Humiliating Dating Moments Redux

OK, Gentle Readers, I've learned from the private feedback I've received (for some reason few people are leaving public comments but will contact me via email. Why is that?) that stories of degradation and humiliation are vastly more popular than stories of success. With this in mind, and to increase my readership, I will offer one more dating horror story.

E. was teaching a class in a humanities field for adults---the hopelessly over-educated, the pseudo-intellectual wannabees, and the professionals who wanted to get "culture". A doctoral student at one of Chicagoland's two top universities, she was slender with long brown hair and what observers of posture would call "superior carriage." She was well-groomed but she never wore makeup and dressed in the typical uniform of a female graduate student, which usually consists of jeans, turtlenecks/T-shirts and sandals-in-the-summer, boots-in-the-winter. She had, however, the most charming, captivatingly sincere smile I have ever seen, and 5 minutes into the first class flashed it on us. I turned to butter.

I have my faults, but shyness isn't usually one of them---I struck up a conversation before class with her one day, and it turned out we had gobs in common. She was also getting out of a long term relationship (seven years), loved the same books and movies I did, and had travelled through the same terrain. She told me that she used to watch Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev for the bell scene at the end whenever she really, really needed to cry but couldn't make the tears come. I suggested poetry as a shortcut. She flashed me the smile and I thought, damn, don't do that again, please.

We would chat a bit before class and I promised myself that after the last class, I would ask her out. Unfortunately, at the end of the last class, she was surrounded by congratulatory students and it would be impossible to get her alone. I decided to thank her for the class and email her the next day.

"E, this has been the best class I've taken....very intellectually challenging. You've been a great teacher, good luck on your doctorate."

"Thanks, David...good luck with your......situation too....you know, if there's ever a movie or concert you'd like to see, let me know.....I think...you'd be a cool person to catch a film or concert with....or something else..."

We made a date to see a Bresson film at the Music Box and I walked out of the classroom and floated all the way home.

As we took our seats at the Music Box, I asked if she had been close to marrying her significant other.

"To be honest, David, it was a woman."

She looked at the ground.

My heart sank for a moment. As my friends are aware, I'm not averse to dating bisexual women. Truthfully, judging from the popularity of lesbian pornography, and my own experience in what is know as locker-room talk, few men do. Still, 7 years with a woman. Long time.

I asked her if she also liked men.

"Oh, I like men. I've decided only to date men. They're much simpler, not as vicious and they always treat me better."

She flashed her smile again, this time with a vulnerable or slightly wounded look in her eyes and I felt myself melt.

On our second date, we were at my apartment drinking tea. She went to use my bathroom and when she came out I kissed her. When I kiss a woman for the first time, I am mentally prepared for two possibilities: she will kiss me back passionately or she will turn away. I am prepared for and can accept either one---better either to advance an incipient situation to the next level or to cut my losses with dignity. What I received was the strangest kiss I've had since I was in my early teens: she kissed me mechanically, drily, as if she were thinking: OK, he's kissing me, yes, this is what one does in dating situation with men, yes, he's kissing and I will kiss back, this is how it's done.....

We spent the next couple months going to concerts, movies and dinners. I sensed that she enjoyed my company and we had searching, heavy, wistfully beautiful-in-their-sad way conversations. But it didn't feel right. I had the feeling that she valued my company and was willing to tolerate low-level sexual contact as an accommodation to me. Her parents had never accepted her female lover---she felt estranged from them, and like most devotees of Foucault she avoided using terms like lesbian, bisexual or straight. You can, such people believe, fall in love with anyone. She had just happened to fall in love with a woman. It was her first and only love.

And all she had to do was smile at me.

Have you ever fallen in love with a smile?

She spent the holidays with her parent in Florida. She invited me to fly down for a weekend or somesuch, but I couldn't. We were not to that point of intimacy yet, and I told her so. I suspected that she wanted to show me off to her parents: a man in her life. I can be articulate and charming, but I wanted a deeper level of commitment before I did the meet-the-parents-bit.

She also took a job on the east coast which would start when she completed her doctorate, in about six months.

I received an email from her a week before her return: would I be interested in meeting her and going out to dinner and the Jazz Showcase? I emailed back: YES! Three days before her return, she emailed me that she had to meet her advisor and was behind on her dissertation. Could we postpone the meeting for three days? I emailed: yes. Let's get together Wednesday.

I decided to go to the Jazz Showcase that night with a friend of mine. Von Freeman was playing. I turned around just in time to see her walk in with another man. He went to find a seat while she scouted the surroundings. All at once she physically recoiled, as if bitten by a snake---she had seen me. She looked at me with her mouth open, and stood there. I stared at her for a moment, then turned back toward the stage.

I felt her hand on my back.

"How are you, David?"

Without turning around, I responed, "I wish this wouldn't have happened." I took a swig of my beer.

"It was a last minute thing..."

She stood for while, her hand on my back. Then she said, "I'll see you soon, David," and walked to her table.

That night I did the best acting job I have ever done in my life. I was alive in all my manic, antic story-telling, smiling guy-time b.s.ing glory. No one I hung out with that night had the slightest suspicion that I was dying inside.

I never called or contacted E. again. I would not have responed if she had contacted me. In the end, when everything else is lost, dignity is all that is left for a man. We can control what people perceive of our character. But it hurt me for the better part of a year.