Not a Love Song

Growing up, I always thought there were two kinds of songs. There were the religious, let-us-break-bread-together-on-our-knees kind, and there were love songs. I remember sitting cross-legged in front of the TV and watching an episode of Double Dare on Nickelodeon. Mark Summers was interviewing the kids before the game started. He approached one girl with long brunette hair. He looked at his note card and stated that the girl wrote songs in her spare time. He asked her if they were love songs. I frowned at the TV. Weren't they all love songs? The girl blushed, embarrassed, and said yes.

Despite 24 years spent enmeshed and working intimately in the English language, despite A's in Old English Poetry, Middle Welsh Poetry (yes), Seventeenth Century Poetry and Twentieth Century American Poetry, I still have a difficult time reconciling that there are songs that are not about relationships. After all, even all those Hosanna in the Highests I sang growing up were about man's relationship and love for God. Come on, Mark Summers, what other kind of songs are there?

Rolling Stone often publishes articles analyzing rap lyrics, detailing which rappers are currently battling. Those articles always blow my mind. I am nothing if not trained to take the English language and break it down into subtext and I can't figure out rap lyrics. Similarly I once read that Sara Bareilles penned the song "Love Song"—which I had thought was about a man—was in actuality a veiled reference to her producers about her struggle to produce a marketable love song. Once again, mind = blown.

Sunday I slipped on my barefoot trainers and ran along the river. It was cold and wet, but I needed a day to be alone with nature. I programmed my iPod shuffle to play Mumford & Sons. I had not listened to the band since I had been dumped; it was time to conciliate my relationship with them again.

I jogged down the path with the river to my right. The water level was high with the recent rain. The traffic on the trail was light, but people were still present. Mumford & Sons began to softly croon and I was okay; I didn't think of Valdosta and cry like I imagined I would have if I had kept the album close to me after the relationship. I heard the tinkling of the banjo and watched the Chattahoochee River. I smiled. It was all so very Georgia.

"Awake My Soul" was playing. As with any good song, when the tempo increased, I pushed myself faster. I could feel the pebbles between my toes, hear the steady whoosh of the river and feel the cool air stab my lungs like tiny sewing pins. "Awake my soul," he kept repeating, his voice becoming stronger and stronger with the actualization of the sentiment. I did feel awake.

And for the first time, the song wasn't about Valdosta or any boy for that matter; it was about me. And it wasn't a love song.

Or maybe it was.

Sasha

Several of the boys I had been out with recently noted the absence of my father in my stories. They ask if I'm close with my family and I respond, "Yes, I visit my mother often because she needs me." They ask how I spend the holidays and I say it's just me and my mom and we don't really celebrate anymore.

Eventually my date will shift uncomfortably in his chair and shift his glass. "So, uh, what about your father?" Meaning, is he dead?

***

My father called me last night. He inhaled sharply, excitement bubbling from his voice, "Your stepmom and my wedding anniversary is tomorrow. It's been 25 years. That's a long time!"

He wants me to share his enthusiasm, but all I can think is, Wow, 25 years since you woke me up out of bed in the middle of the night and told me you were moving out of the house. It's been 25 years since you told my mom you were a cheater, and always would be a cheater. Yet you found another woman with other children and managed to stick around for them. No, I can't share your excitement over your big accomplishment, daddy.

I remember my mother crying at the top of the staircase with my brother. I was too young to understand. I remember my father telling us the new woman needed him, "She wears polyester clothes and doesn't own a vacuum cleaner, for God's sake!"

Because it was the mid-eighties, courts relegated my father to every-other-weekend access. I saw my father 52 days out of every 365. Fourteen percent of the time.

***

My father, who is not a movie man, declares Doctor Zhivago his favorite film of all time. He is not quiet about this opinion, speaking of it often and nonchalantly. As I think about it now, it almost seems he works it in conversation. What are we watching? Some dumbass movie? My favorite is Doctor Zhivago—great love story. I used to think he said it because it was probably the only movie the man had seen.

In an effort to feel closer to my father, I watched the film several years ago. For three hours I watched my father's favorite love story unfold: a man who leaves his wife and child to live with another woman and raise her child. All of a sudden, the reasons why my father loved this movie so much became apparent. And I grew sick to my stomach.

For I was Sasha.

Love-ectomy

This is the dawning of personal belonging...

This is the eve of “I don’t believe”

This is me; I love myself

Yeah, fuck everyone else

I don’t need nobody’s help

‘Cause this is Love 2012

--3Oh!3, "Love 2012"

I think I'm done. Dating for now, that is.

