One Gay at a Time

Well before I met Smiles, I had been chatting with a guy I met on Grindr for some time. He was a feisty one, and I had a hard time locking him down for a date.

One thing you should know about me. If you ever give me your number, count on me having it forever. I don’t delete anyone. Whenever I add someone new from Adam4adam.com, Grindr, Manhunt or OKCupid, I note in their name how I met them. I ask them immediately to send me a pic to attach to the profile so I can keep them straight. If I meet them and don’t think there is potential or I find they aren’t worth my time, I add an X in front of their name so they go to the bottom of my contact list. It’s a system I’ve developed, and it works quite well.

When I broke up with Smiles, I went back through all the guys I hadn’t Xed. It certainly wasn’t a long list, and I’m sure the guys had long forgotten about me. However, it was worth a shot. I had nothing to lose. I’d simply remind them who I was. If they were still interested, great! Mr. Feisty was among this company.

Surprisingly, when I reminded him of who I was, his tone was very different from the last we texted. He was much more open to meeting me and far more playful than three months prior. We got caught up on what was going on over the past three months over text.

I did learn that he met someone in December, and they’d been dating since. However, he was willing to meet up for a drink as friends.

Now, I know he said we’d meet as just friends, but that’s not what he really meant, I’m sure. He was keeping his options open. He wanted to manage my expectations going into our “date,” but he was also leaving himself the opportunity if he liked me to see me again. I was okay with all this and was certainly up for the challenge. My game face was on. Now we were introducing something into the dating game I’d missed from my life since I swam in college — Competition. I could put up a fight with the best of them. I was going to show him how great of a guy I was, and he was going to like it.

He’d been traveling that weekend, and I happened to catch him on his way back into the city in the car from south Jersey. We went back and forth for quite some time. I was once again shocked at the night-and-day difference in his correspondences from the last time we chatted. We figured out a night to grab a drink after work. I went down to meet him in the West Village at Jeffery’s Grocery.

When I arrived, he was wearing a baseball cap and no glasses. This was quite different from the picture he’d sent me. The reason I kept trying to talk to him so much was because the picture was very sexy. I found him very attractive. The man standing before me was attractive, but not like the picture.

We both ordered a beer. He’d chosen one of those odd places that has beers on tap I’d never heard of. I had no idea what color my beer was going to come in. The conversation was tough to break into. He wasn’t being very friendly. If anything, he was being combative. I got the feeling he was being defensive the whole time like he was getting a bad review at work. He never added much to the conversation. He would answer my question fully, but never sparked the next topic of conversation. It was very uncomfortable.

At one point the topic of Facebook came up. He went off! To say he hates it is an understatement. He loathes it, and made it quite known. But, somehow me managed to spare me from being a part of the idiots whining about their lives on there. Somehow I wasn’t one of the, and I wasn’t supposed to be insulted. I respected his opinion of the site, but he didn’t respect mine. He just seemed so angry. I was so turned off and couldn’t wait to leave.

We talked about the dating world. Usually on a date when you start to talk about the physical act of dating, you’ve reached the end. There’s nothing to talk about between you anymore. If you reach this topic, it’s because the only thing you have in common is that you’re doing this with many other people who it didn’t work with either. He told me about a few of his long-term partners. I was jealous he was able to find guys he could call his partner — and more than one. I told him about my worst date ever (until this one), and he couldn’t believe I didn’t leave. He told me he wouldn’t have had the patience to last five minutes with the guy.

However, it was obvious he wasn’t interested in me. That was evidently clear when the bartender asked if we’d like another, and he said he was done. This date wasn’t even entertaining. It was simply painful. I got absolutely nothing out of it beyond the knowledge I wanted nothing to do with this guy.

We paid our tab and left. We were heading in the same direction, so we walked together a block, said our goodbyes, and I walked away never looking back…