The Saddest Valentine

Don't worry. I am so rarely dating anyone on Valentine's Day that it's not really a holiday I dwell upon. I think there may have been a total of five V-Days upon which I was hooked up. I'm pretty sure at least two of them didn't believe in the holiday. At the time, I pretended not care about it either, but, here's a tip, men, women would have to be pretty impervious to the insidious nature of our culture not to care at all about Valentine's Day. If you're lucky enough to have a woman in your life today, be nice to her, even if she says she doesn't care about the Hallmark Holiday.

Anyway.

On one particular Valentine's Day, I was hooked up. I was dating a guy who was completely out of character for me. Some of you remember this time in my life. He was categorically good-looking, not cute-in-an-unconventional-way, like most of my dates. He also had muscles, which was weird for me, because they reminded me of nothing so much breasts. Curvy breasts, growing out of his arms. Breasts on his chest. Funny how the manliest man I ever dated always made me think of breasts when he took off his shirt.

The One With All the N's just got excited because she will use this as proof that I am a lesbian.

"Manly" and I met through the print-media personals ads. I was ahead of my time. Internet dating before we used the Internet to do it. He charmed me first with his voice on the telephone, deep and soft, like a plush carpet. He had a self-depreciating sense of humor, and a charming smile. Some things about him when we first met struck me as unusual especially since I'm such a pinko Commie liberal. He described himself as politically indifferent. He didn't even vote in every election. (What? They let you vote and you didn't line up to exercise your power? I don't understand.) He also served in the Army Reserves. Not a big deal, he said. Every month he would have one weekend when he would be unavailable for dates. That part actually sounded OK. I like my space. I just thought he would disapprove of my pacifist upbringing. And, let's be honest, I sort of wanted to convert him to the Way of Peace. I definitely wanted to make sure he voted in every election (even though it was likely that we wouldn't be voting for the same candidates).

Despite these differences we got along unusually well. Manly was very into nature, and he taught me the difference between white oaks and red ones. On one of our first dates, we sat on a blanket and watched a meteor shower overhead. He lived in a cabin on Medicine Lake and he would get up early in the morning to start my car when I had to drive back to Minneapolis for work. I secretly enjoyed being taken care of. Some feminist I turned out to be.

It all changed when, in January of 2003, after we'd been together for three months, he got word that his reserve unit was activated and called to serve in Iraq. The seriousness of the situation added some seriousness to our relationship that we wouldn't have given it otherwise. What was I going to do? Dump him because he was going to war? Unthinkable. Marry him before he left? Equally so. Instead, I just held onto him a little bit tighter, trying to enjoy the time before he left as much as I could. He told me that he put my name on a list. It was the list of people to call if something happened to him. It was at once flattering and horrifying. Of course, I belonged on the list, but there was no way I belonged on such a list. We only knew each other for three months, and my name was on the same list as the names of other men's wives and mothers. It was spelled wrong (Alia), but it was on the list.

The day he left was February 14, 2003. We got up early, in his little cabin, which was packed up and ready for him to leave. He put on his uniform, and I drove him to his base. We stopped to get gas, and he cursed that the guy behind the counter didn't volunteer to give him a discount for being in uniform, for leaving me for war. I didn't cry when he left my car. I didn't cry when I returned home. I composed a letter, in my little apartment, telling him that I loved him and telling him that I would wait for him. Such things probably shouldn't come up for the first time in a letter, but we had too little time in person to say them out loud.

That afternoon, I drove to Fort Snelling, where I was allowed to drive past the guards because my name was on that dreadful list. I boarded a coach bus full of wives and mothers and children and American flag t-shirts and red, white, and blue earrings. We drove to the hangar where our friends and boyfriends and husbands and fathers and wives and mothers waited for us in uniform. I was afraid. Afraid that I would be spotted as a fraud ("Where is your flag?"). Afraid that I wouldn't recognize him in his uniform when he was surrounded by other men in uniform. Afraid that he would not want me to hand him a letter that said "I love you", right before he went to war. Afraid that he wouldn't want to say it back.

The army gave me a red carnation. The army gave me a flower. I clutched it tightly as if it could help me recognize Manly in the sea of uniformity.

I did recognize him. Even though I had seen him hours before, I already missed him. I already felt like he was a stranger. He had to prompt me to hold his warm, dry hand in my clammy one, as we listened to speeches sending our lovers off to war. "Are we glad to be here?" said the chaplain. I half-expected a patriotic yes from the crowd. "No," whispered the pacifist. "No," came the thunderous response of the crowd of flag-waving family members.

I gave him the flower and the letter. We kissed, even though we both felt awkward doing it in public. He held the letter up, and then he was gone, and I was back on the bus full of quiet, grieving strangers.

I got home to a giant bouquet of flowers and a note, with the kind of things that it's better to say for the first time in person, but we never had time.

