If You Write It, They Will Come: Year One, Take Two

by Julie Robinson

“You may want to do the blog anonymously,” is the helpful advice I receive from my married friend, Rosalyn via Facebook after I whined to everyone I know about a guy who read the What? Not! Blog and no longer wants to take me out. 

Another married friend pipes in: “Well, if he doesn't have a sense of humor then there's no point dating him;).”  Yeah, his loss. 

Honestly, who wouldn’t want to date a woman who brags about winning a free room to a motel sporting mirrored ceilings, gets dumped by a loser wearing pancake make-up, seriously thinks about seeing a guy who recently got out of jail, and bitches about being told she's too pretty to still be dating at her age?  I’ve gone on about needing to wax my pubes—and having that be the only viable reason not to engage in group sex with a neighbor.  I’ve slept with a different neighbor.  Who haven’t I slept with?

The Mid-life Dating Diaries

by Julie Robinson

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a first date before where we both cried.  I’ve met my match, and I’m scared to death.”  I wrote that in my journal on November 6, 2010.  Aaah!  The foul weather lately makes me nostalgic for the dry days of early winter with the shining sun and nippy breeze.  The springs of Colorado bring us the mud season—making it the worst season of the year. 

Spring is supposed to be the season of new beginnings and love.  For me, it’s raining outside and a complete drought in the dating department.  It wasn’t always like this.  I have been known to have multiple dates a week (sometimes double booked for a single evening).  Unfortunately, none of these encounters have evolved into a relationship.  In fact, many of them are just first dates with no chance of a second.  Sometimes I’m the one to put on the brakes, but more frequently it’s the guy who chooses to never see me again.  If that isn’t bad enough, many times I cannot figure out why they make that determination.

I never saw or heard from “my match” after that balmy November evening—now I’m not terribly surprised by this, but at the time I was downright giddy and SURE that this man was it.  I was done looking; I had found the man of my dreams.  I was so sure, in fact, that I recorded the thoughts quoted below in my diary the moment I got home from our date.

Girlfriendland

by Julie Robinson

Seeing that I have never actually been kicked in the stomach, I may have been exaggerating just a wee bit the other day when I complained about that very same sensation.

“I’m sorry,” consoled Shannon, “I know you really liked him.”

“That isn’t really the worst of it,” I appreciate her kindness, but I didn’t know Ryan well enough to be feeling the way I was feeling—shortness of breath, scattered thoughts—but I also couldn’t shake it.  “I think it was the promise Ryan held.  We were both looking for the same things and it’s really hard to accept that he chose someone else.”

That morning while busy at work I had received the break-up text: 

hey.  i don’t know how 2 say it other than say it.  I met someone this weekend im interested in pursuing a partner in crime thing with.  So I need 2 cancel weds.

I wish I could say that I shot off some witty sort of retort right away, but it took a while before I answered: 

               Yes.  Straightforward is always best.

Male Slut

by Julie Robinson

“It’s like a physical sensation,” was Shannon’s lame-ass answer as to why she was acting so I’m-not-fourteen-anymore-but-you-wouldn’t-know-it giggly after a perfectly fine man asked her out.  “I haven’t felt this way since the fifth grade when Alan Pintar asked me to meet him after school behind the tennis courts.”  Yada yada yada.

I’m happy for my friend and all (her future date did show us some very yummy buck naked pics), but after I heard about Alan Pintar’s three (or four?) wives, Alan Pintar’s dead younger brother, and how the only reason Shannon was not currently married was because she was “waiting on Alan Pintar,” I pretty much tuned her out.  Besides, the only reason she kept rambling on was to deflect my attention away from her new involvement with Trevor.  Truth be told, however, that wasn’t garnering too much attention from me either.  No, the man I cannot get enough of--the man keeping me up at night—is Trevor’s father, Rodger “Hubcap” Hubbard.