In hindsight, this date and this date affected me more than I'm willing to admit. The Dating Man has me down. I'm disheartened. I'm jaded. I find myself approaching new matches and new dates from a place of fear instead of a place of hope. When someone initiates contact with me, I squirm, close one eye at the screen and peer through my fingers as I wait for the picture to load. Please let him not have a facial tattoo/man purse/front butt. Please let him not be creepy/live in his big rig.

My heart has become fickle. My missile-seeking baggage radar is on alert. My guard is up.

The last guy I was communicating with initiated a phone call instead of just meeting. I've since learned to just sit in silence and let guy do all the talking and, in the process, disclose his baggage. He told me he moved from Florida "to get away from a bad situation." Mmm hmm. Without prodding, he told me his lung spontaneously collapsed because he smoked too much weed and cigarettes. (The cigarettes were easy to give up; the weed was not.)

I remained silent on the other end of the line. "Oh! Uh huh."

After his 3-week hospital stay, he then gained 30 pounds (from not smoking pot) and not exercising (because of the self-inflicted lung problem) and I'm hearing all of this on the phone before I even meet the kid.

And look, I know my past isn't a basket of glittery kittens, but at least I know to ease into the ugly. If someone says, "Tell me about your past relationships," I'll respond with "I've had past relationships, but I'm here with you now." What I won't say is I lived with an alcoholic who pawned my shit, took a shit in my car and treated me like shit when he was drunk, which was all the time. When I was in therapy, my therapist told me there is such a thing as being too honest. Ease them into that kind of ugly. I never spoke a word of it to Valdosta.

If this blog were a movie, the scene would look like this: I'd be standing by a large round table, still as stone. Hands shoved in my jeans' pocket; pink Converse shoe rolled to the outside of my stance. Behind me people would be passing me in fast-forward speed. Everyone is bustling and I'm stuck.

I'm surrounded by people, yet I'm lonely. I see Jenna and Schmoozer each up to three times a week. I've received a very concerned e-mail from Government Mule that's gone unanswered. It's like the more people I'm around, the more amplified the loneliness becomes.

The only thing I can think of to rectify the situation is to perform an -ectomy on what's causing my unhappiness. And that's dating. Getting dressed up and feeling hopeful and putting myself out there time and time again is, in fact, not bringing me closer to love. It's depleting my resources. It's depleting my tolerance, my spirit and the things about me that I love.

So the thing I've decided to do is to perform a love-ectomy and instead love me. If you thought this blog was naval-gazing drivel before, you just wait. It's about to get uncomfortable up in here.

Date #14

"So tell me about the new date," asked Schmoozer.

I was seated in a booth at a bar on Saturday afternoon. I had just finished with my first kickball game of the season with the new team I had joined. Schmoozer and Swayze had met me for post-game beers.

"I'm hopeful. He's in his early thirties, dark hair, 5'11"," I gave a fist pump over the height. "Strikes me as an Apple geek, which is hot."

"What does he do?"

"He's an engineer."

"Eww," said Schmoozer.

"What?"

"You know what that means?"

"Socially awkward," we both said at the same time.

"We'll see. The only thing that bugs me is that he misspelled 'restaurant' in his e-mail to me."

"Omigod, Sarah," he sighed.

"No! What bugs me is that it wasn't even a typo like 'restuarant.' He spelled it 'rest-er-aunt.'"

Swayze finally spoke up. "I may not be a great speller," he said, "But I'm smart enough to use a browser that has spell check on it."

I pointed at him, "Exactly! That's my point. I mean, what if this guy uses Internet Explorer?"

Schmoozer shuddered and leaned back from the table. "Yeah, that'd be a solid reason to not date him right there," he agreed, laughing.

I never did find out what browser Date #14 used. We met at the resteraunt of his choosing, which happened to not even be open that day. I said it was okay. It's the South and it's the Bible Belt and you never can tell what is or isn't open on Sundays. I followed him a few blocks to another tapas resteraunt.

And it just wasn't a match. Nothing good or bad happened. I wasn't particularly attracted to him, which I felt horrible about since I initiated the match. He had one of those really awkward smiles which I found off putting. Initiate hate mail here, but the bottom line is the smile wouldn't have mattered if I had liked him; instead I'd be writing about how endearing it was. But he did not reveal any significant medical problems such as spontaneous lung collapse from drugs or rashes from direct sunlight.

