The Difference, Redux

So after my Friday the 13th romance revelation in Portland, I returned home with a renewed sense of purpose toward my dating exploits.

I dumped the, pardon the expression, fuck buddy after telling him that I sought something more meaningful. I made it clear that seeking that depth in a relationship didn't exclude him, but I knew that beneath his repeat trips to my place lay nothing more than an interest in a good lay. He is 21, after all. Wanting more from that situation is like wanting marriage equality from a Republican administration. Besides, if I knew he was coming over each week, how hard would I really look for something deeper?

That said, try to keep up with this account of my initial foray into the wilds of Seattle:

I met a guy in a bar while I was out enjoying a few drinks with my friends, Mark and Brian. I spoke to him. I expressed my interest in him. As he was leaving me with nothing, I became aware of another man in the bar staring at me. I ignored this. I can project, fairly accurately, what his thoughts might have been-but until he makes himself available, he's just another barfly.

Seriously...he's there with a pitcher of my favorite food every time I go to the Elite.

Soon enough, all of my friends fade into the night and I am nursing the last of my beer alone. The Barfly is staring at me again. No easy thing, considering I am directly behind him. He has turned himself completely around on his barstool to stare at me.

Feeling belligerent, I stare back. Holding his gaze with mine. I realize how much stronger I am than him, as his increasing discomfort is betrayed in his eyes.

Still, he won't let go. I am slightly impressed by this but suspect he has selected a spot slightly over my head to stare at, making it easier for him to rise to my challenge.

I release him with the raising of a single eyebrow-no small feat given the amount of botulism in my forehead. He turns around and nurses his loss in his pitcher.

Finishing my beer, I reflect on the evening and how quickly I retreated from my earlier assertiveness to my old habits by playing a mind game with the Barfly. He's someone that I have been warned to stay away from which should be reason enough for me to engage yet I confine my actions to games-which, not for nothing, I do win. Perhaps it was the knowledge that my friends found him to be an unsatisfactory person for me that kept me from exercising my new strategy of making myself available. Putting it out there, so to speak.

Yet I was the one who was in the hot seat. The object of affection. For the moment. Why must I make any move at all? If he had wanted me, he could have very well (perhaps) gotten off of his barstool and come over to speak with me, right?

Laying aside these distinctly un-heavy thoughts, I make my way to the bathroom before heading home.

He tracks me in the mirror the whole way. Pussy. But that pejorative may be a bit harsh depending on how long he has lived in Seattle. He simply may not know how to behave or express his interest in a functional capacity. It is a hazard of this environment.

Or probably he was drunk.

Berating myself in the restroom (internally, of course) for letting his bs put me off my commitment to myself to be more assertive in finding an acceptable dating situation, I made a point of stopping to speak with him on my way back from the bathroom.

"I couldn't help but notice you looking at me before." No wonder I'm single.

But what a wonderfully sublime statement. He was staring. And my return gaze was simply hostile.

Anyway, Barfly and I talk, he invites me to sit and I accept having found that I actually am enjoying the conversation.

After about 20 minutes, the first guy walks back in. Gay-ja vu!

He seems absorbed with his group of friends, so I just stay put and enjoy the conversation while the bar burns down around me. No, wait...that bright light wasn't fire, it was the lights coming on. Shit, I closed the worst bar in Seattle! Damn it, damn it, damn it!

Barfly is too drunk to drive, so I bring him home and let him sleep it off. He passes out immediately, which is nice. I stick to my own side of the bed and have a fitful night's rest. In the morning we snuggle a bit and then exchange numbers as we head out into the day.

Midway through the day, I get an email on my phone letting me know that a friend request on facebook.com has been approved.

WTF?

It might be sad that I don't recall making a friend request of anyone recently. Then it hits me. On a lark, I had made the request while I was talking with my friend, Brian, the night before and the guy he was chatting up had told him to hit him up on facebook. Knowing, ok-suspecting, he wouldn't, I did.

This had the added advantage of perhaps helping me find the original boy from the Elite the night before as he had come to my attention when his friend had struck up a conversation with Brian. God bless ulterior motives.

My life is like an episode of Soap. Remember that sitcom? If they made my life into a TV show, it would be, of course, a shitcom. But I ain't complaining! LOL.

So now I have options. Just by dropping a set and talking to people I find appealing. Even if it's only physical. I mean, that's generally where anything starts, right? Who ever says, "I met the ugliest guy last night!"?

