Update on the Social Worker...

... who didn't want to date me because of my hypopigmented skin but didn't see any problem with fucking me.

We hooked up once more and discussed a possible friends with benefits situation.  I was ambivalent.  On one hand, it was easy, available sex.  On the other hand, the sex was so technical and completely devoid of emotion that I didn't know if it was worth it.  He was a fun, intelligent guy who I was attracted to, but I was starting to lean more towards "friends" and away from "benefits."

I went to the gym one Saturday morning, and we talked about going on a run together after.  I arrived at his place wearing yoga pants and sweaty from my previous exercise class, ready to keep the workout going.  He invited me in and before I knew it started kissing me and maneuvering his hands over my sports bra.

It was the least sexy I'd felt in a long time.  I hadn't shaved, hadn't showered, was wearing underwear from the day before, and had just finished an intense workout session.  I told him no, that I felt unclean and not comfortable enough to have sex.  I wanted to stop.  He kept teasing me, kissing my neck, moving his fingers down below.  I said no again.  He didn't stop.  I was physically excited, he could tell, but my heart wasn't in it.  After a bit of back and forth, me resisting and him persisting, my voice became more firm.  "I really don't want to do this.  I don't feel right.  I'm saying no."

His response?  "Well, do you want to suck my dick?"

YES!!!  How did you know?  That is what I've been dying to do all day!  Nothing fulfills me more than sucking the penis of a man who I'm not dating.  Did they teach you that when you got your master's degree in social work?

I said I was leaving, and he became upset:  "I just don't see why people can't get their act together about sex!  We're both single.  We're both having a horrible time dating.  We have a good time together.  Why is sex such a big deal?"

I had been very polite until this point, but my patience wore thin as my voice grew louder.  "I DO have my act together about sex.  I'm saying no.  That doesn't mean I don't have my act together.  It means I don't want to have sex with you."

He sighed and then spent the next hour telling me about how frustrated he was with sex, with dating, with race.  I didn't care at this point but I sat there and listened to him process everything out loud.  He asked me if I understood what he was saying and I said yes, even though I had tuned out long before.  I had made my point clear, and he was free to do what he wanted with the information.

A sixty-minute diatribe later he paused, and I said I was leaving.  I walked out, which I should have done an hour before, and left him to contemplate why I wasn't sucking his penis.

The stereotype that women need to process relationships and don't want to let go while men move along easily is a stereotype I wish to counter.  When this same man sent me a text message last July, the morning after we had sex, telling me he didn't want to date me, I said no problem.  When he called me seven months after sending that text to ask for a favor, I said sure.  When he invited me over a month later and told me he didn't want to date white women but would gladly hook up with me, I went with the flow.  Then, when I told him I didn't want to be "friends with benefits," we had to have an hour long powwow about our feelings?

I told a man who I'm not dating that I didn't want to have sex.  How did that turn into an hour long counseling session?

Back to Reality

I returned to Seattle and opened my email to find a message from OkCupid about a man looking at my dating profile: "SirGeekyMcDork is checking you out!" After a kickass weekend in New York where I felt a solid connection to a man for the first time in TWO FUCKING YEARS, I nearly burst into tears. It summed up dating so perfectly in this city. Seattle men own their GeekyMcDorkiness like a badge of pride; social awkwardness is often rewarded with significant career success. The ability to program computers lands you a hefty salary at one of a million startups. It pays, literally, to be a nerd.

Single men in Seattle outnumber single women, but this statistic hasn't worked out in my favor. Dating has been a classic clusterfuck of "the odds are good but the goods are odd." When I moved back to Seattle, I didn't expect dating to be this hard. It is a city that I know and love, and I felt like I fit the demographic perfectly. I thought that within a few months to a year I'd be able to find a man with similar interests. I pictured a possible boyfriend as a mountain climber who leans vegetarian, drinks beer, votes Democrat, and can pull off a pair of corderoy pants. I never thought or cared about the career he might have, but as I continue to date unsuccessfully I notice a definite pattern in the men I'm not interested in: They all work in tech.

