A girl I recently started seeing (inevitably) discovered this site, and spent some time skimming through the archives. She emailed to say, “you appear to have various recurring patterns in your life in this order: sleeplessness, illness and the avid (drunken) pursuit of women.”
To which I can only respond: it is, indeed, a vicious cycle.
If you have a female caller on a weekend evening, and she finds a business card on your desk with a different female’s name and phone number scrawled on the back, she likely will not be terribly amused.
Sunday evening, direct off the plane back from Denver, I headed to the Tribeca Grand, to screen I Love Your Work for Stellar Network, a young New York filmmakers networking group. After the screening (and a brief Q&A session), I headed up to the bar where a small group of attendees had congregated. Among them was a very attractive redhead, and I smoothly sidled over to strike up a conversation. Not just attractive, it turned out, but smart as well – a screenwriter who spent her days working at the Legal Aid Society. Before I had the chance to ask for her phone number, however, I was pulled away briefly by the event’s organizer, who wanted to thank me for screening the film. A few minutes later, when I turned back around, the redhead was gone.
Despite the Cinderella act, I realized there was at least some chance she’d be materializing again for Stellar’s monthly bar party, which happened to fall yesterday evening. I had a dinner meeting (with an OSU undergrad who also serves as publisher and CEO of the highly successful brass|MEDIA finance magazine – we wunderkinds try to stick together), and hoped to head down directly. Post-dinner, however, I realized I didn’t have the address on me, and so called a friend from Kentucky who works at Miramax and belongs to Stellar. Did she know where the party was? Absolutely, she drawled back; she was headed there herself, and she was fairly sure it was at some bar on 9th between Avenue A and Avenue B.
As my cab turned onto 9th, however, it hit me that, unless the party was a barbecue, the address she had given couldn’t possibly be correct; between A and B, 9th St becomes Tompkins Square Park. By that point, however my Miramax friend had apparently already ducked into the bar, as she was no longer picking up her phone. After dialing through the list of all the people I knew who might be at the event as well and wandering a bit through the surrounding blocks hoping I’d see someone I knew outside the correct bar, I finally gave up and stopped in at Doc Holliday’s for a drink.
As I was walking back to the subway to head home, I got a call from one of the other attendees I had tried to track down. On 9th between A and B? No, the bar was on 9th between 3rd and 4th. I hoofed it over a few blocks and headed in. By that point, however, the party was on its last legs, with everyone jacketing up to head home.
Still, a bit of detective work yielded that the girl had, in fact, shown up briefly earlier in the evening. Further asking around even turned up her name. So, armed with that, and the bits of biography recalled from our initial conversation, the Google search is on. Once again, blurring the fine line between charmingly determined suitor and crazy internet stalker guy.
Apparently in high demand for the purpose, I’ve not only pinky-sworn into a backup marriage at 35, but also another with a different girl (assuming the first backup falls through) at 40.
Yesterday evening, asked to serve as a backup for yet another female friend, I informed her that, sadly, I was already twice taken. So, in response, she proposed we agree to wed should we both marry other people, yet have our respective future spouses both kick the proverbial bucket.
As I always say, It never hurts to have a backup. Or three. Just in case.
This past weekend, watching the last Sex & the City, part of me was thinking: “Thank god this thing is ending; the show’s gone so far downhill this is basically a mercy killing. And clearly Carrie’s ending up with Big. I could have called that from the first episode.” Yet, another part of me was thinking: “Thank god Carrie’s ending up with Big, because if she doesn’t, I’m utterly fucked.”
Truth be told, from that first episode, I identified with Mr. Big. Or, rather, I identified with his archetype, the broader class of Bigs who show up in film after film: Jack Nicholson’s Harry Sanborn in Something’s Gotta Give; Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crown in the remade Thomas Crown Affair; any of cinematic history’s laundry list of men who too late discover the same traits that made them moguls led them, in their personal life, to push people away, to end promising relationships abruptly, to bounce from fling to fling with no apparent end destination in mind, finding increasingly little joy in each.
