Back in the pre-internet / pre-e-mail days, getting a number meant nothing.

You had no other option but to ask for a woman’s number and unless she said “Actually, let me get your number” (which meant she didn’t like you, duh) you got a number.

I imagine it was much easier to give a guy your number and then just ignore his message when he rang then say ”No, sorry, not interested” (most women were never, ever that mean — to your face) or deliver the ‘no-let-me-get-yours’ salve.

It meant so little that when I got a woman’s number, I would wait a day or two, then call it, leave a message (on an answering machine!!!) and then immediately throw it in the trash so I wouldn’t bother her again (and so I wouldn’t be reminded of her / the rejection / be tempted to ring it again).

I say all this because until recently I would get really, really annoyed when I would exchange a bunch of promising e-mails with a woman online, ask for number, get it (often with an encouraging note to call), call it and then get blown off (no returned phone call).

I found this rude, especially when they could have just faded away / ignored me when I asked for their number. The medium’s perfect for that, unlike a face-to-face.

I would just imagine them listening to my message and then snorting in disgust and/or immediately deleting.

BUT ALL OF THAT WAS IN MY HEAD.

Then I realized I had my own dating rule floating around in my brain no one knew / could know about: “Women who don’t call you back after they give you their number on Match are rude, insincere, game players, not serious about finding someone” etc.

When I took myself out of the equation and stopped taking their unresponsiveness personally, I understood that getting the number still / just means nothing — the women are still in a state of PRE-INTEREST. I was putting much more weight on it than women are / do.

They might of have lost interest, didn’t like my voice, started dating someone else, Googled me when my name came up and found this public radio story I told about dating, got busy, meant to call me back but then a guy they liked more reached out, who freakin’ knows.

And like the El Paso girl once told me, “The right woman will think, ‘Whoa, whoa — I have to do everything in my power not to let David / this guy get away.”

Trauma Bond (noun).

You know when you see a guy who’s like a 5 or 6 or 7 and he’s with a 8 or 9 or 10 and you wonder ‘What the hell happened here?’

She might have wanted a baby RIGHT NOW and he seemed like a good provider and would be a good dad and she was tired of dating and she gave up a bunch of superficial stuff (“He has to be as hot as me”) for it.

Or….

He was in the right place at the right time, meaning she was tired of dating hot guys / bad boys (AND also maybe wanted a baby) and decided to give a “Maybe Guy” a try, BUT what happened was a trauma in her life — her mom got sick / died; she had an illness herself or broke her leg; she lost her job; her dog was hit by a bus and that guy — who she had basically forced herself to go on dates with — had an opportunity to slip into HERO MODE and won her over in the process (brought over chicken soup, held her at her mom’s wake).

They also tend to get engaged and married pretty quickly (see the blog I wrote about The Ann-Margaret look-a-like — perfect example of this phenomena)

There was a Seinfeld about this — “I’ll be there for her and then, I’ll just be there.” (the Debra Messing character was going through a divorce)

This is part two to this. (I don’t think anyone cared about part 1, but it gets better in this part).

http://datingdaredevil.com/uncategorized/vertigo-pt-1

Okay, once at The Disney Hall, we are shown to our seats, which are in the first row of the balcony. A balcony with a very, very short wall. As soon as the show started, it felt like I was suspended in mid-air. I got dizzy.

“Do you have vertigo?”

“Yeah, apparently. I didn’t know it until this minute,” I said.

Other than that, she didn’t really seem to care I was getting ill. So for the next 45 minutes, I sat with my head craned away from the action below, my jaw clenched tight and my hands gripping the arms of my seat. I was totally blowing my cool, but we were just buddies, so no big deal.

At the intermission, she says she wants to stay in her seat. I was in a small panic and said (getting up), “I’m going to sit in the lobby. For the rest of the show. I don’t feel well.”

So for the next 45 – 50 minutes, I sat in the lobby.

She came out, found me standing right there in the lobby and I drove her home. It wasn’t that big of a deal. She didn’t seem upset in the car ride back and seemed to have rolled with my vertigo / illness.

BUT what I didn’t realize at the time is that girl was a PRICKLY.

Because when I ran into her at a mutual friend’s events, she acted like, well, I had assaulted her. So got real weird and wouldn’t even say ‘hi’ to me and would literally avoid me. This went on for months.

I later realized that she was AGHAST! That I left her alone for 45 minutes at an event we went to as buddies! AGHAST! How dare I get sick! How dare I be human! Girls like this act like you’ve ruined their night if things don’t go the way THEY IMAGINED IT. (BTW, Prickly Girls always want KIDS RIGHT NOW and I can’t really see it — they way they act and expect others to act, is, well, the complete opposite is what happens with kids.)

