He is the 99%

I am taking a time-out from the usual letter format for this public announcement: though these letters are sometimes funny, I am starting to think that this whole experience isn't very funny at all. They "find me a boyfriend" jokes are losing their zing. The third wheel is deflating. I am getting really tired.

I went out with someone on Friday night. I met him in a bar, he is a friend of a friend of a friend. He is tall, attractive, confident, has a real job, and has a killer nerdy tattoo on his arm. So, as you might imagine, I was quite excited when he asked me out. Things were looking up. In my mind, we were already taking a camping trip together next spring, and, in my mind, by next year he was relieving me of some holiday stress by coming to San Diego with me. Not to crazy-big dreams, but just some light wishful thinking. You never know what relationship becomes The Relationship.

Now, I am not writing him a letter because there is nothing too blatant to fault him for, or rather, nothing surprising because I am coming to realize that he represents the 99%: he doesn't seem to cook for himself, he is better about talking about himself, he has furniture that he has probably been carting around since college after picking it up on a street corner, and he's fairly inert after sex in the morning. But none of this deserves a letter because it is nowhere near unique. We went out to dinner and I felt like conversation didn't come that easily. I did most of the work. Is that because he isn't a big talker? Was he more of a talker when we met because he had been drinking? Did he suddenly find me uninteresting? Later in the evening, as we continued to drink, we interacted more fluidly. It is, of course, impossible to carry on a conversation at a bar so we were only obligated to have brief exchanges. For me, the difficulty in conversation, lack on strong intellectualism, was the biggest strike. It is what made me fall so hard and fast for Mr. Former The One.

Maybe I will see him again, give it another try, though I doubt it will go past the fun stage (he had some strong suits in bed). But this morning I woke up to two Facebook posted engagements and one wedding and it sent me into a spiral. In the last month, I've been asked to dessert-cater two weddings. I have also been asked to take another set of Save-The-Date photos. It makes me want to lose my shit. Am I being too picky? Really, if Mr. Rad Tattoo and I had great conversation, I wouldn't be nitpicking about other things about him. Some friends my age had a good time making light of my other man demands yesterday, but these are friends in their early thirties in 5+ year relationships. If you meet a man that early, there is lots of time to train him and/or figure out if he is trainable. At this stage in the game, I feel like I'm going to have to get something more or less pre-made, no fixer-upers, no time to put a lot of work in only to find out they are unfixable. Is that unreasonable? After feeling confident about my actions with Mr. Rad Tattoo, I spent all of today asking myself if I am actually the problem. But you know what? It's not too much to ask for a man to buy you dinner if you've come a long way to see him. It's not too much to ask him to get out and see you to the door in the morning. And it's not too much to be a little withholding on the first date, because god damn it, I don't really know him. So screw that. I want something great. I will work on being more flexible, but I'm not caving entirely.

T-Rex