The Prowl: Unglamorous Sex in the (Capital) City
The first date with the Pizza Maker, yes, he made pizza for a living and I have two degrees (three if you count high school) and a career, was objectively great. We shared a bottle of prosecco, small plates, innuendo-filled banter, a walk home (the Hill can be dangerous at night, obviously) … breakfast. Even though we had breakfast -- which is well-known to be indicative of girlfriend-land more so than one-night stand land -- we never had a second date. This is because he stood me up, twice.
The day after our first encounter, he texted, an early sign that he was well-adept at utilizing modern technology and had been thinking about me all day. This was a given, as I am very good at making breakfast. He said he could not wait to see me. Somewhat flattering, although, again, given the breakfast, hardly surprising. Even though he failed to meet several of the prerequisites for possible male companions (did not have a white-collar job, was a year younger) he was charming, repeatedly told me how beautiful I was which fed my ego in a way I cannot even properly quantify, and perhaps most importantly, he could cook. I agreed to go out with him again, admitting it might be a good night for a movie and joking about his secret self-professed love of chick flicks. As the appointed time came and went, however, I quickly realized that he was not coming. I was being stood-up.
When I think of being stood-up, I think of an earlier, simpler time when girls awkwardly sat next to the phone or alone in a bar waiting for their beau to call or arrive at any moment. This does not happen in the modern era. Isn’t constant contact with the world the point of having a smart phone? When easily accessible forms of communication include actually calling, texting, emailing, or sending a facebook message, what circumstances could possibly prevent someone from taking all of thirty seconds to try one of these options and say that they won’t be making it?
Of course, I conjured up elaborate scenarios that might excuse his social faux pas. What if he had an unfortunate incident with a cheese supplier wherein he ended up floating down the Potomac on a wooden raft with onlookers poking sticks at him? Maybe somehow he was trapped in a tunnel with angry bats and no reception? Maybe his phone provider was AT&T and he just had no service? In reality, he was simply tired. So tired, that he could not engage in twenty-first century interactions, or at least think of a better excuse after the fact.
Several days after his bout with exhaustion, he texted and asked if he could make it up to me. While my initial reaction was shock that he could in fact use a telephone, I was feeling charitable so I permitted the resurrection of the movie idea. This time, as before, he did not show up. He did not call, text, email, facebook, or send a carrier pigeon. He simply just disappeared, sort of like my dignity at that point.
In the event of "being blown off" -- rather than wildly imagining what might have possibly prevented him from turning up -- I instead thought about how there were easier ways for him to say that he didn't want to see me again. Of course, all of these involve a telephone, which his grasp of (despite initial positive signs to the contrary) seemed tenuous. From there though, I started thinking about how simply bailing is a rather cowardly way to go about it, trying to shift the blame from myself back to him. After all, it's not me, it's clearly him. The fact remained however, that once again, he stood me up.
No matter how many jokes I make about dating Papa John or Little Caesar, or how many times I think about bringing the best looking young professional I can find into his restaurant, he still stood me up. Twice. While this seems like a relic of a daintier time, the fact that we are in unceasing contact with the rest of the world simply makes ever more stark the extent to which this is a genuinely unexpected and impolite act. Especially when it happens twice.