A Week in the Life of a Single Woman

Film Going

elainegold — Mon, 02 May 2011 03:13:42 +0000

There are not many things I really like to do and will drop things for. These include and actually are, film going and live music. Who I enjoy doing these things with is a great mystery to me. I associate having a man with me for any of those activities a bad idea. Finding someone to attend films with was something I never considered. It always seemed like a lot of work organizing film times and locations with someone. The planning was onerous. But I found a man to do that with and made sure I didn’t want anything from him other than film going. Once you start wanting other things, there sometimes isn’t enough time for the movies. Hanging out with someone I was not at all attracted to made it easy. Just being with a man that you have no remote spark for is rejuvinating and fun. It makes everything so easy.
Sitting socially and enjoying the screen is relaxing and then afterwards, if you feel like discussing the film you’ve got someone right there who shares your interest and has just seen the film.
And also, while you’ve got film buddy going on, you can date men you’re actually hot for. All this means that you’re not needing to get everything from one person. Eggs in one basket and that sort of thing.
Then I thought that maybe life could be easier if I did get most of what I like to do, from one person. So people could enjoy “pairing” up? Why had I not heard of this before? Imagine combining it with sex. One could make a fortune selling this idea. Finally I understand why on-line dating caught on. If one does enough of it then it is possible to meet someone with whom you can enjoy shared pastimes. And in the end sound like an ad for woman’s razors or coolers.
It is the end of an era. My match.com subscription has ended. All the men they sent to me every morning were starting to look alike and familiar. These men were not being snapped up. Why would I want one? I was looking for a man with “a reinvented view”. To quote Kelly Joe Phelps.

Recycling

elainegold — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 02:48:22 +0000

This on-line dating thing got so onerous that I started e-mailing an old boyfriend with more reasons why I broke up with him and seeing another for sex. That was a bit of what I thought was “recycling” on a social level. But it didn’t really tie into my on-line dating career. I figured I would start running into old and possibly awkward on-line dates. My particularly worst one lived on the same street as my place of work. Since I started there in May I was on the prowl for him. I figured it was just a matter of time. When i worked on the patio (which was always) I feared seeing him walk by. This is same person featured in my first blog entry. Just when I let my guard down and never thought of him again he appeared and in my section. I now had to speak to him and ask him what he wanted to eat. He even had the audacity to pretend he didn’t know me. I observed him with his obviously on-line date. I wanted to scream” hey. I’ve been there,he’s crazy and he might invite you to a concert but don’t pick out your outfit because before the evening’s out, he’ll change his mind. ” But you my faithful readers know all this. Only his naive date was in the dark.
I will not be surprized if I see more. This guy didn’t even know i worked there. i met him prior to working there. What about all the jews I dated who i made promise never to bug me at work. Now that I don’t date them,I’m fair game. These are men with a love for deli. You cannot stop that.
This was all because I decided for something different, to date jewish men exclusively. Their neurotic behaviour and various feelings about their mothers made them feel they were entitled to eat smoked meat.
Soemthing terrible was always happening to them or perhaps i was doing it.
I also noticed that to bring recycling to an on the edge art form, I decided to fully pursue why I decided to call it quits with my “boyfriend” of seven months. This was before I ever on-line dated. I had barely heard of it and certainly had never tried it. I wanted to meet men the real old fashion way. Getting picked up. It rarely happens but when it does it is really fun. I got picked up at my high school re-union by an aging football player. Seven years my senior, I had never known him but liked hearing about his illustrious football career leading to a football scholarship at an american university. To nurture all this as a current claim to fame seemed a bit askew but I felt like a cheerleader sitting on the steps listening to his stories and telling me how cute he thought I was.
Anyway, more than a year later I realized the only thing was full of alcoholism (his) and the desire to have passionate sex (me).The boozing won out and that with his being penniless ended things ages ago. For some reason I was compelled to tell him all this and make sure I hammered it home. I guess if i met someone new I could lay off everyone.
I’m also yearning and pining for the guy the “car on a hilled” me. We exchanged a few cozy Hanukah e-mails and I got sucked in again. I love it when a guy does that. So few can………
Then there’s my ex-husband but that a whole story in itself. I’m a regular David Suzuki with this recycling stuff.