That day was sad. The next day I marched to protest the war with hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and I felt all alone, because I had been in a much different crowd the day before. The following day was my first day of student teaching. Those three days were almost the hardest of my life. So was every day after his unit left training and actually went to war, and I had to hear about dead soldiers on the news. The day the phone rang and it was for "Alia" was the most terrible day of all, even though the news that prompted the call was not tragic. I hear they come in person for the truly tragic news.

We survived the six months he was gone. We did not survive his return. In the end, we were too different, and the "I love you's" felt more real on paper.

In the context of all of that, it's so much easier to be alone on Valentine's Day. Don't you think?

Why Crushes are Better than Dates

Crushes never live with their baby's mama (even though they both date other people now). They don't have disturbing relationships with her that involve threatening to take the baby away or calling the cops on each other.

Crushes will be easy to talk to once you get over that stuttering. You'll have so much in common you won't be able to shut up.

Crushes will shave and wear a nice shirt for your date.

So, anyway, that's why my dating moratorium until August is still in effect. And P.S. I'm in the market for a new crush.

The Luxury of a Crush

Having met my last several dates online, and having jumped from one unsuccessful month-long relationship to another since March of 2006, I now find myself in a situation I haven't felt in years. I have a crush on someone I sort-of know.

In the online dating world, the transition from strangers to lovers is so brief (if it is going to happen at all, which it usually doesn't) that you scarcely have time for that stomach-churning internal dialogue. You know the one. It goes like this: "I like him. I want to talk to him. What can I say? Oh my god, did he just flirt with me? Now what can I say back that's witty enough that he might think I'm possibly interested, but not so blatant he thinks I'm a crazy psycho-stalker?" For me, because I'm such a socially awkward introvert, this internal dialogue sometimes seems so loud that I accompany it with a complete removal of eye-contact and banter with the object of my affections. If he were interested, surely, he would have noticed that I was completely ignoring him, and, therefore, going insane inside. Now why did he stop talking to me? Damn.

Anyway, back in college, I had such an abundance of these crushes, that I had to give them nicknames to keep them all straight. Bike boy, who had a bright yellow bike and deep dark eyes. The Package, who just seemed like all around perfection to me. Dirty Dancer because I once bumped and grinded with him to Madonna at a party (and then proceeded to avoid him like the plague ever after. Good technique. And we wonder why I'm still single.). Little did I know, at the time, that this plethora of options was temporary, that as I aged, there would be fewer and fewer opportunities for me to fantasize about conversations I'm too timid to actually have. So that now in my thirties, I can just call my crush just The Crush, because there is only one and the next one might be years away.

And he's probably married anyway - although I did boldly glance at his left hand the other day and found no ring. It took me three months of Saturdays to get that far. Maybe by summer I'll ask him about it.

Stories that Interrupt Themselves

You know how it is, when you meet someone you kind of like and you can't stop smiling, and if he likes you back, he smiles, too, and then it's an endless cycle of slightly goofy grins?

You know how it is when you're getting to know someone you kind of like, and both of your words tumble over each other in endless stories that interrupt themselves and swerve and veer and become new stories, until you've created whole volumes of things you know about each other, but you're never quite sure if you ever did finish that story from before - the one you started that reminded you of spiders, which of course meant you had to tell the story about the spider in the ear, because anything to do with spiders or ears elicits that story when you're in the right mood.

It's like porn. You can't quite define it, but you'll know it when you see it.

And then, like a hard cold lump of concrete that helps you weigh-down the abstract, you go on a date with someone who isn't like that, someone who doesn't smile at you, someone so reserved you can't sweet-talk him into a single story, someone who would stop talking all together if you so much as tried to interrupt him, even for the spider-in-the-ear story, which is delightful in its own creepy way. And then you remember. That's what it's like. It's like everything that this date isn't. That's when you can be secretly proud of yourself for not trying to make one of these somber, intelligent, but deathly dull dates work, even though you just were berating yourself for being too picky. You weren't too picky. You were just the right amount of picky. Wait for it. Please, just wait. It's worth it.

Jinxing It

So you get all dressed up, and you spend more time than you'd like to admit wondering if it's OK that there's a gap between the bottom edge of your skirt and the top of your very first pair of sexy-ish black boots (with sensible heels) and, if it is OK, should your tights be black or gray? You wear a little bit of make-up because you hear that that's what the real girls are doing these days, but then you get nervous in the car and probably chew it all off your lips, and you have dinner with a guy who looks a little bit like your older brother (who's a good-looking guy, but it's still distracting, because, ick, incest), and then you wind up having a Geek Off right there at the dinner table, and you talk about sci fi and perfect numbers, and you kind of wish you'd shut up, but even more, you kind of wish he'd like this about you, more than the chewed-off lipstick and the skirt, because who knows when you'll be wearing those things again, but the geek? That's forever, baby.

The Wounded

There was the one who couldn't even hold a pencil or type an email, because of Pain. There was the one who gambled away his house and had to move in with friends before running home to his family. There was the blind date who really was blind. There really was a crack addict, even though it seems like a lie. There was one who gave himself a vasectomy because of what a terrible parent he thought he would be. There was sort-of one who still woke up swearing over the woman who abandoned him years before. And the one who divorced his new wife for cheating on him.

