Mr. Unavailable #149: Miracle on 51st Street

Vital Stats: 37, 6’. Worked in sales. Aesthetic: Dressed to impress, summer version. Demeanor: “I’ve got this covered.”

We’d made plans to meet on Wednesday after work. I suggested the Rink Bar at Rockefeller Center—partly because I wanted to be outside on a nice summer night and partly because I worked at 50 Rock by 51^st Street. All I’d have to do was throw on lipstick and take the elevator down six flights.

I texted him when I got there. He said he was on his way. I ordered a seltzer with lime and fidgeted in my seat. The sun was sinking over the plaza and the Rink Bar DJ played some Pitbull or Flo Rida or Rihanna—my recent faves. The scene was set.

#149 walked up. Trim, tall, confident, faintly tanned, suave in a pale, linen suit and scruffily groomed with a short-trimmed beard.

He moved a stool close and sat down, his legs straddling me. He touched me as he spoke. Every gesture of his met a limb of mine. My leg. My arm. My hand. I caught him scanning me—up and down. He had that energy. The kind that made me sit up and pay attention. The kind that told me to be on alert because something really exciting was about to happen. I tingled.

Two years ago, my interpretation of the tingle would have been “attraction.” I would have hung on his every word, been thinking about how I could ensure that he would like me. What would I say, what would I do? But from where I was sitting this day—maybe because of all I’d been through, or the decision I’d made to find something of substance—my interpretation of the tingle was “flee.” Like an organ transplant gone wrong, my body was rejecting him. My body was telling me to run.

We continued talking, sharing where we were from, where we lived, sisters, brothers. It was all fairly routine get-to-know-you chatter, but I had the unmistakable sense that he wasn’t really there.  Like part of his mind was working at hiding his true self. If he even knew what that true self was.

Remembering his comment about his ex-girlfriends from our phone call, I attempted to snap him into the moment. “So what was that thing you said about your ex-girlfriends? That they were reclamation projects?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. Whatever barricade he had up was now breached. The floodgates opened and I felt the surge of an oncoming over-share. “The reclamation projects...that was a nickname my best buddy came up with…there were two of them…there was the kind of bad one and then there was the really bad one...major drama…the first one I met at a bar…”

He went on. And on. I lost track of which ex-girlfriend was which, but the upshot was that one of them was a stripper, one of them was dangerously jealous, neither of them ever had any money and both had gotten kicked out of their own apartments. They’d, in short order, moved in with him. Eventually, a level of crazy intolerable to even him developed and he had to kick them out. As he spoke, I pictured an interchangeable pair of scantily clad brunette vixens, drunk and holding old-fashioned telephone receivers into which they were threatening suicide.

“Want to get out of here?” he said, looking itchy.

“Sure,” I said.

“Let’s go to Del Frisco’s.” At Del Frisco’s, he asked what I wanted to drink. “Not another tonic water,” he said.

I nodded.

“Do you not drink at all?”

I shook my head. For the first time, he exhibited a degree of gravity. I got a glimpse beneath the surface. “I don’t know if this is going to work,” he said.

“We don’t have to stay,” I said, smiling. “We could totally go. It’s fine.”

“No, let’s stay for a drink. We might as well.”

I laughed. “OK.” Whatever kind of dissociative disorder he may have had, I really didn’t care what he thought or even what we did. He was a traveling circus attraction and I was along for the ride. I knew he’d hang around only as long as the circus was in town, and that, after tonight, I’d probably never see him again, so I said, “Just so you know, I am pretty much the exact opposite of one of your reclamation projects.”

I left it up to him to decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing. He said nothing about that, but his appetite for sharing—about his foibles, his troubles, his dad issues—was insatiable. He revealed information about online dates he’d been on and how some of the women looked thin in their photos, but when he met them, “They were, well, a lot thicker.”

There were a few more women who were more “thick” than advertised. Such talk segued into a description of tactics that helped him get out of dates as quickly as possible. “Usually I’d just come up with some reason I had to leave—I had to work early, or that I thought I caught a stomach bug. I could tell that they were into me, but I had to get out of there.”

“Hey, are you hungry,” he said after we’d neared the end of a second round. I must have passed some kind of thin/thick acid test. “Want to get a burger? We could go to P.J. Clarke’s.” He took my hand as we left the bar and held me close when he hailed a cab.

Dinner was more of the same. We were there, together, eating burgers and fries at P.J. Clarke’s. But it was as if we were at opposite ends of a very, very long table. There was a gulf between us that no amount of removed table leaves could close. It was fun running around the city with a cute guy and all—he grabbed me and kissed me on the corner of Broadway and 61^st—but I couldn’t get at who he really was. I doubted he knew. He got off the subway at 34^th Street, leaving me with ideas of coming out to his place in Weehawken, or hanging out in the East Village with his friend who owned the Belgian Frites place. I doubted I’d ever hear from him again. He was too elusive, too ephemeral.

I called Eva after exiting the subway at Bleecker Street. “A miracle has happened,” I announced. “I’m now actually able to spot unavailable men.” I hoped I’d never hear from him again. Because I feared I wouldn’t be strong enough to resist his unavailable allure.

Signs of Hope: Shockingly, after the date, #149 took several available-man actions, including texting me that night (I froze in conflicting feelings of fear and flattery.), calling the next day, texting the next, and the next, calling again. He was definitely keeping in touch.

Red Flags: In that week after the date, he had a lot of last-second plans for getting together, all of which fell through because, well, I had plans.

Turning Point: We spoke on the phone one Sunday night and he revealed to me more about his job woes and I proved an excellent listener. Or so I thought. He asked for my email address and then, after we got off the phone, I read it. The subject line was, “This you?” and the message read, “Ok, hello. This is me. Godspeed.” I never heard from him again.

Diagnosis: For him: Completely unaware and unavailable. As Kevin said, “He sounds like he said some kind of douche-y things.” And as I replied: “No, he IS totally douchey, and he doesn’t even know to hide it. It’s kind of part of his charm.”

For me: It’s a miracle. I can spot unavailable men.