The "Professional Dater" Knight

Prelude: At this point of the blog: my family thinks I need psychiatric help and my friends regard this as better than TMZ. 

I am thinking that re-devoting myself to my career and publishing this as my first book because I am nearly convinced I am NEVER going to meet anyone like this. Story time. . .

While doing my weekly check-in on my inbox on the dating site, I came across an email from a guy that had a GREAT smile.  I am talking, I think that guys teeth twinkled at me through the picture. Game show host quality smiling. I read his intro email and it showed he had actually read my profile. He talked about being a fellow entrepreneur and traveler, and he encouraged me to look at his profile. Very LinkedIn of him.

Good smile, but totally not someone I would date.

Of course I then went and stalked his page. (Is it stalking if the assumption is that you will take up the invite to stalk?)

He had standard issue stats:  5'10, career in marketing, looking for a relationship, father, entrepreneur, nearby resident, into health and fitness, divorced. OK. Requirements of not living at home, has job, not married and dating, writes in full sentences, seems interested in me and didn't write a form letter as an intro, check. He makes the cut.

I sent him a message back talking about traveling and asking about his companies. He then writes back and asks if I wanted to have dinner with him to discuss any of these questions further.

I have now gotten much more expeditious with this dating thing. I started this blog MONTHS ago with the hopes of banging this out in a month. I am now nearly 8 MONTHS in. Nearly another full year of my life!!! You know that I am saying yes.

He sends me his number, and tells me to text him to confirm the day before a date we loosely agreed on. I get totally harried with my week, and forget to text him the day before, because I am hair brained like that. Since we have not confirmed, I assume that we are not meeting and I text him the day we had  originally specced to meet when I realize that I have missed the prior day's deadline.

He sends back this text saying that he's at the restaurant by himself. He texts he's never been stood up before.

Wait, what the hell? I scroll back through the texts. I didn't agree to a place or a time. . .What the hell is this man talking about?

I send back: "Being stood up would imply that we had landed on a place and a time. I don't see that. Did I miss something?"

He sends back that he is just joking, but I can buy the first round of drinks because I moved the date. I don't agree, but tell him I am willing to reschedule. He asks if we can reschedule for the weekend. I agree, put it on my calendar and am still baffled by the previous texts. Whatever.

He tells me he will text me later with options on where to go.  I feel that even if we don't have chemistry to date, he seems like a pretty interesting business person, and if all else fails, we have our work to talk about.

He offers Roots, or Urban Table. I choose Roots because I haven't been there in AGES. Keep in mind, Roots is a steak house. I ask what time, and he tells me our reservation is at 8.30pm.

This is the first man who has made a reservation for dinner and only the third man I am having dinner with.  Yes folks, this is what the fish bowl is like these days. . .

He suggests that we meet at the bar at 8pm for a drink, and then head to our table. I agree. I see what he is doing though. . .If it sucks having drinks, or he wants an out, he can bail before dinner. I would do the same. Touche.

He then sends me this odd text:  "And I don't  eat red meat."

Strange. Why would one pick a steak house then. My dreams of a lovely Porterhouse, great wine and great conversation have been squashed. I wonder what he's going to eat? Why do I care? Whatever, not my problem.

The day of our date I arrive just before 8pm.  The bar keep clears a place for me at the bar amongst the throngs of patrons. I thank him and order myself a Stoli, dirty martini. Two can play the half hour game.

I text him that I am sitting at the bar wearing jeans and a black shirt.

All of a sudden my Knight is standing next to me and immediately slinks into the seat that is available to my left. He is as attractive in person as he was in his pictures. You can tell he works out and he is dressed well in his pressed, black button down shirt and jeans.

He orders a Tito's and club soda and gets settled in. He sort of busts my chops about moving the dates, but I brush it off and tell him how "happy I am to be here today."

He begins by talking about his work in the health services industry and how he got his start building his empire. He is quite accomplished and he is very eloquent. He is exceptionally engaging and probably kills it at business development. He's a great conversationalist.  He asks me about my work in marketing and for the first time on pretty much any of these dates, the man totally and fully understands what I do for a living. I am impressed.

