The Courtly Bulldog Part 2

Part 2

The Courtly Bulldog and I arrived at more or less the same time, but in different areas of the park. He called me to find out where I was, so I stayed put and guided him to me in my spot in the shade. So I really didn’t get a good look at him until just a couple of seconds before saying hello.

Have you ever seen a movie where they’re panning over someone from the feet up and you’re super invested in what this person is going to look like? That’s how it was because the Courtly Bulldog was approaching me from behind some trees.

I got worried when I saw his shoes—black loafers. And then he got closer and I saw navy blue slacks—pleated!—that were hiked up somewhere above his belly button. And then the bottom of a green polo shirt that was tucked in to the slacks. And then, oh my God, a huge beard. To complete the look, he was wearing giant old man glasses and he lumbered ever closer without moving his arms from where they hung limp at his sides.

He was about ten feet away from me, and I knew he’d seen me but my mind was screaming, “NONONONONONONO!” and I was desperately trying to figure out a way that I could pretend I wasn’t me, just some girl who looked like me and was on the phone in the place I’d said I was. 

Then he said my name and I knew that there was no way I was getting out of here without taking a walk with this guy. I reminded myself to be nice. Yes, I was still annoyed about the day before. And yes, I found him intensely unattractive but it wasn’t his fault. It wouldn’t kill me to take a walk with someone, and at least I knew he had decent conversational skills.

As it turned out, the Courtly Bulldog was only good at communicating via phone and text. In person, he was insufferable. At some point I made a throwaway comment about how squirrels are the jerks of the animal world and he was like, “Well, I’m sure that technically there are worse animals. Consider that bears are a menace not only to humans but other wildlife…” and I stopped listening.

Later on, I was interested by the texture of some weird pine needles (which is probably the best indication of how this date was going) and when I touched them, I said, “Huh, they’re kind of like rubber.” Then he corrected me and told me that no, that was not their texture at all. I nearly tore a branch off the tree and shoved it in his mouth to stop the condescension. But I didn’t do that and I’m calling it a win.

Eventually I stopped talking because every damn time I tried to say something or make a joke, he would take it in the most literal way possible and correct me. I think he thought he was making witty banter. Now, I don’t particularly mind awkward silences, mainly because they don’t embarrass me. But the Courtly Bulldog seemed unable to bear the conversational vacuum and he tried to fill it up by humming to himself, off-key.

At some point as we were nearing the home stretch of our walk, he said, “Goodness, you really are short.” And then he proceeded to reach out and pat the top of my head. Like I was a dog. I quickly ducked out from under his clammy hand, and said, “No.”

He was shocked that patting a woman on the head was a major faux pas. Alternatively, I was shocked that I hadn’t started screaming yet. He made things worse by repeatedly saying, "Well, there must be something I can do to make it up to you." And he was serious. Not trying to make a sexy innuendo, or being self-deprecating. No, he wanted me to name something he could do to make me un-annoyed at him for being a boring, lady-head-patting dud. What was I supposed to say? 

Finally, we had made a circuit of the park. I could see my ancient toaster oven of a car, and it has never looked so beautiful to me. I said, “Well, this was nice. You have a good day.” He said something back. I have no idea what it was because I was smiling and nodding and edging toward my car.

The whole way home, I was chain smoking and laughing a little crazily like I had just had a near-death experience. My roommates asked me how it went, and I said, “I am so mad. I don’t want to talk about it.” So we had margaritas and tried to pretend the whole thing never happened.

Except he texted me the next day. I didn’t want or know how to reply, but I felt kind of sorry for the guy. I crowdsourced the question and my Facebook friends came up with a pretty good but firm sendoff, which I texted back about an hour later. And that was the end of that.

I felt a lot of things in the wake of my recent dating failures: relief, disappointment, irritation. I considered taking a break from online dating and just playing video games instead. But eventually I strengthened my resolve. I started doing this because I wanted to find out who was out there and meet new people. Statistically, I had to come across someone who didn’t make me want to tear my own face off.

It was with this half-assed sort of optimism that I responded to an overture from the Ginger Capuchin. I was in for possibly the worst date yet.

The Courtly Bulldog

I started talking to the Courtly Bulldog when he sent me a little comment about the Hello Kitty cotton candy maker my roommates and I had recently purchased. I’d mentioned it on my profile, because if you have a Hello Kitty cotton candy maker, it’s not the sort of thing you should keep a secret.

Anyway, we hit it off pretty quickly. Unlike the Sexual Bear, this guy’s values were a little more in line with my own and we had similar senses of humor. Despite my failure to be cool and not-vindictive the last time around, I was still determined to play nice and at least attempt to keep things in perspective.
Though I was nervous that the Courtly Bulldog only had one picture, and that was a close up of his eyes. Still, though, I liked the personality that came through our texts and I figured I’d see where things went.

So. After about a week of trading quips and a couple of phone conversations, we decided to meet in person for a walk around the Capitol Gardens. Some of you will remember that the last time I did this, it didn’t go well. But the guy was seriously fixated on the idea that we should take a walk for our first date. I chalked that up to the fact that he seemed kind of old-fashioned and a little sheltered, but he seemed cool enough to outweigh the concern I felt about that.

That Saturday I made myself pretty and headed downtown. I texted to tell him that I was leaving and I’d see him in about 45 minutes. When I got downtown, I was a little early, so I stopped by my sister Heidi’s apartment to say hello. While I was there, I checked my phone and saw that I had gotten no reply. This was a problem because the Courtly Bulldog and I had planned on just meeting up in the park, but not in a specific place.

