The Last Hurrah in Seattle

I’m headed to Seattle to visit John and Caroline, and decide that, since this whole thing is winding down, I should try and meet some of the MANY guys who live in Seattle. I set up my LAST TWO DATES!!!!

Green Lake #1: Trainer. This guy is fit, and has an attitude. He’s also lied about his height; we’re eye to slightly below my eye. He’s really an engineer of some sort, but has earned his living lately training athletes. We walk around the lake once, and then get some snacks to eat by the lake. He doesn’t want to sit on the grass because he’s wearing his “nice” shorts (red flag #1 – they’re not THAT nice) and he’s defensive about it (red flag #2). So I put my jacket down and we sit and talk. He’s enthusiastic about all sorts of things, so I’m willing to overlook any dirt-involved neuroses in the short term. As we’re hugging goodbye, he starts going on about the sparks flying between us (red flag #3 – too much, to quick). Later on he calls and tells me he’s met someone else. Whew!

Green Lake #2: Outdoor man. The second Seattle date also suggests Green Lake for a date. Perfect! I already know where that is. This guy is a great listener, loves the outdoors, backpacks, climbs, and telemarks. I like his integrity. We walk not once, but twice around Green Lake, and by the end I have blisters since I’m wearing my cute shoes, which are not meant for walking six miles. We talk about traveling, wilderness, work, hobbies, values, friends, family, and more. I’m not convinced he’s the one, but I really enjoy talking to him, so I’m not convinced he’s not, either.

The Tunnel

Two Weeks Left. Date 1: Security Guard. That’s right, Security Guard again. He had apologized for being so over the top a couple of months ago (this was the guy that was calling me every night), and then couple of weeks ago asked me out again. I was pretty surprised, but figured, why not. I had fun, and enjoyed talking to him, so I’ll go out with him again. But I’m a bit gun-shy after last time!

Two Weeks Left. Dates 2-13: Speed Dating. Wow! This is a quick way to meet lots of people. You grab a glass of wine, get a nametag and a note sheet, and then start talking. Six minutes per person, with about a minute or two in between conversations to note the person's name and your impression. The note sheets are critical - I find even now as I look over my notes, I can't remember who's who. Unfortunately, unlike online dating, you can't choose who you get to meet. Which explains why I only was intersted in one out of the 11 guys. But for some crazy reason, I added two back to my "let's talk again" list because I knew they liked me.

Which is a complete mistake - one of them (the auto glass salesman) was actually singing about bells as he walked away. But most of the guys were alright - some were a little tense - like the guy who carried around a list of questions and rapid-fired them at me one after another.

So it turns out that 4 out of 11 guys are interested. After some conversations with friends, I've decided to email them and ask if they voted for George Bush. If they didn't, I'll go out on a date. If they did vote for him, or they didn't vote, they're OUT.

Home Stretch

Three Weeks Left. Date 1: Let’s see, how to describe Date 1. He’s somewhat of an enigma. Frat boy, vegan since 1992, entrepreneur, likes to fly planes, is from a small town, and likes to hike and river raft. He lives in the suburbs, and is leaning towards moving farther away from town. His proposed business (something to do with small planes and commuting in the pacific NW) is interesting. He’s nice enough, but my gut check says no way.

Three Weeks Left. Date 2: Dinner. I'm running out of names (or maybe nothing about this guy stood out?). He really liked talking about himself.

Three Weeks Left. Date 3: Outdoor Man. The way to my heart is NOT to lecture me on things I already know. Outdoor man has just launched into a monologue on ecology 101, and I’m annoyed. Our drinks haven’t come yet, and as he moves on to a lecture on mushrooms 101 (slightly more interesting, since I don’t know much about mushrooms), I’m wishing I had ordered two.

After a brief diatribe about grazing on BLM lands, he turns to me and tells me about his weekend. He was at a tantric workshop. He said it was great. I change the subject.

Later on, Matt wants to know why I didn’t ask him what single people do at tantric sex workshops. Maybe Matt should attend my dates just to make sure I ask the right questions.

Back on track. The Date Report

After a several week hiatus, I'm back on track. I was distracted for several weeks, partially by a sweet vaca to Hawaii, partly because I'm a bit burned out and tired of emailing guys. But I've been back from the flooded shores of Oahu less than a week, and I've already had three dates. Here's the report.

Four Weeks Left. Date 1. Golfing Man. I'm late, but he doesn't care at all. He's very animated enthusiastic, optimistic, and surprisingly slick, considering all of the grammatical errors on his profile. But he also seems to have a sweet side. he's a grade school teacher and clearly loves what he does, and works in the field because he thinks education is important. If he asks, I'll go on another date.

