The Night Raven

The Night Raven comes at night.  Swiftly, silently; he is unseen coming and going.

The Night Raven feeds on fine whiskeys and gins, breathing in his alcohol like cool mountain air.  He is smart.  Maybe too smart for his own good, and he has seen things I cannot imagine.  His thoughts hover in the humid darkness…… and wait for mine to catch up.  Pulsing candlelight frolics in the background, and, as gin splashes over my fingers, a wave of calm inexplicably washes over my erratic equilibrium.  He warns me about the dangers of opening up to men, letting them in, showing them my weaknesses.  He understands.  He has enjoyed the company of both sexes.

The Night Raven doesn’t see gender.  And he doesn’t see that my shirt is wrinkled; that my hair fell limp from the humidity two hours ago.  He opens a wounded wing to reveal his offering to me: a collection of three keychains and four magnets from his travels through Poland and Turkey.

I smile with my eyes.  I sip my gin.  I hold souvenirs from faraway places I can’t afford to visit in my hand.  I nod my head and confidently show him my weaknesses.

I look at his eyes instead of his scars while I do.

Grandma’s Bisexual Spice Rack

Last Wednesday night (aka day three of my OKCupid marathon) was a repeat.  I rarely go on second dates unless I actually like the person… which, unfortunately, doesn’t happen very often.

I had to go out with this guy (“Cody”) again because I couldn’t remember anything about him other than the fact that I had been intrigued by his bizarreness.  I usually take notes after all my blind dates (sometimes during, like in the case with Dennis the night before) and the only thing I had written down under Cody’s name was “Grandma’s bisexual spice rack.”  I knew he was bisexual and I remembered him smelling like a plethora of dried herbs… but I couldn’t remember anything else.  He had left the country a few days after we first met and it had been over a month since then.  Of course I asked him to bring me back a keychain, but my expectations were low.

We met at a bar in South Williamsburg, and as soon as I walked in, the bartender leapt out from behind the bar to give me a hug.  I hadn’t realized it, but this was the bar that my buddy who used to bartend across the street from my job had moved to.  I sat down next to Cody, who had also acquainted himself with the bartender.  I recognized right away that Cody was wearing the same shirt as last time- with an anatomical sketch of a ribcage covering the front.  He was cute, albeit a bit awkward in his body.  He kind of reminded me of a bald eagle who has seen too much.  He did have a nice head of hair, though.

I also remembered that he drank like a pro.  I think he had about six glasses of straight gin while I was there… and he had been at the bar drinking two hours beforehand.  I took it easy because I worked the next day, and because even I can’t drink like that.  We chatted for a couple hours, he showed me his new tattoo, and reminded me of the story of his worst blind date.  He had told me this story last time, but clearly I had been catatonic and didn’t remember anything.  Apparently, he went on a blind date with a cute girl from OKCupid and the first thing she brought up was her cat and how she suspected he had an undescended testicle.  (The cat, not Cody.)  She went on to tell him that she had to start sleeping on her stomach, because the cat wouldn’t stop humping her chest.  She said it had been getting better, however, since she bought him a stuffed monkey to hump instead.  Now, if your cat’s genitals aren’t a prime first date topic, I don’t know what is.  I have never seen a cat hump anything, but I did have a large Jewish Canadian attempt to ride my leg like a dollar store donkey the night before.

Around this part of the evening, he reached into his man-purse and bestowed upon me the KEYCHAIN JACKPOT.  I never knew airport souvenirs could excite me so much.  He had gone above and beyond the assignment and brought me back a keychain from Quebec, Munich, and Cologne.  He apologized that he had forgotten to get me one from London.

After that, it became more and more apparent just how intoxicated Cody was.  I offered to walk him home and told him I would meet him outside in one minute- I wanted to say goodnight to the bartender.  When I got outside, he was nowhere to be found.  I walked the perimeter of the block, but he had disappeared into the night.  I even tried calling him (I hate talking on the phone) to no avail.  He texted me the next day, apologizing for his weak liver and thanking me for a lovely evening.  It had been a lovely evening.  Contrary to what my blog may convey, it doesn’t take much to please me.  A good bar, some laughs, cat testicles, and a treasure trove of keychains usually does the trick.

 

Jazz Shoe Man

There has only been a small handful of guys from OKCupid that I have gone out with more than once.  “Greg” was one of them.  We met back in early January, and concluded our brief affair some time in February.  He was the first person from the website I actually dated, and the first person in the world to succeed in getting me to go to New Jersey.

Sadly I can’t remember what Greg said that initially sparked my interest.  I first met him at my friend’s bar one fateful evening after work.  She had texted me before I got there saying he had arrived and that he had dark circles under his eyes, but was otherwise pretty cute.  When I met him, I was pleasantly surprised because he was way better-looking in person than in his profile pictures.  I have found that the guys who look super attractive in their pictures often don’t look as good in person and vice versa.  Greg’s outfit was a little confusing, but I was willing to overlook the jazz shoes, black v-neck and distressed corduroys, and focus on his pretty eyes and nice lips.  (I would soon learn that he wore this exact same outfit every day.)  He was a teacher in New Jersey who wrote science fiction in his spare time.  We hit it off talking about writing, so I told him about my blog (a mistake I have yet to learn from).  He told me that he had only been out on a couple OKCupid dates, one of which was with a wild alcoholic who wouldn’t stop calling him because she was obsessed with hearing his sexy deep voice on the phone.  He also said that his last girlfriend before he joined OKCupid was a much older professor and he kept referring to himself as her “boy toy.”  He then ordered a huge plate of pickles and could not stop talking about how amazing they were.  As I was beginning to think Greg was a little odd, a few of my friends from college showed up and everyone was impressed at how cute and nice he was.