He did, however, frequently mention an ex-girlfriend. After a couple of name droppings, I finally asked about her.

"We were together for six months and she dumped me six weeks ago, saying that if deeper feelings were to develop, it would have happened by now. We still talk... but... no, I don't think I'll get back together with her."

"Wait. You were with her until six weeks ago?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"We were matched by eHarmony in November. You had an active profile during your relationship?"

"Yeah, I got into a relationship with her one month into my year-long membership." He paused, "I didn't check it."

Sure. I buy that.

But it was a nice enough time. I can sit and talk with anybody about anything, which is what I ended up doing. It just wasn't for me.

Quantified Self

Quantified Self is a website where self-trackers—people who record and look for patterns in the empirical data of their lives—post their findings.

I've had six boyfriends so far in my life, with the average length of relationship being 14 months. The median is 12 months. Two out of the six—a full 33 percent of all of my romantic entanglements—had the last name of Wilson. And no, they weren't related.

My average span between boyfriends is 7.4 months. (The median is 4 months.) According to my own empirical data, I fall into 3 patterns between boyfriends, I move on at 0 months, 4 months or 12 months. Considering my last relationship was 10.5 months ago, that means I am 1.5 months away from my next boyfriend.

I've been single 41% of my adult life.

Well.

Isn't that something?

Spring Forward

With daylight savings time change, the running trail also switched from night to day. Whereas the after-work crowd was hot but sparse, Monday the trail was a bounty of beautiful, beautiful men.

Jenna and I hit a lazy jog and worked our way through just 2 miles of the course. Since she's officially in a relationship with Government Mule (she accepted his Facebook relationship request last week), I claim dibs on all the pretty boys.

We've developed a pattern: run with one earbud in, leaving the other ear open for commentary. I adopted the ancient Roman gladiator method of ranking the runners: a solid thumbs up when one passes us.

"I've been thinking," I puffed. "I'm not a good enough runner to be approached by one of these guys; it's not like he's going to slow his pace and sidle up next to me and say, 'Nice form.' I think the only shot I have is to fake an injury."

"Ha!" she laughed. "You know that fire station in front of my townhome? My friend told me to lay in their driveway with an 'injury' to get the firefighters' attention."

Another yummy one passed us. I stuck my thumb up.

"Maybe you should push me down. Make it look more realistic."

"She was beating me!" Jenna faux exclaimed.

Just then, the yummyest one I've seen by far passed us. I crossed over in front of Jenna and came to a dead stop. "Push me down!," I hissed. "Push me down!"

Jenna bumped into me as she tried to stop. She broke out into a fit of giggles. "It's too late! It's too late! He's already in front of us!"

"Yeah, my luck that guy would stop to help me."

Approaching from the other side of the woods was a middle-aged man walking with a full-size Macaw perched on his shoulder. The parrot was so large that its tail feathers trailed all the way down to the man's knees. As we passed them we crinkled our noses, not from the stench of the bird, but from the sheer amount of cologne the man was wearing.

I'm looking forward to spring.

Date #13

Last week Schmoozer and I were rained out of our scheduled run. Instead we met at a local pub that's sandwiched in between our office buildings. I found myself singing for my drinks in the form of bad dating stories. Schmoozer scored himself a deal; it was $1 well drink night.

He tipped his pint glass towards me in a toast. "You have the best stories."

"I'm giving up dating for Lent."

"No! But what about the stories?"

"Subscriptions to these dating sites cost money. You want my stories? Sponsor me."

Last night I went out on a date primarily for the story. When I stepped out of the shower and wrapped my hair in a towel, I knew I wasn't going to meet the man I would marry.

I had been on the fence for quite awhile regarding Date #13. His profile picture was a story in and of itself: he was wearing a blue Oxford and was sprawled across a plush leather chair, glasses lowered to the tip of his nose and an empty wine glass in his hand. It looked like an audition for Masterpiece Theatre. But men also post pictures of themselves in front of the bathroom mirror, so this was an improvement, right?

He wanted to talk on the phone before meeting, of which I'm not a fan. The phone conversation was littered with non sequiturs: I told him where I lived and he responded that he liked to go hiking.

"Let's meet for coffee. How about the Barnes and Noble in [metro suburb]?"

"What?" I shrieked exasperated. "You want me to drive 20 miles for a cup of coffee?"

"I thought you lived in [metro suburb]?"

I was very unimpressed. "No," I said flatly. "I live downtown. I said so earlier."

He doesn't acknowledge his faux pas and just keeps going, making plans. "How about Tuesday?"