While I may only be starting out on the route to mogul, I’m already well seasoned in ending good relationships for bad reasons. Which is why I’m always secretly thrilled by the redemptive endings Hollywood inevitably lays out for these characters. It’s an odd relief to find one somehow changing his spots, reconciling his romantic streak with his inability to actually sustain that romance. The happily ever afters let me tell myself: if that’s the path I’m heading down, at least it ends up somewhere good.
Fortunately, an evening spent holding a bag of frozen broccoli to my forehead countered Monday’s headbutt melodrama, and I headed into my date last night relatively unbruised and certainly in prime form. I must admit to having been more than a bit drunk when I first met the girl, however, and so braced myself for the potential aftermath of a serious case of beer goggles.
In fact, there was no need for bracing, as my date was even more beautiful than I had remembered. In fact, she was great on all counts – smart, funny and articulate, as well as attractive. But throughout the date, a small voice in the back of my head continually objected. Some part of me, for whatever reason, knew that the relationship wouldn’t work, long term. Which, frankly, is true about the vast majority of relationships I’ve embarked upon; were I to have sat down and thought carefully about them at the get-go, I’d have known they had no possibility of going the distance.
Still, in years (or weeks) past, I’d never paid any heed to that small warning voice. Hearing it insistently last night was, frankly, a new and rather disquieting experience. Was this the first sign of impending emotional maturity? Would suddenly having a conscience weighing in keep me from wreaking my standard horribly messy trail of love life havoc?
In short, I’m not certain. So in this specific case, if she’s willing, I’d love to at least go on a second date; until I get used to listening to that little voice, I’d hate to think I killed off something potentially promising due to poor communication within my own head.
It is, of course, the evening before a rather promising first date that I manage to take a headbutt to the forehead, raising a lovely welt above my left eyebrow.
I’m both thinking I need to find a new sport, and hoping she’s into beat-up looking guys.
Several months back, I spent a fair amount of time (arguably too much) thinking about the right sort of dog to get, should I decide to get a dog. As I don’t suspect I’ll be so doing at any point in the near future, that may seem an odd line of pursuit. But, to be honest, it was a question that had plagued me since moving to New York; if nearly all dog-owning New Yorkers look eerily like their dogs, was there a sort of dog that looked like me? More importantly, was I supposed to find a dog I looked like to begin with, or to find one somewhat similar and then hope it or I would evolve towards the other over time, until, perhaps, our relative appearances met in the middle, somewhere between where we both began.
Recently, however, I’ve begun to think the same rule also applies to people in relationships. Not necessarily that couples begin to look like each other (though, certainly, they sometimes do, especially if stooping to the faux pas of all faux pas: matching outfits), but that, over time, people become increasingly similar, in terms of interests, opinions and activities, to their significant others. A quick review of relationships past certainly bears the theory out at least in my own life. From swing dance to indie rock, socialist political views to dubious mental health, I’ve been swayed in all sorts of directions by girlfriends. And while some of the changes were rather temporary (leaving me, post-breakup, thinking things like: “you know, I’m much more of an indoor person than the last six months of hiking might have led me to believe.”), others have stuck with me permanently.
Which, with a handful of dates on the immediate horizon, is sort of a scary thought. Not only am I now looking for a girl I like, a girl who likes me, a girl with whom I can imagine a shared future, but also a girl who evolving towards over the course of a relationship won’t leave me scarred for life.
I woke up this morning thinking that, despite my complete and total lack of free time, perhaps it was time to start seriously dating again, because I’d really like someone to hold onto while I sleep. This, of course, just highlights the gap between action and intent, because in reality I’m a horrible bed sharer; I sleep wildly, tossing and turning, with a tendency to hog the blankets.
Based on conversations with several friends, I’ve decided to start requiring letters of recommendation from potential girlfriends.