Adventures with the Butcher's Daughter

Tonight was the night I decided to call her. The conversation started something like this:

Hi. My name is <> and I some time ago I was at my friend's wedding and his grandmother took a liking to me and thought that she should try to set me up with someone. That was months ago and she called me the other week and gave me your phone number. This woman, my friend's grandmother, is somehow friends with your grandfather although she says that she doesn't know you. I don't really like to disappoint old ladies so I told her I'd give you a call which brings me to now.

I mean, where would you have started with this?

Of course this barage of early explanation was met with nothing. I mean silence. She was, understandably, a little bit shocked. By the end of the conversation she told me that she was 1/3 annoyed, 1/3 surprised and 1/3 nothing wrong.

Looking at it from her perspective it must have been a very strange situation. I think she handled it quite well. We moved around the initial awkwardness and introduced ourselves a little bit asking some standard questions (favourite foods, etc.) and then after about 10 minutes I asked her if she'd be against meeting up for a drink.

It's all set for next Tuesday.

I realised, moments after getting off the phone, that she has no way of contacting me without going through the ridiculous chain of people necessary to get my number. I'll call her again tomorrow.

The strangest set-up

We all know that weddings are great places to meet people. Right?

Well, that's the myth anyway. Personally I've never hooked up with anybody at a wedding. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Who the hell knows? Anyway, a few months ago I was at a friend's wedding. His grandmother took an instant liking to me (this is not going where you think it is) and she tried to get me to set her lesbian granddaughter straight.

Well, I wasn't having a bar of that and told her so. Still, she thought it was unfair that a nice boy like me should still be single and decided it would be her mission to set me up.

That was all last June.

On Saturday she finally called. "Would you call this girl? All of her aunts are doctors and her father is a butcher but he did go to university before that. I'm sure she's very intelligent."

It turns out my friend's gran knows nothing about this girl but knows heaps about her family. The girl herself may or may not know anything about the impending phone call.

I will call her but it might be weird.

Stay tuned for further adventures with the Butcher's Daughter.

The Whole World Exists in Couples

I went to a party the other night with the sole intention of meeting someone date-worthy. It was a 30th birthday party of a single girl and so the expectation was that there would be some kind of gathering of other singles. Of course this theory/expectation is flawed. If the rule was that single people had lots of single friends, then I would have lots of single friends. I don't and neither did the girl hosting the party. In fact everyone else at the party was involved in a couple in some way or another.

I haven't been concentrating on this project as much as I should be. Clearly there is just too much else going on at the moment. Sorry to disappoint anybody expecting amazing things. It will take a while. By all means, please continue to check in.

Back home and still alone

I returned home from the US a couple of weeks ago. No dates while away but that wasn't through lack of trying. Does everybody else find this hard or is it just me?

Somehow in the short time I was away Miss A has managed to dump one lover, find and move in with another. How does that work?

Waitresses, air-hostesses, ladies at bars, cinemas and bookstores all refused to go out on a date with me despite finding me charming and interesting.

My theory, however, is that I was too charming and interesting and that I was also too transient. Why date somebody wonderful if they're just going to be leaving town the next day.

Hmmm...

Am I delusional or is this scenario a possibility?

Dates?

Travelling through the USA. Still no dates. More details to come.

So I've got this friend

Part of being single is that people are always trying to set you up. They're always saying: "Hey, I've got someone. Should I give you her number, or do you want me to organise something or..." On and on it goes.

If they don't actually know anybody who is single and seemingly desperate then they have advice.

What you need to do is go out more.
Why don't you go to more organised functions?
I'm surprised you didn't pick up at that wedding. Are you sure you're not being too picky?
Don't worry. My boyfriend was alone for 8 years before we found each other.
Friends of mine have been having lots of success on this website. Maybe you should check it out.

They all mean well. They really do. There are a few problems with all of this advice. Most of it has to do with it all being useless. Often "are you sure you're not being too picky" comes across as "you should settle for less because the rest of us have'. Then there's also the long-term lonely person who finally found love. Did that finally happen because they stopped being picky?

The website advice wasn't as useless as I thought it was going to be. The best thing friends ever did for me was search through dating sites and send me profiles of girls they thought would be great for me. It was a touching gesture and I learnt two very interesting things:

1. Most of my friends have no idea about what I would find attractive in a romantic partner
2. Receiving pictures of girls via email can make you feel a little perverted even though you're doing nothing wrong.

The truth is that none of it is as easy as people make it seem. It seems like I have the choices of finding someone through being more active or finding someone through being more passive. According to my friends the right person is bound to come along at any stage.

In future posts, and while we're waiting for date #2, I'll share some experiences of previous dates.

Until then.

