It Was Raining Men (Hallelujah!)

I’m excited about all the recent comments on my blog, especially from Scot McKay, who wrote the article that I referenced in my March 28th post about meeting people in the supermarket (his web site is http://www.deservewhatyouwant.com/), and from Tournesol. Thanks very much, and keep those comments coming!

I was recently reflecting on the fact that if anyone had told me as recently as seven years ago that one day I would have enough material to fill more than, say, a day’s worth of a dating blog, I would have said, “THERE’S NO WAY!” Well, actually, I first would’ve said, “What’s a blog?” But then I would’ve tried to imagine being The Dating Guru, and I simply would not have been able to. A friend talked to the other week said she admired my dating persistence. “If I hadn’t gotten married, I’d probably be a recluse or something,” she mused. “I must’ve been 20 before I ever went on a date – I never even had one in high school.”

The thing is – me, neither! With a few rare exceptions, nobody paid any attention to me until 2002, when I was nearly 30. I had a few great female friends in middle and high school who I’m still friends with to this day, but no male was ever remotely interested in me. Boys had made brutal fun of me in middle school, so I was extremely shy and nervous around them. I didn’t even have any male friends in high school, really – the few guys I still keep in touch with from high school, I got to know much better after we’d all graduated. I did not go to my senior prom because I didn’t have a date, and I was too humiliated to go by myself – I didn’t have so much as an ounce of the self-confidence necessary to pull THAT off. Instead, I stayed home and wrote letters to my pen-pals. Seriously.

I’d hoped everything would be different once I went away to college. But my first roommate stopped speaking to me, for no apparent reason, on the third day of school, and by the time they had another free room to move me to, nearly a month had passed. My new roommates/suitemates were a lot nicer, but they already had their set group -- I was still too shy and never quite fit in with them. By the end of the year, a couple of them were dating a couple of the guys from our dorm. But the only time any guys from our dorm talked to me was when they wanted to type their papers on my computer (a cutting-edge Macintosh II, if memory serves, thanks to Mom and Dad’s Christmas generosity).

I transferred to a college in NJ my sophomore year, but since I was still too shy and lived at home rather than in the dorm, I didn’t make one friend, let alone a boyfriend. For my junior and senior years, however, I transferred to lovely Alfred University in upstate NY, where I finally met my first boyfriend – on the computer. Yep. I was ahead of my time. We didn’t have the internet as we know it today, but we did have the VAX, a campus intranet system where you could see who was online typing a paper or e-mailing, and you could put a quote or something by your username. My memory of how it all worked is foggy, but somehow a guy I’ll call the First College Guy and I started e-mailing. Either I commented on his quote or vice versa, I can’t remember how it began. One thing led to another, we decided to meet in person, and almost immediately became a couple. He was in R.O.T.C., a Republican from rural NY State who had a huge American flag pinned to his dorm room wall. Yet after two months, HE had to break up with ME! I was so excited to finally have a boyfriend, I was blind to the fact that it never would’ve worked out between us. Thank goodness he wasn’t!

It wasn’t long before Last College Guy asked me out. This was a step up because we didn’t meet on the computer – we were in the university’s choir together. After we’d talked a few times, he looked up my number in the campus directory and called me. That had never, ever happened to me before, so I was quite flattered. We dated on and off for months, but I never called him my boyfriend because by then I knew we didn’t have enough in common to make it work. It ended for good soon after graduation.

Last College Guy gave me hope, however. After he asked me out, I thought, Oh, is this how it works? Has the spell been broken, and guys will just ask me out regularly, guys who keep improving and improving, until finally the perfect one will just appear?

Well…no. Not so much.

Over the seven years after I graduated from college, I moved back home for a year and worked as a teacher’s aide; moved to South Texas and taught middle school for two years; moved to Austin for a year to get a master’s in education; moved back home for a year, teaching and then working for a publishing company; moved to Boston for a year to get a master’s in creative writing; and moved to NYC at the age of 28. As you can see, I was not a recluse in any way, shape or form. Yet in those seven years in my early- to mid-twenties, when I was young, vibrant and single – NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO ME! Oh, there were the two “old-bachelor” teachers who asked me out, one nearly 20 years older and the other 11 years older than I was. But that was basically it, and only one of them led to so much as a date!

Then 2002 happened. Chinese tradition called it the Year of the Horse, but for me it was, without question, The Year of the Men. Suddenly, and without warning, they were everywhere! Last College Guy called my old phone number at my dad’s, completely out of the blue, just to say hello. He was married by then, and he asked my status.

“Single,” I said.

“But surely you’ve had relationships since college?” he asked.

“Not really,” I admitted, embarrassed. What was wrong with me?

I needn’t have worried, because Last College Guy was just the tip of the man-iceberg that year. A single guy I’d been pen pals with for years also called my old number at my dad’s to get back in touch with me. Since a good friend from college and I were both unemployed, we had time to work on our social lives, so we went out to parties and clubs a few nights a week, where, to my amazement, guys actually talked to me and asked me out. I dipped my toe into the water of the internet dating sites and met a few guys that way. I started attending St. Bart’s Church and met Hyper Boy (see my March 10th post). One night in particular, a bunch of us from church went out to a bar after our class. We were all laughing and talking, Hyper Boy couldn’t keep his eyes off me, and I suddenly flashed back to a church I had attended in Austin five years earlier. I’d had a crush on one of the guys in the young adult group there and had even e-mailed back and forth with him a few times, trying to show I was interested. A few months later, at the church Christmas party, he arrived – holding hands with another woman from the group. It was all I could do to keep from screaming. What is wrong with me, I wondered in despair – why am I never the one who gets the guy??

In 2002, I was. And I was pretty darn happy about it.

But why then? It’s not like I had suddenly lost a lot of weight or did anything else to radically alter my physical appearance. And I know I looked older in 2002 than I had in, say, 1995. I think part of it was that since I didn’t have a job, and I had a friend to go out with, I finally had both the time and the bravery to put myself out there and go to bars and clubs. Part of it was also joining a church I liked and felt very comfortable with. The small amount of internet dating I did at that time was a good way for me to ease into dating, since I’ve always gravitated toward connecting with people through writing. And guys in their late 20s/early 30s are probably more mature (or less picky!) than they are in their teens and early 20s. It’s not like every guy I liked that year suddenly asked me out. But I got enough positive attention to feel more confident, and the more confident you feel, the more people you attract, or so they say.

Some of it, though, like my old pen pal and Last College Guy coming out of the woodwork within weeks of each other, is just inexplicable.

It is interesting to think about how life would have been different if the internet had been invented and in wide use ten years earlier, or when I was a teenager. Would I have tried on-line dating sooner, and therefore become more social and more confident earlier? Or would it have made me even more shy and reclusive, because I wouldn’t have had to come out of my shell to talk to people in person? I probably still wouldn’t have had a date for the prom -- I would’ve just e-mailed my e-Pals instead of writing snail mail to my pen-pals. ;O So maybe it’s all working out for the best. I can take my time. It’s not like I want biological kids, anyway, so I have the huge advantage of not having the proverbial ticking biological clock. Well, I have one, I suppose -- I just don’t listen to it. :) Incidentally, last year I made an off-hand comment in a group of people about how I’ll probably adopt a 10-year-old when I’m 40, and one of my acquaintances looked at me in astonishment and exclaimed, “You’re not 40 yet!?” (Uh, no, still five years away, but thanks for that.)

Anyway, for all of you out there going through a dry spell, take heart. Your time is coming. Believe me: if I can have a Year of the Men, ANYONE can.