Pot-lucky

Let's see…what happened on Friday? Earlier in the week (Tuesday?) a woman on Jdate IM'd me. She was inviting me to a Shabbat potluck in Virginia. I chatted with her briefly and, eventually, accepted the invitation. I had plans with Heather, but she agreed to come with me. She has a guy she's interested in, but was happy to support me and perhaps harbor the illusion, however briefly, that she was actually available.

Friday afternoon, I was on-line in the hour or so before I needed to leave the office for the potluck. It was IM craziness. First, the guy who always buzzes me when I'm on wrote to me, then a new guy, another guy, and a fourth guy! At any one time, I was only writing to three of them at a time. It was like walking the high-wire. It was a risky, break-neck proposition, but I was up to the challenge. As it turned out, none of these guys really caught my fancy, but, my, I felt popular. It was really fun.

Then it was off to the potluck. I'd convinced Heather to make a full pound of pasta salad, which turned out to be a good thing. It was the hit of the party. I didn't have time to cook and she'd had the day off and had graciously offered to take care of our share of the food. The group at the potluck was, well, kind of sad. One look around the room and I had the most ungenerous thoughts. Like, these are the kind of the people that use on-line dating? Am I one of these people? I also knew the answer, I wasn't one of them (it should go without saying that Heather wasn't either). I was much more attractive, witty, sharp, on-the-ball than most of them. The two or three attractive guys there talked to other guys! It was not a terrible time, but I've had more fun. Heather certainly enjoyed herself. I tried to talk to everyone, men and women. A couple of the guys were very nice and interesting, but not appealing. Some of them were downright impossible. The first guy I had a real conversation with was one extremely negative and bitter. A slight, nice looking guy, with very short dark brown hair, nothing was good enough for him. He didn't seem to like anywhere he'd lived; he hated the congestion around here. I asked where would he like to live and he said here was ok. He liked it well enough. That was about as the most positive thing he had to say.

The women were almost entirely impossible to talk to, except for the one who had invited me. She was an odd person. A Russian émigré, with a bit too much information on everyone at the party and a willingness to share it. She told a story about a man she liked and I gave her completely unfounded advice, to which she replied, "you are a very smart woman." And then she told everyone else.

At least Heather had a good time.