Thanksgiving sucks when you don't have a date (or I just hate turkey).

I suspect that I’ve never really “dated” anyone before. My ex-wife and I worked together and became friends long before we were married. Prior to that I always just had girlfriends, except for that brief, polyamorous period where I actively sought out both sexes and had boyfriends. I’m told that dating these days entails months of getting to know each other just to find out whether or not you want to get to know each other. When I think about it, it makes sense; particularly at my age (forty-eight), I mean there’s not much time left so the getting to know you period seems important. God forbid you should date someone you’re not really all that into.

The first woman I met from eHarmony lived down the peninsula from San Francisco, a considerable distance from Berkeley where I live which is just across the bay from the City. Mountain View is not an easy commute for me to make, especially since I don’t have a car. “S,” as I’ll call her, is a very attractive woman with an eight year-old son. She is very active in her son’s life which I found instantly attractive. S and I participated in the dance that eHarmony calls “guided communication,” trading answers to each others questions and sending our “must have” and “can’t stand” criteria. I swear, a lot of eHarmony is a waste of time, but there seems to be at least a fragment of science behind the concept. When we got to the “open communication” stage S should just how ballsy she could be and sent me her phone number.

We talked on the phone a few times and decided to meet. Our first meeting was a lot of fun; she had tickets to the Giants’ game and was going with her son and friend from work. A misunderstanding led me to the wrong ball park, I went to the Oakland A’s stadium instead of Pac Bell Park… that’s a long story in and of itself, but I did make it to the game right around the fifth inning. We seemed to hit it off, and now that I think about it a baseball game is a really good first date. It’s not so loud as to impede conversation and by the same token, there’s no need for awkward small talk and you can just watch the game. Afterwards we went to a nearby restaurant and got a bite to eat and continued the small talk. S and I decided to go forward and continue to see each other. About a week later she came up to Berkeley and we hung out, I impressed her by taking her to dinner at my restaurant and sealed the deal. A week or so after that I took the train down to Mountain View and we went to a movie with her son and afterwards I met her mom. Now, I think normally meeting someone’s mom can be scary, but I helped install a pump for her fountain and looked at the pictures from their recent trip to Hawaii.

S was great, I really liked her and the possibility of getting to know her son as well intrigued me. Could I be a dad? I think so, a good one too, much better than mine, that’s for sure. But a few weeks after that Mountain View trip S decided that I was not right for her. She said she “need[ed] to be careful.” I’m not sure what she meant by this, was it a fear of HIV, which is very reasonable, or was it my habit of drinking a few beers and playing dominoes into the wee hours after work? I suppose I’ll never know. I took the news well, and wondered who would be next. About two months afterwe went our separate ways I got an email from S saying that she had stage II breast cancer with lymph node involvement. I haven’t heard from her since, despite two emails I sent her offering my assistance and support. S I hope all is well…

The Universe is truly amazing to me. I feel that if you open yourself to it it will guide and show you exactly what it is you need. Of course this doesn’t help if, like me currently, you have open eyes but you seem to have misplaced your glasses. The dating process has actually taught me more about myself in a shorter period of time than my psycho therapy sessions, although I’ve spent just about as much money it seems. I put my faith in the dating websites because it seems a good way to meet people whom you would otherwise probably never meet. The other thing is that I put “HIV Positive” right there on my profile for God and everybody to see. This, ideally, was or so I thought, a great way to save time. No muss, no fuss, immediately you can tell if a person is the kind of person I find attractive because if they contact me, then quite obviously they have an open mind. And hell, once you get to know me my charm and grace will most definitely win you over and you forget about the woes of safe sex and latex. That is if the woman actually READS the profile…

Not long after S decided to bail my subscription to eHarmony ended and I decided not to renew it. I was checking email one day and I remembered my Yahoo account. Lo and behold there was a message from “J,” that had been sitting in my personals in box for about a week. I read her profile and since you can’t send messages on Yahoo without being a member I signed up for three months with Yahoo personals. J was attractive, intelligent and much more geographically desirable than S. Frankly, she’s hot. Again, J was up front with her phone number, we talked and then met. Apparently we had been matched on both eHarmony & Yahoo… which to me seemed like a good thing. So after a few conversations over the phone we decided to meet. Wow, sparks! Our first date was a walking tour of the UC Berkeley campus; she has a fondness for architecture as I do. The second was pool at a local pool hall, the third the Berkeley Botanical Gardens. Everything was going great I was beginning to think that this dating was a piece of cake. And then she got scared.

J had decided that it would never work between us because she searched herself and realized that I was just like every other guy she’s ever dated: only interested in satisfying my needs and my needs alone. She came to this conclusion about three weeks into the affair and informed me, over the phone, that she was calling it quits. Well I was not going to have any of this. I reached down deep for my best bag of rhetorical skills and argued, essentially, why this decision of hers was biased and concerned with satisfying only her needs and not addressing mine at all. While understandable given the degree of crap she must have had to suffer through with men who didn’t care one whit about her, what is not understandable is how she saw these things in me. I am very attentive and caring and quite frankly I was falling for this woman that I describe as the one that I would “build” for myself if Legos had a domestic partner kit. That fact alone should have been an indication that she came first in what we would soon be calling “us-ness.”