I keep telling myself that I, in comparison, am pretty healthy and happy. I'm the one who has emerged from this battlefield relatively unscathed. I can barely even pick at any of my scabs anymore to remember what the pain felt like.

On the other hand, I seem to be the one encased in bubble wrap. I'm the one who doesn't feel any more. I can go from smitten to over-it in three short weeks. I have turned off my compassion to you for your depression/your gambling debts/your suicide attempts/your chronic pain/your inability to combat your own drunkenness/and your broken heart, because feeling it for each of you turned out to be too much for me.

And so, I say it again, because I keep forgetting: I'm opting out until I can feel my own self again. You can keep your wounds and your stinking pheromones. I'll be the one at the dog park with Buddy.

The New Going Steady

On the second date, he said, "Do you think we should change our status to 'Seeing Someone'?" This is the new "going steady" for Internet daters I guess, and it sounded exceeding dorky and flattering at the same time. My mom asked if it was like getting an ID bracelet and then instantly claimed that she never got to "go steady". Of course, as near as I can tell, her entire dating career involved getting engaged twice before she was 25, so how much more steady can you get, really?

On the same note, I kind of wish that I could date someone who was a little bit more aloof. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm great and gorgeous and all that, but he should be able to pretend that I'm no greater or more gorgeous than he is, so that I don't start wondering whether I can do better. We all saw Swingers. Whatever happened to waiting 48 hours before you call the beautiful babies?

I mean, it's still fun, but I'm just saying...

Smote

I met a guy. He has good pheromones. He likes me. I like him. I'm extremely tired from staying up late talking and stuff, so I don't feel capable of the words I need to describe what this feeling is like. It's been such a long time since I've been able to talk about a date without using every non-committal adjective I know. "It was fine." "He was nice." "We had an OK time." Now I need new words, like "smitten" and "giddy" and "don't tell my mother."

Virtual Crushes

So it happens when I'm Internet dating that I begin to receive emails from some dude somewhere who looks pretty good in his photos. He might even mention Jane Austen or costume dramas or Buffy or Say Anything in his emails. He spells tricky words like "it's" and "there" correctly. Maybe he'll say that being mathematical is hot. And, so, without meeting him, I develop a crush. I look forward to his emails. I imagine that we'll meet and immediately hit it off. I forget all of the other Internet men I've met before, and instead I imagine the happy times of actually being in a relationship with someone I respect and admire.

I don't really know how I do it, because when I'm not in that email-crush-stage of one of these things, I know intellectually just how deceptive it can be. I realize that the percent of the male population I can actually stand in real life is ridiculously small, and I know that the chances that one of them will like me back approaches zero. Yet, I hope when I get these promising emails. I get a little bit devastated when they don't write me back. I flirt ridiculously when they do, revealing way more about myself than I ever would if I weren't suffering from the effects of email-crush hormones.

Sometimes when we meet, the disappointment is so great that there is no hope of a second date. Sometimes it's there, but I ignore it so I can feel my initial high a little bit longer. And maybe someday, there won't be disappointment at all, and we can live happily ever after.

But I doubt it. I think the man for me is in the real world somewhere, and not hiding behind the Internet, which probably means I have to close this post now, and get myself out into the real world.

Marianne and Willoughby

I began flirting with Peter innocently enough. I knew he was engaged, and there’s a language barrier, so I didn’t really expect him to “get” me anyway, and mostly he was the only thing going on in town. Our group – as I’ve said – is too young, except for Mike, and he’s with Kate.

I didn’t expect to become addicted to Peter’s smiles of amusement I didn’t really think I’d catch him looking at me in quiet times, and I didn’t know how much it would affect me when he finally said my name. The problem is that his English is too good – it’s good enough for him to use it in jest – and I’ve discovered that his wit is quick, even in a second language. I feel like a Jane Austen character, only not one of the main ones who winds up happy and married, but one of the sisters who flirts unwisely and is just there as a foil to show how wise and virtuous the main one is…Marianne, perhaps, and Peter is my Willoughby.

It sounds light, and I’m sure in a week, it will be, but for now it feels heavy, because I spent all day yesterday deciding to pull away, and I slipped only in the end, when he asked me with the look of a question mark, what I was knitting, and I told him it was a blanket, and he looked at me in disbelief and said it looked like women’s underwear, and I smiled because I knew what he meant, and his face, which had been somber and tired all day, rearranged itself into dimples and wrinkles, and I wanted more, despite my decision of the day. Later, I looked up and he was taking my picture, so I hid my face, wondering as I did so, whether the fiancée sees his pictures and hates me as much as I would, and then I vowed for the hundredth time that day that I would stay away, wondering how much of Peter’s heavy looks were the result of a similar vow or – more likely – a hangover, and wishing perversely for the former, because if I’m going to forgo his smiles for his happiness, then at least I want him to miss me.