It’s past midnight here. I sat down to write hours ago, and was staring at a blank screen, about to type, “I think I got stood up.”
I decided to dip a baby toe back into the online dating pool. It was daunting, but I soldiered forth, remembering the words of my friend Heather’s mom: you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a good toad. By Sunday night, I was chatting with two dudes. Both were Turkish. Both seemed polite and kind. One had a dog. They both asked questions about me (this is significant, sadly), and made noises about wanting to meet.
One, though, was a little pushy. When I didn’t respond to a question he asked right away, and he wrote, “Busy?” He did that a couple more times, so it wasn’t a fluke.
The other one said he was cooking dinner (nice) and asked if we could talk later in the evening. It was already 10:30pm, and after two hours of reading the news and googling “what will happen if there is a nuclear war”, I was a little tired. I told him so, and went to bed.
The next morning, he’d sent a voice note. He explained that I needed to “not feel sad” because “bad things are happening all the time”. He said that I just did like him and didn’t watch the news, I would be fine. But, he went on to share, because of what I’d said he had watched the news, and now he felt blue, too. He related this in a tone that implied that it had more to do with me than it did with Putin.
Uh huh.
Later in the afternoon, I got a notification from a guy named Aaron, who was from the States, made films, and had the kind of smart-assy sense of humour I love.
Huh.
I said hi to Aaron. Aaron responded. He asked me what part of town I lived in. It was not far at all from the part of town he lived in. He asked if I wanted to go for a drink, tonight. And for some reason, despite having thoroughly vetted every other man I have ever met up with from an online interaction, I agreed. I even mentioned we could have dinner together. It came out before I could stop myself.
An hour later, I hadn’t heard back from Aaron. An hour and a half later, still nothing. Still irritated by the two blokes from last night, I actually felt relieved. I put on my sweatpants and ordered dinner. I chatted with Jasmine. I did some work. As an afterthought I checked my phone.
And there were a whole bunch of messages from Aaron.
“I’ll text you when I’m close. Here’s my number…”
“I’m walking towards Cihangir from Taksim.”
A voice note (that I can’t open).
A missed call.
“Okay, um, I’m done with my first drink at [the restaurant where I’d suggested we meet], so I guess I’m going to leave and go home?”
I wrote him in a panic, apologizing profusely. He suggested we meet. I told him I was in sweatpants, then thought fuck it, cancelled my food order, threw on some clothes, and brought Django with me. Sometimes, you just have to trust your gut.
Aaron could have been written by Woody Allen, when Woody Allen was good. From LA and about my age, he admitted that he’d only ever gone out with women in their twenties, and had even married one. We ate and drank and talked for hours, and while we live throughly different existences, I felt comfortable and amused, and—having been married to a filmmaker myself—very much at home. In fact, by the time we’d finished dinner I kind of loved him, the way you love someone who’s just walked into your life out of a film script. He is a member of the Soho House here, which is as posh and expat as it sounds, and somehow I agreed to go there with him.
At this point, he became befuddled that I didn’t want to sleep with him.
“I don’t understand,” he said, as we walked out into the night.
“I want to be your friend,” I said. “That’s more valuable to me than sleeping with you. What is there to not understand?”
“But… I’ve never had a woman friend.”
“Humans were made to try new things.”
“Is it like some Nora Ephron movie thing?”
“No.”
“Like you’re just building it up for later?”
“No.”
“I’ve never been rejected like this.”
“Maybe because you only go out with 23-year olds.”
“Do you want to come over and bring Bruce (this was his immediate nickname for Django) and sleep on opposite sides of my bed in pyjamas?”
I stared at him. “Why would I want to do that?”
I caught a cab and went home, alone, to my own bed, in my own pyjamas. And here I am, eating cherry gummy bears at 1 in the morning. I know that when I read this tomorrow, there will be a hundred errors I’ll want to correct. But at least sleeping with Aaron won’t be one of them.
What a jerk 😂
Great boundaries!..... I hope you will keep trying...