I texted again to ask if he was still planning on meeting me and I got nothing in reply. I talked it over with Heidi and her boyfriend and we decided to wait until ten minutes after the date should have started before we all left to do something else.  Maybe, we reasoned, he had been in a terrible accident.

Ten minutes came and went. I left him a polite voicemail informing him that since I hadn’t heard from him, I assumed we were done and wished him a nice day—I only sounded a little sarcastic, which made me proud.

Heidi, Jo, and I went out and had a lovely lunch and then we spent some time looking at espresso makers at Crate and Barrel. We were in a BevMo about three hours later when my phone rang and I saw it was the Courtly Bulldog himself. I hesitated, but eventually my curiosity won out and I answered.

He apologized profusely. Apparently, he had decided to take a nap—seriously—and slept through our date. It was just stupid enough to seem like a thing that had actually happened. I accepted his apology through rather gritted teeth and hesitantly agreed to meet the next day at the same place and time.

In case you’re wondering why I did that, here’s the thing: I was dead set on being more accepting of people’s flaws and mistakes. This was a relatively foreign concept to me, but people kept saying things like, “You’re too hard on men,” and “you have such high expectations of people.”

And that’s why on Sunday, I went through the whole prettification process again and headed back downtown even though I absolutely didn’t feel like it.

But no, really, I should just have passed.

The Sexual Bear

All right you guys, I know it’s been about a thousand years since I updated. I got lazy, but I’m going to make it up to you. We’re going to go through the backlog of assholes, dilettantes, and man-children I’ve encountered in the past couple months, which will be fun for all of us.

So, to pick up where we left off, I had just sabotaged the hell out of myself by slinking away from the Math Unicorn. It was time to do some soul searching and also some pep-talking.

I decided to be more open to people and their imperfections. I’m certainly not perfect, I thought to myself, and it would be unfair to expect everyone to rise to my high standards. I would listen to what people had to say to me and not reject them out of hand if they said something I thought was stupid. If I actually liked a guy, I wouldn’t disappear two dates in. Yeah! I was going to be awesome and understanding and pleasant, dammit!

And that’s where the Sexual Grizzly came in. He seemed normal at first, which they all do for the most part. He wasn’t my usual physical type, but he looked ok and didn’t seem like he was intent on eating the skin off my face or anything, so I gave him my number and we commenced a texting courtship.

He worked in a college library during the day, and he was pretty smart. He made me laugh quite a bit and had the skill of giving me compliments without seeming like a creeper. Overall I liked the cut of his jib. But something seemed a teensy bit off-kilter, like he wasn’t telling me something important. Initially, I filed this feeling away with things that are noteworthy but not necessarily ominous.

A flag went up a couple days in when he said he was also a DJ at local fetish parties. This gave me some pause; while I’m really not bothered by people on the Fet scene, the instances of polyamory are fairly high and I’m a completely monogamous kind of girl. He made some reassuring noises about it just being a gig. I gave him the text version of the side-eye, but I reminded myself that I was practicing not shutting people down right off the bat.

And then came the day when, at his suggestion, we played Truth or Dare, on the understanding that I did not want any pictures of his junk. When answering the question, “Why did your last relationship end,” he seriously told me, “I guess it’s just because I’m a very sexual person…my girlfriend couldn’t handle that.”
LOL, what, dude? But no, you’re totally trying not to be judgmental. Roll with it!

So I went through my usual spiel of, “Blah blah religious upbringing, love, not happening anytime soon, blah.” I figured that would take care of it.

But no, he was all (to paraphrase), “Oh, that’s so awesome and special! I’m down with that and stuff and I appreciate your honesty and whatever.”

Side note, do men actually appreciate honesty when it’s not what they want to hear?

Anyway, since I was wearing my Pants of Being Accepting of People I talked to him for a few more days. His messages got more and more explicit, though, because he was such a sexual person and whatnot. I was starting to get annoyed so I threw out a suggestion that might have been kind of a trap.

“We should meet in person! Let’s get coffee!” I sent a picture of myself being super smiley and not at all looking like I was trying to call the Sexual Grizzly’s bluff. On the off-chance that he accepted, I named the daytime in a very public place.

But wouldn’t you know it, he was busy! But he super wanted to meet me, it was just that he had his final due for film class (I know, right?) and so much was going on. But we should totally keep talking and meet up when he wasn’t so pressured.

I was like, “Aww, that’s too bad. I understand.” I think at that point, without realizing it, I had gone to the Dark Side of being understanding. I kind of wanted him to just admit what his game was even though I should have already disengaged at that point. But when someone starts to play games with me, it’s hard not to play to win.

The last day I messaged him, I just asked him how it was going and the reply I got was pretty operatic. Imagine violins here, by the way. He was so overwhelmed, you guys. His final was overdue and the editing equipment was broken and his mother had had a nervous breakdown and was going into a sanitarium the next day which was also his birthday and he was so stressed! Oh, woe!

I sent a sad face.

He continued, “And sex is one of the ways I deal with stress.”

I said, “O RLY? Well, I told you what my deal is, so you have fun banging random chicks. Sorry you’re stressed, though. Later!” Then I erased his phone number and spent the evening dissecting the whole ridiculous charade with my girlfriends.

He tried to message me a few times after that—most recently last week—but it was too late. I’m afraid the Sexual Grizzly’s sexual aura was just…too sexual for my delicate lady self to handle.