Slow Train

elainegold — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 21:10:36 +0000

After many months of speeding through on-line dating romances and coming out completely and utterly disatisfied, I have decided to change strategies. Many of these encounters had some form of physical liason. Usually there is nudity and mostly there is little else. Everyone wants passion, I’ve read books, magazines, gone to movies, and listened to love songs. There were many great ones, but one of my favourites is from Graham Nash to Joni Mitchell. For anyone younger than 40, they were lovers and musicians in the early 70′s.
Anyhoo, knowing that everyone seems to crave a little of that stuff we all seem to want, I found very little evidence it was out there. Most people connect quite mechanically and just want to know that penetration or orgasm can be achieved. This is stupid I feel and i’ll explain. If all my dating site pals are roughly my age then should ‘nt we have learned something along the way. We’ve had many years to pick up some sense of awareness. We should have a way better clue as to how to be cool and hang out. Where are all the like minded folk to have fun with and have a connected sexual moment with. Those guys. Remember them?? And someone that knows cool things and can spell the word “vinyl” (not vinal, and I actually read that in a note i received). Because of this sense of let down, i have decided to avoid moving into a sexual thing. That approach didn’t work well for me. To defend my reputation, or what is left of it, in no way did I have actual sex with every man I’ve dated, and certainly not the ones that entered my blog. I actually haven’t started this new way of dating but i did meet a fella on match.com. He looks cute (oh, god I’ve said before and then ran in terror) and we’ve spoken on the phone and exchange the odd e-mail. The not rushing in is refreshing. I’m not even sure if we’re even going to meet. I met him in the cutest way. I was desparate to meet someone on Friday night cuz i thought that someone I’m seeing was spending a hot evening with his new chick and i was looking for backup. This on-line dating olympics that people do is like being at the high school dance and having the most people to dance with.
This is too much crazy and really, no good seems to come from any union men and women (well me and men) attempt to cobble together. That is my most frequently used word to describe on line encounters. It all becomes so much work and a sense of constructing something. I just assumed that everyone knew what not to do. I also have the scary thought that no “cool” people even try on-line dating. Maybe i’m the only cool woman but it doesn’t matter if I’m even the only one because there are not any cool guys to appreciate it. This became real to me recently and I’m still waiting to be disuaded. Hopefully this new guy will get me over a few negative thoughts. It is really fun to get that pathetic feeling of optimism. Everytime i get it I swear it is my last time but I’m a hopeless (really hapless would be more apt) romantic. As long as a man doesn’t spend too much time with me it all seems so fun. Here i am, once again poised on the brink of on-line love.

Sweet Little Mystery(dating advice from the late John Martyn)

