A Summer's End

The weather the past week has been much less summery, and more autumnal than anything. It helps me with the impending end of my fun summer of dates. Last night was the last date that I will have this summer. It was kind of bittersweet. School starts tomorrow and my dating will have to take the back burner to teaching and grad school, so I apologize in advance for the lack of posts. Maybe I will tell some of my archived dating history sordid stories, once a week or so, to keep the readers engaged.

In hindsight, I dated pretty much all summer - Memorial Day right up through Labor Day (almost). Which is pretty impressive. And what have I come up with? An extensive collection of the craziest men you might meet in this fine city. They weren't all bad dates, in fact some were downright good. But did anything amount from any of them? Nope. I did make some good friends and have expanded my social circle. It was a great experience. I can look back at my summer of serial dating with pride; if/when I do meet someone that I settle down with, I can say that I dated enough to know what I want in a guy, and more importantly what I don't want.

So the last date of the summer... here goes.

I had exchanged emails with this guy prior to meeting him. Obviously, as all internet dates start that way. From these email exchanges I knew that he was a 34 year old librarian living in Brooklyn. Ok, that's a good start, but not nearly enough information for me. So, I did what most people do, I assume, when they meet someone online. I checked to see if he had a myspace page using his email address. Score. He did. From this I found out that he was divorced. Ooooh, juicy. But there was only one other picture on the site that I hadn't already seen, so there was not too much information on that page. From there, I decided to see what else I could find out about this guy... I googled the handle he uses for his personal ad and his email address. Another score! I found his blog. Uh oh. Now if I can find his blog that easily, it's potential that he could find mine just as easily. He is a librarian, I trust he must have some mad librarian skills. True enough, I googled the first part of my email address I use for this blog (and for online dating emails) i3rooklyngirl. Ahhh, yes. My blog does come up when you google that. That's the risk I will have to take. Back to this guy's blog. So, I go back to the very beginning of his blog, and read it from the beginning... So besides learning that he is divorced, now I can read how frequently he posts dating ads on Craigslist, more about his divorce, that he's a champion spelling bee winner, all about his family vacation, and some really personal stuff about him family and his life. Now I just feel awkward thinking that I am actually going to meet this guy and I have to pretend to know very little about him.

So, after a failed attempt to go out last Friday night (I was in Jersey and didn't make it back in time - I had to cancel), we agreed to meet up at a bar in Williamsburg last night. We met a bar (the one where he wins all those spelling bees actually - but wait, I'm not supposed to know that yet...) but he forgot that they have Bingo there on Tuesday nights, so we go to a less crowded, quieter bar a block away. We talk over 2 rounds of beers, and I am surprisingly capable at concealing all the information that I already know about him. The conversation starts easily, and we talk about music. He is well versed in Sinatra and singers of that era, I've been listening to a lot of Big Band and Standards lately, probably due to my roommate's wedding, which I tell him. He mentions nothing about having been married previously, and I'm very consciously aware of that. Really aware of it. He talks about going to friends' bachelor parties, I am dying to ask him what his was like. Can't do that. He talks about his cousin, who, from his blog, I have actually seen a picture of... she has the same name as my brother in law, and he mentions how it's weird that his cousin (who is a girl) has a very traditional boy name. It's funny, I thought the same thing when I read that on his blog. But I can't say that, can I? He tells me how he's actually the reigning champion at the local spelling bee, which of course, I already knew. But it was interesting to hear him talk about how he actually became a better speller. Crossword puzzles, I need to start doing them. If it weren't for spell check on this thing, I don't think I'd keep a blog. We also talked a lot about libraries and books. Safe territory, I know very little about the actual work he does, so I can talk and ask questions unguarded about that. After we finished the second round, he goes to the bathroom, and as soon as he comes back, he abruptly announces that he has to leave. It was about an hour and a half on the date. Not a substantial amount of time. But I wasn't disappointed. The conversation was very interesting, but I wish I could have been a bit more relaxed about what I knew about him. Next time, I'll just leave well enough alone.

I've reasoned from all my dates this summer, anything under 3 hours will not amount in a second date. That's just statistically how it has worked out. Now, more than 3 hours does not automatically guarantee a second date, but it greatly increases the odds.

And that, in short, is the conclusion of my summer dating.

Tomorrow I go back to teaching, and with that comes the risk of seeing the subway stalker. I am a little nervous about that, but I'm hoping it won't be a problem.