decided I would marry this girl if I could (perhaps a bit of hyperbole there, but still....), I'm thinking I ought to at least give it a shot.The only real reason I ever give up on these things is because I'm terrified of what Friends Speeches will do to my ego.

I'm secretly hoping that she will send me a follow-up e-mail like my previous successes. But I doubt it. Duh! I'll give that a snowball's chance in hell. I plan to call her (or e-mail her, if I chicken out) and ask her out again in 5-9 days. The odds are stacked heavily against me. Yikes. But there's never anything to lose, and everything to gain.

And so ends the month of October - the fourth month on the mission. I've now been on 11 dates, plus 4 platonic meetings, for a total of 15 1-on-1 activities, plus a few other things. I've come a long way since July, when I was just trying to figure out how I was going to force myself to even try meeting someone from the Internet (for starters). But there's still an incredible amount to figure out, and an incredibly long way to go. The goal is to document in this blog the solution to overcoming shyness (or whatever I'm suffering from) in a mere 8 more months. It's going to be tough, but I do have some new ideas.

(for the guys)

P.S. The girl was so awesome! At some point I told her that her myspace song was one of my favorites that'd been stuck in my head recently. No One by Alicia Keys. She was raving about how much she loves Alicia Keys, and how that's the only girl she'd go bi for. What! Haha...unfathomably awesome. She and Alicia Keys are both at about 10/10 on the beauty scale. No exaggeration...she ("She") actually looks similar.I promise not to sing this girl's praises anymore...I just wanted to share that with my male readers =)

What do you folks think...would my Mission make for a pretty decent reality television series?