garote | An inconclusive outing with Джессика

Джессика sent me an engaging unsolicited message. I browsed to her profile and saw a sturdy redhead with an inquisitive mind and a love of cycling. Nice! I sent her a cheerful reply asking lots of questions, and this turned into a long, complicated exchange where we bared a lot of personal information, all of which implied that we were very well suited to each other. Could this be the start of something big?

There was one obvious problem, though: She lived in Soquel, almost two hours away. That was too far away for casual visiting, and since it was in the Santa Cruz area I had no interest in moving there. I'd seen too much of Santa Cruz. I knew that if we did get involved, either she would be okay with picking up stakes and settling somewhere closer, or we would burn a huge amount of fuel and time, exhaust ourselves, and then drift apart. Still, she was a compelling match on paper and seemed genuinely curious - and she really did have a great looking ass - so I arranged to meet her in a park in San Jose for an afternoon stroll.

It was a warm day for October. She wore a checkered flannel shirt over a t-shirt, comfortable hiking shoes, and exactly the same ass-hugging jeans from her profile photos. She knew what worked. We exchanged a quick and very tame hug, then started walking up into the trees, following the footpath through the park. I went for a very expansive opening question: "So, what's your story? Tell me everything. Or anything!"

She must have interpreted "story" as "romantic story", because the first thing she began describing was a long-term relationship and how it ended.

After a while I moved into the lead and guided us to a clearing, and unpacked some gear from my backpack: A picnic blanket, two big glass mugs, some fruit, some hot water in a thermos, and a selection of teas. I was hoping that she would be charmed by the sudden presentation of a picnic, but her response was curiously blank, as though we'd done this a dozen times already and she was over it. It seemed as though all her enthusiasm had been drained away just before our date. She was very forthcoming with personal information, but not with her emotions.

On the other hand, the romantic story she told was intense: Джессика had spent the last six years with a man fifteen years older than her. At first, he lavished her with attention. Then as time went on, he lost interest in her and became more interested in his career. They'd purchased a house together, and in the beginning, he was mostly a stay-at-home hubby who fixed up the place and cooked a hot meal for her twice a day. Then he went back to school, and slowly evolved into a partner who would get up for work at 6:00 in the morning, and be gone most days until about 10:00 at night. By the time they broke up, he was in his mid-fifties, and in a wholly different stage of his life relative to her.

"I convinced myself to be okay with it," she said. "But our relationship had narrowed down to five hours of cuddling at night, and not much more."

She explained that the two biggest factors in their split were his complete refusal to start a family, and his constant arguing from a position of authority. Their arguments would escalate, and she would get more and more frustrated because he didn't acknowledge her opinions. "Even if he really was right almost all the time, it became stifling," she said. "But I don’t want to paint the wrong picture, and give the impression that he was manipulative or mean... He was a great guy, and very young at heart, and we’re friends now, though we had to be apart for a while."

After that she spent two years with a guy who was very physically attractive but also a huge flirt. She was constantly worried that he was about to cheat on her -- or was secretly doing so already. I pegged it as the starved-for-affection bounce-back scenario; one I was familiar with for my own reasons.

Talking about past romance on a date was tiring and a bit dangerous, so I turned us away from it. We described our careers. She was a teacher, and found the work equal parts challenging and rewarding, especially because it often shaded into social work when her students brought their emotional troubles into the classroom.

"One of my students came in today with two black eyes," she said. "Not just one - like maybe he got hit with a baseball - but two, like somebody punched him hard enough to knock him out and then punched him again when he got up. Even that, I might overlook. But he's come in with a black eye before. It's a pattern, and it looks like it suddenly got worse. We all had a debate - the teaching staff - about what we should do. Contact social services? Ask a counselor to talk to him? Say nothing?" She sighed. "This is not the kind of thing you learn about when you're getting the credential; you know?"

I told her about my job, and the burn-out I'd had before finding it, when I thought I needed to abandon my career entirely. Teachers can always relate to stories about burn-out. "It was pretty rough when I first moved to Oakland. Luckily I had some friends who kept me sane through the worst of it."

She talked about her friends in Santa Cruz. She seemed very comfortable there, to the point where it concerned me. It was a bit too early for meta-questions, but I wanted to ask her why she'd contacted me, knowing that I lived so far away. Did she imagine I could be convinced to pack my bags and move into the house she bought, up in the hills? Abandon my entire life here, scatter some of my furniture into her living space, and start paying her rent? Cook meals in her kitchen and walk the dogs she'd raised with her ex? Had she thought about what she was actually offering?

Maybe. Maybe she knew she wasn't even close to ready for a committed relationship to start, and had chosen someone who presented as many barriers to that as possible while still being interesting.

I really wanted to make a good impression, and I really wanted her to express more interest or be more emotionally present, but she just wasn’t. After three hours of walking, picnic, and wide-ranging discussion, I felt less close to her, instead of more. What was going on? The correspondence had been so enthusiastic...

In the evening I sent her a message with a few follow-ups to our conversation, and to generally check in. She eventually responded that there had been "no red flags," but she was overwhelmed with other social obligations including a dinner outing with one of her exes and his new girlfriend, and between that and the impending work week I wouldn't be hearing from her for a while. Disappointed, I moved her to a back burner and turned down the heat.