2004-03-05 - 1:33 a.m.

regular readers will know that i have been dating a lot lately. and also that i met someone who made my toes curl. but its far from clear if he is available to make my toes curl on a regular basis. so, i decided to follow the sage advice of s and keep on dating, if only for distraction. this strategy has worked well for me in the past. so with relentless optimism, i press on.

i told b to meet me at my favorite makeout spot, the antique lounge, at 10p. he sent me a photo and i could tell he is really good looking, which he is. also a bit of a gym queen, which i don't mind at all. he bought me a gin-and-tonic while he sipped on diet coke after diet coke. this was my first warning sign. also this: he is an actor.

b was visibly nervous and mentioned again and again that he had never been on a blind date before. conversation frequently came to a grinding, screeching halt. his body language was extremely awkward and closed, hands folded across his chest most of the time (making his sculpted biceps look really delicious, incidentally). he tapped his hands on the side of his glass to the music. at some points he was even bobbing his head to the beat in a kind of white man's overbite. i was willing to overlook much of this in light of the fact that he is from a very small town in the remote reaches of northern canada. but without the benefits of genuine conversation to fill in the gaps, it was a little tiring.

after a couple of drinks at the antique, he insisted we go elsewhere. he lives in another borough and had never been to williamsburg before. i was inclined to oblige him despite the awkwardness of our interaction. so i dragged him all the way to the southside to the lounge.

the lounge actually was cozier than the antique, the music was better, and he seemed to relax somewhat. the conversation turned to sexuality, which i am fairly comfortable with at this point as a topic of conversation, but apparently this was not the case with him. he confessed with much shame that he'd recently purchased his first porn DVD, but swore he'd never buy another. i didn't figure out why not.

later in the conversation, he again insisted that we go elsewhere. his jittery diet coke vibe was really beginning to get on my nerves. 'i don't know where else you think we are going, this is about the last bar of the evening,' i said. he replied 'you know, someplace we can hang out. there's too many people here'. there were about five other people in the bar, and two of them were behind it.

i could see which way this was going, so i tried to be direct. we went out to the front bench to talk and i made it clear that i was not about to invite his self-conscious jitters back to my house. no way was i going to even make out with his tom-cruise-look-alike soap-opera-reject booty. and it was at this point that he said, 'i knew this wasn't going to work'.

apparently, he's terrifically hung up on another girl. she is a tall redhead, much like your humble diarist. his goal for the night, if i may be so blunt, was to revenge-fuck her. and then he asked me 'maybe i should go over and see her tonight? would that be terrible?'

'no, actually, i think that's a fantastic idea.'

'yeah. i'm going to call her right now.'

i waited politely in front of the bar until he completed his phone call to her. and then he had an attack of 'i'm so sorry. that was too weird. i'm a mess.'

'no, you're not. you're just hung up on a girl. it happens to everyone.'

'but you know you and i would have had great sex, right?'

'um....do you know how to get back to the subway?'

and that is how, for the second time in three months, i walked away from a man with his head in his hands, too embarrassed to even watch me leave.