elainegold — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:29:18 +0000

After claiming that I was a few coffee dates away from abandoning my on-line dating career, I realized I still an an itch to be scratched. Comparing meeting men to a skin disorder is about where I’m at but at least I’m realistic.
I hadn’t heard anything from any of my sites in a while and had even done some tweeking on my J-Date site with my profile and photos and still nothing. I’ve realized that not being the Princess that these jewish guys expect is probably the reason I do better on other sites. Just when I was getting ready to meet men the traditional way (going to bars and picking them up) I heard from what looked like a cute jew on PlentyofFish.
He said he liked Woody’s films and excercize. Wow, a soulmate in the raw. Whatever! I was game. We exchanged a few messages and I delivered up my phone number and we decided on a time for a phone date. Last night at 6:00 the phone was suppose to ring and my new true love would be on the other end of the line saying all the right things and making me believe. Time ticked on and I realized that this new on-line goof wasn’t calling. I was on-line and got a message from him on the site. It said that was he was feeling “flueoish” (and I quote)and he would call me wednesday or thursday. At first I read it to mean that he felt foolish and i could understand. This on-line dating thing is a bit crazy and trying to connect with a total stranger could make anyone feel foolish. Then I realized that he meant “flueish”, meaning unwell, sick and obviously too weak to pick up a phone. Well this annoyed me for several reasons as you my faithful readers would suspect. Firstly, I didn’t think he should presume that I’ll just be sitting around wed. and thurs. evenings waiting by the phone for someone who seems a bit infirm and sickly and secondly, a major “dealbreaker” for me is when a man claims to not feel well as an excuse to cancel on a an encounter or in this case a call. Look, I don’t wanna know the details of your health. Once I was dating a guy and he had to cancel and called and told me he was nauseous. Too much information I screamed (quietly in my head) and never felt the same about him again. I appreciate the idea of mystery and tiny glimpses of a prospective suitor. There’s plenty of time in our (imagined) future for listening to hacking, coughing and nose blowing. For now let’s keep thing bathed in sweet unreality and mystery.
And anyway, I’m meeting a younger man tonight for a drink. I’m feeling confident and frisky with no threat of hair frizzing humidity in the forcast.
A word of advice to all you on-line wanna be romeos. Only healthy applicants need apply. We don’t want to know the real you before we’ve even spoken to you.

And John Martyn says it best.

Happy 70th Birthday John Lennon – Jealous Guy

elainegold — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 23:27:15 +0000

Dead Head……I’m Serious

elainegold — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:16:42 +0000

I ran across a different kind of guy courtesy of J-Date. He was much younger so I was intrigued to see what he wanted. We were meeting at the IDEAL on Ossington. I needed to purchase coffee anyway and he lived in the area (and had never been there before). He was kinda cute and ofcourse young and not at all interesting. Had not heard of any kind of music any normal person would know. He did like films by Todd Solondz which was fun to talk about briefly. He was a serial J-Dater. I was unfamiliar with this term but he explained that it meant that he met and dated alot of women. He stressed “alot” . He did tell me a rather humorous anecdote about eating too much of a pot infused bakegood just prior to a date. It sounded like quite the bad trip. All of a sudden he seemed to be looking closely at my head. It was a hot and humid day. I realized that he was not looking at my head, it was my hair that he was staring at.

Pretty sure he was looking at my hair...

Soon after this moment, he looked at me expectantlyand asked me if I had been (or still was) a Grateful Dead fan. I am not nor ever was but I took that question as his way of saying that I might look just a wee bit like a “hippie”. That kind he’s heard about that followed the Dead and had bad hair. And in my case, still continue to have it to this day. Now when I’m about to think of leaving for a date, my friend Frank kindly nudges me and asks me if I’m perhaps off the see the Grateful Dead. I get the message and run upstairs and apply the leave in conditoner.

I never saw that guy again, I would like to though, just to thank him for helping me establish a long over due hair regimen.

This is my favorite song about hair.

Car On A Hill (thanks Joni)

elainegold — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:01:30 +0000

For those of you not familiar with that Joni Mitchell song, it is all about a woman (and we perceive it to be Joni) getting stood up. She’s waiting for the car on the hill. The cars in that part of L.A. go up and down hills so you can see them coming and going. In this particular case, the car, occupied by a man, never arrived. This is a poignant moment for Joni Mitchell but was even more so when it happened to me by a man I was more than a little hot for. My “hill” was the side street that connects to my laneway. It rarely dawns on a woman that a man is so unable to communicate that he cannot say that he really doesn’t want to do whatever he told you he was about to do. Even though this must happen to everyone, it is still devastating to feel so completely rejected. Ironically, just hours before while watching this man play the guitar with his band, I left, got in my car, and turned the key. The only thing that got me back in the bar to see the end of the gig, was wanting to see how the evening would play out. Needless to say if I knew what “I’ll be over in 20 minutes” really meant, I would have left first. But I cared about this one I thought. And then I got mad. When 2 hours went by and I was still “waiting for my sugar to show”, I lost it! I called his house and left a message telling him not to call me ( the ever again was implied) but to please read the e-mail I had just sent him. I berated him over his lack of etiquette and accused him of not manning up and just being a poorly bred moron. Of course demanding to know why if he was no longer interested, why he couldn’t just say so. There is also the compulsory concern that I had completely lost my sense of judgement. I’m not even sure I have any, good or otherwise. All this on-line dating has numbed my true senses. When the anger subsided I realized that I wasn’t even sure how I felt about this guy. I was about to pack it in with him without a word of explanation. When people meet on a goofy dating site (this was a jew I caught on Plenty of Fish), the regular rules and gestures of niceness are discarded. It’s not like friends introduced you and you’d have to explain to them what happened. Everyone can dissolve into the night in a puff of smoke and the key is to pretend no body cares.