"I think I have plans on Tuesday. My calendar is at work, but I know next week is a busy week for me. I have a 5k, hockey game and painting class all scheduled."

Meanwhile, he's talking over me, as in talking while I was talking. Just kept making plans even though I was clear I wasn't sure I was available. "At the mall? 8 pm?"

I've never been on a date at a mall before. Not even back in 1993. Our plan was to meet at Starbucks. And because this is a modern-day Starbucks love story, I was waiting at one Starbucks at the mall and he was waiting at another Starbucks at the mall.

I got in line and made my purchase: tall mocha frappuccino, skim, no whip. The guy behind me in line was attractive: early 30's, dark hair, khakis and Adidas jacket. My coworker encourages me to go out on all dates. "Who knows who you're going to meet while you're out? Maybe the guy at the next table..."

This was the guy she to which she has obviously been referring.

Could I? Could I hit on another guy while waiting for my date to locate the other Starbucks?

I turn around, "Long line, huh?"

"Yeah. I didn't think so many people would want coffee at 8 o'clock on a Tuesday."

"Yeah."

"You normally drink coffee at this hour?" he asked.

I opened my mouth to respond when a guy approached and I crossed all of my fingers and all of my toes that it wasn't my date. He stood a little too close to me, invading my personal space, and waited a beat before introducing himself.

And this guy was hideous. I try to keep an open mind about people. I didn't say anything about the gross little turd who worked in sex toys, but there was no saving this one. I was a victim of the bait and switch again! It was like someone took his profile picture and ran it through one of those Photoshop style layers that swirls the head and I was left with the whorled mess.

Adidas Guy took one look, smirked and left. Oh god.

I opened my mouth to just say No, thank you and leave but I couldn't. Oh god.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.The mall closes in an hour, I kept repeating in my head.

We sat at those crappy little Starbucks café tables. He leaned towards me with his arms outstretched across the table, his drink sitting next to mine. Even from the other side of the table, he was invading my personal space. I leaned back and crossed my legs at the thigh.

"This week is going by slowly," he said.

"Well it is Tuesday, so I guess."

He picked up his grandé frappé, extra whip with caramel drizzled on top. "I had Pop Tarts for dinner. I don't really eat well."

"I can see that. I guess that makes sense why your cats are named after candy."

"What did you have for dinner?"

"Steamed chicken with broccoli and red peppers."

He asked me another question but instead picked up something and started playing with it. I specifically didn't answer.

"Sorry, I'm not being rude; I'm just adjusting my insulin pump."

My stomach turned over. He's adjusting his insulin pump at the table on a first date. I don't know because I don't have an insulin pump, but I would think manners would have him adjust it in the previous five minutes before he met me, knowing he was going to get that beverage. Or if there was an indicator that needed attention, he'd get up from the table.

I stared at the wire and then my frothy frappuccino that I just spent four bucks on. I know enough about the mechanics of an insulin pump that I'm imagining it in my mind. I pictured the box pumping insulin through a catheter inserted in the stomach as the same consistency as my frappuccino through the straw in my mouth. My stomach flipped over again. I'm nauseated.

"So an insulin pump. You must be type 1," I said.

"Yeah."

"It's a difficult disease. But the Pop Tarts and the large frappé—You say your favorite food is 'Pizza Hut'— is all that good when you're a type 1 diabetic?"

He chuckled. "I guess not, but imagine what I would look like with less fat." He pinched his skinny arm. "I need all the fat on the stomach I can get because I need it to absorb the insulin. Sometimes the skin on my stomach hasn't healed yet when it's time to move the pump."

Oh god. Considering I was nauseated before he mentioned that he had open skin wounds on his abdomen, I can't imagine him saying that to anyone and she'd still want to see him naked. I tried to sip my frappé but I was seriously trying to fight back the vomit.

I thought about a news article someone sent me in preparation for the date. Date #13 was an Auburn man, "So Auburn football. Armed robbery." Luckily we rode out the rest of the time talking SEC football.

As soon as the Starbucks in the mall flicked its lights off at 8:45 pm, I stood up. I had never even taken off my coat.

He nodded to my zebra-print stilettos. "Nice shoes. That's one perk to being a girl; you get to wear pretty shoes."

I wasn't sure how to take that statement. I thanked him.

"Tomorrow's Hump Day," he said.

I couldn't even hide my annoyance at that expression. I turned around. "Nice to meet you!" gave a shoulder hug and crossed the street to my car and spent the rest of the night gagging.