power dating

I’m sitting here in the mid-renovation Oakland terminal waiting on my overnight flight to NYC. They finally have gratis wifi on the scene (good move, Oakland), and it’s as good as an airport gets. I got through security with no waiting and all smiles for my bike-chain bracelet which gets me a wanding every time, scored some Advil PM from the quick shop, and snagged half a table in the crowded little makeshift bar that’s serving this wing while the old spot is under reconstruction. Things have gone so smoothly I’ve got like 45 minutes to kill.

It’s been a pretty good run the past few days. This weekend I got some much-needed bonding time with good old LGD and his special lady, some late night whiskeytime and a great tasty family dinner too. Cooking delicious group meals is one of my most favorite thing to do, and I honestly can’t say why I don’t organize these things more often. Seems like something to consider going forward.

I’m gradually becoming aware that the primary reason my social life has felt a bit fallow is that I’ve largely stopped arranging for things to happen, become just another lamp-ray go-along follower, picking up on other peoples action. One undeniable pattern in my history is that the better times in my life tend to coincide with taking on the role of instigator, provocateur, catalyst, etc. Again, something to consider.

Under the auspices of my mandate for Power Dating, I’ve turned to the internets. After being needled by the Girth over dinner on Friday night on this point — we were breaking bread with a couple couples on the road to matrimony and in discussing our single status and the conundrums there posed, my friend recounted how he’s asked me, the undisputed internet maven of our circle, whether I’d ever done online dating; no I’d replied, a fact he likes to use in support of his case that this is a weird and freaky activity: “well if Josh isn’t into it, then…” — I decided that enough was enough and I should stop running from destiny.

Now, it’s not entirely true that I’ve never dabbled in internet dating. Back in the early days in NYC I had a profile on one of those standard personals sites. Most of my friends did. It seemed like an interesting thing to create (this was before there was such a thing as “social networking”), though a horrifying thing to discover someone you might already know socially. There’s something about seeing how your friends describe themselves when trying to appeal to the opposite sex that’s unsettling, a bit like hearing them get chewed out by their parents.

I would add further that the internet, to one degree or another, has played an integral role in most of the great love affairs of my life. For instance, during my freshman year of college, I fell in love mostly over email, and using a radically old-school unix command-line chat system that was made available by our respective educational institutions, and which I explained to my lovely lady how to get in and use. At other times, email correspondence, a shared ideosyncratic love for Homestarrunner, or other online connective tissue have underpinned many fine romances.

And then, of course, there’s this old thing: a radical exercise in information asymmetry. Some middle aged men asked me once if blogging can get you laid, and I said yes, yes it can. Assuming you’re a halfway decent writer, and you do a compelling and honest job, you’ll eventually amass enough material that any fair lady can come and read themselves into your head. Maybe they like it there. Maybe that’s how it starts.

I have my qualms about this, because I think it lends it self to a sort of highly questionable starfucking vibe, but it is what it is, and it’s not as though I’m going to give up on this perpetual writing project just because sometimes pretty girls will know vastly more about me than I will about them at first blush. At the very least, it screens out people who really wouldn’t much like me at all.

But to the point. What am I up to now? Well, way back in the heady dot-org-boom days of 2004, Dustin, the first of my veagan bike-riding anarcho collagues, introduced me to the website Ok Cupid. It had a delightful little intro quiz which is basically a tarted-up version of the Meyers-Brigs personality assessment (I think). It told me I was a Playboy, which I didn’t like, but couldn’t really deny, and it purported to use a vast number of questions to match you up w/folks. I fooled around with it back then, and have logged in from time to time to window-shop, but this past week — 4+ years after originally creating my account — took the first step and actually asked someone out.

This is a big step for me. Just being proactive, let alone opening myself up to the possibilities of what’s out there online. My generation is coming of age, and while many are suspicious like The Girth, a great many more find romance initiated online to be as natural (if not moreso) than meeting strangers in a bar. I can’t say I disagree with that, and given that I prefer to date outside my immediate social circle, this seems like a good thing for me to experiment with.

Anyway, it all boils down to conversations, communication. I’m sort of excited about this experiment in finding new interloqutors.

