A Date With Love Jones

Who am I?
I’ll be whatever you say
But right now, I’m the sight raped hunter
Blindly pursuing you as my prey
And I wanna give you injections of sublime erections
And get you to dance to my rhythm
Make you dream archetypes, of black angels in flight
Upon wings of distorted, contorted, metaphoric jism….

Excerpts from “A Blues for Nina”…

It’s Friday and even though I feel as though I need tape to keep my eyelids open, I’m flying high from last night’s date.  Weeknight outings are normally reserved for that someone who I may have already met, a man who makes sleep deprivation and crabbiness the following morning worth it, but once again, it’s time to try something out of the ordinary.  So far, encouraging and allowing myself to step outside the box this time around in the dating game has been working out and even though that “one” hasn’t been found, I’m feeling better about the change ups. 

About a week or so ago a decision was made to start doing my own search for possible hangovers contenders instead of sitting back and waiting for these men to contact me.  Perhaps the fear of a bruising to my ego if one decided not to reply or worse, reply with “Not interested” has prevented me from searching, but finally, I did it.  The second or third profile I came across was a man whose profile name was from one of my favorite (and one of the most underrated) movies, and for those of you who aren’t familiar with a stand out scene, here is “A Blues for Nina”: 

O3-xeN8ulso

 That’s right, I had a wonderful first time meeting with the one I’ll call Love Jones and can’t help but blush about replaying everything in my head over and over again.  For starters, he was exactly what his profile portrayed him to be – physically, mentally, and emotionally.  He had “the look” that I’m normally attracted to and is “the type” that is always interested in me; Lighter complexion, thin build and stands at a neck straining 6’2 with a neatly groomed goatee. Nearly all of his pictures showed him with a sexy glare or serious expression without a smile, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that there wasn’t a little shop of horrors inside of his mouth – he has nice teeth and a warm and inviting smile.  In addition to the outward appearance, I was drawn to his profile because like mine – it was direct and to the point, with the intent on weeding out the undesirables.  Love Jones wrote an impressive summary, which like the character in the movie, depicted someone who was passionate about finding the type of woman he wants to keep and the things he wants to do with her.  Refreshing.

Now while I’m sharing all of the tidbits leading up to last night’s date, I must say – I was pretty reluctant that we would meet up and sure as hell didn’t imagine that we would hit it off so well.  He was a TEXTER, big time.  In fact, I have tried to avoid dealing with these types of men and even commented to him last night that going on a date with someone I had only spoken to once for less than five minutes was unheard of.  Secondly, he came across (and to an extent, still does) as being a little superficial because it seemed to me that he was looking for a bathing suit-diva, a trophy of sorts and before meeting last night, he’d sent a text after sending me his address asking me to attend a pool party this weekend with him.  When I replied “It depends on the time” he replied with “It also depends on if you look good in a bathing suit, LOL”.  I did chuckle at the comment and then told him “I’m alright, have some meat on these bones” and sent him a picture I’d taken last year inJamaica.  He didn’t automatically delete me when seeing it, so I guess that means I met his expectations.   Lastly, I definitely was a little turned off by the invitation for drinks and conversation in the Jacuzzi at his home as an option for the date.  Uh… no.  Home date and I don’t even know if you’re hideous or a jerk in person or worse, a psycho?  Love Jones took my reply of “Sorry sweetie, no home dates” with a grain of salt and said he had a really nice place he wanted to take me, so a few hours later we met outside of his place.

Love Jones was quite the gentleman; doing the things you would expect a 30-something man to do such as meeting you with a nice handshake, opening the car door, complimenting etc.  With my mace close at hand, I hopped into the car and away we sped to the 55 freeway.  As we’re making our way to dinner, we engaged in some nice conversation talking about everything from why we hate people abusing section 8, our upbringings, backgrounds and more.  Oh wait – I failed to mention that we were in a convertible coupe with the top DOWN and even though I’d taken time to throw in a few curls for a polished look with plenty of body, I didn’t grip about looking like I’d been on a rollercoaster during the drive.  He was polite and did ask if I wanted the top up but last night the weather was perfect; it was nice and balmy with the right amount of breeze and rolling down the highway at 80 mph felt fabulous.  Again, the conversation was great and before he asked me if I minded listening to a little music he said he couldn’t remember talking (especially about anything interesting) with the top down.  Ever.  I just turned to him and smiled as I reminded him “I told you I wasn’t the typical woman”.

About 20 minutes later, we exited the highway and he smoothly navigated us through winding roads and even at night, the hills around us made for an enjoyable and serene sight.  Finally – we made it to our destination but when we learned that the rooftop dining overlooking the ocean had ended, Love Jones grabbed me by the hand and said “I’ve got another place I want to take you to”.  Destination two was a fabulously decorated restaurant called Mozambique Steakhouse, and although the live jazz band he really wanted me to experience was playing to a private party, we made this our final stopping point.  Without going into too much detail, dinner was lovely.  As I sipped my Riesling and he tried his Mozambique Mule, we enjoyed ourselves as we talked about any and everything but specifically, relationships.

Now this is where the skies get a little cloudy, because as much as I can say he is a great guy on the surface, I gathered from the talks about his ex-wife and subsequent relationships after her, that he was almost like damaged goods.  The positives include what I was experiencing on our date – the chivalry, appreciation of a woman, knowing her worth and treating her right, along with the mindset of being a provider and not wanting to grow old being alone, along with him saying a few times that when he loves he loves hard and gives his all.  The negatives however, showed me that for a man having had only three serious relationships in life, a good majority of his learning how to make situations with women and relationships work is still a work in progress.  Love Jones admitted that he was working on his issues and realizes his expectations and high demands are what drives women away from him.  That part is totally understandable and I admire his honesty; but he also said that he’s on the dating web site to try and learn about himself through the women he meets.  This is NOT okay because he’s basically experimenting with women like me, looking for US to tell HIM what he’s doing wrong to learn from his mistakes.  For some reason I feel as if a person needs to figure out themselves on their own time or with someone they dealt with in the past, versus using someone new as a test dummy.  You may agree or disagree, but this is just my take.

At the end of the date, we both commented how well things had gone and he again, acknowledged my good taste in music.  It’s always amusing when a man thinks he has “that” song on his playlist that will mystify me, so when his facial expression turns to sheer surprise when I’m snapping my fingers and singing along, I just chuckle.  It’s a little past eleven o’clock when we arrive back at his place and as he walks me to my car, Love Jones says: 

“This has been a great night, I’m so glad I was able to meet such a pretty, sexy and intelligent woman like you.  We definitely have to go out again and really – I wish I could do a testimony or something on ________.com to share this experience.  It isn’t often that you have dates like this and I’m itching to share this story of tonight”.  I thanked him for that, told him the feelings were mutual and we ended the night with a long, firm hug.

Encounters like this are definitely good for the mind, body and soul, but isn’t this usually how the good ones start out and doesn’t it seem like whenever you talk too much about these instances it will usually end in disappointment later? 

I’m a realist and while I would like to say that we will have many more outings like this, even though we both said we wanted to get together again as we said goodbye, the  fact remainsis that he and I are in two different places.  During our candleight dinner, Love Jones shared that he was on a mission to figure out why he had failed in every relationship.  He added that he was dating different women to get a feel for what he needs to work on and change within himself.  Translation?  Any woman wthat he meets on the dating web site is an experiment of sorts.  I’m in a different place because I know exactly what it takes to make things work and what things, actions and behaviors causes problems.

As much as I would like to get to know this man better, I am not interested in “working” with any more men.

Until there’s a cure for the hangovers….

 Carmen Jones