Mr. Unavailable #185: A Downward Trend

See The Voice, Cracking the Code, Quasi-Quadrille, Imperfections, Cheap Empanadas, Slow and Steady..., An Upward Trend and Be Mine for the background on this one.

We girls don’t like to share the bad stuff about the guys we’re dating until things are already clearly headed downhill. Such was the case with #185. A few things I may have failed to mention: 

• He never complimented me but wasn’t shy about saying if he thought someone else was pretty (which means I now have a resentment against Anne Hathaway). 
• He was always bringing up his last ex-girlfriend. The one from two years ago. And other ex-girlfriends. And ex-crushes. 
• He liked stupid jokes (When we saw Argo, he thought the joke “Argo fuck yourself” was hilarious).
• When we kissed, well, while it had definitely improved from the very beginning, but more often than not, he’d lose focus and I’d be left having to work my way around his wayward technique. 
• He not only lived a five-minute walk from his parents, but, up until six months before, he’d been living with them.

Date #15: He met me downtown where I was hanging out with Eva. He didn't know it, but she’d rearranged her schedule to meet him. While I was in the bathroom at the cafe, he’d told her “Blah blah blah… now that I’m dating Tara…blah blah blah.” We thought that was significant. Still, I wanted more.

We took the bus uptown and went to dinner at Yerba Buena, on Kevin’s recommendation. It was much fancier than I thought it’d be, so I just ordered a couple of appetizers. Somehow, during dinner, he began talking about his last ex-girlfriend. The one from two years ago. He felt bad for hurting her, he said. He began to tear up as he conducted his own rhetorical conversation. “Did I love her? Yes. Am I grateful for everything she did for me? Yes. Do I think we were meant to be together? No.”

As he spoke, I went far, far away, to a safer place. He asked for the check and said, “We’re going to have to take a break on these dinners now that I’m going to have to deal with some major dental bills.” I got up, went to the bathroom and searched for some kind of internal restart button. One thought ran over and over in my head: He’s telling me about how he loved her and I have no idea how he feels about me.

As I walked him to the subway later, I hadn’t fully come back from my safe place. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“I’m just tired,” I said.

That night, a two-hour phone conversation with Eva convened. It involved yelling, tears, some minor reprimanding (“You don’t even know how you feel about him,” Eva said, rightly) and a decision. In the spirit of being the change I wanted to see, instead of being needy and demanding, which was how I was feeling, I chose to be generous. Right or wrong, I was doing it for me not him.

Date #16: I emailed him regarding our Friday-scheduled date: 

“I was thinking about tomorrow and considering wooing you with one of three options:

1. Gangster Night: Dinner at the American Prohibition place followed by a mafia flick.

2. La Lumiere du Soir: Bistro dinner with music--at the same time.

3. Summertime in February: We close all my windows, turn up the heat and pretend it's July—with tropical takeout, fruity drinks and a DVD summer classic.”

He wrote back, opting for Gangster Night and saying he had a terrible night sleep (insert foreshadowing here).

That Friday, I dressed in mafia mistress red and we headed to Commerce in the West Village. We ran into a couple of my friends en route. As I spoke to one, I overheard the other saying to #185, “Tara looks gorgeous. Doesn’t she look gorgeous?” I heard him agree. But, later, he didn’t repeat it to me.

Instead, during dinner, he began telling me what felt like a needless story about running into a guy in his office on his way to meet me. And then he said, “I told the guy I was headed to the East Village because I was staying at my girlfriend’s tonight.”

My girlfriend’s tonight… relief washed over me. I was his girlfriend. Back at my place, we had a steamy make-out session on my sofa, but, when we moved to the bedroom, he needed a break. “I’m all in my head,” he said. “I haven’t done this in two years.”

“You haven’t? Wow, I feel special,” I said.

“You are special.”

Signs of Hope: The next night, when I met up with Eva at a party in Greenpoint, I was glowing. “Guess what?” I told her how he casually referred to me as his girlfriend. She screamed and jumped up and down.

Red Flags: The morning after he told me I was special, we had a sexless, lazy loll, brunched at Yaffa Café and returned to my place. He was agitated. “I missed the 3 o’clock train,” he said. He paced across my bedroom and slumped on the desk chair. “I’m not going to get home until after 4. I feel like my whole weekend is gone,” he said. It was only Saturday. I felt less special.

Turning Point: There would have been a turning point had I let myself recognize what was happening.

Diagnosis: For me: I’m so wrapped up in the idea of being someone’s girlfriend, I’m ignoring all the red flags.

For him: He’s so wrapped up in his past, maybe he’s incapable of moving forward.