And now, my plane is bording and I should roll. SEE YOU IN NUEVA JORKA, BITCHES!

In keeping with my recent wedding-borne inquiry into default notions of romantic future, the arc of the story, and also owing to the fact that I finished my most recent book conquest — the inestimable Mountains Beyond Mountains (we’re helping out PIH w/their drupals at chapter3) — I’ve been considering the possibilities.

Fact: to the best of my knowledge all but a recent few of my significant romantic interests (the “old flame” category) are now married, engaged to be married, or have been married. Some of them even have children. This would seem to suggest that the kinds of girls I’ve been into over the years are the marrying kind. Also it would seem to suggest that my future more likely than not lies in undiscovered country.

Counter-Fact: I haven’t been in any relationships lasting a year or more, and have never lived with a lover. Also, to put it diplomatically, I don’t have a strong track record of fidelity.

Fact: I really really like kids. I’ve always loved children, was a babysitter as a young man, and I’ve gotten into arguments with people who suggest that it’s morally questionable to bring new ones into the world (as opposed to say adopting). I seem to have a pretty strong desire to pass on my DNA.

Counter-Fact: the particular circumstances of my life (massive work, lack of steady location, etc) are not conducive to settling down. I’ve also shown a particular affinity for rambling, as well as a resistance to compromising personal goals or priorities for the sake of others.

This is how I tend to think, but really this kind of score-carding is bullshit, a truth I’m glad to realize. What I’m interested is not an evaluation of my worth or readiness as a comrade in nesting, but rather some kind of concept of my purpose and aim in a life of love. Looking back, I’ve variously taken on the gestalt of hopeless romantic or shameless hedonist, both with some success and some failure. Neither of these seem particularly apropos now. Some new fantasy of love awaits.

I recently invented the idea of “power dating” for myself, partly because I liked the phrase linguistically, and partly because it seemed like a decently dirty criterion to evaluate potential opportunities. However, what I find really is that I need some kind of objective, goal, or at least understanding of method. Putting aside things I want theoretically in some far-off future, what am I looking for in the precious present? That’s a good fucking question.

For now, I’m still grappling with the unknown, but actually considering this is leading me to permit a whole universe of potentialities, all of which embrace the “facts” but none of which fit into some Leave It To Beaver narrative. More than that, getting out from under the weight of figuring this all out — seeing it as a fascinating question of life rather than a problem to be resolved, hopefully in the next five to six years — is liberating.

Just call me “Uncle Beefcake.”

It’s 80 degrees in Westhaven! Sort of a miracle even for summer. I’m going out to check out some potential local office spaces.

Things have been good. Work is a little harder when I’m not in the office. There are social dynamics I can’t keep spinning when I’m out of town. In the long run these plates need to spin themselves (with the aid of ye olde partners) but in the short term it looks like I’m the secret sauce.

Personally I’m still recovering from a hell of a weekend. Good, but left me feeling a bit dazed and behind on things. I had a real live date though — a fulfillment of my “power-dating” mandate, even — which went pretty well, although with schedules being what they are who knows when a second rendezvous might occur.

I have a shit-ton of photos from the party too. If you’re on facebook you can peep them there. I’ll try and get something up on Flickr too. Lots of excellent knuckle tats.

Anyway, apologies in advance to everything I’m behind on. I will be playing catch-up over the next week/end I’m sure, but you’re all in my heart and thoughts.

New tag. Drupal set message “Power dating.” Backstory on that is here, and I’ll elaborate with new thoughts now.

Well, actually, first I start with self-quote, to illustrate just how sisyphusian this feels at time. From my report back from Baja, which feels like another lifetime:

I realized, for instance, just how blatantly I’ve been keeping myself out of range of romance out of fear more than anything else. Sex and love have always been intertwined in my experience, and avoiding one is a pretty good way to skirt the other. Much as I bemoan my lonely state, it’s my own choices and habits of action that render it so. I’ve been rationalizing this to myself as a kind of jaded maturity, but now I think that’s just bluster.

The truth is I’m afraid of what might happen: of getting hurt, of hurting someone else, of getting into unknown territory where the possibility of both those things just gets greater. It’s weak sauce, really, because this is what life is all about; but as they say the first step towards finding a solution is admitting you have a problem. So there’s that.

