Second Date: The Date that Almost Wasn't

So there have been a few “dates” since this one, but I think things with Glitter are getting to a point where sharing everything with the reading public might not be the best idea (for privacy's sake), so this may be the last post expressly on this subject for a while. I give you our second date:

I just concluded my second date with Glitter a couple of hours ago.

It was a little lower key than our first outing to the Temple Bar, but somehow this time felt more public since we were having lunch on campus.

He's quickly learning the lesson almost all of my friends have learned: you can't take me anywhere without running into someone I know or who knows me. This problem, or maybe gift depending how you look at it, is exponentially increased the closer you are to population centers I frequent, like the middle of campus.

I call this the date that almost wasn't because I accidentally double booked myself. This is why I have a calendar that I more or less use religiously, it helps me keep my appointments straight (or in my case, queer).

Last night I'd gotten a text from my dancer friend, JaguarPrint, reminding me that I would be meeting her class to teach salsa somewhere between 11:30 and 12:50. We'd made these plans about a week and a half prior, the same day where I'd made my lunch plans with Glitter for noon.

I'd completely forgotten about my commitment to help my friend with her class presentation, but really didn't want to flake on this cute guy I'm kind of trying to start a thing with.

What's a queer to do?

Make everything fit like a puzzle piece, that's what! I let my friend know about my date and had her email her professor to see if they could take the first twenty minute presentation slot so we would be finished by 11:50. Just in case that didn't work, I also texted Glitter asking if he would be okay with me being a little late.

All this morning I was on pins and needles, hoping things would work out in my favor.

10:35am. A text: “We are going first at 11:30 :)”

I could have cried in relief. I sent a quick text to Glitter telling him that I wouldn't need to be worried about being late after all and I would see him in the Atrium at noon.

He ran into me about 100ft from the entrance where I was talking with two friends I work with about seeing them last night after getting a drink with my friend Hat. I admit I had been a little bit tipsy by the time we got to the grocery store (The Reese's Klondike Bars in my freezer are amble evidence of that drunken impulse buy) and I cannot fault them for assuming Hat and I were together when I'd said “I'm with him.”

Nonetheless, it was quite embarrassing to have two beautiful girls fawning over the the idea of me and the guy they saw me with when my date was walking up.

Inside, Glitter and I made our choices between overly priced pizza, overly priced sandwiches and overly priced prepackaged meals. We both went with pizza.

We'd agreed ahead of time that for this short lunch date we wouldn't talk about finals because that's all we hear or talk about with pretty much anyone on campus for the last week and a half. So he asked me how next quarter is looking.

I laughed.

He tried to laugh, but kept stopping himself as he ended up coughing. He sounds better compared to our first date, and I'm glad the herbal tea I dropped off at his place this weekend seems to have helped.

In Which Danny Goes on a Date

I feel like I rarely post about my personal life in too much detail here, probably because the majority of people reading this are friends who receive regular updates in person and thus it seems redundant and detractive to the semi-academic, semi-social justice, poetic vibe/theme that has permeated this blog.

That said, I went on a date this past weekend. I can't remember the last time I've been on a “date” that had the intention of being a date and wasn't some kind of confusing blend of potential interest and existing friendship. I went on a date with someone I barely know, with the intention of getting to know him better to see if we have any kind of chemistry or if maybe we should abort mission and head for the safety of newly minted friendship. For now, I'll call the gentleman in question Glitter.

I brought him flowers.

“Would you tell me, please,” said Alice, a little timidly, “why are you painting those roses?” -Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 

 I've never gotten someone flowers like this. Well, unless you count the time over the summer where I got a calla lilies at the Pike Place Market and then forgot them when I stayed the night at my friend Joe's and didn't remember them until I was an hour away on public transportation and told him to give them to his mom.

They were white roses. Or rather they were white roses when I purchased them. I took them home and painted the roses red. I never asked if he understood the literary nod to Lewis Carroll, but the playing card (Ace of Hearts, naturally) with the quote probably made it painfully obvious. Assuming there are future dates and my budget allows for it, I'm toying with the idea of continuing to give Glitter literary flowers.

Perhaps as a friend of Dorothy, I can acquire some poppies. And morbid though it may be, perhaps I can rustle up a small bouquet of the petals Ophelia names in her madness before drowning. A daffodil and a mirror might be too strong a message of Narcissus.

On second thought, maybe more flowers are a bad idea if they're all harbingers of doom and death in literature.

Even as I was painting these roses, I felt really insecure. I'm not sure how many people I texted for reassurance that this was a good idea, but I really needed people to say to me “Danny, you're being ridiculous. Stop thinking and just go with it.”

The afternoon was entirely too long.

Part of our date was going to the Vagina Memoirs, a monologue performance process on campus that gives women opportunity to speak truth to power and break silence. I should have seen it coming when Glitter sat down next to me in line and asked if the flowers were for the cast member and mutual friend who sort of introduced us.

Now, the obvious answer would have been to immediately say no, these are actually for you. But I froze. I was a little embarrassed to not have anticipated that any and every other bouquet of flowers in the concert hall that night was going to a Vagina Memoirs cast member.

So I waited a painful 15 minutes in line letting him believe the flowers were for someone else before I half-whispered (lines are loud) in his ear and told him that if he wanted to give flowers to our friend, he now had some since the roses were for him.

He held on to them for the entire first act before putting them under his seat during intermission. Part of me wanted to trade the flowers for my hand every time I caught sight of this out of the corner of my eye.

The Date