Four Weeks Left. Date 2. The Dane. He's interesting, informed, and travels a lot. We have a lot in common, because he works on rivers. But he’s awkward (or maybe I am?). I have trouble making conversation. It might be the language barrier, but I don’t think so. He’s passing none of my gut checks.

Four Weeks Left. Date 3. Eight Hour Tour. This afternoon’s date lasts until tonight. We start with “coffee” which he doesn’t actually drink. He doesn’t “drink” drink either. After chatting a lot, we move on to a walk on 23rd street, gelatos, and then a movie. He’s somewhat reserved, but clearly intelligent, and although I learn fascinating things about the Masons, Elvis, Gnosticism, pyramids and Thomas Jefferson, he laughs somewhat less than I’d like. He also asks questions, and then completely changes the subject, a behavior I’ve become somewhat sensitive to recently.

But for some reason, I can’t cut the date off. For the first time, I find myself wanting to spill the beans about the whole three date a week thing (but I don’t). So after the movie, we go ballroom dancing (he competed in college, and is an EXCELLENT lead). I learn how to Rhumba, Nightclub two step (?), Tango, and Foxtrot. I have fun and he’s a patient teacher, but we don’t have much to talk about. By the end, I wish he’s stop being so serious and smile more. Bottom line - despite the date lasting EIGHT HOURS, it won’t kill me if we never talk again.

Week Ten: Date Report

Week 10. Date 1. This is not actually a date, but I’m counting it anyway. Faced with not meeting my goals, I decide to take action. I drag Bridget and Kathy to the Lab for a “singles club” event. It seemed promising – they do activities like wine tasting and hiking, and tonight’s event is a social at the brewery.

“Do you have men in this club?” I ask the woman who runs the group, doubtfully eyeing all of the women sitting at the table. “Welllll…” she responds. “There’s more women than men. Women are just more active. Also this is a good group if you want people to do things with. Everyone is very friendly.” Which is all fine and good. Except that I’m not looking for people to do things with. I’m looking for one man to have a relationship with. We order beers, dreading sitting at the table with it's ensuing small talk. We linger at the bar, watching members of the group arrive. Men do start to trickle in, although this only adds to my general dismay. Everyone is way older than us. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I want someone I could possibly have kids with, not someone who has already put his kids through college.

We decide to try speed dating next.

Week 10. Date 2: Pink Party. He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him. It’s a frisbee party, there’s lots of people, and I’ve just come from my friend Mike’s Birthday party, (Happy Birthday, Mike!!!!) where I drank too much wine. I’m blaming Jonathan for bringing my favorite kind, although Lord knows he didn’t exactly force it down my throat.

“Don’t you remember me?” he says. “I met you at the Pink Party.” Oh, right. The first guy I’d brought home from a party in over ten years. You’d think I’d remember. And furthermore, he was three sheets to the wind at the Pink Party, and woke up in my room with no recollection of where my house was or how to get back to his car. So I was surprised he remembered me. He had given me his phone number, but I never called. Something about me having to ask if he wanted to see me again clued me into the fact that he probably didn’t. "I'm sure I'll see you around..." he had said.

But maybe I was wrong? Tonight, he certainly seems interested. But roles are reversed after this party. He's driving, not drinking, and I wake up with a pounding headache.

As I leave, he says he wants me to call him. Unprompted. But I still sense some sort of hesitancy or something on his part. I’m not sure what it is, but this time, I’m determined to find out what the real deal is. So I pry more.

“I’m not dating” he states.

Crap! How can I count this as a date if he’s not dating? I decide I’m going to anyway. It certainly is more of a date than the “singles club” I counted as a date last night.

“Did you ever spend more time getting over a relationship than you spent having the relationship?” He asks. Apparently he’s still getting over some chick he went out with last fall.

We're clearly in different dating worlds, and I'm confused. “Why would I call you if you’re not dating?” I ask. “I don’t know,” he responds. “Because we like each other?”

Good point. I do like him. He’s fun, interesting to talk to, and nice. But as my friend Jennifer asks; How long is going to mourn his previous relationship? I give him my phone number, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for him to call.

Week 10. Date 3. Dogman

Going with the gut check- he's nice, but I'm not alltogether smitten. He's way less nervous than last time, but I'll still go out with him one more time to be sure I'm really getting to know him.

Week Nine: Date Report. You be the Judge

Zilch. Nix. Donut. Nada. Nil. Naught. Zip. Diddlysquat. Not a single date. In giving Ultraman a serious chance, I stopped emailing or setting up dates with anyone. Unfortunately, the result is I have nothing going on during week nine.

