#9- The Blindest of Blind Dates

Since I started dating I’ve always sort of been a fan of blind dates. There’s something exhilarating about going on a date with someone that you really don’t know much about and whose physical appearance is a complete mystery. For some people blind dates can be the cause of great anxiety and fear and horror stories abound about blind dates that have gone terribly wrong. Even I have had my share of awkward blind dates. But for the most part, I like them. I like the nervousness and the first few questions that are asked. I like waiting for the person to arrive and trying to figure out which they are in a crowd. But mostly there’s a romantic anticipation that the person could be “the one”. Each time I go on a date (be it blind or not) I always think, “Maybe this will be the last first date I’ll ever go on in my life.” So far I haven’t been on my last first date, but there remains a youthful optimism with me that keeps me going out.

When I started my blog I put a little box in the corner that invited people to go on dates with me if they felt inclined. I honestly didn’t expect to get any responses but after a few weeks I had an abundance of guys asking me out. There were Harvard law grads, a Stanford med student, and even a guy from Ireland. I was overwhelmed that so many people wanted to take me out on a date. However, out of the 30 or so guys that had asked me out via the blog, only one of them lived in Portland. I wrote back to every guy and said that I would love to go on a date with them, if I ever happened to be in the same city as them. To my Portlander, however, I told him we should try to set up a time within a few weeks to meet. He agreed and we set a date to go to lunch the following week.

The night before the date #9 emailed me to confirm lunch the following day. In my reply I asked how I would know what he looked like when I got to the restaurant. All I knew about him was that he was a 24 year old PSU student who lived somewhere in Portland. He told me that he would be wearing a blue hat the next day and asked how he would recognize me. I directed him to my Facebook page and asked him to add me so that we could see one another’s pictures. He told me he didn’t have a Facebook. “What?! No Facebook?” I thought to myself. What kind of modern day college student didn’t have a Facebook. I immediately became more grateful that we were meeting in a public location. I began plotting an escape plan for the next day just in case he ended up being a 50 year old pervert who wanted to kidnap me and make me his next victim. What was I getting myself into? A blind date that is set up by one of your friends is one thing. A blind date without a single reference from a friend or at least a Facebook page to do some verification is a completely different story.

The next day I texted a few friends on my way to the lunch date and told them my plans for the date and instructed them that if they hadn’t heard from me within two hours to go onto MobileMe and use the “Find my iPhone” feature to locate my body. After spending twenty minutes finding parking in the Pearl district I exited my car and began walking towards the restaurant. I scanned the people streaming past me on their lunch breaks, looking for anyone wearing a blue hat. Unfortunately it was “Wear Your Blue Hat to Work Day” in the Pearl, as everyone seemed to be wearing a blue hat. There were navy blue fedoras, light blue North Carolina ball caps, and an overabundance of blue knit caps. I got closer to the restaurant that we had chosen and then I saw him standing outside the restaurant door, sitting on bench smoking a cigarette and scanning the crowd. My worst nightmare had become true. He was about 52 years old, dressed in pajama pants and a black pea coat, wearing a blue beanie on top of his balding head, at least 100 pounds overweight and carrying a tiny Chihuahua in his non-smoking arm. I took a deep breath and weighed my options. I could leave, go back to my car, and send him an email later in the day that said I had an emergency come up and then avoid rescheduling. Or I could go through with the date and have on of the most interesting blog entries to date since I started the experiment. My curiosity to hear this man’s story (especially why he told me he was 24 when he was clearly not in his twenties) outweighed my concern for the tiny dog accompanying us on the date. I turned back towards the restaurant and prepared to introduce myself to the man.

Right as I turned the corner onto the street I felt my phone vibrate and saw that I had received a text from the man. “Hey, I forgot to tell you I’m not wearing my blue hat today. I put my grey one on instead. See you in a few minutes!” My anxiety melted away as I realized that the Chihuahua toting man wasn’t my date at all! I began to walk towards the restaurant and after about 3 minutes he spotted me and called for me from across the street. He was indeed 24 years old, about 5’7”, normal weight, also wearing a pea coat but not pajama pants, a grey beanie, and cute little hipster black rimmed glasses. We headed to the restaurant and enjoyed a great lunch and conversation.

One of the reasons I wanted to go on a date with #9 was to understand what someone completely removed and unfamiliar with my personal life thought about the whole dating experiment and why he would even be interested in going on a date with me. I recently had met a guy (not on a date) who had compared my dating experiment to cheap art, frivolous and solely for the sake of the audience. I had been hurt by his comments and was reconsidering the whole dating experiment. Maybe I was doing all of this for attention? Was I hurting the feelings of my dates by going on 100 dates? Was I being insensitive? I ran all of these questions by date #9. I needed a third party opinion.

#9 said that the only problem he really saw with the experiment was the stigma associated with the word “date”.

“A “date” means that there are feelings attached to the occasion. Can there then be a second date if the two people liked one another? How is that possible if you are going on 100 dates this year?”

He suggested that maybe I change the title of the whole experiment to “100 Conversations with 100 Gay Men”. He explained, “The whole purpose of the experiment isn’t to find love, right? It’s to find out what you like and dislike about others. By attaching the word date to each of these conversations you immediately impose a different purpose to the meeting. However, if you say you’re just having a conversation with another gay man then you avoid any type of false expectations or hurt feelings.”

He had a point. The word “date” carried with it a lot of expectations and feelings, not only for the guys I was going on dates with but also for me. I had recently felt slighted when I found out that #7, a guy who I had definitely liked, had gotten back together with his ex-boyfriend, effectively making the possibility of a second date with me out of the question. My feelings had been hurt, not only because I thought he had liked me the same way as I liked him, but also because I had to find out about his reunion with his ex through a friend and not from him directly. It was both frustrating and sad to me.

But isn’t that the point of all of this? It’s not supposed to be clinical and scientific. It’s supposed to be about emotion and love and interaction. Whenever there are two humans involved there is going to be an inevitable risk of pain and loss, denial and sting. But the potential reward outweighs the risk to me. If I were to change the premise of the experiment from dates to conversations then I would end up with the characteristics I’m looking for in a friend, not a lover. And so, I’m pressing on with everything, resolved to be hurt 100 times or more if needed, so that I can find out what it is I’m looking for.