Get down girl, go head get down

I have failed miserably at pretending Gigi is with me on dates, forcing me to be agreeable and sweet. If I go on a date with a guy I’m actually friends with, I do all right (and I also don’t write about it afterwards). But when I go on internet dates, I am like a wrecking ball.

Consider Mitch. He asked me out over the interwebs. When I clicked on his profile, I was greeted by pictures of him hiking Kilimanjaro, Everest, and whatever that mountain in Antarctica is called. Also, his favorite hotspots are in other countries and his pictures included photos of his multiple houses. I hated him immediately.

“I’m sorry, I cannot go out with you,” I typed. “You are too old. And also kind of braggy.”

Unlike most men, however, Mitch responded with a good deal of graciousness, which put me in my place. After that, I really had no choice but to go out with him.

In my lengthy and illustrious dating career, I have found that I prefer to meet people at Starbucks. That way if it’s terrible, it’s like an hour out of your life and you’re done! Also, because there’s a Starbucks on every corner, it’s pretty easy to find one. 

Mitch asked me to meet him at the Ritz.

Upon walking in, I immediately felt like a pauper. I wondered if people could tell my dress cost $16. I sat down in the hotel lobby and started grading papers, flatly refusing to go into the lounge until Mitch showed up. I wondered if people were wondering what a schoolteacher was doing in the lobby of the Ritz. Then I wondered if people wondered if I was wondering what they were wondering about me.

When Mitch escorted me to a corner of the lounge, it was quite clear he was at ease in this environment. Unlike I, who, when threatened, swell up to twice my regular size. Since I felt enormously out of place and also like everyone was pegging me for a gold-digger, I’m afraid all my intentions of being sweet and agreeable flew straight out of my head. Fortunately, the man I was with didn’t really care.

“Why aren’t you married?” Mitch demanded.

Interesting. Someone who was as direct as I!

“I was going to be, but then my ex decided to start a commune in his apartment without talking to me,” I said, “So things didn’t work out. Now. What do you look for in the women you date?”

“They have to be Intelligent. Interesting. Hot. And we have to have Chemistry.”

“That’s dumb,” I said. “If you had great chemistry with someone who wasn’t hot, you wouldn’t date her?”

“No. No one would.”

“I would and have,” I said.

“Oh yeah? How’d that work out for you?”

DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“So,” I said, switching tacks, “You have a lot of money. What are you doing for the world?” 

Mitch missed maybe one beat and then said, “Well, recently I’ve been investigating where the best place to invest my resources might be.”

“OOOOOOooooooooo,” I smiled mockingly. “Big deal. You’re investigating it. What are you actually doing to get your hands dirty in the messiness of other peoples’ lives?”

“I really like you!” Mitch announced. “I want to see you again. What do you think?”

“Meh,” I said, "I don't know. Maybe. I'll think about it."

Back at school, people live vicariously through me because they are mostly all married. They began calling me Anastasia. Having not seen 50 Shades of Grey, I assumed they were nicknaming me for a Russian princess, although I could not imagine what that had to do with my dating life. They found this hilarious and decided to call me Romanov instead.

They suggested one of my co-workers ask me out.

"No way!" he said. "She goes out with guys who take her to the Ritz! You know what kinda' Ritz I'd give her? Crackers." 

Crackers are more my style. I can't handle the stress of being a gold-digger. It makes me want to go to the chiropractor. 

Spineless

Gigi lives in the flat above mine. We spent 3 years smiling awkwardly as we passed each other in the stairwell before finally becoming friends. She is much nicer than me. Gigi is the type of person men generally like because she is charming and sweet.

I, on the other hand, am a Snake Bomb or some other kind of Independence Day trick -- fun to stare at in wonderment for a minute, but then what? The reason for this is because I am very defensive. My usual ploy is to hold people at arm’s length with my wit. Then they eventually lose interest and I feel let down. My mentor always says, “Don’t make things so difficult! People just want to be with someone who is easy and fun. They don’t want to constantly be challenged on everything.”

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get the hang of being non-defensive and charming, like Gigi.

I went out with a chiropractor this weekend. The conversation went something like this:

Him: I’m a doctor of chiropractic. I just signed on with the Denver Broncos.