I make a tentative date on facebook with the first guy. No name for now but I am sure one will come to me soon enough. He immediately starts texting me. Frequently. It's cute, but come on, we haven't even met yet. Officially.

Around 2:00 a.m. that next day, I get a few texts from Barfly. Closing time. How charming.

Barfly wants to come over. That's a negative. Some of us have to be awake in four hours, pal. I make plans with him the following evening. Feeling good about the sitch, good practice if nothing else.

A lot happens that next day.

The boy with no name continues to text me like a teenage girl on spring break and Barfly cancels our date for that evening, not feeling well.

I leave Barfly with the "Call me when you're feeling better" chestnut, expecting never to hear from him again and make a date with the boy with no name...let's actually call him the Mad Texter.

So, as it happens, I have no real time to commit to either of these guys in the upcoming week so it's good that Barfly has malaria and is out of the equation for the week. The Mad Texter, on the other hand...sooner for him is better. I have learned in the interim that he is 22. Nothing like instinct to guide your attractions. In my defense, he looks much older. Might just be the company he keeps.

Between working toward a VP visit at work-chaotic hours included-and the gym, I manage to carve out a couple of visits to my fave watering hole, Purr, to keep up with my friends and frenemies.

Both times, the Mad Texter just happens to be there.

Creepy. You'd think I would have noticed him before this if he's so frequently in the places I frequent.

I usually enjoy a few minutes chatting to this guy (sic, as he doesn't say much) but would like to see him when one or both of us is not buzzed, so I am looking forward to our dinner date later in the week.

The big day finally comes and I get a text as I am walking over asking if we are still on. This kind of ticks me off, but I confirm.

Long and short of it? Finally? My first thoughts when I see him are "Are you stoned?" and "Thanks for dressing up". He's in a baseball tee and jeans and has eyes like he just came out of a burning building. Maybe he was at the Elite when it burned down, too...

He says almost nothing during dinner. More awkward is the fact that he seems to have difficulty making eye contact.

I find myself hoping it's because he has had a change of heart upon seeing me while he is sober. After buying dinner for him, I am barely able to manage the offer of a ride home. Barely. So I am not surprised when I exit the car at my curb and have not been thanked for dinner.

Diane Fossey, could you please begin teaching your gorillas to use sign language to communicate again? It was so useful.

Before the elevator reaches my floor, I recieve a text saying "Thanks for dinner". He is, after all, The Mad Texter.

That point notwithstanding, I haven't had much to say to him recently. What, I need a long distant relationship with someone that lives in the same town as me?

But, at least I am out there. In person and off line, which is how god would have intended it if he had any designs on my social and romantic life, I'm sure.

Need

I think I was born to rail against the typical American lifestyle. Or at least it is a byproduct of my residency in the USA.

And I find myself a member of that lifestyle I so often complain about. That's part of what makes me special.

Mmm-hmm.

It crystallized in a thought I had this morning at Noah's Bagels on 23rd in Portland while I waited for a friend to finish a doctor's appointment.

(A couple of side-bars here: Twenty-third is referred to as trendy-third in Portland, which dovetails nicely on my thoughts for this blog. Secondly, while at Noah's I took a little inventory of what I have consumed on my vacation-the sheer amount of food I have eaten. Crazy. I think it really went off the charts when my friend, The Silver Fox, started his fasting three days prior to his colonoscopy today. I think I ate all his food rations, too. This thought also folded into my thoughts for this blog.)

I was there enjoying a salt bagel (the best!) and a couple cups of coffee while I waited for The Silver Fox to finish his anal probe when a lady walked in and ordered a dozen bagels. The shop manager addresses her from across the counter and offered to put together an assortment for her. Here's what happened:

"I'll pick them myself" No "no thanks"?
"Ok"
"I need two pumpernickel" Yes, I sent myself a text with her order so I would remember what she asked for. Me and my stellar memory.
"Ok"
"I need two plain"
"Ok"
"I need two salt" (the best!)
"Ok" This guy is way more patient than I am.
"I need two asiago"
"Ok"
"I need two pepper, how many is that?"
"That's 10"
"And I need two sun dried tomato"
"Ok. You get one more when you order a dozen. What kind would you like?"
Flustered, "You pick"

Really? Now, now...this is when you release your control issues and let someone else pick? She left the shop without as much as a "Thank you" for the guy who helped her. I think she confused the nature of the "order" she was giving. She obviously needed better service before she felt the need to grace a lowly service person with her good manners. I wondered where her and her clunky shoes worked. I wanted (it wasn't a need) to tell her that if she was gonna put on airs like that, she should put on better shoes. And probably use a better handbag while she's at it. But I didn't-see, there's my generous nature.

