Date #4

Last night I met another guy from eHarmony. I'm experiencing a lot of difficulty organizing my thoughts about this one.

First off, he was Irish. I was taken aback by this because he was so soft spoken that it took me a couple of minutes to realize this. Secondly, most expats announce their country of origin in their profiles to load up on the vapid women who date them for the accent. For this reason alone, I usually avoid the expats.

He was more attractive than he is in his picture. Last night he sported a light scruff across his face that suited him very well. We immediately asked each other how our respective kickball tournaments ended. His team came in second. Mine came in third.

On a side note, about 4 or 5 people I'm communicating with on eHarmony have stated that they are playing in kickball leagues. According to the website and my team t-shirt, it's the premier social experince, but I had no idea that this is the new way to meet singles. Apparently it's a huge market. I highly recommend it and wish I had taken more advantage of the opportunity while I played. On a side, side note, we just signed up for dodgeball, which I'm a 100% certain will result in an injury to my face.

My date was very soft spoken, to the point where I thought I might have had a hearing problem. I'm the opposite: loud and boisterous. A positve trait about me is that I can sit down with someone I've never met and treat him like we've been friends for years. I'm instantly comfortable around strangers, and I was the only one in my group of friends to make friends with Schmoozer and even players on opposing teams. But his quiet demeanor suprised me and I found myself becoming more reserved as the night wore on.

We have a lot in common in that we are both active and enjoy going outdoors and doing something. But we're opposites when he asked me about travel.

"I have the curiosity to travel—I even have the time—but I don't have the money. It's hard when you're alone. With someone else a $200 hotel becomes a $100 hotel."

"So where do you travel?"

I listed the 5 states I visited this past summer. Just when I was feeling confident and interesting in my travel, he said

"Oh, so you travel domestically."

It seems like a requirement to have an avid interest in travel when you have an online dating profile. Half of your pictures are supposed to be you standing in front of some monument (his was London and Paris) or a blurry picture that's labeled a cafe in Spain. I have half a mind to post a picture of me sitting in a Taco Mac and label it enjoying a beer in Portugal. I have plenty of pictures of the 2 weeks I spent traveling through Italy, but that was 10 years ago and I kinda looked butch at the time. So now it's a question of do I want to look attractive or do I want to prove that yes, I have travelled too?

And I'm sitting here a day after the date, all worked up about expats and travel once again, but yet I still want to see him. There were fleeting moments when his reserved guard was down and he threw out a careless laugh or a snicker of mischievousness and I thought, this is a person I want to know. He's intelligent. He's well read. He still steals music off the Internet. He reminds me of Adam in that he's already moaning about his physical ailments because he's 8 years older than me. He reminds me of Conor, of whom I swore I would never date another Irish Catholic as long as I lived. But I feel the need to crack this guy, to get him drunk and learn his secrets and know the person that I think is within.

He paid and made sure I had enough money to pay the parking attendant. We walked outside. He gave me a hug. The hug was full frontal, shoulders meet shoulders with hips not too far apart, which passed my hug litmus test. He said quietly that he would be in touch.

For the first time since I started online dating, I said, "I hope you'll call."

He stopped, looked me square in the eyes and said confidently, "I will."

So I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm thinking it's like a 50/50 shot.