I Have a Date or What the Hell Am I Doing?

Okay, so my pathetic confession du jour is that last Friday night, whilst fervently searching craigslist for a futon (no, I still have not found one), in a fit of patheticness (and horniness) I happened to sneak a glance at the personals on Craigslist. I swear I usually just use it for furniture! There amidst the sugar daddies and men seeking asian women, I found a simple little post that caught my attention from a guy who said he liked the outdoors and going to the theatre. As you can imagine, this interested me a bit, so I did something I had sworn never to do; I responded. I've never (and had never intended on) venturing into the online dating thing, but several friends had lately begun to do so, and well I'm evidently an unoriginal follower. I had no idea how to go about it though, so I constructed a brief (ha ha, like I'm really capable of brevity) response framed rather identically to his post but in my own individual somewhat quirky style. I evidently forgot to sign my name however, and his response back stated that I certainly wasn't boring (well that's a relief, and here I thought I was so very ordinary) but I had forgotten to include my name. We exchanged several e-mails and pictures in the odd ritualistic dance of this new and incredibly foreign dating medium, and then he suggested we talk on the phone. At this point I became sure that I wouldn't like him and that the forced constraints of this highly impersonal method produced such flawed results that how could it ever work? After much urging from Mr. Artsy Hotpants to just give him a chance (and simply for the fact of being able to tell Vixanne that I gave a normal nice boy a chance) I responded with my phone number.

He called tonight, and the incredibly shocking thing was that I actually enjoyed our conversation; we talked for almost an hour, none of which felt forced or awkward. He's pretty normal, but not boring...I had no idea the two could co-exist! And furthermore, he wasn't at all bothered by my wackiness (I held back nothing and behaved as normal). He held his own in sarcasm and flirting and all of the witty verbal foreplay that you engage in at the inital stages of attraction. I was enjoying the conversation so much that when he asked what my plans for the weekend were, I invited him to go hear Cuban music with me at Lincoln Center tomorrow night. He then suggested we go to dinner first (sushi and he loves wasabi just as much as I do) and go hear Moroccan music afterwards (unless he said "more rockin" but I'm pretty sure it was Moroccan) which I freakin love! He said he'd take care of making all the plans, which is even better because I hate making choices and picking places.

I hung up the phone, rather excited about this spontaneous plan, when suddenly it hit me...I'm going on a date...with someone I've never actually met...that I found on Craigslist! I feel so very trite all of a sudden.

Even stranger is that I feel slightly nervous. I am normally not nervous about dates, but then again I've usually met the person beforehand and can be relatively asasured they are attracted to me and I to them. What if he's not at all attracted to me? Worse yet, what if he is and I'm not attracted to him? What if he's an axe murderer canvassing Craigslist for his next victim?

I can't believe I'm suddenly so very unoriginal. It was the outdoors thing that hooked me. I'm unoriginal and easy. Wow, my dating patheticness has reached new lows...but at least his idea of a date wasn't just to fuck and go get ice cream so perhaps I'm actually moving up out of the abyss. We'll see.