I’m a serial monogamist. I hate dating. I’m not one to be tickled by mind games and their various cousins. I like having the sure deal or none at all. If a guy I like doesn’t call me like a normal person and follows the three-day call rule like in Swingers, he’s toast no matter how cute or how funny he is. I hate butterflies in my stomach. And the worst is the drop home; they all expect to get a little something after paying for a stupid dinner when all I want to do is barf.
I was not always like this in high school, with nothing but homework and curfew to distract me. My boys were the nucleus of my existence. There was something rather quaint about studying in a Catholic school without the techno chill of cell phones and SMS. So, every day, I’d look forward to a handwritten letter from my boy du jour, and if there was no letter, I would psychoanalyze what I said the day before, not considering whether he was just busy or perhaps dead. I think I self-combusted in college when, after one rather embarrassing date, I ended up crying (second date not good) because I had blurted out to the guy that I liked him. I drudged on in life, being in one slowly roasted relationship after another, just to save myself from the scary world of dating.
A few years ago, I suddenly found myself single. I was single for a whole year, in fact, but that did not come without its follies befitting a Shakespearean comedy. After a couple of disastrous blind dates orchestrated by friends, involving alcoholics, nature lovers and mathematicians (no offense, it’s more like I’d bore them to death, except maybe for the alcoholic, he has his work cut out for him), I decided to take matters into my own hands. I worked out, did the whole grueling parlor thing to nip, cut and wax myself to perfection.
No one came.
Although I did seem to have a certain charisma with high school boys, or so I thought. One night, I was feeling dejected and vulnerable, when a young man in his teens with an anorexic goatee came up to me. Feeling the approaching doom of being a sugar mommy, I gave him a curt smile. "Hey, you want a drink?" he slurred, seeing an investment in his one drink to me paying for the mags on his car. "No, thanks," I answered, silently cursing my all-pink outfit for giving him the wrong impression. He leaned towards me, his bravado fueled by booze. "You know," he said, and looked around either for effect or because his head really was spinning drunk. "You know my mom."
He winked and asked if we could have lunch. Where, in the caf?
Every day I would call my then best friend Marcel, who has now saved me from the clutches of the dating world forever, and recount how each date went. His favorites were that of the alcoholic and the almost-date with my friend’s son. Then, I realized I wasn’t alone. One friend told me he had a friend who was twirling her hair like Pavlova and batting her eyelashes strategically (oh, the mysteries of feminine charm), looking like she was really into the conversation. When she seductively moved toward the soda straw for a sip, her nostril landed straight into the straw. As my friend says: "Wa poise but hole in one."
But the mother of all horror stories came from a good girlfriend of mine who, after being spied by her mom in the window making out with a new cutie after a great date, was harshly summoned indoors through a steaming text message. My friend, confused by the sudden drama, clumsily kicked out the hottie and went inside to talk to her mom. It turned out the mom had scored with her dude a few months before.
OMG.
Being out there is rough. Almost like a sport. And I’m not exactly a good sportsman. I’m so glad to be out of the race – at least in this department.