Don’t waste time with it. Don’t make dates with me and then cancel them at the last minute as way of letting me down easy. There’s nothing easy about it, it just wastes my time.
So my mother set me up with really nice woman she works with (she’s my age, not my mother’s). First mistake: listening to anything my mother says. She said this was a really nice woman who was just very shy and wouldn’t I take her out? I said, sure, whatever, I’m shy too so why doesn’t a shy person do another shy person a favor.
Second mistake: liking someone I had originally taken out only as a favor to my mother. This woman, whom we’ll call “S” because it takes too long type Slow Inefficient Muthafucka, is pretty, intelligent, extremely soft-spoken, and from what I gather, a good administrator (don’t remember exactly what she does, but I don’t know what anybody does these days). Our first date, a few months ago, didn’t go very well; it was a movie to which I arrived only after the lights in the theater went down; I missed her until afterwards, out in the lobby. The second date was about two weeks later at an Indian restaurant. The third date never happened; got delayed about a hundred times and finally cancelled. She went out of town for a few weeks and told me that was why she hadn’t returned my calls for about a month.
Third mistake: noticing when someone doesn’t return your calls. If somebody doesn’t return your calls, you’re fucked. If they don’t make any excuses, you have no idea if they are even getting your messages, or they are getting senile prematurely. If they do make excuses, you can either believe them, which causes obvious problems if they are misleading you, or you can disbelieve their excuses, which to less trust and possibly to cutting them out of your life. If I took the latter course with everyone, I would have no friends. Thus you must immediately forget every phone call you ever make.
The third and a half date was made about 10 days ago, for today. Another restaurant. This morning S cancelled it by voicemail. S said she had to cancel our “appointment” to have dinner because she was seeing someone else, and I could call her if I had “any questions”. Fourth mistake: thinking that someone who
(a) your mother says is single,
(b) appears far too shy to ever make conversation with a man, much less date one,
© has no ring on her finger, and
(d) is willing to date your, or at least make dates with you
is single. No one is single. There is always a boyfriend in Philadelphia, or an ex-boyfriend in Philadelphia that she’s still visiting and staying with regularly, or some shit like that.
Anyway, I don’t really know what to do now (Fifth mistake: writing a post so ridiculously long no one has even made it to this point). I could,
(a) not call her back, and presumably never talk to her again until I run into her for a few nervous moments at the DMV,
(b) call her back and make pleasantries and tell her everything is just fine,
© call her back and tell her I am feeling ill-used at having been strung along by her for however many months (it seems like five or six),
(d) join an ashram (sp?),
(e) add a little bit of fresh basil to the clarified butter, which when mixed with the granulated garlic will make a mouth-watering sprinkle for the pasta, or
(f) sue my mother for malpractice.
(b) seems a little like poetic justice, misleading S right back about the way I feel; it wouldn’t serve any purpose. (a) is the most likely alternative, as it would get the whole thing theoretically over with most quickly; I’ll still be bitter about the whole thing for a while, though. © gets points for assertiveness, but most people would probably consider it rude (like most things, it would have been assertive to do if you don’t do it; if you do do it, then it’s creepy or sociopathic). (d) don’t you have to wake up pretty early in those places? (e) I don’t have any fresh basil. (f) I didn’t even sue her over the St. John’s Wort, fer cryin out loud.