The maître d' stops by us at the bar to tell us that our table is ready. The bartender asks if we are going to transfer our tab to the table. I tell them that is is fine and leave a cash tip.  My Knight then tells them that he doesn't want to transfer it to the table. I say OK and reach into my wallet to get out my money to pay for my drink. My Knight then looks over at me, says "thanks," and walks off towards the table.

I guess he did get his free drink on me after all.

When I arrive at the table he is standing there waiting for me talking to the waiter. Seems he is a regular. I am a bit ticked that I just plunked down nearly $30 for the drinks. This was going to severely cut into my personal steak budget.  Dang.  Now I am at a steakhouse and I'M not eating steak. WTF?

As I turn to sit down I notice that I TOWER over this man. He is not only shorter than me, but think middle school dance girl boy height ratio difference.  Awesome.  5'10 my ass.

I re-compose myself, and for whatever reason decide I am going to stay for dinner.  Probably because I am starving and well, I am one of these people that always hope for good to come out of situations even if it looks bleak.

He orders a Caesar salad and a mac and cheese side and a glass of wine. My budget has me now down to a tomato salad. I am assuming I am paying for at least my dinner and have embraced this.  However, I now have no budget picking up his dinner as well as mine. Not happening.

We chat through dinner about his work, my work and then we begin to discuss the topic of dating. He tells me of the many, many dates he has been on. How he can tell if someone is into him or not, how he usually dates early 20somethings, how some of the dates have been complete disasters. I agree that dating is a real challenge and ask him about his worst date. The conversation continues like this, and I realize that this man may actually have been on, as many, if not more dates than me! I am fascinated by the stories and we carry on like this for a while. We wrap up dinner and decide against dessert. He is a charming man, but seems to be happy dating and lying about his height. No worries, just not for me.

He offers to pick up dinner and I thank him. This was a lovely gesture.

He walks me to the door and I tell him that I will find my way to my car. We sort of nod to each other good night in a very business-like fashion and head our separate ways. As "professional daters" we both know that this is the end of the line.

As I arrive back my car, I realize that, after quite a bit of digging,  I don't have Svetlana's key. Usually it is buried in some nook in my bag, but tonight the car key is gone. Legit.

I am in monstrous heals and am dreading the three block walk from my parking space BACK to the restaurant.  As I get a few steps into the restaurant I walk right smack into my Knight. We look at each other quizzically.

"I think my key fell out of my coat pocket during dinner," I stammer.

"I had to go to the bathroom," he replies.

Neither of us have unscrewed the shock on our faces at this point though.

I begin to head towards the booth we were sitting in hoping I won't have to ask some poor person if I can crawl under their table. Thankfully there is no one there. I crawl all over the floor while the staff shines phones and my Knight jockeys chairs. No success.

The search party now carries over to the bar, which has significantly cleared out. Thank God. This is just awkward enough without digging under more chairs.

As I walk over the bar keep smiles at me. He asks me if I am looking for "this," as he holds up my car key. Turns out the sucker escaped into the crevasse in the chair I was sitting in, and the guy sitting next to me found it in my chair when I stood up.  I thank him and the Knight and I begin heading for the door for the second time tonight.

Again, he offers to walk me to my car, I politely decline. It's like Groundhog Day with my date. I say goodnight and wave as I wander off.  I meander back to my car, feet aching. As I stare up at the moon, just to check if it's full or not,  I again question why it is I am doing this.

If everyone says that you meet someone when you are not looking, maybe I should really stop looking. Or do I believe that everything does, in fact, happen for a reason. Hence the reason I am trying to stick out this thirty date endeavor is because this is what needs to happen. I don't know. Each day I seem to feel differently. The dating has been 80% terrible with the two exceptions: it has given me a lot of perspective and this has provided me the ability to learn that, perhaps, I can write.

I hop in my car, throw on my flip flops and drive home to my sanctuary on the hill.  I try to author my text message farewell to this evening's Knight, but I end up falling asleep watching Real Housewives of Atlanta.

I awake the next morning and see no signs of him having text. Well, I feel I am absolved from messaging. Super!

At lunchtime the text comes in. He had a great time, and maybe we could do it again, but not at a steak place. I send back that I had a great time and hope he has a great week. Nebulous and polite. I believe that the professional dater will be able to take the hint.