J realized that I was sincere. J realized that I honestly did care very much and believe it or not did put her needs ahead of my own. J agreed to another date and on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend we spent the entire day and into the evening together. It was really a wonderful date. It was here that I learned about her upcoming birthday and how family drama usually ruined it for her. Being attentive and caring I took note and began planning what I hoped would be her best birthday to date and, ideally, the first of many with me. So yeah I guess I was thinking about my needs.

J wanted to take things slow, no sex, but lots and lots of making out, which if you’re good at it, is almost as good as sex. We had two conversations in the same night, in between make out sessions on my new couch, about two subjects which most would consider the “deal breakers:” HIV and bisexuality. J took it all in stride while I opened up the parts of me that I rarely tell anyone, especially someone I fear will go running for the hills when they find out my secrets. I suppose there is some truth to vulnerability being attractive because J and I continued to make out on my new couch afterwards.

I planned a five course meal for her birthday and got her a Teflon pan for her eggs (she had mentioned that her eggs kept sticking) and a series of photographs that I had taken in one of those frames that holds five images. And the images were ones that she had commented on before indicating her favorites (and I have a lot of images). So yeah I pay attention. The Saturday before her meal with me was her actual birthday which she spent with her family complete with all the drama which makes her regret spending her birthday with her family. It was my goal to make her forget all about the ugly stuff and focus on us; on our us-ness. So yeah I was concerned only with getting my needs met.

To make a long story short everything was perfect. It was a beautiful September day and she wanted to go down by the water and just chill. Without missing a beat I suggested that we take the fruit and cheese course with us and enjoy it al fresco…great idea. We talked, we held hands, we romanticized ugly family drama. We went back to my apartment and got through three of the five courses, all the while drinking wine and conversing. We ended the night by making out and I tried, in vain to convince her to stay the night. She reluctantly went home late that Sunday night and I fell asleep thinking that we were destined to be together for a very long time.

Oh well I was wrong and must have been thinking only of my needs, insert sarcasm here, and J decided that “when [she] searched her self [she] knew it would not be a good fit.” I was dumbfounded. We had great dates, we had great conversations, I’m a great cook, she loves to eat, everything was perfect. Apparently not. This time I was hurt. Unlike S’s departure J had managed to get under my skin and when she decided to break it off, again on the phone, I was sad. For a couple of days afterward I found myself asking what did I do wrong? What is wrong with me? Is the HIV thing really too big for intelligent adults to handle? Do I smell? What is it? Of course no answers were immediately forthcoming. But I soon realized what it was. It was her and not me. I was exactly the person she was looking for and when she realized that she got scared. Unlike all the other men she dated I was there for her when she needed someone to be, I put her first instead of myself, I showed a genuine interest in who she is and what she wanted out of life, I actually did the things that I said I would do. Oh well. I emailed her and asked if she’d reconsider, like I said she had gotten under my skin and I was hooked, but to no avail. She was dead set about not dating me, oh well.

J left and I went back to Yahoo Personals to see who was out there. My subscription was coming to an end and I was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to renew it. I perused a couple of profiles and one woman sent me an “icebreaker.” I responded with an email and this time I left both my email and phone number explaining that my subscription was about to expire and I doubted that I would renew.

Now my profile on Yahoo was a little bit vague about the HIV thing. In fact, it doesn’t even address the issue of HIV, just an obtuse comment about “not being able to have kids,” assume at your own risk, right. Besides I figured any intelligent woman, any woman that I could possibly be attracted to would ask the meaning behind the cryptic one liner. Enter “K.” Now I have baggage. I have abandonment issues, I was an abused child so trusting people is difficult for me, I also have HIV which puts the self esteem issues to the test. K, as it turns out has genital herpes. Now I’m open-minded and can handle this, or so I think. But there’s another problem, she’s not exactly my “type;” a little heavier than I like, a little less buxom than I like, a little taller than I like and she has genital herpes. In the grand scheme of things does HIV outweigh herpes on the list of things not to pick up on your travels? Most likely. Does having HIV make it easier to commiserate with someone about the tenacity of certain STDs and the woes of safe sex and latex? Surely. But studies have shown that the herpes virus allows the HIV virus to replicate at a much faster rate. This time I got scared. K mentioned to me that she thought that I wanted what I couldn’t have. Here she was offering me everything I was looking for and I turned it down. I just couldn’t take the risk. Do I feel bad? a little but we “dated” for only a couple of weeks so the emotional commitment was minimal.

I re-joined Yahoo yet again. I updated my profile with a picture that was taken on that wonderful Labor Day weekend with J, I just cropped her out. I added a paragraph indicating the nature of my virus, and once again, the women that I contact don’t return the email. So it’s back to waiting. There’s a twenty-three year old math major that I’m interested in but the age difference scares me. There’s a forty something friend / co-worker that I’m interested in but I lack the balls to ask her out. There’s a thirty something friend of mine that I have asked out but I honestly suspect it will go nowhere; which is cool.

Dating is difficult. I think I’d rather have my wisdom teeth put back in just so they could be taken out once again.

Next Time: never trust a skinny chef