Anyway, I know this because two buddies of mine filmed a show she was producing and at some point, she was saying to them she couldn’t find a date / boyfriend and then they said “We got the perfect guy — Jewish, East Coast, owns his own business, funny” “Who?” And then they mentioned my name and she went…

“OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

And then proceeded to tell her victim “version” of what happened — I got weird (not sick) and ran out midway through the performance and didn’t tell her where I was going and she didn’t know how she was going to get home” (Whhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttt?)

My buddies actually questioned her version of it, saying “That doesn’t sound like Dave…”

Anyway, I heard she is preparing to have IVF and a baby by herself (which another Prickly I know did).

The Grand Gesture. This is such a dating No-No.

And one I’ve been guilty of…many, many times. Even up to five years ago.

What is The Grand Gesture?

It’s when you demonstrate your interest in someone you barely know by doing something BIG and SHOWY to try and WIN THEM OVER.

But usually spooks the shit out of them instead.

Usually guys will buy something expensive and they think will “flip it” — way before it’s appropriate to be “gifting.” It’s usually jewelry, but it can be something they hand-made (guilty!) and mailed (double guilty) or left at their door or sent to their work (ahem, guilty again), or something unique based on the woman’s interest (“I know — I’ll get her favorite childhood book autographed by the dying author!”  – ugh…guilty again). It can even be surprising her at a show she’s performing in. Even though we only had one date. And she didn’t want a second.

Something that screams, “I LIKE YOU SO MUCH — PLEASE LIKE ME BACK JUST AS MUCH!!!!! PLEASE!!!”

This comes from such a very needy and ‘masculine insecure’ place, it usually makes vaginas scared and sad for you.

But why does this happen if it’s so misguided and ineffective?

Movies and TV tell us it works. It doesn’t. Remember this asshole?

If this guy showed up at your house (you being the hottest girl in high school and this a weird outcast maybe with Aspergers who’s really into kick-boxing), you’d call the COPS. Seriously.

Some examples:

- An older rich guy tracked down a friend of mine who she had one date with and FED EX’ed her a diamond bracklet. With no return address. I helped her track down an office address to send it back to him. At 50, I was astounded that this guy still thinks this stupid “I’ll-Buy-and-Ambush-You-With-Shiny Thing,-You-Love-Me-Now” works.

- After a woman I was really into got a stomach ache on a date with me, I custom made a “First Date” first-aid kit with Pepto Bismol and some other trinkets and mailed it to her office.

Did she love it / the attention? TOTALLY.

Did it get me laid? OMG, NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Even a kiss? Not even fuckin’ close. Has she dated other guys and had sex and fuck buddies in the last five and half years since I did that? Oh, yeah. Would she have dated / had sex with me if I hadn’t tried to buy her affection with some stupid ‘I’m-Not-Enough’ gesture? Maybe. At least getting it on with me would have been in the realm of possibilities.

Once I offered TRINKETS instead of MANHOOD, I blew it.

Boys and Man-Boys, the Dating Daredevil says don’t do this.

I was speaking to a woman I dated very briefly years ago and with whom I am now good friends. To my relief she said, “I don’t think you’ve had any ‘That one got away’ girls” —  the girl who was perfect for me but I was too stupid, too young, too immature (different from being ‘too young’, although there is some overlap) and just blew it.

The closest I had was Mia, the 25 year old Italian girlfriend I had when I was 35.

But I didn’t blow it with Mia in any big or obvious way (if I did at all) — I met her about 2 – 3 months before she had to go back to Italy (and took her to Hawaii during that time), invited her back months later to Philly and NYC for my brother’s wedding (where she saw her first Broadway show) where she stayed for about 3 weeks and then came back for 2 weeks a few months later…and then, basically, never came back…. she just didn’t want to be far from her parents and her studies and her new career….

Aside from that, there hasn’t been anything that was going really well and that person was perfect and I just suddenly burned the house down, well, just because.

If anything, I try and make things work even when the ship is going down (Snark is Relationship Cancer girl, the woman I moved out to LA for, Ellen The Event Planner).

I just keep thinking about the Snarky Redhead and wondering — WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

Everything was going great — we had 5 dates, decided to stop dating others, had Body Heat chemistry, was well matched when it came to interests and intellect and then she just pulled a grenade on the whole thing (got mouthy, got mean, refused to sleep in my bed one night, admitted to sabotaging when confronted)…

And it seems there’s been a lot of sabotaging going on with L.A. Match girls — girls who play obvious ‘Ooops-I-missed-your-phone-call’ games (return phone calls at 9:20 am on a workday, call at lunch), refuse to give phone numbers just when the e-mails are getting good, give me their numbers and then never call me back (or worse, weeks later, then send me an e-mail encouraging me to call again and I do and then don’t CALL BACK AGAIN!!!!!! OMG!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!)….

