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Friday, Jul. 11, 2003 - 6:35 p.m. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Alas I have returned. I have quite a bit to write about. My career has not changed. My life, overall, has not changed. But much has happened since. Easter ended when the sorority girl I sponsored was baptized. The school year was ended and my involvement in the church would become more limited as the campus became less busy over the summer months. However, I was a bit distracted by a professional certification exam that was hanging over my head that I vowed to pass in June. As much as it pained me, I put the Experiment on hold and I studied. I told my therapist that my efforts in building a social life would have to diminish. Otherwise, I could not fully commit myself to passing the exam. So mid May through mid June I spent most of my free time studying. My only other outlet was a dancing class I was taking in West Coast swing. Only women in their mid-30s and up took the class, so I would not have much luck meeting eligible single girls in their 20s. When I was not studying I wasted time fiddling around on the Internet. One night I stumbled across "Eharmony.com." My curiousity was piqued when it offered "a free personality profile." I clicked around and found myself taking a test that evaluated my personality. So I took it. What did I have to lose right? The theory behind eharmony is that you take this test, others take this test, and you are matched based on compatible personality traits. Simple enough. The catch? You have to pay $50 a month if you want to contact your matches. A couple of days went by, and I got notice that I had a couple of matches, one of which wanted to contact me. In order to answer her, I would have to pay the money. Of course, I hated to do this. But then I saw a 7-day money back guarantee and decided that I would find out about this person but quit before I lost my money. So I put in my credit card number and we exchanged multiple choice questions, must haves and must nots, etc. I stayed interested in her but the 7-day deadline was drawing near. So I had to find a way to contact her without eharmony. I knew she was a 23 year-old physical therapy graduate student in New Orleans. So I hunted around the LSU-NO medical school web site, did some creative guesswork, and figured out what her e-mail address would be. I then e-mailed her. She e-mailed me back and we sent messages back and forth. Eventually she asked for my phone number. I gave it to her and she called. We talked nearly every night for an average of an hour. That was until we decided I should visit her. The only problem was that she was in the middle of an internship in Sleepy Hollow, New York. I spoke to my therapist and he recommended that I should go to New York to visit her. So I made arrangements to fly out to NY during the 4th of July weekend. We planned it all out on the phone. We would tour New York City all weekend. She liked Disney and her favorite movie was Beauty and the Beast, so I bought us broadway tickets to see Beauty and the Beast that Sunday night. Let me tell you a little about this girl. She was going to graduate from physical therapy school in August. She was originally from New Orleans. She claimed she had broken up with her boyfriend after 8 years about a year ago. During the course of our phone conversations, she constantly prodded me about my previous relationships. Of course, I had none to speak of. I simply told her that I did not like talking about previous relationships and I did not tell her anything. She got so intimate in her conversations with me that she went on to tell me about her sex with her previous boyfriend. She said she did not like sex with him because he was a "minuteman." She said she also was gaining a little weight because she was on a new birth control medication. Of course, she was 5'5", 125. Her cousin teased her because she looked like a sixteen year-old. I knew she had to be a beauty. However, I did not actually know what she looked like until I met her in person. She turned out to be something like a model. I am a virgin. I try to keep an open mind about the sex thing, almost assuming that sex is just a natural part of a modern relationship. I am a guy, so having sex is always on my agenda. However, I cannot let go of the fact that I am a virgin, and that since I am one and have been one for so long, I might as well make it worthwhile and save it for marriage. So I remain conflicted. I guess my compromise would be that I would lose my virginity only if I was absolutely certain that my partner would be the one I would spend the rest of my life with. I am also completely inexperienced with relationships with the opposite sex. Yes, I can talk on the phone for hours and sound quite charming. But as I learned on my trip, 95% of the relationship between a man and a woman must be nonverbal. I was not at all prepared for this. In hindsight, I bet if I were more experienced with women, I could have got in bed with her the first night, based on all the signals she sent to me. Instead the opposite happened. I was so unaware of the signals at the time, I simply ignored them. Naturally, she began to think I was ignoring her affectionate advances toward me, ie. I did not like her. On the contrary, I thought she was beautiful. And she was attracted to me. This also baffled me and it left me completely unprepared. The first night we had "romantic" dinner at a restaurant underneath the Brooklyn bridge and I charmed her into submission with my complements. I held hands with her and put my arm around her as we viewed the Macy's fireworks display from Roosevelt Island. I had never felt that way before. It was so new and wonderful, it was putting me on overload emotionally. That is why when I brought her to her train and she turned he cheek to kiss me good bye (on the lips) it did not occur to me. I kissed her on the cheek, but she wanted more. I was so overwhelmed by the novelty of everything, I could not imagine anything better, like a kiss, ever happening. So the next morning we met at Grand Central to tour the city. It was downhill from there. Slowly but surely, my lack of reciprocal affection got to her. Now that I think of it, she wanted sex. Sex her boyfriend could no longer give her. Sex, believe it or not, was the last thing on my mind. I was trying to enjoy seeing New York, and make sure she was having fun, too. Unfortunately her friends kind of ruined it for me by touring NY with her over the past couple of weekends. Seeing the city no longer interested her. Let me just say that I am as horny as, if not hornier than, the next guy. If I knew what was going on, I would have been all over her, and she would have liked it. But now I do know the signs, and the next time I see them, I will act. But then I took the bad advice of my therapist, who I incidentally decided to no longer see, and told her about my disorder, and my past. What an idiot! You cannot tell anyone that unless you know you trust them, and they trust you. What kind of therapist is that, to tell me to spend loads of money going to New York, to see a girl I have never met before, to go on a first date? Common sense recommends that I do something simple, like meet her in New Orleans when she gets back and bring her to dinner and a movie. Incidentally, when we passed Ground Zero, I marvelled about where we were and what had happened there. She said I should be sad. I shrugged it off saying that I was just acting like a tourist who was seeing the site for my first time. She was upset by this and went on to say how the place reminded her of how sad she was when her boyfriend (she never called him her X!) who is in the Air Force had to fly to Afghanistan. Right then and there I knew something was up. Why was she still hung up on her old boyfriend? Telling her I was manic-depressive was the icing on the cake. She wanted to go home. I brought her to the train station and sent her back to the lair of the headless horseman. Luckily, I have a cousin in New York and I brought her to see Beauty and the Beast. She loved it. She also brought me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I came to realize I had more in common with her than the physical therapist. In the beginning, I thought my date was the Beauty, and I, with my disorder, was the Beast. Her shallow reaction to my honesty about my illness makes me reevaluate that assessment. But anyway, at least I have gone on a date and have a good understanding of what it is all about now.
I have renewed my subscription to eharmony. Even though that one did not work out, I still believe it is a great way to meet people. But the Experiment continues. I think I will be a lot more confortable around women from here on out. |