You know what? We haven’t had story time in a while. So let me tell you a story. This tale takes us back to over a year ago when I was just starting to seriously want to date again. This story is about RetroBoy.
RetroBoy earned his name up front from the pictures he posted on Plenty of Fish. He was neither attractive nor unattractive, but he had a Hawaiian shirt, Buddy holly glasses, lava lamp in the background kind of retro thing going on. It was a little endearing. Enough, at least to make me answer him when he emailed me.
As emailing went on, I made a classic mistake. He was silly and made me laugh. He signed off his emails with funny little rhymes like “Toodles Noodles” that made me laugh. When he realized I was amused, he would come up with a new one every time. I started to get excited about going out with him. I was looking forward to a date.
We all know that never ends well, right? Finally we managed to schedule a time to meet. I continued to look forward to the date and to think positive things. He continued to say things like “Later Tater” and me me giggle. All was well. Until, of course, the date.
Reality is rarely as good as hope would like us to believe. From the moment I spotted Retro Boy, I knew we were in trouble. First of all, he was skinny. Not thin, but skinny. Truth be told, even thin is not my thing, but skinny is rarely anyone’s. And this guy was skinny. He was all legs and arms and overly large hands, but no real substance. And his hair was not the retro gelled look I thought from his picture. Instead it was rather thin and oddly fuzzy. Still, I smiled and went into the restaurant with him.
He was also very soft-spoken. I learned that next as I kept having to lean over the table to hear him. We were in a crowded restaurant and his voice did not carry over the noise, despite the fact he was sitting right across from me. Despite this, he seemed to find joy in the smallest things. Retro Boy was obviously a very positive and mostly happy person. It was refreshing, but not necessarily what I wanted to find next to me in bed, you know?
Unfortunately the remainder of the conversation did not work in his favor. Although he wouldn’t come out and say it directly, I learned that at 37, Retro Boy still lived with his mother. And it appeared to be due to the lack of money to live elsewhere. Oh yeah, this was just getting worse and worse. I obviously already knew that it was a first and last date with Retro Boy for me.
Still, the fact remains that this was an exceedingly nice man, and I didn’t want to be rude. So I made polite conversation, tried to pay for my dinner (which he didn’t let me do) and let him walk me to the car. When we got there I gave him a quick hug and headed off. Then I waited.
Because every One Date Wonder knows that what you do next is wait for the other person to show their hand. Especially in dating situations where you know you’re just not that into them, the next logical manuever is to wait for the other person to make a move. This is because the other person may also not be feeling it. The whole thing could conceivably die a natural death without the sort of painful gasping that having to explain you’re not interested may cause. So you wait. The other person may simply never contact you again, or may also express a disinterest. In those cases, you don’t need to take action or do anything painful. You can just accept their action and move on. Of course, sometimes they will express a continued interest, in which case you do indeed have to take action. Such was the case with Retro Boy.
A day or so later, I had an email from Retro Boy telling me it was the best date he’d been on in ages, he had a great time, and he wanted to do it again. I was out of town at the time, which he knew, so I had a small window to assemble some kind of reason why that wouldn’t happen. I thought and thought, but the bottom line is that despite my lack of interest, this was a genuinely good person and I didn’t want to hurt him. So I fed him some vague nonsense that did not specifically state that I would never be attracted to him. He said ok, and it was worth a try, and our email exchange ended. I promptly wrote off Retro Boy and went about my life.
Until six months later when I heard from him again. But that’s a story for tomorrow.
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