Travelin' Light

Who the hell do you think I am?

Saturday night found me on a third date with a very handsome man whose company I find thoroughly enjoyable. So why, one might ask, did Sunday morning have me thinking that I hated dating, and never wanted to do it ever again? The reason is this: Dating makes me feel like a bull with its head down, snorting at the earth and tossing its horns about. I have no grace. I have no finesse. I am brutish; I trample the flowers and butt people with my hard, hard head. “Everyone hates dating,” my best friend assures me. But it’s hard for me to reconcile the reality of the single life with the cocktail-party-filled-with-bachelor-babes that I imagined when I wasn’t single. In truth, it’s more like going to a cocktail party where bachelor babes are rumored to be invited guests, but, upon arrival, discovering a nightmarish keg party with people fist fighting and throwing up on the lawn. Then realizing that you’re only wearing your bathrobe and a pair of swim fins. And the keg is tapped.

Since I’ve been single, I have blamed my seemingly rotten luck with dating on the guys I have dated. My tendency to hold potential suitors to a set of exacting and unrealistic standards while placing no such demands on myself is an old habit I am trying hard to break. Saturday night I turned the tables on myself in a way. Although my date was a perfect gentleman, the following morning’s frank post-date analysis with my two best friends revealed that elements of my behavior the prior evening qualified as both “douche-y” and “ghetto”. During the date I never once felt like I was being “ghetto” but in retrospect, I see that my manners could have been vastly improved. They say what goes around comes around, so if this guy never calls me again, it will just be payback for all the times I’ve quit calling perfectly nice people because they didn’t hold the door for me, or left the waiter a bad tip, or had a loose thread hanging from their collar.

The real problem is that you can never really know how you are perceived by others, and even if you could, there isn’t much you could do about it anyway. It’s a conundrum that usually just makes me say, To hell with it then- might as well be myself. But sometimes, usually in a dating situation, I find myself wondering and worrying over the mysterious version of myself that they see, the woman they think I am. I want to compose her, to make her my marionette. If I get dressed up and go to a nice restaurant, I can remember to put my napkin in my lap and avoid speaking with food in my mouth. I assume this leads other people to perceive me as well-mannered. But who is to say? Though it has been suggested that I do not pretend well, my friends’ honesty on Sunday morning was like cold water being tossed into my face. Of course it’s entirely possible that my date did not find me to be douche-y or ghetto, but chatty and pretentious instead. Or maybe he liked me.

As a kind of experiment I asked a couple of my friends to compile a list of adjectives that described me (yes, this is the kind of absurd activity my dear friends perform on my behalf). I told them to choose the first words that came to them, and not to censor themselves- I would put aside hard feelings in the interest of science. The list was interesting- some of the adjectives seemed to contradict one another; all of them were true. Not especially surprising was their omission of the following words: elegant, eloquent, charming, refined, graceful, articulate. But “douche-y” and “ghetto” didn’t make the list either.

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Comments

Claudio Santambrogiocsant Tuesday, October 17, 2006 6:44:37 AM

Did you ever try to describe *yourself* in six adjectives? Six, not one more, nor less. Only six.

Of course your friends' adjectives were right - each one describes you as you are "in their lives": I really think that beside the "real" life you live for yourself (or *with* yourself), each one of us has several lives one might not even know about: the lives you live in somebody else's head... People think about you, meet you, talk to you, all in their phantasies - and for them *that* you might not be less true than *your* you. And you might even never get to know about these lives "you" live in parallel to yours... But to the world they are not less "real" than you yourself. Just be yourself, with all your virtues and defects.

(...as if that was easy...)

dɹɐzılpǝkɔıw ɐʞɐ ɹǝɥgɐllɐg lǝbɐsıwickedlizard Tuesday, October 17, 2006 11:03:53 AM

that was so nice of your friends to put together such a flattering list of adjectives! up

Sarah angel292005 Tuesday, October 17, 2006 3:22:35 PM

Depending on my mood that day do I care what people think of me. bigsmile Go with the hormone flow.


wine

Emily DavisEsme_11 Tuesday, October 17, 2006 10:46:29 PM

csant- list forthcoming.
angel- it's not so much a flow as a coast-ravaging tsumani.

Richardmusickna Wednesday, October 18, 2006 1:37:54 AM

Dating is such a dance of actors acting - either well or badly. At least you have got to #3 - it may go further and it may get more real (i.e. less artificial). Or it may not. Depends what you really want, I guess. Getting to know a lover (or potential lover) can be such a trial. smile

Emily DavisEsme_11 Wednesday, October 18, 2006 3:28:34 AM

Ugh- I couln't agree more. Sometimes I wake up in the morning (in the middle of the bed) and feel so glad that there's no one there to have to deal with or talk to. No one to complain if I reset the alarm seventeen times. And then I go into the bathroom and in the mirror there's a bleary-eyed person with mismatched pajamas and hair sticking up all over her head. And I wonder: at what point is it appropriate to unveil this reality to another person? Too soon and it could be repellent. Too late and the poor sucker may feel like he's been had....

Emily DavisEsme_11 Thursday, October 19, 2006 7:08:38 PM

Okay, Claudio. I tried your suggestion about describing myself in six words, which is presumably an exercise in self-analysis. Coming up with the words wasn't hard - it was limiting them to six that I found challenging. So, after covering the back of an envelope in words ranging from "mercurial" to "impulsive" to "thirsty", in the end, one word seems to summarize me best of all: verbose.

Dillon RobertsDillonRoberts Friday, October 20, 2006 9:00:15 AM

"Radiant" comes to mind when remembering you. And "curiously messy in a artful manner" I don't know exactly what I mean by that. It's what popped into my head. Remember the Alamo.
Love
D

Claudio Santambrogiocsant Friday, October 20, 2006 6:05:54 PM

Emily, I guess you are right saying that it is an excercise in self-analysis. And of course it is not too difficult to come up with adjectives that describe yourself. But when you have to limit yourself to six, you'll have to discard some of the words you wrote down, and up comes the question: "am I rather *this*, or rather *that*? One of the two has to go..." Six adjectives certainly do not fully describe a persons personality, but it is an interesting path to some close inspection of - "whom we are"? Probably not. "how we see ourselves"? Maybe. "how we think about ourselves in that very moment"? ...

At least in your written form, you indeed are verbose - and I am glad to enjoying you like that smile

Emily DavisEsme_11 Friday, October 20, 2006 11:00:07 PM

Radiant? Moi?

John ..... (Loku) lokutus-prime lokutus-prime Friday, October 27, 2006 9:31:03 AM

Interesting that you should describe yourself as verbose. I always thought of you as articulate i.e. able to express yourself fluently and clearly. I haven't changed my view on this. I still percieve you to be articulate and 'though I will never be able to know you, as you know yourself, I think my own impression is a lucid one - that is to say, I know what I mean.

Emily DavisEsme_11 Saturday, October 28, 2006 5:47:47 AM

That's very kind of you, Lo. Thank you!

scott cummingI_ArtMan Tuesday, October 31, 2006 11:53:38 PM

just be soigne' and interested and you will be lovely and interesting.

Emily DavisEsme_11 Wednesday, November 1, 2006 4:50:48 AM

Soigne! What a gorgeous word!

devansdevans186 Wednesday, November 1, 2006 9:47:19 PM

Emily,
Sorry for tardy.bigsmile
A man should hold the door for you and it is extremely important for a proper tip.
The loose thread?????
From what little I've read, you are a very interesting person.
Just be yourself:D

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