Sure, there’s the cost (downside) of dating — leads gone cold, people who vanish (shit, I vanish on women online after a couple of unimpressive e-mails or when I’ve found someone to date / focus on), but the people who take it the extra step into Dating Kabuki is what really gets my goat….

This post has really nothing to do about dating, but maybe that’s welcome.

****

When I was about 15, 16, I was very much into 60′s music — The Beatles, Beatles bootlegs, weird one-hit wonders (The Knickerbockers, The EasyBeats, “Time Won’t Let Me”) and somehow I heard about this retro band called the Chesterfield Kings. Most likely Rolling Stone had a review of their record “Stop”.

I ordered it via mail-order or found it in at second hand record store in Philly. These guys had Prince Valiant bobs and that mid-60′s sound to a “T” –Vox amps, vintage guitars, analog recording techinques. I even wrote them a fan letter and asking them where they got their (groovy) clothes. One of them even sent me back a Chesterfield Kings promo postcard and listed their Rochester NY tailor and where they got their Cuban heels. I remember at the time being thrilled.

***

In the summer of 1987, I was in New York taking courses for high schoolers at Parsons, living in their dorms at 31 Union Square West. I spotted in the Village Voice that the Kings were playing at a small club in the East Village!

I invited a girl on my floor I was vaguely attracted to and she agreed and we went.

It was in the East, East Village, somewhere near East 5th and Ave B or C, which in 1987 looked like a war zone. Alphabet City was a dirty ghetto.

If you watch ‘Marathon Man’, Dustin Hoffman lives in that area and these local punk Hispanic kids harass him everytime he’s coming or going — I’m convinced those kids aren’t actors, just local kids they paid (or not) to yell at Hoffman.

The neighborhood was untouched since the shooting of that movie from 10 years earlier.

So after a scary walk through Thompkins Square park (At 17 and white, I really had no business being there at night) we get to the theater. But it wasn’t really a theater. It was a storefront with a metal gate. And we were there at the showtime which might have been 8:30. It didn’t know at the time there was such a thing as ‘Rock and Roll Time’ which means the show really didn’t start for 60 to 90 minutes later.

So we are in this small barren room with a stage with ropes hanging from the ceiling and a handful of weird people milling about. One guy, older, maybe in his 30′s had a hand puppet. On his hand.

Somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes later, the Kings take the stage and they’ve changed their look and sound — they are now retro 70′s — long hair, very New York Dolls, Ramones. In the year since I had gotten their postcard, they’d jumped a decade in rock, look and attitude. They were loud, crazy and now longer jingle-y-jangley 12 string Rickenbackers. In fact, the lead singer, Greg Prevost was grabbing hold of the ropes and swinging over the audience like a rock and roll Tarzan.

The crowd was thrashing, pogo-ing, the guy with the puppet was dancing and jumping and freaking out. The whole scene was frightening.

We left and RAN ALL WAY THE BACK to Union Square. I remember running with her through the park like Marathon Man.

***

Epilogue: The Kings are still together and are in their early 50′s now. They made a B & W movie I got on Netflix called Where is the Chesterfield King? where they (in their 40′s) goof around like a Monkees episode. It’s beyond dreadful.

I’ve been online dating on-and-off (but more on) since 1996.

I’ve read THOUSANDS of profiles. Really. Maybe upwards of 20,000 THOUSAND. Let that sink in for a minute.

And frankly, I don’t think I can read…one…more.

Mainly, because 99 out of 100 of them read exactly the same.

You know, the “I’m looking for a partner in crime, I work hard, play harder, my family and friends are the most important people in my life, love football (Go _________ !), I’m equally comfortable in a little black dress as I am in sweats and a T shirt, love love, love to travel!, You must love dogs (at least my dog!) No games!….”

As a marketer, I imagine ads for soft drinks — Coke, 7-Up, A & W and they all just have a picture of the can and every ad says: Great Taste! Refreshing! The Best Soft Drink on the market!

Generic. That’s the worst thing you can be in advertising. The principle that drives all advertising and marketing is the U.S.P. A unique selling proposition “is a description of the qualities that are unique to a particular product or service and that differentiate it in a way which will make customers purchase it rather than its rivals.”

I suggest that people use an unique emotional selling proposition (an ESP) when composing their profiles. Something that they emotionally provide that is different than the girl in the box below and above. I’m nurturing. I’m warm. I listen. I support. “I’m hot and I like Arcade Fire and the Gators” does nothing for me (at this age.)

And the example above is the the boring, but safe essay. There’s also the I don’t like writing about myself, don’t e-mail me if you.… types of profiles.

