#3

OK, Craigslist date #3 was last night. In all honesty, as the day approached I could have taken it or left it. The only reason I ended up going through with it was because this girl had answered my initial ad and due to a busy schedule we just hadn't had a chance to get together until now. Far enough removed from when I placed the ad that by this point my manic personality had swung back to the ambivalent side of the scale. But since we had been consistently emailing back and forth I decided the least I could do was go through with it.

Now, don't get the impression this is to any way impugn upon her. She seemed nice enough, but... The but. Of the three people I ended up meeting, she fell sqaurely in between the first girl, who I felt we didn't really ahve anything in common (but also felt it would be, if nothing else, a good practice run) and the the second girl, who I felt I had a lot more in common with, and who's date was OK, but nothing that really grabbed me. So I didn't have the highest hopes for success, and found myself wondering during the day that if this date wasn't going that great would I be able to get home in time to meet up with my backup woman, Ms. Veronica Mars.

Well, I didn't make it home in time for Veronica. The date, quite pleasantly, went fairly well. My favorite of the three. Now I don't know if that means much aside from the fact that I'd definitely hang out with her again. That we'll just have to see, but we do have tenative plans to see who can drink who under the table some time.

Some notes on Indian food. 1) It's pretty good and I should have it more often, especially if 2) Indian places usually carry lamb. I love lamb and almost never have it and this place had a whole section of the menu dedicated to it. 3) Kingfisher beer from India? Well, it was pretty much a Budweiser with a different label.

Some notes on Jamaica Plain. 1) It's not near any major road in the city and takes forever to get to. I'd forgotten this. 2) I'd also forgotten how busy Centre St. gets.
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Segue piece. One thing I've noticed in my brief recent history of Craigslist dating is that what translates on email doesn't necessarily translate in person. A sense of humor, a certain way of speaking. This isn't a surprise to me, just mentioning it because I've seen it in action. Think about it, who are a large percentage of your emails to? People you already know. People that when you read their reply, you can often realistically picture their tone and inflection behind the words. When you're emailing someone you've never met, you can't do that. You can make a joke on email, they can "LOL"...but in real life that same joke can fall flatter than soda that's been left open for a week. (Whoa, that's like the lamest ananlogy I think I've ever used. But I can't come up with anything better right now.) Because they're picturing you saying it a certain way that may not be exactly the way you're saying it. Sense of humor is something that I don't think translates over email to someone that you've never spoken to in real life.
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Segues into: I love my computer. Really I do. I can Google stalk people while downloading music and watching porn. What else is there to life really? But with email and the rising popularity of Myspaces and IMs and by extension PMs on the cell phone...well, these things are not necessarily good things for someone who tends to lean more to the introvert side, socially. I often have to make a conscious effort to be social in situations, most often where people I don't consider good friends are involved. The problem with these things is that while they give you a way to interact with people, you're not really interacting with people. Raise your hand if you've emailed/IMd/PMd?Myspaced something to someone that you probably might not have said, or might have said differently, face to face. Yep, my hand's up. Maybe in a more perfect world there would be no reason for this to happen, but thinking about it, these things are often like credit cards. There's "no consequences". How many times have you bought something with a credit card with the subconscious mindset that it's not real money because you're not actually opening your wallet, taking out cash, and handing it over. I know that's a alrge reason that I spent a lot of my late 20's paying off the debt of my early 20s. Well, you can type up an email, send a Myspace message, a PM, etc. sometimes with that same feeling of invulnerability. You know that whoever you're sending it to is eventually going to see it, but you're not face to face so it's not exactly real. Like a credit card payment isn't exactly real until you get the bill, this kind of communication isn't exactly real into you get a reply. (If you get one at all.) Beacuse let's face it, if you're anything like me, these things most likely come across a lot more awkwardly then I intended when I sent them. For my own protection, I should have a breathalizer attached to my computer.

But to get back to the point. It's mecahnisms like these that in a way hinder rather than help my level of social awkwardness. Beacuse I feel like I'm saying things I want to say, but in retrospect they're not coming out correctly. This Craigslist dating thing has been sort of a mix, but one thing it has helped with is that yes, it starts off in this safer electronic medium, but if it gets to the point where you actually meet up with someone, well then you have to deal with people as people, and not bytes on a computer screen. You have to get past that introversion, and in the scariest possible theater, one on one. And that's what I need more of. That's where I should be aiming my sights.