I think we went to the same bar again for our second date and more pickles were consumed.  The third time we went out, he took me to dinner at some restaurant in the East Village and then to the same bar I went to with that Indian man who fell in the street.  An hour later, he was hungry again so we went to a second dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant where he ordered figs wrapped in ham and I tried not to throw up.  I don’t know about you, but figs wrapped in ham are not an appropriate thing to order on a date!  What are you, a medieval knight?  We ended the night at Lit Lounge, which I was surprised to find was his favorite bar.  Here was a nerdy, serious, and responsible teacher in the middle of a cluster of  young, obnoxious college kids.  Needless to say, I let him grope me on one of the couches.

Either this time or the next, he came back to Brooklyn with me where he experienced some, um, technical difficulties.  The next couple dates we went on consisted of going out to dinner at this nice restaurant in the West Village, ordering a ton of food and wine, and him trying to convince me to go back to Hoboken with him.  Eventually, I relented.  He got so excited, he paid $65 to take a cab from the Village to his apartment in Hoboken, and bragged to the bewildered driver about how excited he was to be taking my “New Jersey virginity.”  Upon arriving at his place, I realized how much of an adult I had on my hands.  He was only a few years older than I, but owned a car, listened to a lot of NPR, had an adult job, and an adult apartment.  He had THREE shoehorns.  But it got weirder.  He kept the door to his bedroom locked when he wasn’t home.  I asked him if he was afraid his roommate was going to burglarize him and he said “Well, we’re friends now, but it started out as a Craigslist situation…so, you know.”  Whoa.  His room was probably the most depressing bedroom I have ever seen.  It was dark and drab, with old maps all over the walls.  On his desk, he had six pens lined up perfectly square next to a small stack of about six moleskin journals lined up perfectly square, but alternating the direction every other one was facing.  In the corner, there was a wooden drying rack with six of his signature black v-necks hanging on different rungs, but lined up perfectly square with one another.  While he was in the bathroom, I moved around the v-necks so that they were no longer in a perfect formation because I was starting to feel like I was in an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”  When he came back, he immediately noticed and said “Haha that’s awesome.”  That was his response whenever I made fun of him.  I also got “That’s awesome”s when I teased him about eating two dinners, being an older woman’s “boy toy”, his jazz shoes, and the fact that he used the word “breasts”.  Anyway, I assure you that the events that followed that evening were very serious and adult.  A little too much so, if you ask me.  The next morning I had to get up at 6am and take the PATH train back to Manhattan because he had to teach.  Before continuing on to Brooklyn, I went to The Container Store in Chelsea to cheer myself up.  I love The Container Store and the bright floor-to-ceiling stacks of containers of all shapes and sizes were a welcome sight after Greg’s depressing bedroom.

I ended up going back to Hoboken a week later because I was feeling blue that things had gone sour with this foolish woodworker I had also kind of been seeing.  (More on that another time.)  Greg took me to dinner at Maxwell’s, where I limited my drinking to two or three beers.  He had several beers AND a couple Tickle My Pickle martinis…which ironically prevented that from happening later on.  After his second martini, he began a lengthy conversation about his therapist’s thoughts on his love life and how he lets older women take advantage of him.  I asked him if he was an only child and he responded with “Yeah, how did you know?”  Back at his place, things weren’t working to his advantage again.  (I’m running out of vague ways to say this.)  I had long since given up and rolled over to go to sleep, but he was still nudging me, whining “At least let me fondle your breasts.”  That statement is about as sexy as a fig wrapped in ham.  We had to get up in three hours and he would not stop the prodding and whining.  I was so uncomfortable I thought about calling a car service to take me across the river…but was unsure if my bank account could take the $65 blow, so I stayed.

The next morning, I was exhausted and couldn’t wait to get out of there.  After he got out of the shower, he asked if he could just make out with me for five minutes.  I told him not unless he wore a stop watch around his neck… to which he responded with “That’s awesome.”  During the walk to his car, he announced awkwardly and loudly “So, ahh, sorry about the whole FLACCID PENIS THING” as we passed an unsuspecting man on the sidewalk who did a double take at us.  I told him not to worry, but to perhaps ease up on the Tickle My Pickles in the future.  He dropped me off at the train station and I retreated back to Brooklyn as fast as I could, where I hid from the world for the rest of the day.  Later on, I got a text from him that read “Halfway through teaching my first period how to write an introduction, I was interrupted by a giant gin belch.”  If I had to choose the two most unattractive words a guy could possibly say to me, they would probably be “breast” and “belch.”

After that, Greg and I never hung out again.  A big part of that was the fact that I’m all set on going to Hoboken, maybe for life.  His behavior the last time we were together obviously didn’t help matters either.  But at least if I had been in Manhattan with a man who had consumed too many Tickle My Pickle martinis and was begging to fondle my breasts, it would’ve been much easier to cope.