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About ten days ago, I answered a somewhat strange ad on Craigslist, in women-for-men – strange in the sense that it didn't include the usual romance cliches. In any case, she was intrigued by my reply. We corresponded quite a lot. The conversations never showed clear signs whether we were going to be sex-friends, a relationship couple, or just friends. Yesterday, I finally made a concrete proposal to meet. Neither of us had felt ready to give out phone numbers, so all the discussion of meeting went through e-mail. It took about 30 e-mails to figure out where to meet. An additional complication was that she doesn't have a car, but didn't want to meet too close to where she lives. It had to be a safe public location within walking distance. She was hesitant about setting expectations too high, and I said that it was fine for it to be a friends-lunch, not a date. She remained somewhat hesitant, doubting her ability to think of it as a friends-lunch even if that was the understood plan. But she was still interested in meeting. In a strange detail that came from our odd conversations, we had decided that we were going to meet with nothing more than fairly fuzzy descriptions, and no pictures. To recognize each other, we described what we'd wear, and be sure to wear something distinctive enough that we wouldn't approach someone by mistake. The point was so that we'd each get a chance to see the other's reaction to first sight in person. Anyway, we agreed to meet at a book store. She got there first, and I wandered through about three-fourths of the place before I spotted her. The idea of seeing first-sight reactions didn't turn out as amusing as expected. The reactions were more along the lines of, "that's you, right?" than "wow, you're hot" or "I thought you said you were attractive." In any case, I thought she was reasonably attractive, which is roughly how she had described herself. My main surprise was her ethnic background, which I hadn't guessed from her description. We went to my car from the store, and she looked at me and concluded that she just didn't feel a relationship spark. She apologized for the time I had wasted driving all the way to meet her, but said there just wasn't much point in continuing the date if it wasn't going to go anywhere. I also didn't feel the spark. She was attractive enough, but something wasn't there. So she saved me the trouble of deciding to say something like that by saying it first. However, I didn't want to just call it quits right then. One thing that seemed pretty clear from our e-mail conversations was that we were at least good friend material. I countered with the point that a friends-lunch was the plan all along, and that we were both really hungry, so we might as well have the friends-lunch. She agreed, so we looked over a restaurant list I had printed before I left home. She was very indecisive, so I hinted at a favorite, which she decided was satisfactory. We drove to the place, which was – as promised by reviews – in a faceless strip mall near a grocery store. Inside, it looked really nice, and the hostess was very friendly and showed us to a table. Looking over the menu, I found something that looked good pretty quickly. She saw something tempting right away, but was indecisive again about whether to go for that or consider everything else on the menu. Eventually she went along with her first thought. We also added an appetizer. The conversation was great. It was almost completely different from our e-mail conversations. In e-mail, we had mostly teased each other with hints of secrets to be revealed, guessing games (like the vague-description-only first meeting), and more. In person, we were full of revelations and straight answers to deep questions. The food was really good too – as promised by reviews, it was great food in a surprising setting. It was slightly more expensive than typical for that type of place. She felt bad about that, because her share of the bill would be hard on her budget. I had said in conversation that I was doing just fine, and reminded her of it, offering to cover the full bill, without any implication that it was suddenly something other than a friends-lunch. Anyway, the lunch and conversation ran close to three hours. The only real dead spot in the conversation was when I stumbled through telling her something embarrassing – which she accepted far more graciously than I would have expected when I finally said it. After lunch, we stopped into the grocery store. Without a car, it was convenient for her to get a chance, and I needed a few things too. While we were wandering around, she commented further on my embarrassing statement, in a very complimentary way that really surprised me. She remained hesitant to reveal where she lived, and suggested returning to the book store. She had said how far it was from where she lived, and I suggested that it might be better to let her out at some place close enough to be a quicker walk, but far enough to protect her privacy. She agreed, particularly since she had groceries to carry. On the way out of the parking lot, I asked a question about something she had mentioned in e-mail. She had said that she told friends about her plan to meet me. I asked whether that was out of the excitement of meeting, or so her friends would know where to start the search if she disappeared. She laughed quite a lot at that. I had made claims of a clever sense of humor in e-mail, but our conversation had been mostly serious, so she hadn't encountered much funny with me. But my dumb little joke really worked. It must have been in the delivery, because it doesn't seem funny the way I'm telling about it now. In any case, she had just told them about the meeting as something that slipped out in conversation, rather than a thought-out plan. Once it slipped out, she told them more. She did agree with the gist of my joke, however, in saying that it was a good idea for someone to know where she would be. We continued talking on the drive back to her general area, and pulled onto a side street to wind down the conversation. We discussed whether to meet again or be strictly e-mail friends, without a definitive answer. We said goodbye with a handshake. It was a fantastic friend-lunch. In a bit of epilogue, I was only barely on the road when I realized that I couldn't remember having paid a tip. I detoured back to the restaurant, went inside, saw the very nice waitress, and asked whether I had remembered. She said I had, and seemed grateful that I had thought to ask well after leaving. I was relieved. The drive home was pleasant. I was in a good mood, and didn't feel the traffic. Post a comment in response: |
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