 | Time IndefiniteA repository and collective timeline of our individual significant moments in time. |
A First "Date"
Posted On Friday April 6, 2007 By Chuck
I’ve never really had much luck dating. After about 3 years of serious drought I decided to get my act in gear. I went on Match.com and just started contacting practically everyone on there. I think I emailed 50 women in total. And from there I went back and forth with about 20 and ended up going out with about 12. Each date was a mini-disaster. One girl showed up completely hung over for a brunch date. Another didn’t speak more than 5 words the entire night and never more than 2 in a row. Another was an ex-Marine (she told me she had been dishonorably discharged on some drug charges) and, I thought, she made an outstanding possible serial killer of the future.
I had basically given up on Match.com and felt like I had very little in the way of future prospects. I was just about to finish grad school and so my social world was rapidly shrinking. Then I started IMing with a former professor. She was in the middle of a long horrible divorce and I had always thought she was cute. Apparently she felt similarly about me because we chatted for many hours at a time.
I suggested that we go to a concert together. A favorite singer/songwriter of mine, Vic Chesnutt, was playing in Brooklyn. I made her a mix CD of what I thought were Vic’s greatest hits, and not so subtly included Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” as a bonus track. We decided to get dinner before the show, and went to The Sanctuary, a now gone favorite vegetarian spot of mine. I was pretty nervous all night long, but we both enjoyed ourselves. At the end of the night she asked me if that night had been a “date”. We hadn’t really spelled it out as such, and so it might have just been a friendly get together. When she asked I just panicked. I didn’t know what to say. I guess I was just overwhelmed. Fortunately my stop had come and I had to quickly exit the train.
We ended up having this really long drawn out courtship that is probably unusual in this day and age. Most people just hop into bed on the first night and try to make things work that way. We both liked each other and kept seeing each other regularly. I’m just very slow to act and think things over a million times in my head before I do anything. I don’t like making mistakes and I felt like I had been burned enough times in the past, falling in love, and then a week later having my heart ripped out. I wasn’t willing to have that happen again.
And now here we are 4 years later celebrating the anniversary of our first date. A lifetime has happened in between. She has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. We bought a place together last year. And even though we are both resistant to the idea of marriage we are now officially domestic partners. I will always look back on that first “date” and the time following it with the fondest of memories.
Tags: chesnutt, date, dating, first, hot-for-teacher, match.com, sanctuary
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It's Over
Posted On Monday April 2, 2007 By M
My ex-husband and I were together a total of 11 years and 11 months. We had been married for seven and a half of them. We had good times. We also had problems like everyone else. The photo above was taken of us at Disney World in a photo booth. I don’t know what happened to those masks.
In the fall of 2001 he left. It was a combination of things — a midlife crisis, depression, a drug problem, and a budding relationship with his assistant at work. For someone who prided himself on his individuality, both his reasons for leaving and his departure were remarkably cliched. He was one of those men who disappear. Guys who walk out the door that can never face you again, even though they live four blocks away. I never saw him again – except once on the street and once through a subway turnstile.
I was devastated when he left. Being handed a non-negotiable end to a relationship is never easy. Not being able to discuss it because the person makes themselves completely unavailable isn’t easy either. Compounding the difficulty was that the reasons he gave for leaving were none of the above. Rather, I got the old “I never loved you enough to do any of this” line instead. Having someone tell you that your whole life was a lie really messes with your head.
When he said it was over, I asked him how long it would take for him to collect his stuff and leave the house. I wasn’t going to subject myself to seeing him walk out the door, so I sat smoking in the schoolyard next door for 30 minutes.
I remember sitting there so clearly. It was one of those moments where I knew that life was never going to be the same again and all I kept thinking is “what am I going to do?”
But, the crazy thing is that in that moment of devastation, in my head there was a little voice that kept saying “yeah but… you got exactly what you wanted” and there was a teeny part of me that was relieved he was gone.
Tags: abandonment, adultery, disappearance, divorce
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