The technology industry employs most of the single professionals in Seattle, which bodes horribly for the dating life of a woman who bought her first cell phone in 2011. It's gotten to the point where I search for potential dates on OkCupid by profession. Healthcare professionals jump to the top of the list, followed by teachers, social workers, musicians, baristas, bike repairmen, students, or really anyone who doesn't work in information technology. I simply can't stomach the geekiness.

One More

And then on my third night in New York, I slept with another man.

Just kidding.  That would be slutty.

New York Delivers a Second Time

Once again, to recap, there have been two years of bar hopping in Seattle with no dating success. 

One could argue that the Seattle social scene isn't horrible, that it was complete chance to have met the man from the previous post in New York in a bar.  And I would agree, if it hadn't been for the fact that I met another man in a bar on my second night in New York.  One man=chance.  Two men=R____ needs to consider relocating.

The man on night #2 noticed the hamtza hanging on my neck and went in for the kill.  "Oh, you're Jewish!"  Yes, yes I am.  We didn't have much in common besides our tribal affiliation, but he was outgoing and cute in a dorky yeshiva sort of way.  Not really my type, but I saw potential for a good story so I stuck with the conversation.  Why not?

This was a Type A, Long Island, formerly modern orthodox Jewish man who, within the first 30 minutes of talking to me, expressed his love of kink and Fifty Shades of Grey.  Still not my type but he sounded fun, so I exchanged numbers and we made plans to see each other the next night.

I thought we'd meet up for drinks, but he clearly had another vision for the evening.  He called me on the phone, "I want you to get in a cab and pick me up on the corner of 19th and Park.  I live on the Upper West Side.  We'll go there."

We started making out in the cab, and when we paused I saw the street numbers go higher and higher.  The heart of the city seemed far away, and I became nervous.  I playfully asked to see his ID, and I texted his name and address to my friend "in case I disappear tonight."  Then I told him, as we held hands in the cab, my limits:  "I don't want to have to seek medical care because of rough sex.  Don't kill me.  And NO ANAL."  

The cab driver pretended to ignore the conversation.

At his apartment, with his roommate watching tv in the next room, the sex was as I had expected:  Fast, rough, and not that interesting.  My partner was a 5'6'' MBA graduate with a name so Jewish it made Shmuley Shmulowitz sound like Santa Claus.  Physically it was fine, but the emotional and psychological component so key to intimacy was completely missing.

During pillow talk, we discussed financial planning and stock options.  He recommended I get an accountant.  I said that was probably a good idea.  He advised that I switch from Vanguard to Merrill Lynch and that I ditch my credit union for a national bank.  At that point, I realized it was time to leave the Upper West Side.  I missed Brooklyn.

If this man had offered me money for a cab back, I would have taken it.  The evening felt like a transaction, one that was going to leave me a $40 taxi ride poorer and had no real fulfillment.  I couldn't stop thinking about the first man I met.  Casual sex is so easy to find- especially as a woman- but the real human connections are few and far between.

Let's Start Again with a Success Story

I have been going to bars as a single woman in Seattle for nearly two years now and can count on one hand the number of men who I have met.  Actually, I don't even need fingers to count with, because that number is ZERO.  Two years of putting makeup on and doing my hair and trying to look cute and available has led to zilch as far as finding romance through public alcohol consumption.  Then in my first night of a vacation in New York, out with two friends drinking cocktails, three men near us folded their conversation into ours.

I won the position lottery as the most attractive was sitting next to me, and my friends went down as the best wingwomen in history for occupying the other two.  Eight million people in New York, and we connected.  He had a fascinating job that didn't involve a computer science degree and took him all over the world.  He spoke Russian and French.  He practiced yoga and followed a mostly anti-inflammatory diet.  Above all, he asked me appropriate questions about my life and seemed to care about what I had to say.  Anyone who knows me and has heard me bitch about dating for the last two years in Seattle would have recognized that he was a straight-up match for what I'm looking for.  Then, after an hour of me falling in love with a stranger in a Brooklyn bar who seemed pretty perfect already, he told me that he was raised loosely Jewish and is now atheist.  The perfect kind of Jew!  I think I ovulated.

