January 19, 2004 :: Ramblings

In the style of The Sports Guy from ESPN's Page 2, I'm just going to write about a bunch of random stuff in one post.

It's been said... you can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the boy. Or, similarly, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl. I was at a wake for my great-grandmother this past week. It was the first wake I had ever been to, and I didn't quite know what to expect. My family usually doesn't do wakes. I am 100% sure I didn't expect my stepmother to start taking pictures of the body as it lay in state in the open casket, and I definitely didn't expect my uncle to pull out his videocamera and start filming the people in the pews. I tried to crawl under the pew, pretend I didn't know these people and they weren't family... but they are. These are, ostensibly, people who have been educated beyond such foolish indiscretions. My uncle is a physician, even. But this is just further proof of the maxims above. And they are my family, I can't ditch them no matter how hard I try. Maybe I should just disappear into the jungles of Costa Rica like my other uncle.

Oh, I almost forgot... the one thing my family is consistent about is harassing me to go back to school for a Ph.D. (or to become an "internet lawyer", which is my dad's latest recommendation). I did my best to tune them out.

I'm a relatively laissez-faire guy when it comes to first dates. I don't usually have a lot of expectations, because anything can happen. Another principle that goes along with that is trying to limit the spending on such affairs, because the risk of catastrophe is so high. If you want further commentary on my dating spending habits and expectations, go talk to the uptown brown girl.. I had a couple of, um..... shall we say... interesting dating experiences this weekend.

I took one particular lady to a Rachelle Ferrell concert. We had never been on a date before, and ordinarily I wouldn't have opted for such an expensive first date, but I really didn't have anyone else I would have preferred to take, so she was the default choice. Now... I say my expectations aren't too high, but if you really enjoy yourself, and I spend - I don't even want to say how much I spent on that night - is it too much to ask for a hug in thanks as you speed away into the night? Yet it seems clear that this woman is at least interested in spending more time with me, and she doesn't seem to be all about what she can get out of me (although I admit that particular circuit might be miscalibrated). So maybe she is yet another in a string of women with an odd sense of intimacy. That same night, she launched a detailed discussion of the collection of sexual toys she's bought (while we were waiting in line for the concert, which happened to place us in front of a "toy" store). Obviously she feels some level of comfort... or maybe she has no sense of discretion. Actually, I'm leaning toward the latter. We'll see where this goes... there are other major issues looming ahead of us anyway. She's not helping me with my new year's resolution.

Then there was this other date... which was really a non-date, since it was a blind date that was set up by the girlfriend of a friend of mine in Boston with the explicit premise that it not be a date of any sort, we would just be hanging out. This woman was just visiting D.C. for a couple of days from Boston. She is thinking about relocating here, but is not terribly familiar with the town, so I agreed to show her some of the D.C. nightlife. Previously, we had spoken on the phone, and I could see she is a tough nut to crack. Not terribly expressive, although intelligent and somewhat interesting. She doesn't react much to anything conversational, and in fact it felt like I was babbling on at times, because if I didn't, she wouldn't say much. It was apparently her intent to have me tell stories all night, and she was particularly interested in bad-date tales. So I indulged her with a few, yet how does one do this all night? She only had one story to tell me, claiming that she didn't date enough to have stories to tell. It was a most bizarre evening... ordinarily, I would have chalked it up as a loss, because if a woman has nothing to say, then she's obviously not interested. Yet, with her, it was different... maybe her mode of interaction is limited to listening, maybe she just doesn't open up to people quickly, maybe she's just effin crazy, I don't know. I do know she seemed to enjoy herself, and despite the fact that she lives in Boston, she did leave the open invitation to continue communication with her. But then, she didn't return my phone call yesterday, which she should have received after returning home. Oh well.

Followup: Nickel-plated Susie is wondering when we are going to go out again. She seemed to have little appreciation for the fact that I had no time to spend with her this past four days, due to having a wake and funeral to attend, plus having 6 guests staying in my home. She frightens me....

posted by Rainmayun at 12:18 PM -