I guess this means I have time to reflect on this whole crazy process. So first, I should say that although I liked Ultraman, I don’t really miss him. I felt disappointed when I told him things wouldn’t work out – but it's because I'm not in a relationship, not because I'm not in a relationship with him.

I’m thinking more and more that the whole “gut check” might be entirely the way to go, and I should just scrap that whole list I wrote in the beginning. As some people have pointed out (and correctly so) if I liked Ultraman a lot, I probably wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what he drove. And I don’t want someone who is a carbon copy of me. Upon reflection, I might have been using the whole values thing as an excuse because I just didn't like him enough. (although values are extremely important to me.)

I've definitely had some good comments/thoughts/suggestions from people. I appreciate the input! Here are just some of them:

"If you don't look forward to seeing someone, maybe you shouldn't be dating them"

"To me, making each other laugh, enjoying each other's company, respecting who the other person is as a person is HUGE"

The gut check – "Do you want to kiss him? Hug him? Shove your tongue down his throat?" may be more important than any of the other things

Respect is necessary, maybe more so than love

I need to be more up front with how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking

"You can tell a lot from a kiss"

"In the context of a committed relationship, it can be fair to ask someone to change their behavior out of respect for the other person's values. I don't think it's fair to ask someone to change their values to match your own"

"If you don't have good chemistry, even if you have the right number of cars and coffee cups, it's going to be hard to make it work"

I'm going to officially extend this whole three date a week thing until my birthday at the end of April. Maybe this will make up for weeks with not enough dates!

Week Eight: The Date Report: You be the Judge

Week Eight, Date 1: Two less paper cups
“I could have a commuter car that gets good gas mileage” he says. "But I love to drive too – so I could have a sports car or an SUV that I don’t drive very much. Would that be OK?"

I panic. It’s not really what I want. I want someone who helps me use less in life, rather than someone who tempts me to use more. Plus, for the price of a sports car, you could feed, clothe, and shelter quite a number of starving children. But I revert to my usual nod and smile. I need more time to figure out what my reaction is all about. After all, many families have two cars – it seems logistically to work MUCH better. So what’s the big deal?

After a great weekend in the snow with friends, and some self-reflective snowshoe time on Tumalo, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not so much whether he buys organic food or not, or whether he volunteers his spare time helping other people or not, or whether he has one car or three (There are so many ways to contribute in this life, and everyone has their strengths. Lord knows I don’t do even half the things I could to make this world a better place). But the difficulty is that we don’t share the same base value system. It's not formulaic, i.e. two cars= bad person, volunteering= good person. What matters is that someone is in some way striving to contribute to this world.

I might not recycle everything I can (*sigh* it’s sad, but true), but the difference between Ultraman and I is that I want to. As M&A pointed out – there’s an ideal way which I want to live, and Ultramarathoner and I unfortunately don’t share that vision. Plus, I think we lack the chemistry to bridge the gap. When I said that I had kissed him and it didn’t suck, I should have mentioned that it wasn’t everything I ever dreamed of either.

Which means I need to tell him. But he’s unloading the dishwasher when I get to his house – it seems inappropriate to spring this on him while he’s doing chores, plus, I hadn’t quite got the courage just yet. Luckily, before I left, Merm strongly suggested I start the discussion within the first 10 minutes I was there- very good advice. In the meantime, he chats about how there’s been two less paper cups wasted this weekend- he took his travel mug to get coffee a couple of times. That’s super! But I figure that particular behavioral change is a moot point in about 10 minutes.

He’s very logical about the whole subject, asks many questions, and is good to talk things over with. He talks about compromises and how people in relationships have to make them. “Sure, I say. Take the whole where to live discussion. If I were to move out of the northeast, that would be a compromise, but nothing in my values says anything about where I have to live. But some of the things we’ve talked about to me aren’t compromises. They compromise my values, which is different.”

As some readers have pointed out, it's fair to ask someone I'm with to respect my values. The problem is that in life, you wind up living out the values you believe in. So with Ultraman, would I wind up in some suburban neighborhood, unable to walk or bike anywhere when that's what I like to do? (Plus it's an easy way for me to have less impact.) I'm not so afraid of the "does he vote differently than me" values questions, but more "what am I going to loose when I live with someone that doesn't believe the same as me?"

Can people who have completely different values be together? I've decided that in this case, it won't work. What do you think?