He was born in 1968; closer in age to my parents than to me.  Other things that happened in 1968:  Martin Luther King was assassinated.  The Tet Offensive.  The 911 emergency telephone service started.  Richard Nixon won an election...  He would have been out of my age range on OkCupid, but who cared?  I felt chemistry.

We exchanged numbers, and I prayed to the dating gods that he experienced the magic too.  Was I too young for him?  Too Seattle crunchy?  Too curly-haired Jewish woman sassy?  Too short?  (I am 5'1'', he at least 6'4'').  When he responded to my text message the next evening, I knew I was in.  We met up at the Bedford station after midnight, and he delivered on a great date.

Bar in Williamsburg.  Wine.  Intelligent, easy conversation.  Chemistry.  Codeine pills (I like my men fun!).  He did not wear a flannel shirt nor sport a bushy beard.  The DJ played MGMT and when he saw my head nodding to the beat, his face lit up.  "Want to get our groove on?"  He pulled me up to dance. 

I was having an awesome time, and I took a leap of faith that the following question would not offend him:  "What were the 80s like?"  He became a legal adult while I was watching Rainbow Brite, before I knew the alphabet.  I asked if he was too coked out to remember the 80s, and he laughed.  Once again, I like my men fun.

We left the bar to walk to his place, and he looked me in the eyes, said my name, and took my hand in his on the sidewalk.  The decision to hold hands- to transfer the emotional connection into a physical one- had more meaning to me than I'd like to admit.  It was the first time a man had held my hand in over a year, and as far as I was concerned, was practically tantamount to a marriage proposal.  There have been dozens of horrible dates, a modest amount of casual sex, premature requests to fuck my ass, but no hand-holding.  I knew in my heart that I was unlikely to see this man again, and I  Lived.  That.  Moment.

Like any 44 year old man who is experienced in dating, he knew how to balance the hand-holding in the street with hair-pulling in the sheets, and I was totally content.  As we laid in his bed afterwards, I wanted so badly to ask him how often he was finding what he was looking for with dating.

He volunteered the information without me asking.  "R______, I knew within the first ten minutes of meeting you that we'd end up having sex.  My last relationship ended six months ago, and I haven't been with anyone since.  It's just so hard to find that connection with someone, and then it was so easy with you..."  He trailed off.

I sighed as two years of dating flashed before my eyes, and my heart broke a little.  "I know."

He said I could spend the night, which I declined.  My time with him had been so perfect; I couldn't bear the thought of waking up sober with morning breath and frazzled hair and needing to awkwardly start our days.  He offered to give me $20 for my cab ride, a well-intended move that made me shudder.  "There will be no money exchanged in this transaction," I joked, "the drink was enough."  I thanked him for the offer and walked back, through Brooklyn, at 4 am.

The next day he sent me a text.  "Thank you for last night.  It was great and fun. I don't know what you came to New York looking for, but I hope I was able to give it to you."  He had no clue.

It wouldn't have worked out, I know already.  There was a significant age difference, for one, that allows for a fun night but creates a power dynamic that would make me uneasy in a relationship.  Moreover, there was a cultural divide.  He was East Coast classy and composed, while I am a born-and-raised free spirit of the Pacific Northwest.  I was surprised he was attracted to me to begin with and thought he would do well with an art curator or a fashion designer, not a community health medical provider who drains black tar heroin abscesses and tries to reassure her delusional patients that bugs are, in fact, not crawling out of their skin.  He needed a slim, attractive, cultured woman who could appreciate the best of what New York has to offer; I dream of solo-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and there is nothing that makes me happier than sitting atop a mountain peak, grit and sweat all over my face and hair.

Yet years from now, when I look back at this late 20s/early 30s time period that may well extend into late 30s/early 40s or may never even end, that night is how I want to remember dating. When it is good, I make connections with people from different backgrounds who teach me lessons and add their stories to my own narrative.  If I'm lucky, I experience the inertia of a possible relationship starting to build and the hope that two people feel as they begin to discover each other.  I fail so often, yes, but these brief success stories propel me to try again because they remind me that connections can still be made.

I just need to find them in Seattle.

Fuck It

I'm going to start blogging again.  This shit is too funny.  I'll stop talking when men stop giving me things to talk about.

Stay tuned...