A Good Man Is Easy To Kill

In thirty one years, I think I can safely say that I’ve never been on a proper “date”. I have never met someone and asked them to meet me for dinner or a movie or coffee with the express knowledge that this is a “date”. The word “date” implies that you want this to progress to a more romantic encounter at some point, if not this time, perhaps a few “dates” later. I have always shied away from labeling my encounters with women and have taken the more stealthy approach of “being a friend”. I have gone out with women I have gotten to know and it was always carried off as a friendly affair, just hanging out, spending time with a bud.

Surprisingly, this approach has gotten me nowhere.

Women like to say, particularly in magazine articles written for the forlorn, that it is better to start a relationship off as friends and then progress into romance. This is complete bullshit, and an honest woman will tell you as much. This is a great idea, if you’ve got the patience and libido of a monk. At some point the line must be crossed. And having built yourself up into a “friend” makes that role-reversal especially hard.

That’s why people go on “dates”. To meet people with the precognizant understanding that this may lead somewhere.

My approach of diffusing any “date” by making it clear that we’re just “hanging out” has sabotaged my efforts countless times. I am quite often called up minutes before our “date” and told that they can’t “hang out” this evening because something came up. This “something” takes on many guises (from unexpected colds to helping neighbors move) but I’m pretty sure it’s the same creature underneath: someone they are interested in “dating” rather than “chilling with”. I make the mistake of getting excited about these encounters and that makes it more painful when we don’t meet up.


FLASHBACK:

Natalie and I were co-workers at a record store in New Orleans and we had gone to a few concerts together and gotten drunk at bars several times. In fact, on one of those drunken nights at the bar, we had actually found ourselves passionately kissing and she ended up coming home with me and we slept soundly in each other’s arms, drunk and completely clothed.

(Now I like to try and pass this off as being considerate and gentlemanly, but I was basically too drunk to even think about having sex with her and probably would’ve screwed it all up had I tried. I’m a path-of-least-resistance kind of guy, so I seldom make such bold moves. I really liked her and I didn’t want to ruin it by pushing too far too soon. I figured we had hooked up and it was naturally going to progress to sex the more we hung out together and kept making out. How was I to know that her romantic interest in me was only a by-product of getting hammered and would not carry over to her sober state?)

We hung out a lot after that, but it never went anywhere. Aside from the fact that I wasn’t gay, I was essentially her “gay friend”. That safe male companion that every girl wants. I would go shopping with her, watch Morrissey videos with her, flirt innocuously with her. It was great for her. She felt loved and cherished and could use my affection to feel better when the guys she really wanted wouldn’t pay attention to her. And I got to pretend that I had a girlfriend. I mean, nobody had to know we weren’t sleeping together or anything, right? Is that all a girlfriend is? (Before you respond, the answer is yes.)

One evening in July, she had planned to come hang out at my apartment. We were going to spend the evening listening to CDs and getting drunk. I was going to take her out to dinner. She was a vegetarian and I had scouted out some of the restaurants in my area for possible selections, depending on her culinary mood. I wanted to have a nice, romantic meal and tell her, finally, how I felt and where I wanted our “friendship” to go.

The problem is, I hadn’t specified any of this. We were just friends “hanging out”.

When she got to my place we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood.

“Are you hungry,” I asked.

“Sure, I guess.”

“What are you in the mood for? There’s a nice Mediterranean place down the street, there’s a few Italian spots around the corner.”

“I want pizza. I’m not that hungry. Just a slice.”

“Well, this is Louisiana, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” she laughed. “I fucking hate this place!”

“Let’s check out the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen. It’s five blocks, but their pizza is pretty good.”

And so we walked to the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen on Carrollton, and asked for a table for two.

As we were being seated, Natalie’s cell phone rang. She answered. It was her mom.

“It’s my mom,” she told me. “I’m just gonna take this outside. It’s our Thursday night phone call. Get me a water.” She laughed and went outside.

The waitress took our drink order and I sat waiting. Five minutes passed and she didn’t return. In fact, she was standing in the window and I could see her chatting animatedly into the phone.

The waitress came back in a few minutes and asked if I wanted to order. I told her I would have a Fettuccine Alfredo and that my “companion” would be inside in a few minutes to make her order.

I watched her in the window. She looked and saw me and smiled and made a “chatty mouth” sign with her hand. I sipped at my beer. Ten minutes later, my fettuccine arrived. And Natalie was still jawing away on the phone with her mother.

I began to eat.

I tried to eat slow.

The other patrons began to notice me and whispered to each other and shot inquisitive glances in my direction. Some of them made apologetic frowns. Others just giggled to themselves and went on with their meal.

With each bite I took I wished she would come back to the table and make a show of being terribly sorry for her inconsiderate behavior. I would laugh it off and say, “No worries,” and she would order her meal and I would pay for it and then we would spend the rest of the evening getting drunk and then we would have sex in my bed with the freshly laundered sheets.

But she never came back.

I finished my meal and sat around and eventually had to ask for the check. The waitress brought it, I paid, left a tip and left the restaurant.

As I got outside, Natalie was still on the phone. It had been approximately 45 minutes. I stood and waited for her to finish talking. When she did, she said:

“I’m kinda hungry now. I’m gonna pick up some Funyons at the gas station on the way back.”

No mention at all of the fact that I just had a meal in a restaurant for the last 45 minutes, while she gabbed on the phone outside. No acknowledgement of her rude behavior. I was just a friend who had gone to get something to eat while we were hanging out. In fact, she acted as if we had just spent a couple of hours studying for exams at the library and now we were going to grab some snacks. We, apparently, were in no danger of being on a “date”.

And the rest of the evening followed that same path, and she went home early and we didn’t hook up and we didn’t sleep together and I spent two more years going through the same motions. To no avail. And now I’m a tired, bitter, old man, and I’m telling you kids to be up front with everything. There is no reason to be coy in life. That trait only belongs in Jane Austin novels. Go out and grab what you want, provided it doesn’t get you arrested. Make a show of it. Let the world know what you desire. And if you’re going on a “date”, don’t be afraid to take the quotation marks off and call it what it is.

Hell, you might even get lucky.