Me: Oh. So you’re like a witch doctor?

Him: Excuse me?

Me: Oh you know. Like, Oh hey, I’ll come see you and you’ll press on my bones magically and then BLAMO! My migraines are gone! Sounds like witchery to me.

Him: [Long, drawn out explanation of what chiropractic entails]

Me: How interesting. I’ve never gone to see a chiropractor. If my back hurts, I just find the biggest teacher at school and ask him to pick me up and shake me out. It works great.

As you can see, these conversations do not show me at my best. Actually, I’m not sure I have a best. I’m too prickly to do well in the dating world. The only other extreme I have is exhibiting disinterest and boredom. In that scenario, even my wit deserts me and I stare at my date and wonder what his head would look like on a dolphin’s body or something.

Between being boring and being feisty, I’m hard-pressed to say which is worse. My dad always tells me, “Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor.” He wants me to eschew sarcasm and be sweet and kind, I guess. He’s probably worried about me because I’m old now. He once warned me that if I didn’t get it together, I’d be left alone in life, an old maid by 26.

LOOK WHO’S LAUGHING NOW, POP!!! I’m an even older maid than you ever dreamed!!!!

Wait a minute.

The point to all this is that I need to be more like Gigi. When someone asks me to have dinner in the CWE, I need to not say things like, “I can’t. I’ll start cursing on the 20 minute walk from my car to the restaurant and then I’ll lose my car because I parked so far away and I’ll end up wandering around forever and hating you because you are the reason I lost my car.”

I need to learn to smile sweetly, bat my eyelashes and say, “Whah yeeees! Ah would luhv to have dinnah with you!” (bat, bat, bat). That’s what Gigi would do. She would throw some dimples in there, too, for good measure. Then she would come home and yell to me about everything that’s wrong with the guy.

I hate letting down my defenses like that, though. Even the thought of it is very unsettling. My friend J-Mo says I have a marshmallow center, but I suppose I’d rather have the feisty, prickly part of me rejected than the soft, squishy inside.

That, and when it comes to following the path of least resistance, I prefer amusing myself over catering to the expectations of what I should be and do and say. I know Midwestern girls are supposed to be demure and beautiful and modest and acquiescing. I just can’t seem to force myself. It kicks against the goads!

I’ve decided there must be a balance. From now on, when I’m on dates, I’m going to pretend Gigi is sitting next to me telling me nice and adoring things to say, such as, “Wow, the Denver Broncos! You must be so talented at pressing people’s spines!”

I’ll say those things until I start seeing dolphin-heads. After that point, it's every man for himself. I can only bend so far.

Cookie Cutter

Lately I've come to the understanding that I don't fit.

When I went to New York last week, I was prepared to feel a bit wistful. What I wasn't prepared for was to feel so free and peaceful. It was like suddenly 12 layers of clothing that I didn't even know I was wearing were stripped away and I could breathe. There wasn't anyone expecting me to be a dutiful, conservative Midwestern girl. No one was expecting me to be anything, and I found that it was much easier to be myself.

"Myself" has been in short supply lately. I feel so much pressure to fit into this lifestyle that I've adopted by default. Girls in the Midwest go to Truman, where they teach each other to knit and make casseroles. They graduate college, get married around 24, and by 35 have three half-grown children. I envy them, partly.

I don't fit that mold. But more than that, I don't fit the mold that cries in prayer meetings and loves nights of worship. In fact, I hate singing songs at church. And recently, I've started hating church. I love the people there, of course. But I hate listening to the same messages and then getting the same call to communion and the same benediction.

Recently, I met with someone on staff at church. This person said, "You're doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. So why not quit? God will still love you if you don't go to church and don't read your Bible and don't do all the things you're doing in a desperate attempt to find Him. He can find you no matter where you are."

And so I went to New York, and I felt, for the first time in a long time, that maybe there is a God. Away from the constant pressure to be a dutiful daughter and sister and Christian, I felt that maybe it was possible for me to be any or all of those things, if I wanted to.

I don't think I fit the Midwest anymore, if I ever did. Being here suffocates me.