Week Seven

"What happens if you go out on three dates in the same week with the same person? Does that count?" asked Michael some time ago. I immediately responded "That's the goal - if I'm dating someone, then I'm done!

But now I'm not so sure. This week, I go out on dates only with Ultraman (thanks special K - that's a much shorter nickname!). It starts on Valentine's day, when he makes me chocolate soufflé - yum!

On Friday, we go to see my friend Rick Huddle's
awesome Valentine's day show - on “Beginner’s Luck– first encounters with relationship, love, & sex”. Ultraman really enjoyed it, and I had fun.

The day after is much more serious. My friend Jennifer from Ashland has suggested that I need to talk to Ultraman about some of our political and values differences - I'm not looking forward to this (I dislike conflict) but it needs to be done. At a lull in the conversation, I look away to try and figure out how to broach the subject. "How do you think we're doing" he says. Wow, he's perceptive. "I think we're doing well, but I also think we have some pretty big differences in what we think is important" I respond.

I won't bore you with the tedious details, but what follows is a discussion of living in walkable neighborhoods, composting toilets, materialism, flexcar, commuting to work, large SUVs, kids, recycling, and organic food.

It’s definitely weird to be discussing such details with someone I hardly know. But wait – what is that sound? Do you hear that ticking noise?

Somehow when faced with not getting to achieve my dream of having kids, I find the gumption to talk to an almost-stranger on the seventh date about how many cars we’d have if we were married.

Ultraman is not at all defensive, and seems willing to analyze these issues and figure out if he's willing to change certain aspects of his lifestyle. My question: is it fair to ask someone to change?

Week Six: Halfway!

Week Six, Date 1. Ultramarathoner again. He's starting to grow on me. But today's "Survivor" party could have been a bit much - after all I've never seen this particular TV show before. Luckily, his friends (who I meet for the first time) talk during the whole thing and turn out to be 1) fantastic cooks, 2) generous with the wine, 3) friendly and fun and 4) have some ultimate players among their ranks (Ok - maybe I exaggerate - one person played in college, another woman was on my spring league team some years ago).

To answer some queries from the commenters – yes, I sometimes think about him when he’s not there, but the whole "gut check" thing says I'm not head over heels. Maybe he'll grow on me more over time? And yes, I have kissed him and it didn't suck.

This week, I only go on two dates - falling short of my goal AGAIN. Since I'm halfway, I guess I'll summarize the what's happened so far. I've gone on 17 different dates (just one shy of the 18 date goal) with 10 different people. I guess I've learned that there are some great and available guys out there. Also, since dating has been my focus, I've gotten a lot of good advice and some excellent support - thank you!!

Week Six, Date 2. My friend from Ashland sets me up with a sign interpreter from her daughter's class. We walk to downtown Ashland to one of my favorite brew pubs. I don't have much in common with this guy, although he's very sweet and nice. I feel like I'm struggling to make conversation, and that we aren't really interested in the same things at all. But my friend who set me up on the date thinks I'm not giving him a chance.

Can you make yourself like and/or love someone if you want to be in a relationship? My gut says "no". But maybe that's why I haven't found anyone yet?

Week Five: Recap

I apologize for not keeping up-to-date. Honestly, a month of three dates a week was super-difficult, and I'm glad I'm getting closer to April 1st when I can stop all of this nonsense. So, this week I only went on TWO dates, falling miserably short of my goals. In fact, I had a third date lined up, but cancelled because doing my taxes was a more appealing option. Uga - that just shows you how bad it is.

Week 5. Date 1 was very entertaining. I was skeptical, since he was pretty late, but figured that overall, I could tolerate a little tardiness (ok you folks who know me - YES I've been more than a little late to some major life events. My apologies!). But lunch was fun, and I found the topics he brought up interesting an fun to talk about. We left it that we'd go out for a beer at some point. Big Kudos to Peter for the setup!!!! He joins the exalted ranks of Jennifer and Tara, the other friends of mine to set me up on blind dates.

My friend John came down to Portland for a visit, and had some dating advice worth mentioning- in fact, it warrants an addition (or maybe even a replacement?) to my "list". He noted that many marriages (and arranged marriages) work because people respect each other. So instead of looking for love, I need to look for someone I respect, and then see what happens from there!

Week 5. Date 2 I'd been dreading. Why did I think hiking with Ultramarathoner was a good idea? Clearly, he's an overachiever when it comes to outdoor activities. And even more clearly, I can be lazy when it comes to hiking up things. But the hike up Dog mountain was good. It was beautiful, and he stopped to talk whenever I fell too far behind. We went to edgefield for dinner, and then a movie at his house.