Mr. Unavailable #143: My Inner Cheerleader

See The C Word and Real or Reflected for the background on this one.

After our Sunday brunch/Met/PR Day Parade date, #143 and I kept in touch through Words With Friends—a game at which I was killing him. When the next Saturday rolled around, I wondered why I hadn’t heard from him. I messaged him over WWF to ask how his week was. He replied.

#143: Did you get my email?

I hadn’t. He re-sent it to a different email box. When I got it, the formerly missing email asked if I wanted to go see Speigelworld. As we know, I looove Speigelworld. Everyone had busy schedules, so we set the date for Friday.

On Friday, nearly two weeks after our first date, waiting for him in front of the broke-down Speigeltent situated in a random parking lot in Times Square-slash-Hell’s Kitchen, I summoned my inner cheerleader. You may not think he’s cute when he gets here. But that’s OK. You’ve gone back and forth on guys before and they’ve sometimes become really attractive to you. Eventually.  

Finally, he appeared. OK, this isn’t so bad. He was in a polo shirt and khakis and had a messenger bag slung across his back. You can work with this. We hugged. While it was true he looked acceptable—cute-ish, even—an unacceptable scent was emanating from his facial area.

Judging from the heavy, earthy aroma (dirty-earthy not fragrant-earthy) wafting from his mouth, he’d begun his day with coffee and proceeded to drink coffee for perhaps a great portion of the day. It’s entirely possible he’d even inhaled a good dose of city dirt and truck exhaust, too, because he said he’d been on a job site most of the day. Maybe he hadn’t had time to check his breath or find gum or even know that a breath-check was necessary. Or maybe he just wasn’t all that hygienic. Whatever. That could be fixed, my internal cheerleader said.

We went into the tent and found our seats. Other than the diesel fumes wafting toward me, the only other disconcerting thing was that both of us were sort of turned away from each other in our seats. I was supposed to be that way because I wasn’t so into him, but…he was doing it, too.

After Speigelworld, #143 had made a reservation for us at Northern Spy in the East Village. It was one of those mindful restaurants where all the animals used for food were raised happily until they died. And when the restaurant served pig, for example, it served ALL of the pig—slowly, over the course of a few weeks.

When we got there, it was pork belly night. The rest of the menu was laden with fish. A few months before, after sending yet another fish dish back at a restaurant because it was too fishy, Kevin begged me just to admit that I didn’t like fish. So pork belly it was.

#143 asked me if I had any travel plans for the summer. “Nope,” I said. I asked him about his.

“In a few weeks I’m headed out west with Alice and Harry to go rock climbing and then in August I’m heading to Denmark to see a friend of mine and then I figured that while I was there, I might as well travel down to the Maldives to see what’s down there…”

Just like in our earlier phone conversation, my exotic-travel cred got taken down another notch. And then the appetizer came. I’d agreed to share a fish-based starter with him. I didn’t like it. And then the pork came and, it turned out, “pork belly” is the glistening fatty part of the pork. I didn’t like that either. On top of my exotic travel cred being damaged, my adventuresome-food rep was taking a beating, too.

When the bill came and I took out my wallet, he said, “Oh, no, no. I have this thing where if I ask the person out, I pay.”

I excused myself to go to the restroom and tried to psych myself up. It was the second date, after all, so it might be appropriate to kiss him. He pays. He travels…you can totally kiss him if it comes to it. Maybe it’ll even be good.

And then I thought of his breath.

Walking down the street after exiting the restaurant, I asked if maybe he wanted a dessert. I wanted to spring for something to show my gratitude—and maybe also put off the inevitable. He declined, saying he had to get up early to do—I forget what, probably something adventure-y.

“So, I have sort of a conundrum,” he said.

There it was. I don’t know if it was the tone of his voice or the words, but like a Pavlovian dog that’s been dumped too many times, my heart sank reflexively, thinking, “Is he breaking up with me?”

Wait, wait, wait, I reminded myself. There’s nothing to break up and you’re not even that into him anyway. My inner cheerleader tossed down her pom-poms and breathed a sigh of relief.

“OK?” I said.

“So, I’ve been seeing someone for a few months and she wants a relationship with me and I’m not sure if I want one with her. Although when we first started dating she asked me if I wanted a relationship and I said yes, but that didn’t mean that I wanted one with her, but I think that’s what she thought. So I thought I could see more than one person, but I don’t think I can.”

“OK,” I said, unsure of why he was telling me this.

“I was going to call you last night to tell you, but then a friend of mine said not to because I’d left it til too late. She said you might not have wanted to have gone tonight.”

“OK,” I said, still unsure of why he was telling me this but fairly sure that his friend was right. “So, you’re dating someone but you don’t want a relationship with her?”

From there, the conversation took a weird turn where I began to council him on what he was doing with this other girl. I managed to turn the conversation back. “So, are you saying we’re friends?”

“Well, yes, if you’d like to be.”

There it was. I experienced a combined sense of relief and rejection. This meant I wouldn’t have to kiss him. Or try to like him. And, hey, it hadn’t even cost me anything. But then, he was rejecting me? Because he had multiple options? What kind of bizarre-o world was this?

“I’d really like to be friends. I mean, I think you’re a riot.”

I’m a riot?

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said.

“Oh, well, yeah, in my book, it’s the highest compliment.”

Well, it was nice to know I entertained him.

He walked me back to my building. We hugged and I turned to unlock the front door.

“So, I’ll see you again sometime?”

I turned back. “Oh, hey, you never know,” I said.

“Well, you’ll still kill me at Words With Friends, right?” he asked.

“Probably,” I said.

We waved good-bye and he turned and walked away down the street. The next day, I resigned our WWF game. I had enough friends. And even if he got closure with his other situation, I didn’t like him—or his breath—enough to stick around.

Signs of Hope: He arranged a show and dinner and sprang for the whole thing.

Red Flags: Two weeks between dates. The body language.

Turning Point: My conflicting feelings when he said, “I have a conundrum.” I’d been rejected! By someone I didn’t find attractive! But I was now free! I didn’t have to kiss him!

Diagnosis: For him: Clearly, he didn’t have the stink of commitment on him, he had the stink of all-day-dirt-and-coffee breath.

For me: I feel compelled to force myself to like a guy simply because he’s got the word “commitment” attached to him?