“Well if he turns out to be an asshole, I’ve known you forever,” said my new friend. She kept me company at the dive bar while I waited to meet a stranger.
“And it’s gonna suck,” I told the guy next to me.
“How do you know? You haven’t even given him a chance,” He said. We discussed the woes of trying to meet people in the city, his abstinence from social media, and the years he spent living in France. Conversation was so enjoyable that I was deeply disappointed when the stranger arrived. Mr. Stranger was exactly what I had expected: nice, most likely below the bell curve, and a chore to speak with.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. No Socials putting on his jacket and packing his things.
“I’m going to say bye to my friend,” I told the stranger. Once out of earshot, I asked No Socials for his number. He typed his contact info, mouthed “you’re so rude!” with a smile, and whispered in my ear “Tell me if you need anything.”
After an hour with Stranger, I told him I was meeting my friend at her corporate holiday party (which was supposed to be true). He walked me to the train. I waited inside for a few minutes, deliberated, and then promptly went back to the bar.
“Bad date?” The bartender asked, “I could tell you didn’t vibe.”
“Why are you going on bad dates? You’re fire,” said a new face sitting next to me. Suddenly I became the captive audience of a new stranger who waxed poetically about the scented products he stayed up late crafting. He tried to determine my preferred fruity, floral, and wood-inspired fragrance notes and extrapolated a wealth of information about me from my choices.
“You’re getting more out of this than astrology,” I said. He laughed and decided we needed tequila shots. The bartender shot me a questioning look and I shook my head slightly. I watched as he subtly filled my shot glass with water and then charged Mr. Fragrance for all of our drinks.
“You’re the BEST!” I said effusively as my lime-water was placed in front of me.
When I mentioned teaching yoga, Fragrance declared,
"Oh, you like sex."
"What?"
"All yoga instructors are sensual. They're always like 'breathe in... breathe out...'"
That's one way to view meditation. As Fragrance droned on and on I knew I needed to devise an escape plan. When Fragrance offered me a joint, I declined, but encouraged him to step out if he needed a smoke.
“Not all your dates are bad. Maybe you should apologize for your personality,” said Fragrance as he left in a huff, flustered by my lack of interest.
The last stranger to approach me for the night gave a speech about his work with the New York water system and complained about his website’s HTML. Finally he divulged the fact that he was seeing someone, but they were on-and-off and happened to be in an “off” season. I recommended that he use Wix to avoid coding and took my apology-worthy-personality home.
“Maybe rude, but I had to,” I texted No Socials.
“Can we talk about how savage you are? Your confidence is sexy though and you're definitely not shy.”
“I hate talking to everyone, so when I actually enjoy talking to someone I want to stay in contact.”
“I’m sorry it was cut short.”
“Me too.”
“Your personality is attractive. I get comfortable talking to you immediately.” I felt the same way. He continued to flirt for the next several hours. Finally he asked,
“So if you’re not looking for casual hookups, what are you looking for?”
I explained that I wanted to meet new people and find something meaningful whether that was a conversation, friendship, or relationship.
“We can be friends because I like sex too much,” he said. I was taken aback.
“Are you in a relationship?” I asked, internally searching the last several hours for any indication he was committed to someone else. No search results were found. He explained that he was in an open relationship and would like to meet with me again. I knew that would not be healthy for me and didn’t feel right seeing someone with a partner. He asked,
“You can’t fuck attractive friends and just keep it beautiful and light?” He continued to compliment my appearance, whine about his attraction to me, and insist that my boundaries were “harsh”.
I knew I would never talk to any of these humans again. They were all disappointing in their unique ways. I decided actively trying to meet new people was a special form of self-sabotage and I would be happier on my own. If you live life as if you know you'll meet the perfect partner someday, you stop doing things you don't want to do.
That comical, strange, sad night did add an extra layer of thickness to my emotional skin however. Rejection isn’t possible without authentic connection. None of them had rejected me, they simply rejected my boundaries. None of them truly knew me and none of them ever would. When evaluating my personality on the surface, the inter-rater reliability was incredibly weak. One person's apology is another's attraction.
People Suck But You Don't,
BrainwaveBlog ❤️