Lessons Learned, part 2

More and more in my life (and in my work), it's becoming clear to me that people hear what they want to hear. That seems to be the case with men reading ads on Craigslist, as well.

To wit, my first ad said

I try to get to the gym at least three days a week, but I'm still a work in progress. I don't expect I'll ever be perfect, and I'm okay with that. I'd rather feel healthy than fit society's standards of beauty, anyway. You should have a similar philosophy.

That's true. (I went to the gym yesterday, the day before that, and I plan to go tomorrow - see? It's true!) You'll note that nowhere does it say, "I love working out." Nor does it say, "exercise is my friend" or "I'm a really active person." It doesn't say that because that's not exactly true. The truth is that I understand that exercise is important for my health; I understand that I feel better (both physically and emotionally) when I take the time to exercise; and I understand that those benefits are maximized when I get to the gym about three times a week.

Understanding those things and acting on them is NOT the same thing as enjoying exercise. Unless I'm missing something?

Apparently, I AM missing something. Or else these men are really hoping to see something that just isn't there:

I am single, 32 years old 6'5" 215 lbs with a fit/muscular build with a college degree. I am looking for something similar and the way you describe it sounds very intriguing.

I am glad to hear you enjoy working out and being active

Wait! Did I say that? What I meant to say was ...

I don't really like working out, but I go to the gym three times a week because I know I should. I'm still not skinny/slim/slender/fill-in-your-favorite-synonym-here and don't think I ever will be. I certainly don't have a "fit/muscular build." And, um ... I don't want to.

Anyway, maybe I'm being too sensitive. Or maybe I need to re-think how I write my ads. I'm thinking Ad #2 will have a slightly different flavor - still honest and true, but different. You know?

What are you looking for?

Twice now I've been asked what I'm looking for. Once in e-mail (I haven't yet responded to that question) and once in person (I evaded the question). I don't want to lie (plus, the rules don't permit it), but I also don't want to say, "Well, you know I'm looking for a crazy story to share." So what should I say? I think I've landed on


"I'm looking to meet some new people, maybe make a friend or two, and if it just so happens that I meet someone so cool I want to spend oodles of time with him, well - all the better."

But, really, I wish men wouldn't ask. It makes dating sound so calculated. Maybe that's what dating is, but the romantic in me (I admit - the romantic side of me is pretty small, but what little of it is there) wants to believe that dating shouldn't be such a game.

I just got back from meeting someone for the first time. In e-mail he described his life as "being upside down" right now. In person he told me that he's going through a divorce; he just moved out (just as in TODAY) because his soon-to-be-ex is "what you might call a husband beater." This guy seemed pretty broken. When he asked me what I'm looking for and I evaded the question, he told me he's not looking for anything deep. Fair enough, I guess, but I wonder how most people take that?

He talked and talked and talked. There were moments when he stopped himself and acknowledged that he was doing most of the talking, but it was okay with me to just listen. I wasn't attracted to him, and I can't imagine myself ever really dating him (meeting him was a date, though, wasn't it?), but sitting with him and listening to him - that I could do. And, actually, when he did ask me questions, he forced me to think about what is important to me in this whole dating thing.

Why can't I see myself with him?

Well, as I said, I'm not attracted to him. In part, that's because he's quite a bit older than me, I think. The greatest age difference between me and someone I've dated is 7 years. We were both in graduate school at the time, very much at the same point in our lives. Seven years wasn't that much then, and I don't imagine it would be that much now. Interestingly, this guy asked if the 12 year age difference bothered me; I said it doesn't. (Then he asked if I'd date someone who is 12 years younger than me, and to that I can absolutely say no.) I don't think I was lying - it's not the fact that he's older, it's that we're not at the same point in our lives. He's in the midst of a divorce; he helped raise 2 stepchildren who are in their early 20s, he's been laid off and is seeking a career change. It sounds very mid-life crisis to me.

I am not attracted to mid-life crisis.

But I listened. I listened to him tell me about the other women he's met on Craigslist. There was the one who is 34, married with 5 children, looking for an affair. There was the one who told him she was beautiful (and then gave him the name of some soap opera star, but as I don't watch soap operas, the name escaped me the moment he said it), but when he met her he "threw up a little in his mouth."

I listened to him tell me that I am "not like the other women." Why? Well ... he enjoys my e-mails; they are smart and thoughtful. I seem insightful and grounded. I have opinions and am something of a smartass. I have a good vocabulary. I mostly agree with his assessment of me. He thinks I am "worldly" because I have lived many places and can talk about many things. I want to know why that makes me special; I want to know why it isn't the case that all women share their intelligence with the world. He tells me that the average IQ is 100. I don't know if that is true, but I do know that I want more women to show men they are smart. I don't want to be the only smart woman he thinks he'll meet.

On the other hand, maybe it's true. He told me that an eye condition makes it hard for him to read. His eyes get very tired, and it strains his brain. I want to believe that he really does have a condition. But he tells me that he has only read three books in his entire life. The last one was in 6th grade. He has only read three books in his entire life. His entire life! (Except textbooks, he says - which, as a laid-off mechanical engineer, it is probably true that he's read some textbooks.) He's not unintelligent. He tells me that he likes to learn new things. He reads newspapers and magazines. I can appreciate that. But no books?