I also realized in conjunction with the above that I’ve been looking backwards a lot, for similar reasons, when really I should be looking forward. The possibilities of the future are almost literally endless, and when I begin to entertain them I feel a real true gut-level sense of trepidation — “don’t make plans; don’t invest; shit doesn’t pan out, remember?” — and it feels like it might be that good kind of Allen Ginsburg brand of fear. The kind I know I should pursue.

That was nine months ago. Today I remain in almost exactly the same position. The Girth sort of confronted me with this last night — in the good way that friends do — as we were getting ourselves fired up to go out in Berkeley. Because it’s true. I am afraid, and even as I can feel my whole being becoming increasingly energized, I have nervousness and trepidation in my heart. I have performance anxiety, concerns about failing to meet my own high standards. More than any of this, I have layered defense mechanisms which are used to rationalize and obfuscate the whole situation under the auspices of reducing hassle.

This is childish. It is time this ended.

So we went out to a nice little drinking establishment where they have ginger beer (great with gin) and soothing live jazz music. I rode my new Mission Bicycle down just for kicks. After a little seat adjustment it feels like god’s own chariot, and I’m actually kinda bummed to be leaving it here for a while. Doesn’t do me much good in the HC though (or doesn’t it…).

Anyway, the speedy ride and sparksplus get me well-primed to hit the scene. Not that we’re doing anything crazy, just having a couple cocktails and looking at pretty girls of a Saturday evening. There are two such behind the bar, and as a sign of how high I feel I’m riding of late, I skip on past the Girth’s worldly wisdom of not attempting to engage such creatures — to wit: pretty women who wait tables, sling coffee or pour drinks are virtually un-flirtable owing to their massive overexposure — I give the one a little friendly sass while ordering our beverages.

Conversation turns to the increasingly bourgeoisie nature of our lives, and my man is nice enough to humor me with some flattering words about how I’m going to be successful without losing my humanity, and to let me spin out my faux philosophical ramblings on our first-world problems. I invent a good bit about Maslow’s pyramid of human needs as a series of mechanisms for social control, and the ascending of said pyramid as the sweet road to freedom. We talk about the general fuckedupness of the world. The evils of the prison system. The gradual stripping away of the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments (only true checks against a police state), and the strong chances that we will get a Democratic president and congress, but not universal health care.

The revolution misses us, and we miss it. Part of my feeling better and better about life makes me think once again that there’s something good to be done with our cultural capital and freedom to work outside institutional structures. There’s a lot of injustice, especially when you’re not a financially comfortable, physically fit, straight white male American. What to do with all that dumb luck, you know?

By and by we get another chance to make friendly with the bartender since the gentleman to our left is being a bit of a prick. Common enemies are good at producing solidarity. Her shift finishes at about midnight and she takes a seat next to my buddy, and I think suddenly this has potential, though she spends a good amount of time talking to the handsome long-haired fellow further to the right and at some point a very skinny man with a very trendy haircut enters and exerts some signs of social ownership.

It’s at this point that I disengage, and upon reflection I’m a little disappointed. She was obviously at least somewhat interested in me/us, initiating small-talk and asking to try on my hat, etc. She introduced herself, and when we did finally roll out she put her hand on my chest and told me it was nice to have met me. Her skinny/trendy companion could easily have been an affectionate homosexual friend, but I used the pretense of a putative boyfriend to ignore the fact that this girl, who I legitimately thought was attractive, seemed to think I was attractive as well. And this is a move borne of fear, or perhaps even cowardice.

So yeah, baby steps. I’ve been making some progress. Getting it up to flirt in the first place, and I did an ok job talking to a cute girl down at Coachella, and with a couple of shiny local faces in the elevator at work, and having nice correspondences and the like. But the killer instinct is lacking. As my brothers at Wu-Tang Financial remind me, you gotta play this game rough: in, out, grab, get, bonk. Coffee’s for closers.

To that end, I think the next logical step for the plan of Power Dating is Operation Get Real Hot, which involves improving my personal grooming routines and getting into a healthy gym habit for the next three weeks I’m up north. After that it’s Operation Get Out There And Mix It Up, which is a little more of an unknown.