Rather than grind on, this week, about the strange dates that walk off line and into my evenings, I compiled a list of the four best invitations my love life has ever received. They range from sweet, well-orchestrated date requests, to white-hot, wordless pathways to sin. In the spirit of imagining what I love about love, here are my favorites.
This is a story of Charles the Gay, as my girlfriend came to call him.
Charles was my first date when I got into town. He was comic and peculiar: very thin and a few inches taller than me with big dramatic eyes. His voice was rich, with a tapping staccato to his pronunciation. Words came fast and incessant once he got started. Charles the Gay was very fun to listen to. He reminded me of an industrious cricket.
We laughed a lot.
Charles the Gay and I kissed on the first date. It seemed to be going very well, the date. We strolled down the neighborhood and ate snacks at an outdoor haunt. We drank beer and listened to a guy play sidewalk sax around the corner. There was a festive mood in the air. It was dusk.
I moved to a new city recently.
This is not a big surprise. In the last ten years, I moved to a new city five times. The recent move, however, involved the desire for a man.
Love uprooted me the first time when I was 20. I left home for San Francisco to be with my boyfriend. It was très romantique.
Now, I am far from 20, still single, and moving to a metro of prospective lovers known for its smart, creative men. If I am a kid, this is my candy store. Moving for a guy before I know who he is? Call it creative manifesting.
Gotta have faith. Mail order brides do it all the time.
New Fashioned dating is making me an Old Fashioned girl. “Not your mother’s” traditional gal, I am 30-something, single, bisexual, dating exclusively men the past several years, independent, and happily looking for the guy who will delight in the complexity of my package: professional, artist, imaginative spiritual seeker who excites over the real estate and investment news. I e-date, get fixed up by friends, meet people traveling, have sex on the first date when it feels right (and sadly sometimes when it doesn’t), get shocked by people who have sex on the first date, dig myself out of too-true-to-be-true scenarios, and howl with laughter at the adventures. But lately, though I feel like a New Fashioned woman, I realize that, for all my perceived difference, I am still just a girl wanting a guy to love me.
