innocence and other things that escape me

"Same as it ever was, same as it ever was..."

I am so over dating, it is thoroughly and completely exhausting. I realize that unless I want to be confined to a life of dining on Chef Lonely Hearts Soup for One and my menagerie of cats, I have to suffer on. Knowing that the alternative is worse doesn't necessarily make it better.

After a very, very long string of poor matches, false starts, and general earth-shattering disappointments in dating, I just sort of came to a place where I decided I didn't care all that much any more. I'm not looking, because every where I look, I see douche bags. Fabulous gay men, happy, cohabitating lesbians, but heterosexual men who make me almost prefer to begin working on my cat collection.

So a few weeks ago, my roommate Laura, who is two steps from blissful cohabitation with her girlfriend, Kelly, dragged me to a barbeque against my will. "There will be cute boys there. I cannot bear to hear about how you never meet cute boys. You're going." And, she was right, I did, I did happen to meet this nice guy, and we have had two semi-dates and one actual date since that time.

"You seem so innocent," he says to me at dinner. What? Me? Really?? No. Have we met? Innocent? Really?

Wow, this makes me wonder how I am presenting myself. And then wonder more about how people start to perceive you as you get to know one another. "Innocent" is not a word I would ever use to describe myself, and I'm pretty sure no one else I really know would either. Jaded, maybe. Dark and twisty?

And then I realize that during our conversation, he had asked me what I had done that morning. "I went to church, had lunch with my mom, went to a Christmas party..." I'm pretty sure that the church part somehow gave way to the perception of innocence. I ask my friend Amanda why...and if she thinks I'm innocent?

"That's funny that he thinks your innocent," she said, "because my first very vivid memory of you was from your birthday party one year, when you had your 'friend' come pick you up and came back to the party the next morning. Fun times."