Doesn't it sound familiar...

Last night was the 2nd date with the guy from earlier this week. You know, the one who lives with his lesbian ex-wife, and all his ex in-laws either in the same house or right across the street? Yeah, that one.

Ok, so I don't care about that so much anymore. I know I probably should. I've been burned badly in situations like these... D and his ex girlfriend, CK and the BFPE, who was bisexual, which I know isn't the same, but that didn't turn out well in my favor either. I know it probably doesn't matter how many excuses I make, there's just something wrong with living with your ex-wife, no matter how into girls she is. But all that aside, I just don't even really think about it when we're hanging out.

Last night we met up at a coffee shop in walking distance from my house. There is something calming about being able to walk to date, it reminded me of dating in NYC. I considered driving the 3 blocks because it was so cold and miserable out last night, but in the city, I would have never driven to the subway, and the coffee shop is closer to my house than the subway was to my apartment, so that didn't make much sense. I bundled up way more than I should have to for mid-October, and walked over to the coffee house. Well, it was so crowded and there was some sort of open mic night going on, it was kind of crazy. We found a spot that ended up being a good as we were going to get in there, removed in a corner, behind the music, so we weren't even facing it. However, there were some very strange folk and very interesting music which provided much fodder for the conversation.

Some highlights of the night were a song about fisting (I'm not sure that this is what the song was really about, but my date seems to think so, he thought it was hysterical), a spoken word poetry session about nursing homes set to some synthesizer music, a creepy father/daughter (maybe not, we hypothesized this relationship) duet sung pretty badly, and me stabbing myself with a toothpick in my gums. That wasn't embarrassing at all. At one point, the coffee house staff brought around some dessert bites for the customers in the place, on toothpicks. When I have something in my hands, like a toothpick, I tend to fidget with it, and it was in and out of my hands/mouth while we were talking. And at one point, I lodged it into my gums pretty hard, and I started to bleed, kind of excessively. I had already finished my tea and I didn't have anything to rinse my mouth out with, it was pretty horrific. My date was cool though, and if he was terrified by my self-mutilation, he didn't let on too much. I'm realizing I'm way out of practice in the dating scene, in my heyday I would have known not to play with sharp objects!

So, this date was only moderately shorter than the last one, lasting about 3.5 hours, which for a second date isn't so bad. I was still tired from the late night earlier in the week, and hadn't fully caught up on my sleep, so I was yawning profusely by 11 pm. Around 11:30 we made it outside, and I wonder how the goodbye would have gone if it hadn't been awkwardly interrupted. This tall, gangly, toothy guy followed us out, he had been in and out of the place all night, and had been the topic of much speculation and discussion on our date. Tall guy proceeded to try to talk to us, asking if we were leaving. Which just made it awkward for us, because he had to go to his car, and I was walking in the opposite direction... so we hugged goodbye, and tried to escape the weird guy. I was slightly afraid that the tall guy was going to follow me around the corner, but he didn't. He just kind of interfered at an inopportune time.

So the ex-wife guy is going away for over a week, and I'm sure we'll be in communication the entire time, but it's a lot less pressure to figure out what it is I'm looking for with him, and if I want to play this role for yet a 3rd time in my dating history.

3rd time's a charm?