Rom Com and the Blog

As I mentioned earlier, nobody wants their friend to be #24 in this dating prescription, so when I found out that my friends did not know about my blog, I decided I needed to tell them. I learned my lesson after The Blues Man, and I’m not willing to sacrifice my friendships for a little online storytelling and dating humor. I explained to my friend how the whole thing got started, and emailed her links to  the first post, Confessions of a Serial Dater, and Man #11, Il Mio Nonno Italiano so she could get an idea of what the blog was about.

I don’t know if she ever read them, but she knew enough about it that the next time I saw her she said, “If you and Man #24 (not his real name) go out, you could stop at #24, couldn’t you?”

“Well, I suppose, if things went really well, yeah. I’ve said all along that if I meet someone halfway through who is really good for me and is someone who wants a committed relationship, I certainly wouldn’t turn him away.”

The last part of this statement, however, always seems to be the kicker. Just as friends don’t want to be #24, it seems that men don’t like to knowingly be in a perceived competition with other men. It’s ok if THEY date this way, going out with multiple women, mind you, but rarely have I found that guys are ok with the  idea that the woman they are dating is dating other men. I know there are exceptions, but a lot of men seem to try and avoid this kind of situation.

Not that my dating prescription is even a competition. Some might say that I’m “dating like a guy,” but I don’t even think that’s the case, because, typically, that involves dating and sleeping with more than one woman just to have a good time, and we all know that I haven’t had any in a while! Therefore, I don’t think what I’m doing qualifies as dating like a guy.

The way I see it, I am simply dating without settling, and I will continue to date in this way until I meet someone who…

1. I want to go out with again and again.
2. wants to go out with me again and again.
3. asks me for a committed, monogomous relationship.

Until all three of these parameters are satisfied, I see absolutely no reason to limit myself to one guy. Enough said.

And with that, to illustrate my point, my next post will be on the game theory of dating.

Man #24, The Leading Man

It happens. Every once in a while a friend will get a wild hair up their ass and decide I need help finding a date. In the past, these set ups have never ended well. Some of these dates have left me wondering if my friends know me at all; others have made me wonder what kind of woman my friends think I am; and one date even left me fearing for my life.

Since I’ve started my dating prescription a lot of friends have mentioned that they would like to set me up with one of their friends. However, as soon as the words are out of their mouths they say something along the lines of, “but I want to wait for you to meet him until you’re closer to 100.”

Ok fine.

At the rate I’m going that will be in about 3 more years. (Tomorrow this blog will be one year old.)

Clearly they’re ok with the idea of my prescription as long as it doesn’t involve any of their friends. Basically, nobody wants their friend to be #24.

And then…

…along came one of my friends who, for some odd reason, did not realize that I had this little blog thing going.

I got a call from one of my friends one night a couple of weeks ago. She put her husband on the line, and he asked if I remembered a friend of their’s who I had first met at a New Year’s Eve Party in 2003. At first I wasn’t sure, but with an additional hint it dawned on me to whom he was referring.

“Oh yeah. I remember. I thought he was pretty cool.”

My friend’s husband told me that earlier in the day he had been visiting with the man who will soon become Man #24, and, in his words, “I had a moment of inspiration, thought of you, and just said your name. He remembered you right away.

He proceeded to give me the man’s phone number.

My friend got back on the line, and excitedly said that when her husband returned home and mentioned Man #24 and I in the same sentence, she and her husband started fantasizing about what an amazing match up this could really be. Apparently, we are the two remaining single (or nearly single) people in their network of friends. She said that her husband had studied film and that he has always wanted to produce and direct a movie. She drew a picture for me of how they thought our relationship would unfold. It would be perfect. They speculated that our love story would be so inspiring it could be the subject of her husband’s future movie. It was obvious they were very excited about this.

Ok. Fine. I could use a little romantic comedy in my life.

I agreed to play along, and I told her I would call Man #24 within the next couple of days.

About that time, the Pacific Northwest got hit with four days of snow. On one night when it was particularly windy, I called Man #24. I reached him at his home and we had a really great conversation.

I was fairly certain this would be the case. I had seen and talked to him at a number of parties at my friends’ home. The last time I had seen him was probably in 2006 before I met STBex. We had talked for quite a while on the deck, and I remember having the thought when we parted that he seemed like someone I might want to get to know better. However, when I had looked for him later, he was already gone.

Near the end of our phone conversation, I commented that I needed to go because I had been making ox tail soup all day and it was time to make the dumplings.

He said, “You have power?”

“Yeah. You don’t?”

“No. I’m sitting here with a fire and candlelight.”

“Well, I may have power, but you have ambience,” I said.

We talked a little longer and ended the conversation by setting a time and place to meet for a date…

…and with that, I will leave you until next time with one final note.

After I hung up from talking to Man #24, the potential leading man in my friend’s movie, I called my friend and informed him that his movie would be starting with a cliché, not from a romantic comedy, however, but from a horror film.

“It was a dark and stormy night….”

Image here.