First Dates

First Dates...ugh...yeah!

It involves a feeling of anticipation and dread, of excitement and fear, of hopefulness and insecurity. I love/hate first dates.

The" freak out" phenomenon (and no, I am not meaning I will hurt myself, run screaming naked through the streets or start picking people off from a clock tower)causes a distinct uneasiness in me. Will he like me? Will I like him? Will it be wonderful or a disaster? Will it even just be nice or will I be trying to come up with reasons to leave?

It is worse when it comes to internet dating as we do not really know the physical person at all..and they do not know us either. Ahhhh...here is where all the unique surprises come in. One of the surprises is that we don't look how the other has imagined. Pictures only capture so much. Pictures and profiles are not liars-just gross exaggerators of the truth.

I sometimes wonder if maybe it would be smarter to post photos of me- pre-morning coffee, jumping out of bed after a night of little sleep, wandering through the house bumping into the door in a too dark hallway and stubbing your toe on the door jamb with hair sticking up on end pictures instead. We could then say, "Here it is. Here is me at my worst and if you can't face this sometime in a future morning, be on your way."

Yet, it isn't just about what a person looks like. It is their presence, the sound of a voice, the crinkle of an eye during a bout of laughter too. These things we cannot truly know until that first date. I am eager and apprehensive at the same time. I can come up with a dozen scenarios good and bad of how it will all turn out. And it never does turn out any way I can quite imagine. I wonder if men do the same or if they are all cool about it and don't even give it a second thought.

Tonight is a first date night. I am eager and apprehensive. I need to stop here and get ready before I am late which never makes a good impression. I have to also factor in the time it will take me that is extra when I get lost (I always get lost). And the weather has changed suddenly and dropped twenty degrees so I have to rethink what I am wearing. I will make sure to have the girls look me over so I don't have anything unzipped, unbuttoned, stained or something stuck in my teeth. The heels I wanted to wear I have already decided against since I tend to be a klutz and even more so when I am nervous. I have already embarrassed myself greatly in a text that was autocorrected...

Me: I get off at four. What time do you want me to come fart you?

Me: omg

Me: get, I meant get.

Him: Sixish would be good.

Him: Fart me?

Him: Hey, I'm not that kinky. Lol

At least he will be fun.

Monika M. Basile