I really love sushi. I especially love sushi when I am not paying full price. My favorite sushi place in Sacramento has happy hour sushi from 2:30-5:30pm, at which time all the best rolls are five bucks each. It’s a sweet deal, and I’ll tell you how much I love sushi. The other day, I was doing a handyman job, and my car battery started crapping out on me – I don’t have a truck, like most handypeople, because I’m the “Hatchback Handyman.” The guys at the jiffy lube place had tested the battery last week as part of my 25-point inspection or whatever, and they told me there might be a problem. Well, on this day, there was a problem. I was able to quickly assess the situation and get my priorities straight. It was coming up on 4pm, and I had about a half an hour of work left to do, and I was going to need to call AAA to get a jump, because my car was currently disabled. So, I call AAA and get the tow-truck on his way, scramble to finish my work and clean up, the AAA guy comes and gives me a crank, I jump in the car and I zoom to the auto parts store, but it’s 5pm – too close for comfort. Sushi happy hour ends at 5:30, and the place is about 10 minutes drive from the auto parts store. I pull up to the Autozone, leave my car running, run inside and quickly orchestrate a new battery transaction, carry the battery to my car and stash it behind the seat, and proceed on to happy hour sushi. Like I said, it’s all about priorities. I park the car in a shady spot, cut the engine, and exhale deeply, thinking I change the battery after I have some sushi and cold beer.
Earlier in the week, I had invited the woman I am dating to join me for happy hour sushi. Of course, I did not know that we were no longer dating. It took me a couple of days to find that out. And, I didn’t find it out, so much as deduce it…surmise it based upon the evidence at hand. This seems to be the way online dating works. At this point I have racked up a handful of varied online dating experiences, and I think it kind of sucks. I think the whole process sucks. Sure, you can meet a lot of people quickly, but it becomes like scrolling through people, occasionally stopping for brief connections, and then moving on, holding true to the dream of finding that perfect fantasy person with the profile that fits all the criteria. I think I am a hypocrite as I write this, since I am guilty of exactly the behaviors that make online dating suck in the first place. My theory is that it really is the medium that brings out the worse in us. When we meet people through friends or work, we are more likely to slow the process down, grant more acceptance, or even try and forge a friendship where the romantic compatibility is not there. There is a lot to be said for dating the old fashioned way, but what the hell is that? The only reason my parent’s met is because my dad’s brother was dating my mom’s sister. Eventually, there were three marriages between the two families, but with 22 siblings between them, you might have expected a few more.
I am back to pondering my own dating experience. The anonymous “She” should be here having sushi with me, but in fact, never replied to the voicemail that I left inviting her to do so – a few days ago. Clearly our connection has fizzled after a couple of meetings, and that is the way of nature, except that there is often one person more interested than the other, and this time that person is you –know-who. I am getting the blind kiss-off, and on the surface that’s just the way it has to be. After all, with the online dating, there is an economy of scale, meaning that a couple of meetings into it, with a stranger, the blind-kiss-off feels appropriate. But, that is what sucks, that human interaction gets reduced to an economy of scale. Is it just me, or is that kind of hurting all of us?
I have handled the dump scenario, as dumper, a few different ways myself, with the blind kiss-off at times, and more evolved moments featuring a sincere, heartfelt phone call or face to face meeting, to let the person know that it’s not them, really – it’s me…I’ve got “allot going on right now.” I realize that this is so George Costanza, so Seinfeldian in nature that it has become something beyond a cliché - A kind of standard operating procedure for Generation X. I’m not even sure if I’m young enough for Generation X, but the label seems to fit well.
The thing is, I have personally built a pretty strong case against the blind kiss-off. It is particularly angst-provoking for me, because of an experience I had several years ago, while living in Fresno. I had broken up with a woman - Jessie – after several months of relationship. I am using Jessie’s name to honor her, and it will be clear why at the end of the story. Our time together was a mixed bag, but we were still somehow connected, in a warm and civil way. We were still seeing each other regularly – still spending nights together and then parting in the morning with that “well, sorry it didn’t work out” kind of look on our faces. We had a date scheduled for the weekend upcoming, and it was now Wednesday. I had called Jessie earlier in the week but had still not heard back from her, which was unusual. I did what any ex-boyfriend looking forward to break-up sex would do – I called her to follow up. I was half-expecting a kiss-off of some kind to come sooner or later, but also kind of knew that we had a bit more invested than that.
When I called Jessie’s house, a man answered the phone. I was not expecting that at all. The man that answered the phone began to speak and asked “is this Michael” in a deep southern accent. OK- I was NOT expecting this even more. It took me a second to answer, and to drop back into my body so that I could listen to this character from Hee Haw or wherever – I had no idea what was going on. He turned out to be from Arkansas – and Jessie’s long-lost older brother, in town because there had been a terrible car accident, and Jessie was hospitalized. She was in ICU, and possibly not going to live. I had become quite attached to Jessie’s 5 year-old daughter Michaela, and my first impulse was to ask about her. She was ok…not involved in the accident. I was not ok, thinking about this woman, and instantly forgiving all the things that made me break up with her.
I went straight to the hospital to see Jessie – her mom had put me on the visitor’s list before I ever called. There she was, all bunched up with tubes everywhere, and on a ventilator. No one was allowed inside the room yet, and I could only see her through the window. There is a feeling of helplessness and disconnection that happens in moments like that – it’s kind of like being held under water, and it is one of the ugliest feelings that I know of. The relief of knowing why she hadn’t called, was no relief at all.
And there was no relief for several months. Jessie remained in a coma – actually with a detached brain stem like that guy in the movie Diving Bell and The Butterfly. I would sit and talk to her and imagine I could see her lips move or smile, and then sometimes they would. I would pick up her daughter and let her climb up in the bed, where she would curl up next to Jessie and sleep, and I would feed her glycerin swabs and watch her eyes follow me as I got close to her. People would visit and I would play never-ending songs with my guitar. It is hard to imagine what she was experiencing in there, and I never got to find out.
After about 18 months, I had to detach myself from the situation. I was in a new relationship, and my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was compelled to relocate back to Sacramento, to be with my dad in his final months. I tried to keep in touch with Jessie’s family, but they were all in flux, and with no improvements in Jessie’s condition, a weary kind of numbness had set in and the whole thing was yucky and awkward.
Mixed energy can be hard to manage. It’s the kind of thing that makes us humans struggle to be skillful in our relationships and our decisions. It’s like catch and release fishing. The lowest common denominator, is that we really want the fish. Sometimes we have to hit the reset button, but the good thing is, we never ever have to fake it. I’ve gotten pretty good at survival. I don’t mean your lost in the outback, eating bugs and berries and building a short-wave radio out of coconuts survival – I mean the kind of survival that people have to do when big machinery around us is not running smoothly. Seems like I can rub two sticks together and make a decent living, but I cannot go for very long without knowing which way my little life is pointed.
Right now C is for cookie and that’s good enough for me. I’ve got a bicycle journey to take, and I just hope that my ass can take 9 days on the road. I am dating, while simultaneously applying for the Peace Corps. Symbolically (or energetically,) these could be seen as contradictory actions. However, taken at face value, they are the actions of casting a wide net. It’s like my legs are running and my arms are doing jumping jacks. But hey, it sure is nice to have arms and legs that move.