Hello? Date #2?

Okay, I need some ideas, people. How do I go about getting myself another date? I've 99 more of these puppies to get through and I seem to have stalled already. Where do people meet people these days?

Potential #2 never called me back after she was too sick to have me over for dinner/video/whatever with mutual friends. What do I need to do here?

Date #1

The first date was little more than conversation surrounded by disappointment. It was a blind date and she was 10 minutes late. That first 10 minutes, sitting alone and wondering if I should just bolt and face the consequences of social disfunction, I was secretly hoping she would be wonderful.

But she already wasn't wonderful. She was 10 minutes late. I ordered a wine and started to think about what is a reasonable time to wait before I leave. Remember, I wasn't feeling well although NSHM told me that was probably psychosomatic.

When she finally walked through the door I instantly knew it was her. She does give a fairly good but basic description of herself. A tiny woman, height-wise, she clearly hadn't made any glorious attempt at dressing for a date. I looked sharp, as always, and was left feeling the fool a little when she arrived in a step above supermarket clothes. (Rather than classify clothes as casual, smart-casual, formal etc. I prefer to identify them as the activity most likely to be performed while wearing them.) They were, at best, daytime cinema clothes. Not first date clothes.

She ordered a wine and then another, a little disappointed that I was only having the one. I danced like a monkey (figuratively) to make her laugh and cut through the tension but when it came down to it there was nothing there. It pretty much amounted to this one exchange:

#1: So do you like to go out dancing?
Me: Not really. I like to go out to talk.
#1: You don't go dancing?
Me: Not really. Not for a long time.
#1: So where do you go out?
Me: Usually I don't. Sometimes to the cinema. Sometimes to people's houses. If there's a party on I'll go.
#1: But you don't like going out?
Me: And you do.

We spent a little over an hour getting to that point. I couldn't work out how to make it stop. I wish there was a little more drama to start the project off but I suppose a lot of the dates I'm setting myself up for will amount to this kind of simultaneous nothingness where at the end of the night we both say that we had a nice time but neither of us says that we want to do it again.

Background to Date #1

This was a blind date. Last November, at a wedding, I gave a speech. Friends of the bride's parents thought I would be perfect for the daughter of a friend of theirs. That's the way these things work sometimes. I was given her number and was told that she was expecting my call. That was last January.

A couple of weeks later I was told not to call her if I hadn't already. She had hooked up with someone. Good for her, I thought. I simultaneously began thinking of opportunities missed. True to form I only ever think that a situation would have worked out well when it is too late to work out at all.

As luck would have it, her relationship with her boyfriend was short-lived. I don't know the details and I don't really care. The information was conveyed to me through the network and I called her.

The phone-call was confusing at first. The connection was so tenuous it was difficult to explain who I was or why I was calling. She very quickly told me how funny it was, in a never-rains-but-it-pours kind of way, that she was just on her way out to another blind date. Hilarious.

I told her to call me regardless of the outcome of the impending date. We could make a date ourselves or at least I would know where I stood. She did call. We arranged a time. She postponed it and it was rescheduled for last Tuesday.

Beginning Countdown

At the time of writing I have 45 minutes before my first date. It's a setup and I don't really feel like going. It's got more to do with this feeling I have of being achy and tired and just wanting to go to bed. I think I'm coming down with a cold but NSVegGSOH says it's probably psychosomatic.

NSVegGSOH and I have just returned from the gym. My stomach feels so sick that I don't even want to have any dinner. She's handed me a tall glass of PMax to help with the pep and maybe my impending shower will change my mood.

It should bear no reflection on the girl soon-to-be Date #1 that I would rather stay home and watch America's Next Top Model. I don't know her but I'm fairly sure that it's not going to work out.

That's the attitude!

A False Start

Well, the plan was to have the first date tonight. Unfortunately that is now postponed until Tuesday. Tonight I also recieved a phone call from the girl who will likely be the second date. I met her at a party a few weeks ago and she's organising a dinner or something for Saturday with a couple of mutual friends. Does that count as a date? Probably not. Opinions, comments?

The Basic Idea

This was the idea:

There are too many people in the world and most of them are idiots. How, then, are we ever to find the right person after just going out on a few dates? Even if I only get along with 5% of all the people I ever meet (and some people have suggested that that is being generous) then my chances of meeting the right person are pretty slim.

If the guestimate is correct then I will meet someone within the first 20 dates. The challenge is to go on 100 dates and this is where I will document them.

The challenge was laid down by Miss A over hot chocolate at Greasy Joes. My challenge to her was to come up with "commentary" during sex that is hot but not crude, evocative and forthright without being intimidating or cheesy. Perhaps the "commentary" will appear as its own blog one day soon.