The Blind Date, Part 2

Dating Amy
by Amy DeZellar

(Page 2 of 2)

As Indentured told me about himself, I learned that he is quite accomplished and lives a rich life, each facet of which is punctuated by beautiful women:

He is a businessman. He's an entrepreneur, really, as he owns his own business. He and his employees enjoy a sort of stalled adolescence akin to the guys in John Cusack's record store in High Fidelity. Their workday consists of Yoda in-jokes, computer games that may or may not include real-life reenactments, and the hiring of cute chicks whenever possible.

He is also a dirty old man. He told me about getting suggestive e-mails from women on Match.com who would never need to post on the Internet to get dates. "I guess it seems too good to be true that a twenty-one-year-old who is working her way through medical school by lingerie modeling is interested in me and 'up for anything,' but I click on the link to her Web site anyway. It's always porn or a hooker."

He talked about a thirty-year-old he had beers with for five hours and how he spilled a beer on her. He called the next day and she told him he was too old and too bald and that she wasn't attracted to him, couldn't he see that? Despite the unfortunate word choice on her part, I couldn't help but admire the woman's decisiveness. Unlike me, she knew what she wanted in a man and she wasn't afraid to say so.

I constantly second-guess myself. Should I have given this one more of a chance? Am I too concerned with feeling chemistry right away and not allowing it time to grow? Should I lower my looks standards? How about my income requirements? Is this guy going to be the best I ever do? I mean one's dating pool has to dry up someday and there will be a point in every person's life when they do indeed date the best person they're ever going to get. If they don't end up with that person, it will all be downhill from there, by definition. And so on.

The blind man told me all about speed dating, where singles sit at tables for two and everyone talks for seven minutes, then a buzzer goes off and they switch partners until everyone has "dated" everyone else. He said that there were ringers when he did it — again, girls so beautiful they would never have to do something like speed dating. He complained to the hostess of the event that it was unfair. He had taken a cab there and the only good-looking women were her friends and not really available. He argued that it was discrimination against the handicapped. It took me a beat to realize that by "handicapped" he meant other than socially, since as the owner of a business he had built from the ground up and a social life replete with beautiful women, he was doing better than most of my guy friends and they can all see.

Normally I loathe hearing about how beautiful other women are, especially from a potential prospect. It's even worse when he doesn't have one kind thing to say about my looks. This particular situation had me in a politically correct quandary, though. On the one hand, he was just another guy yammering on about hot chicks right in front of my face. On the other hand, he was blind.

I couldn't help but be fascinated by his very male sense of entitlement.

It truly pointed up a core difference between men and women. If a blind woman were on a date with a stranger, she'd probably feel by turns hesitant and humble — assuming she would even have the confidence to do something like online dating, which is scary even when you have all of your senses. She would certainly have mentioned it, probably apologetically, before the date. Leave it to a man to act like the world is his own private beauty contest even if he needs the program printed up in Braille. In a way I admired him.

My political correctness held my sense of self at bay for the better part of an hour until I finally broke: "How do you know all these women are so beautiful?" I asked. "You're blind."

"I'm not that blind," he said.

When I was ready to leave he asked me to wait with him because he wouldn't be able to see the bright yellow taxi when it drove up. I'm sure if there were a gorgeous blonde driving it he'd be able to spot it.

After I saw him off, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a Lean Cuisine on my way home since he hadn't offered dinner. Tiny, ornamental pumpkins sat like fat orange jewels in the front bins. Fall had arrived and I felt good. The date had gone well, and despite his oddness, or maybe because of it, I had had fun with Indentured by Cats, and when he asked me out again, I said yes. More important, my dating project had officially started.

It had started to drizzle, so I'd put on a baseball cap I'd bought on vacation. "You're wearing a Yankees hat in Seattle? We need to talk," the young guy behind the checkout said. He was tall, big, athletic, confident. A wave of chemicals crashed over me and then receded, the undertow pulling the sand from underneath my toes. "What's your name?" he said. "I see you in here all the time."

In the span of a few hours it seemed that I had seen the difference between the kind of man I was going to be dating and the kind of man I was attracted to.

Bunk Debunk

Myth: Love only happens when you're not looking for it.

Debunked!

I always suspect a death wish — or rather celibacy wish — coming from the people giving this advice. Invariably they are also the sorts who panic if they are alone for more than a week and who met their most recent liaison by placing ads on more than one dating Web site.

Really, when I'm "not looking" for anyone, it means that on the rare occasions I do leave the house, I give one-word answers to strangers and haven't washed my hair.

Of course you have to be looking for love; it's a completely different mind-set from not looking. And not looking is not pretty, in my case at least.

Copyright © 2006 by Amy DeZellar

About the Author

Amy DeZellar is a promotional powerhouse, and has already been featured nationally on ABC News, Fox News and the WB News. She has been an entertainment journalist for the past eight years and got her start as a music critic in Los Angeles. She lives in Seattle, Washington.