Again? Seriously??
He looks at me with those deep, innocent eyes.
No wallet. I’m gonna smack him.
This little “casual dating” experiment is not going well.
What’s the harm?? I said. What could possibly go wrong?
Yet here I am, on the hook yet again for another dinner. I will try not to point out how he just spent thousands on a new gizmo… where did that come from? Weirdly, he has very expensive tastes, yet isn’t overly fond of picking up the tab. The money isn’t the point, it’s going out, then suddenly shifting the responsibility to me. I mean, a hike and a couple of sandwiches is damn near free, why not do that? It’s another Dude incapable of coming up with any ideas. So, here I am, once again paying for an hour with Mr. Entertainment. There’s a sucker born every minute, but does it have to keep being me?
It’s not the money. It’s the time, the distraction, the monkeywrench tossed in my brain, not being able to totally focus on what has become my three driving forces. And the reason it feels okay to go on an occasional date is because I am making quite a bit of progress on the Big Three, a precious three nuggets sparkling in the pan after endlessly swirling the mud of a thousand ideas.
I write out notecards for a future book. An awesome musician friend starts parading me around to events all over the Actual City that gave birth to Big Suburb. He even lands me an audition with a high-level band from Bigger City of Three Million. One of the other singers in this band was a backup singer for Aretha Franklin and another backed up some other famous person whom I completely forgot as soon as he mentioned Aretha Franklin. I’m extremely intimidated, but my version of Lady Marmalade still nails me a part as their sub, and I am elated. I won! Little victories like this are starting to pop up, green sprouts in a formerly dead landscape. I am coming to life, slowly but surely… a formerly dead body Frankensteined together from the limbs of past lives, electrodes on neck showing the first sparks of electricity…SHE’S ALIIIIIVE!!!
And then, once a week or so, there’s Lastdude.
I am “casual dating”, that theoretically harmless purgatory of someone you know in your gut will never be The One but allows a few dinners while you wait… Or maybe you kiss him one time and he magically turns into Prince Charming? I wouldn’t know, it never worked for me. Maybe I should have called him Substitutedude? Or Tempdude? Or Monicastillhasn’tquitegotitdude?
So anyway, there’s this guy.
It’s the music that got me.
Possibly the best bass player in the state, with a reputation for practicing hours longer than anyone (especially me), to watch him play his instrument is to watch the precision and artistry of Baryshnikov (dust that pop reference off, Monica, it’s an antique) and it’s just pure magic, and well at least we have THAT in common… and… and…
This guy is a solid maybe, and I know it. I think even HE knows it, probably why he’s always talking about his ex. She was this, she was that, how could she leave? And a big blowup that ended in a fit of depression in someone else’s world somehow winds up on my plate.
Coach doesn’t think it belongs there. He’s calling me out on this guy.
Monica… Quit wasting your time on a maybe. What you want is a HELL YEAH!!!
Okay, Mr. Coach, but does a Hell Yeah for me even exist? After all of the angularity in my life, and my personality being a wee off the beaten path, do you even really think this guy is out there?
And Coach finally confronts me with the question of the ages, an Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything statement that leaves me reeling.
Coach:
Look, Monica. What if you knew today that you would never meet the right guy, never have a significant other, just live your own life pursuing your own dreams for the rest of your life, could you be happy?
Oh, hell no!
Why is he even asking me this? Asking me to give up the cuddles, the kisses, the shared time, the… the… the…
Is ANYONE happy alone?
I mean, I guess I have known people who are, but I’ve always thought it’s weird. Who doesn’t want another person there throughout every day, through all the events, holidays, weekends, cold winter evenings when your toes are cold and you want to stick them under some warm legs?
Is it really possible to be happy the rest of your life with a vacancy on the other side of the bed every night?
He has presented me with a dilemma. I have shaken free of the wheelbarrow, but as long as I feel I can’t be happy alone, I’m going to think I’m somehow incomplete without someone else looking at me across the kitchen table, even though it may only be because he’s bitching about the bacon being overdone.
Ant that’s why I’m tolerating Lastdude, because there is juuust a little bit of batter left in this bowl of desperation, something only the spatula of a life coach could have discovered, one last aching need in the vessel of my life that keeps saying I won’t REALLY be happy until I find this elusive guy.
And I can’t unsee it. From here forward, I realize there is a foundational problem with the way I view my own completeness that is driving me to tolerate what I should not.
I start thinking about the people I know who are happily single.
I know a widow… actually several of the widows I know say they wouldn’t want to be married again, and it always surprised me. They happily take care of their homes and read books, watch movies, get together with friends and go to bed in peace without the snoring partner next to them Dutch Ovening them all night. Hmm.
I know career women who are tired of the dating-go-round and decided to leap-frog the whole scene in favor of a mission no one can interfere with, not having to support someone else’s endeavor and having to sacrifice their own, but instead driving forth to build their own empire. Hmmm…
I know twentysomethings who don’t do the dating frenzy like back in my high school days and opt instead for planning an incredible life of travel, adventure and freedom, self-driven and able to turn on a dime… hmmmm…
I start examining tip to toe, this need I seem to have. Where did it come from? Why do I still want some little piece of relationship? What will it take for me to let go?
And then I found out.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 