I was killing time there for an hour and a half at Noah's. It gave me time to notice how many people tell you what they need when they are really just expressing what they would like. Three people ordered dozens. One accepted the manager's offer to assemble and assort on their behalf. The other two needed specific bagels, apparently.

I wonder what would have happened if they would have reported to the office without the bagels they needed. Would there have been a termination? A corrective action? Hard to say, and honestly, I do not have a need to know. My brief observation of these two customers led me to the conclusion that neither of them was patient enough to take the order of one or two people, let alone a dozen. So where did this need for specific bagel flavors come from?

I think it was a need to be in control. But it did get me thinking about how we phrase things. We don't talk about things that we really do need like food, shelter, oxygen. The basics. We gloss over those things as part of our life experience. Things that are given to us because we, as Americans, are entitled to them and god help the poor bastard that tries to deny us those basics, our birth rights. It made me think hard about the last times I've casually overheard people discussing their needs.

What I recollected was a woman on the street telling her phone, "I need to get a massage". A woman at breakfast (post anal probe) saying to her boyfriend that she needed to go to Nordstrom". Funny, at breakfast at Fuller's (the best steak and egg breakfast in Portland) I fought back a need to ask the waitress if I could buy breakfast for the guy across from me. He had the specific look of homelessness without the addition of "crazy". I wanted to ask after I heard him ask the waitress how much an order of french toast was. After a pause, she offered that they had half-orders, which he requested with a cup of coffee. You may have noticed that I said, "I wanted" earlier, I didn't have a need to buy this guy's breakfast, but he looked like he needed the money he was spending on food. What I needed in this scenario was a way to ask the waitress if he needed help without damaging his dignity regardless of the answer.

Back to the point.

There was a guy at the gym telling his buddy that he needed to get a protein shake.

Sadly, that was the closest to a genuine need I could recall.

Well, there was a memory of someone saying, "I need to use the restroom" but other than that, I was drawing a blank. To be honest, I could have been remembering myself saying that and forgetting it was me, I tend to drink a lot of fluids and forget lots of details.

The conclusion-which I will no doubt hear from someone that this is more of an indictment than a conclusion-that I came to is that we have managed as a culture to elevate our wants to the level and urgency of needs. Frankly-and this is where I reclaim my perceived generosity of spirit-I don't blame the individuals. I blame the culture. Specifically, our media-centric culture.

For decades now we have been programmed, in an escalatingly aggressive fashion, to forget about the basics and focus on the brass ring type items that we see on tv or in movies. The designer shoes and clothes, the trendy eateries, the vacation hot spots, the cosmetic procedures. Over the course of time, this has eroded our sense of appreciation for what we have and shifted the focus to what it is that we don't have. What the Joneses have that we don't. What the next conquest or acquisition is. What we need.

Or, more appropriately, what we need to validate and/or distract ourselves.

I think that I will place a large portion of the blame for our increasing divorce rate and decreasing ability to maintain solid relationships on this same phenomenon.

I felt kind of crummy after all this. Slightly sickened for the realization. Maybe it was the second cup of coffee.

Not reaching out for any shred of humanity to hold onto for the sake of my precious ego, but still grateful for the unbidden memory, I thought of my aunt's way of expressing her gratitude for her good fortunes or simple pleasures. I was riding in the car with her once and she made a traffic light as it turned from red to green without having to stop or slow down. She exhaled, "Thank you, Jesus".

When I questioned her about it, she simply explained that there are so many things to be grateful for, small miracles, that go unacknowledged everyday that she feels selfish if she doesn't say "thank you" when she notices one. And my aunt has been known, as a rule, to put the "conspicuous" in "conspicuous consumer".

I thought about that practice, and decided I loved it. Putting my own spiritual rather than religious twist on it, I adopted it as my own and try to throw a "thank you" out there myself now and then. I actually said, "Thank you, Paula" to express my gratitude to her for sharing this with me and, therefore, allowing me to recall the moment when I needed to be reminded of the fact that there's plenty of good to witness out there in the world.

I just need to be open to seeing it.