Plan B.

A happy November 18th to you all,

Sometime last week I came to the conclusion that I needed a hiatus from the merry-go-round of dates that I have been stuck on, strapped onto the stationary tiger, but still getting a little queasy and irritated by the tinny carnival song playing on loop. I am sure that you are all horrified to hear this, and wondering, “But Liz! Where now will I turn to get my fix of dating anecdotes that are so heavy on the mocking and devil-may-care attitude?” Fret not. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I realized at some point (possibly after, or more likely during, Wednesday night’s first) that I am in a place where I really should be spending more time working on myself, and figuring out how to find contentment in the every day rather than putting effort into getting to know someone new. This fact was illuminated on Friday afternoon when my second first of the week asked me what my hobbies were and I nearly had a breakdown struggling to identify what the hell I do in my non-work hours.

I have found myself spending the 2 – 4 hours that I am with a person on the first date smiling a lot and kind of just going through the motions, with indifference as to what the guy thinks of me, or if I’ll ever see him again. Having no investment in the future of an acquaintanceship and being unable to envision a future relationship with anyone is probably not the best angle to come at dating from. With this state of mind, I decided I would tie up lose ends, attempting to meet with the three guys from OkCupid with whom I had progressed to the texting phase to give them each a chance, then I’d deactivate my account for the umpteenth time. Dates one and two of the week played no part in derailing my plans to take a dating sabbatical. Both guys were nice, as 90% of guys I’ve OD’d (online dated) are, or as a 90% are at least capable of keeping their douchiness under wraps for a single night. Apparently, the OkCupid compatibility test that was designed by ‘Harvard math majors’ has pretty effectively red-flagged any users who are homophobic, misogynistic, hate the environment, or are otherwise closed-minded by ensuring that we don’t reach more than a 60 percent match. I have it from a source that one of these ‘Harvard math majors’ dated her friend. Aaaaand they met through J Date. Which system should one put more confidence in? That designed by a Harvard grad- whose education makes them a clear authority on all things in the world of the living- or that used by one? Maybe J Date is the next frontier. I give you permission to imagine a hilarious, madcap, yet somehow inoffensive storyline in which I infiltrate J Date by pretending to be Jewish, meet The One, but am then scorned by my true love for having disingenuously represented myself. Just like Mulan. Or Yentl. Or Tootsie?

SO- yes. Thing 1 and Thing 2 were nice guys. The first, a film score composer and Culver City resident, and I spent a good amount of time speaking about traveling, family, and languages. He was particularly interested in my time spent in Spain, since he was a bit of a Hispanophile and led us into a few bland conversations in Spanish. I met Thing 2 for coffee on Friday afternoon. Actually, for the sake of accuracy, I should admit that we both had cold teas, and for the sake of comedy that he felt the need to tell me that my iced green tea looked like one of the containers of piss that he so often saw as a third year med student. Hawt. He was a pretty funny guy, we were just on different conversation beats. There is, however, a chance that the dinner invitation he made for later this week might materialize into something. Later on Friday, as I got dinner with one of my roommates and a friend we realized that an ability to banter was one of the prime requisites for any future relationship. This, somehow, seems like a small step towards more effectively focusing my efforts on finding someone who can help me break my two month curse. The length of time my past ‘relationships’ have all fallen short of, if you weren’t sure.

Lord this is getting long. I hope I haven’t lost you just yet. So. Last night was my third first date in five days. Without spending too much time combing through the archive of dates past, I’m pretty sure that I’ve set my new PR. Plan B (the rational behind the name shall be revealed in due course, worry not) and I met at a super-dive-y bar that I had found through Yelp when attempting to chose a spot between Culver and West Lake, where he is staying with his cousin and her family since arriving from Chicago last week. Actually- we met outside the bar, and he promptly told me that he had tried to get in before I got there, but the bouncer doubted his Mississippi ID and refused him entrance. We both found this pretty funny, and deferred to Yelp yet again to find us an alternative. The closest option, and clear winner, was a locale called ‘Plan B’, which promised a lounge, champagne, ‘American’, and a name that was so fitting that we would have been thumbing our noses at the gods had we overlooked it. PB suggested that we walk to Plan B, having definitely underestimated the distance on google maps. I quickly agreed and we set off.

PB assuaged the embarrassment of my car collision with a tree last month by detailing his older sister’s five accidents that had all taken places within their family’s garage or with other family-owned cars. He talked about the eight years he had spent in Chicago for undergrad then law school, and shed some light on what growing up in Mississippi was like. We got within sight of Plan B, and even my untrained eye was pretty sure that we weren’t looking at a typical bar/lounge. Yes. Plan B was a strip club. We decided it wasn’t quite what we were looking for, and lamented not being able to meet Champagne, who was probably the lead dancer. I spotted an illuminated cactus sign down the street and knew we’d found our place. PB joked about his creepy intentions to lure me into a strip club as we made our way to a Mexican family restaurant. The banter level was pretty solid throughout the night, and PB proved to be a witty and positive person, but not as annoyingly positive as his enthusiastic texts had led me to worry he might be before meeting him. He’s pursuing intellectual property law in the music industry, which is probably the type of law that sounds the least appealing to me, but, to be fair, I also know near nothing about it. Despite the fact that we both saw 2 Chainz preform in August, PB is not the kindred music spirit who I am still searching for in L.A.

I said I should probably head out at 9:30, three and a half hours after we’d met, and we walked back to my car. PB went in for the kiss and it was a little more than I was feeling at the moment, but wasn’t bad. We have tentative Thursday night plans.