The subtext of 99% of women’s profiles is this: I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BE DOING THIS. This is annoying. I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I should be married already. This is stupid.

This is another thing, most profiles are EXCLUSIVE rather than INCLUSIVE.

I’ve read hundreds of this: “Don’t e-mail me if you hate your mother” but one of this: “Don’t worry if you are not close with your family, there’s always an extra chair at our family’s dining room table”

I almost fell out of my chair when I read that (and I wrote her).

What about instead of writing about how much you love your dog (a waste of space), why not write: “My dog loves to play with other dogs — do you have a dog he/she can play with?”

Match.com and Evan Marc Katz charge about $39 to re-write your profile. Such a bargain I can’t get my head around it.

I’ve had two women recently give me a “No talking on the phone” ultimatum.

Meaning, we exchanged a handful of nice e-mails and when I asked for their numbers, they threw down a big barrier as if I asked for a very delicate and touchy sex act on Date 1.

The excuses range from “I’m not good on the phone” (What? Oh, you mean that thing in your hand all the time?) to “I don’t like talking on the phone.” (Again, what?) to (an exact quote) “I am not much of a phone person – especially when I first meet someone. I like to just meet a person and take in the entire energy of the experience.”

I usually counter with that I just like to talk to someone for a few minutes — 10 or 15 — before I make a Date Date.

You know why? I’m a big believer in Phone Chemistry. Because Phone Chemistry often translates into Real Life Chemistry. And Bad Phone is a canary in the coal mine for Chemistry.

I’d rather have 10, 15 minutes of Bad Phone than 30 – 60 minutes of Bad Face-to-Face — plus travel time, drink costs, etc.

And I’ve had bad phone — a few women who were drunk, the woman who made the joke about calling the morgue, the woman who offered to ‘tea bag’ me, women with voices that could qualify as torture devices (I once talked to a woman who knew a friend and when I asked the friend about her voice, she said, “Ooooh, yeah….there’s that.”)…

At this point, the conversation has to be good to get me to go out on a real date — nice, passable, boring talks don’t inspire me for a get-together anymore. I don’t care how good looking you are in your pics.

So, I made kind, charming appeals to these two women — the one mentioned above thought about it and made more excuses and the woman on e-harmony CLOSED ME out. (Meaning, I was banned from communication).

I am being too rigid? Or are they?

I mean, if they are so rigid about something so small and reasonable so early on, what are they going to be like later? Like my mom, where EVERYTHING must be her way? (“I know it’s your birthday, but your mother wants pancakes for dinner…”)

Many moons ago, I wrote a post on the ‘meet-cute-in-the-supermarket’ myth. ( http://datingdaredevil.com/?p=1 ).

Now some real data on it from Jezebel.com.

“Prof. Reuben Thomas, sociologist and coauthor of a forthcoming study on how couples meet, told me that Crystal Light’s 8% statistic was “an odd claim.” He explained,

We do estimate (from a nationally representative survey [...]) that almost 9% of married couples in the USA met in some sort of customer/client scenario, broadly defined. But looking through our data, I found only 27 couples (out of 2,960) that initially met each other in a grocery store or supermarket, and in 17 of those cases it is clear that at least one of them was working at the store (often both of them, with many of them students at the time). So I estimate that less than 1% of US married couples met in a grocery store or super market, and mostly when at least one was a store employee at the time.”

The full post:

http://jezebel.com/5874442/you-wont-meet-prince-charming-supermarket-no-matter-what-crystal-light-says?tag=dating

In June of 2011, I had a date with a 29 year old petite, cute nerdy girl around the corner from her house. She was FUNNY — now, I don’t say that lightly. As a former stand up (and occasional depressed person), it’s a huge feat to make me laugh. And this girl did it often. We had a 1 hour and 45 minute coffee date that just flew by.

We went out a few days later and saw a comedy show also around the corner from her house and then kissed her car. Unfort., the mood was ruined by two assholes who kept driving past us with their brights on again and again.

I called for a third date….and nothing.

I was a bit surprised, but she seemed a little guarded, a little snarky, probably not ready for any kind of intimacy.

But she was funny. And I needed new friends.

So about a month or two later — I don’t remember, I wrote her a postcard (I was in her neighborhood and remembered the building where I dropped her off and jotted down the address one day) and said, “I know you don’t want a third date but you are the funniest person I’ve ever gone out with and seem to have a lot of quirky stuff in common, so if you ever want to see a movie to go to a weird art or comedy show, let me know. YOUR MAILMAN READ THIS” I wrote in big letters at the bottom.

That was probably late summer of 2011.

Then the other day I saw her on Match.com. I clicked on her profile and read it and then a day later I got this: