After my crash and burn Saturday, I had a guy take me to brunch Sunday. It was another one of those online dating site guys but I had just fallen off the horse and although I didn’t really want to get back on, I felt like maybe I hadn’t given him a fair shake. So I told him I had a couple hours to kill and we could hang out. Weekend brunch is my favorite. It’s a place people can agree. Do you want breakfast? Do you want lunch? Something in the middle perhaps? Anything is possible with brunch. So I thought it would be impossible for him to ruin for me. But I’m on a roll of being wrong just like I was wrong Saturday, I was also wrong Sunday. And then today I sat with a friend telling about all my woes and I had an epiphany of sorts.
First, the brunch. I won’t even call it a date because it definitely fell short. He picked me up. Asked me where I would like to go and I said The Tomato Head because any time I get to pick, that’s my go to spot. There was not much conversation on the way there because he had his music up too loud for me to talk over it and he was not trying to start a conversation so I just sat there quietly listening to his old school R&B. Not that I mind that kind of music, but I’d rather it be playing softly in the background and not having to shout over it. Anyway, we get there around noon. They are still serving brunch. I’m pretty much a creature of habit especially there. Especially on the weekends. I have a few things that I prefer to eat that they only serve on the weekend. I picked the eggrolls. They are this little pizza ball of happiness, but instead of classic pizza ingredients, it is basically a pizza dough hiding eggs and cheese and sausage or bacon or in my case soysage (vegetarian sausage) baked until golden brown and served with spicy ketchup. Like I said, it’s a little ball of happiness. You put it in your mouth and your life changes for the better just a bit. I ordered those and superdate ordered from the create your own breakfast- eggs and roasted potatoes. I’m not saying he’s boring but if you would have seen the brunch menu… They have breakfast burritos, a plethora of delicious sandwiches that include egg and avocado or anything else if that’s not your thing, and there’s the eggrolls, and waffles, not to mention the full regular menu and he picks scrambled eggs and roasted potatoes, but it’s whatever. I’m not here to judge even though I am kind of judging him at that moment. We ended up sitting outside because there was quite a long wait for an inside table and he seemed irritated with the wait time already. It was kind of windy and kind of cool. There was also a marathon happening and people were running by and there was a guy with a guitar playing cover songs from all the best classics. I thought it was the perfect atmosphere, superdate did not seem amused. I kept trying to make small talk. And I will admit, I’m not very good at small talk. I want long talk. I want deep talk. I want substance talk, but he was not making any talk so I figured small talk was better than no talk.
Our food came out and not a second too soon. He looks at my eggrolls and snarls his nose a bit and asks what they are. I tell him “they are balls of happiness.” Then he asks what’s in them. And I tell him “soysage, egg, and cheese. Here have one.” With his nose still turned up he says very arrogantly, “I don’t eat pork.” In the midst of our pre-brunch conversations, I’m pretty sure I told him that I was a vegetarian. I’m pretty good at not leaving that one very important detail out in this bacon eating world. But instead of “no shit, Sherlock,” I just said, “there’s no pork in it. There’s no meat in it at all. Try one.” But he said no again and I wasn’t going to force happiness on him. I mean, if you want to be a miserable douchenugget, that’s your choice. I’m not here to change you, but that eggroll would have changed you for the better. Normally, I wouldn’t force food on anyone, but they give you one too many. Unless you are super hungry, five is plenty. It comes with six. It’s meant to be a sharing food. It’s actually an appetizer. If my server can eat one whenever I go in by myself and order them, why can’t the guy who is trying to woo me eat one if it would make me happy? So I say, “It’s fine. If you don’t want to eat a magic eggroll and experience that happiness in your mouth, that’s your prerogative.” And as I’m going to take my first bite, he decides he will try it. No. Too late. And I ate all five of them and forced the 6th one down on principal alone. There was pretty much zero conversation. At one point he was singing along with the guy on stage with the guitar, which would have been fine if I was not trying to talk to him at the time and then when the guy on stage started singing one of my favorite songs, Jimmy Buffet’s A Pirate Looks at Forty, he wants to show me a video of him and his band. I should have, at that point, ignored him and belted out my worst karaoke, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m a fucking lady. So I watched his stupid video because it wasn’t stupid to him and in his own little way I think that’s how he usually gets women, but I’m not into superstars (Kymani Marley and Ben Affleck excluded). I like real people. We finished our food and our meager conversation and he took me home. He does get points for getting out and opening my door though, but he only did that because the interior handle was broken and he had to. There will be no second date.
My Epiphanies during this little two week online dating fiasco:
If you aren’t ready for a relationship or don’t have actual time for one, don’t get in one. You can’t work from 4 am to 9pm and think you have time for love. You don’t even have enough time to get into bed for 8 hours.
Find out who you are and what you actually want before jumping into something.
Pretend to have fun on dates 1-3 even if you aren’t that’s how you get to date 2-4. This goes both ways. Ladies, don’t be a complainer. Gentlemen, don’t be nose snarlers.
Learn how to have a decent conversation. I think you can YouTube this?
When someone wants to share their food with you, accept it, they are sharing a valuable piece of information with you that they don’t have to. They are showing you what they like and they want you to experience it with them.
Open her door. Ladies, if he opens your door for you, reach over and return the favor.
Winning Epiphany of the Day:
Maybe I expect too much because I had a therapist once tell me that the one common denominator all my failed relationships had was definitely me. And I couldn’t get mad because he was right. But that was a long time ago. I’ve narrowed my list down substantially. Now all I want is someone whose kids are not younger than my youngest, someone who doesn’t snore, someone who isn’t an alcoholic, someone who works hard (bonus points for loving what they do), someone who typically wakes up on the right side of the bed. I mean we all have bad days, but I want a person to be happy with, not one that needs me around to cheer them up all the time and preferably someone with beautiful teeth because I plan on keeping him in smiles, but most importantly, I just want someone to eat my 6th eggroll. Is that too much to ask?
RouletteWeekend 