Yo, Adrian!!!!!!

I was out on a "date" last night with a cross between Sylvester Stallone and Lou Ferrigno. His name was Enrico... Suave? Ever since Rocky I I'd had a thing for that type character: sweet, simple, loving. I'd carried an aching need to be someone's Adrian, a fantasy kept since I was 8 years old, when Rocky came out on the big screen. Still considered by me one of the greatest love stories ever told.

Enrico-not-so-Suave was not Rocky.

We were to meet at Il Gatto Nero, a lovely little pizza/coffee bar on the corner of College and Crawford Sts. He was late. And unapologetic. He had left a message on my machine, but I didn't retrieve it until I got home. There was an excuse (fell asleep), but still no apology.

Telling.

Sitting on that patio on a summer-warm late September evening, people laughing, concert go-ers smoking between sets across the street, slow but smiling waitresses passing, rarely stopping unless flagged, wafts of both cigarette smoke and delightful snippets of conversation, made me feel like I was on a trip somewhere in Europe. It was completely refreshing for the spirit. I wasn't at all mad that he was late. I was strangely grateful to not have to share this moment, nor dissect it by explaining how happy I felt.

The funny thing about meeting someone online is one receives this 2D image of this potential suitor/stalker/ friend and sometimes a person is less than properly represented. Sometimes the picture does justice, sometimes the light flatters too much, sometimes the camera hates the subject, rendering him unphotogenic. Reject. I hate saying this, but I was meeting him in Little Italy where there are an inordinate amount of swarthy European men who didn't look dissimilar to him. I liken it to him meeting me in Chinatown for the first time. There were physical qualities that needed close scrutiny prior to meeting. So there I was, prior to said date, launching Explorer, typing in my password in Lava, going over his profile picture with a finetoothed comb so I wouldn't embarrass myself by going up to just any buffed Ital Fagioli on the block.

[Short, dark, wavy hair, greenish eyes (fuck, I can't see that from a distance!), small forehead (good, not everyone has that), 5'8", buffed, wifebeater shirt (what if he doesn't wear that?)]

I spotted him first. He was walking through the restaurant as I was taking a long chug off my beer, smoking a Dunhill and watching a game of Cowboys and Indians. True. Dallas and Washington were playing.

So he comes out to the patio with an exaggerated exasperated look on his face, like he had to move Heaven and Earth to get to me. He's from one of those "M" places. Milton. Malton. Minden? I stand up to greet him. And maybe this is just me, but whenever I've had a few conversations via email or IM, I figure we're friends. I hug my friends. So I go to hug him and the first thing he says is, "Wow, you're tall!" Yes, I suppose I am tall. According to our profiles there should have been a 1" difference between us. There were 3 full inches between us. The midget fibbed.

We sit and I flatter him about his shirt selection, which he just runs with. He's thrilled I noticed, but then went spiralling into self-flagellation over spending too much money one day on clothes ($300). So then conversation goes like this: Blah, blah, blah, clothes; blah, blah, blah, hair. Finally I ended it by saying, "Okay, let's talk about something else. Hair is where I draw the line."

This is what I learned:
He's a serial dater. Speed dater, in essence. He's heavily implicated in this new phenomena of being jaded because he is anxiously and feverishly looking for The One. He's been on scores of dates with dozens of women who sometimes come alone, sometimes come in packs. In the beginning he was patient, just like anyone would be. He took time to get to know someone. There was room for play maybe. He would gingerly find out about her. Time was on his side. But then things stopped working out for him this way. He discovered an incidious side to this Brave New World of Dating. People lied.

He'd dated women who didn't disclose their 3 children; a stripper; women who promoted, not starred in, porn; ladies, while in their previous marriage, were asked, and complied, to take on new lovers while having their husbands watch; there were gang-bangers; there was once a woman, and when he told me the story I thought she was just being friendly, he was convinced was bisexual, that was hitting on their waitress. To him all of them lied because they didn't fully disclose their entire past to him prior to meeting. He was upfront. He never lied. He was an honourable fellow.

5'8" and fully 3" shorter than I.

I asked him if he'd had conversations with them. Correspondence. You glean a lot about a person through words they choose, the speed of IM interaction, the timber and inflective lilts and regional accents when you are lucky enough to finally hear their voice. He said he had. He really wanted to find that nice girl, but he seemed to hook up with hot sluts. Present company excluded, of course. I'm a whore, not a slut.

He figures that every new girlfriend he has has to usurp the last one. Upgrades. This I understood. I likened it to living quarters: As we get older, move, change houses or living spaces, every new place we move into should be a slight improvement over the last place. Makes sense. What I think he was looking for was this perfect creature that essentially has to have the best qualities of every woman he's ever met... combined. This guy has a (Lava) life sentence.

The interesting thing about it was he was now trying to speed the process. There was less time spent unearthing slowly, gently dusting off the bones with a special acid-free brush. Instead it was commando-style bulldozing. Nothing subtle, just cutting to the chase. The interview. We'll see if the applicant is qualified. Now, I'm really no better. Lava is a dating site. I had no romantic intention nor inclination towards this young man. This wasn't even a reconnaissance mission. I wasn't sniffing anyone's butt. I was just there because we had a nice dialogue and my intentions were very friendly, never amorous. At one point I'd said I would only be relegated to friend status. Boy, did he ever turn on the "wouldn't it be great if we had sex" eyes at that point. I think I ended up blowing smoke into one of them. Non-smokers love that.

I wasn't budging, and he hates awkward silences, so he tells me about this one girl he was dating. Super hot. Dazzled by her appearance. It was their second interaction. She had invited him to a houseparty, replete with posse, but had little foresight into her filthy booze-imbibing appetite for the evening. She had called Dial-a-Bottle and coquettishly asked if he would pay for the 40 oz of 180 proof, as she'd left her fictious money in her fictious bank account in sunny Switzerland, I guess. He didn't want to, but did anyway. On their subsequent date she, again, came with posse in tow. They were at a roadhouse style pub. He excused himself, like a gentleman, to go off to the loo, minutes after the bill had been dropped. And just like the fella who leaves his trailer park home for a pack of smokes, he never came back.

But he's an honourable fella.

I think the best thing that came out of this was, just as I've marvelled at that point in a relationship where one party is mirror to the other, I felt a real mirroring last night. He was uptight, cheap, vain, living some code of ethics that was incredibly warped, seriously un-fun, ambitious in a gross way and made some interesting choices in dating material. The mirror held to me was someone vivacious, fun-loving, less than serious, thoughtful, caring of the earth and of its inhabitants. And mostly, and this was the most important, I was someone who was not jaded.

Still enjoying the chasing... of my own tail.