I am not attracted to a dislike of reading.

Am I a bad person for that? Am I a bad person for that if he has a valid reason for not reading books? (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and accepting that his reason is valid.)

BPB, Revisited

I should have known it would happen. I've heard from several of you (by private message), asking about BPB. The most popular question, by far?

Was it awkward living next door to him after he exposed himself to you?

So I figure BPB warrants just a little more of our time. Plus, perhaps I haven't been totally fair to him. No - I've been perfectly fair to him. But I had my own moment of freakdom with him, and it's the right thing to be upfront about that.

Remember how I met him about 6 months before he asked me out? Remember how, whenever we ran into each other outside our doors, we made small talk? Well, I could not for the life of me remember his name. The day he asked me out, I drew a complete and total blank on his name. SIX MONTHS of talking to the guy, and when he requests a bit more of my time in a one-on-one situation, I let him down. I didn't remember his name.


Oh, I remembered his roommate's name well enough (let's call him "PornMaster" - more on that later). Somehow, that was an easy one. Despite the fact that I'd never talked to PornMaster, I knew his name - first and last. Yet, this guy who I'd been talking to at least twice a week for SIX MONTHS? Nope. Don't know his name. And, really, is it really okay to go on a date with someone whose name you don't know? That seems kind of lame. And it's especially lame when you've been told his name.

So I jumped into action. More accurately, I crept into action. I watched to see when his car was gone. I watched to see when the lights were out in their apartment. I waited for the mailman. And when I was certain no one could see me, I tiptoed over to their door, pulled out their mail, and looked at the addressees. On the first day, only PornMaster got any mail. Same thing on the second day. Third time's the charm, though, and the day before our date, I learned BPB's name. You can call me "Mail Stalker," if you want.

The thing you've been wondering about, though - what about that?

Well, no. It was not at all awkward to see him after. It could have been. It maybe should have been. But there was too much other drama happening in the BPB-PornMaster apartment for a little thing like that to get in the way. (I suspect this drama had been happening the whole time, but I'd remained oblivious to it until my interest was piqued by the "incident.")

Like the two different times the cops visited...

First, the men in blue came by to pay a friendly arresting visit to PornMaster. Turns out he'd been producing pornographic videos in their apartment, and something about that wasn't exactly on the up-and-up.

Then, they showed up in the middle of the night a few months later. BPB had called them to request that they escort a female visitor off the premises. I was thankful for that call, actually, as the woman had been pounding on their door (and my bedroom window, a few times), screaming at BPB about how he'd been cheating on her and she wasn't going to stand for that. She pounded and screamed, screamed and pounded. That woman was going nuts on him. But you know what's really funny about it? When he opened the door for the cops (it was him - I was watching through the bedroom window, so I know it was him), she looked at him and stopped screaming immediately. Turns out she'd been seeing someone else who told her his name was BPB and given him BPB/PornMaster's address. How funny is THAT? BPB actually stopped by my place the next day to apologize for the noise.

Anyway, the point is that there was drama enough going on after I saw all BPB had to offer that it just wasn't awkward. Plus, we just made an effort not to cross paths quite as often. Plus (and maybe this is the real reason), I moved shortly thereafter.

Huh.

So, life is pretty funny sometimes, I'm thinking. I think that a lot, but today I'm thinking it because...

I've been really on top of this blog, writing posts and scheduling them days in advance. In fact, there are three more all queued up and ready to go. In part that's because I've been finding that I actually have quite a bit to say. In part it's because I know that there will be a point at which I don't have time to sit down and write something new every few days. And, in part it is because I want to write the stories when they are fresh, but there's still this nagging sense that I need to hold off on actually putting them out into the ether.

All that is to say that this morning's post was written at least a week and a half ago. Maybe two weeks ago. At a time when the idea that I might meet someone I actually thought had potential was still kind of laughable. I mean, I walked into this project with my eyes wide open, and I knew it would be foolish to assume there wouldn't be some pretty great people looking to meet other pretty great people ... and why shouldn't they use Craigslist along with the masses, but come on! Really? Was I really going to meet someone? I was pretty sure that was a shot in the dark. We're talking really long shot, really dark dark.

I'd forgotten about this morning's post until I received notification that some of you had commented on it. (And I was pretty surprised, since it's the FIRST time the scheduling feature actually worked. For each of the previously scheduled posts, I had to go in and manually post them - which, by the way, defeats the purpose of a scheduling feature.) Anyway, I'd forgotten that I had written a brief post in which I wondered what would happen if I met someone I actually liked.

Call it fate. Kismet. Destiny. I don't know.

But I scheduled that post for just a few days after I did meet someone who seems pretty cool. Cool enough that I felt compelled to tell him about the blog. Cool enough that I am contemplating whether or not this project should continue. For now it will ... he says he'd like it to and will even do something obnoxious if it'll get him in the blog. I think I'll let him know he made it without having to stage some crazy drama. Did I mention cool enough to think this is an interesting endeavor?

In the meantime, it may mean that my attention to the project won't be quite so full -- after all, this stuff takes time. And it just might be the case that I won't have as much of it.

I wonder

Umm... what happens if one of these men turns out not to be a freak? And, what happens if I actually like one of them? I don't have any rules about that.