I did feel a little bad about the 3 nasty e-mails I sent him calling him on his rude behaviour and general sense of ass-holeness. I sent an e-mail that wasn’t quite an apology but it did reflect that perhaps I got a little shrill in my response. A few weeks later I heard back from him via facebook messaging. I’m ashamed to say I was excited to hear from him especially in that very non personal way. If a dating site is impersonal, then a facebook message is nothing more than a virtual glance from a distance. I think that’s all we can both handle. We’re both equally unable to do any kind of relationship thing.

Never one to leave well enough alone, I’m going to go back to the scene of the crime (the bar he gigs at) this weekend and check him out. I’m taking a friend for back up and this time I’ll disappear before he does.

Freak Show

elainegold — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 01:42:52 +0000

I had two “coffee dates” to finish up before i really do try to end this really sad and pathetic addiction. the first of these two was today. This encounter was brought to me by OKcupid, so far the site least likely to send me anything that isn’t Freak Show material. My first from that site was the previously mentioned bi-sexual who dumped for not being big enough (for what??, still not sure). The next was a guy who snagged me because his office was across the street where I was exchanging a film festival ticket. He told me a long-winded (boring) story about washing the floor of his stepson’s bedroom while he (the stepson) was in the hospital after falling off a roof doing some renovating. See, I told you it was boring. I literally ran out of the Queen and Peter Starbucks. Today’s though was a combination of Dustin Hoffman’s two most powerful roles. Ratso from Midnight Cowboy and the idiot savant from Rainman. All this combined with teeth so bad I could barely believe it. Bad teeth being the one thing that is intolerable (universally I’m sure). I started making up stories of trips to Connecticut for several weeks and having to leave in mere seconds to make dinner for a friend. I was shocked. Not at his teeth or the fact that although he had lived in Toronto all his life and grown up at Bathurst and Eglinton, he had never been to Kensington Market before. No, the shock that hit me so deeply and fully was that I voluntarily was meeting literally anyone for coffee. This man and his bad teeth convinced me that I must get off the on-line dating train. My final coffee klatch is Monday with the fake jew from J-Date. After Monday I’ll be free (or at ready for an intervention). I never want to live with or marry anyone so why do I do this?? It’s for the thrill of the hunt.

height & weight

elainegold — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 02:28:28 +0000

Back on the horse, cannot stay away. Online dating is a serious addiction and although harmless, one is always left feeling like an idiot. Like today. thought I should have the obligatory phone call with my Monday coffee date. This is someone I met on J-Date mind you……..Whilst chatting he gets a little more worked up and claims he’s got two big points to make. Firstly, he ask me how short I am (and I quote) because if I’m any shorter than what I am I’m too short and by the way, he’s NOT a jew. First of all I cried out “you mean you’re over this already because I’m too short?” and “Do you have a thing for jewish women?” He’s a professor of engineering,who wants to talk about music. I promised to wear my cowboy boots to make me taller. If this wasn’t on-line dating even my hopes would be up.

My friend Frank and his day

elainegold — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 03:40:35 +0000