Critical Mess

So, went on a date with my PT on Saturday. Going into it I was freaking out. Like stomach hurting stress. I woke up early Saturday morning and had a half a pot of coffee, watched soccer and tidied up my apartment. I smoked a little bit as I still had no idea what we were going to do.

She texted around Noon and said she'd be ready about 1:00. That worked. I told her to just meet me at my place and we would cab down to an art & wine festival. I sent her directions and told her just to call me when she gets into the abandoned shopping center. I got the text saying that she thought she was in an abandoned shopping center and walked out to meet her. It looked kind of foggy in the parking lot which was weird since it was about 90 degrees out. I looked to the left and one of the buildings and an adjacent tree was on fire. This was probably a sign.

I called her and told her to park closer to the apartment complex and pointed out that I called her before I called 911. We walked back to my apartment and I threw on my shoes and stuff for the art & wine thing and called a cab. I'm thinking that she thought that I didn't have a car, but even a girl is not worth a second DUI for a .04 BAC.

We got to the festival and went to lunch at this ripshit Mexican place that has awesome margartitas and we each got one. Conversation went well as I nibbled at some nachos and she got a veggie quesadilla. Topics included NASCAR, TV (Lost, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, 90210) and music. She liked Jeff Buckley's album Grace which really worked in her favor. She's a Cubs fan because her dad is from Chicago and she likes olde-tymey pictures from magazine covers and the like. She wants to get a tattoo of a butterfly with her mom and her sister, but hasn't because it violates some rules of her mom's people. She would rather be evacuated from an embassy by boat rather than helicopter and her life plan includes never getting a phone that receives e-mail.

It turned out to be a two plus hour lunch and she started yawning. Yeah, could've been the margarita and the heat, but this was the second date and the second time she started yawning. So, I settled up the tab and we went and got her a coffee. Grabbed a cab back to my place in which I referred to the dangerous at night park as "The Stabby Park" to the cab driver. She was not a fan of that remark. This was quickly followed by a walk her out to her car, an awkward hug and what felt like a girl making an escape.

It's been pointed out that this is the first time in 34 years that I've tried a normal courting process wihtout booze, bars or any other extraneous environmental issues to work to my advantage and I will admit that I hate it. Eventually, however, I need to do this without crutches or shortcuts. Eventually, it will have to work. In the meantime, my question is "This is how you really do it? Seriously?"

Regardless, it was good practice and has forced some super self analysis post-game. She was my kryptonite. I totally faked like I was something else the whole time because I thought that I would like her when I got to know her. If you read that sentence again, you will read volumes into how I set myself up for failure.

My problem was nailed in one statement made by the sage wisdom that is Pappy sometime ago: "You are in a hopeless cycle. If a girl likes you, you don't trust her due to poor character judgement because you don't like yourself and if she doesn't like you, you hang around to figure out why because you can't stand the fact that someone doesn't like you."

It's true for now. Scary.