garote | A final date with Кэти

In the evening, Кэти drove to my place in Oakland and I cooked her a curry, which turned out excellent.

We kissed at the door, then chatted away merrily as I moved things around on the stove, then chatted away between bites at the dinner table. She was planning to stay late into the night with me, but not stay over because she had decided that would be "too dangerous" for a third date.

As we were moving dishes to the sink, she got a call from a friend who was undergoing chemotherapy and had become suddenly, violently ill. She was very upset, and told me she needed to leave but was doing so very reluctantly. I could see the despair on her face.

"Hey, these things happen," I said, "Go help your friend." I did my best to convey that I wasn't resentful.

Though she was nearly in tears, she put her arms around me and kissed me, then kissed me some more. I could tell she was reluctant to break the hug, so I started to move her backwards to the door. When we arrived, she put on her coat and grabbed her bag. She said she was going to pick up her friend and drive him to the hospital, but would keep me updated with text messages.

"The hospital? Good grief, what are you hanging around here for?" I said. "Get going!"

She scrambled into her car, and I shut the front door and finished clearing the dishes.

That was the last date we had.

Before we could schedule another, we began a discussion about faithfulness and monogamy one evening online.

She told me that she thought my strong desire for sexual contact was a bad sign, and she wanted to "be careful" with me, and "proceed slowly." In an abstract sense I could understand that. Everyone has their own pace, and sex is a powerful thing.

But Кэти was confusing me. A week earlier she had sent me texts all day before our date, daring me to make out with her, and then when we were actually in the same room she acted scandalized by the thought, right up until we had a silly pretext for kissing - a prize for winning a board game - and after that first kiss it was like a switch flipped inside her.

I had the feeling that she didn't want the usual "plausible deniability", she wanted something more. Like, to act out a little stage play, in which I insist and she gets argued into it "against her better judgement", to establish in her mind that if things get uncomfortable, it's all my fault. Or maybe it feels more arousing to her if it looks like she's being coerced. But that's the sort of thing you need to be consciously aware of so you can explain it beforehand ... otherwise it's a disaster waiting to unfold.

I paused here, and thought about my own behvaior. It was true; things moved pretty fast in my own dating life. My date and I usually ended up kissing the second time we met face-to-face. But we also usually traded a huge pile of words in text, or over the phone, leading up to those dates. It wasn't some anonymous make-out on a dance floor. I needed those words, and lots of them, or that second date would not be arriving.

But I also had to acknowledge a really unsavory part of my character: I wanted sex, and I was going to keep looking until I found it. If someone had my attention on the dating calendar because they were smart and friendly and fun, the best way they could claim my undivided attention would be to knock my socks off in bed. And here's the truth of it: If I'm dating several people at once - which is perfectly sensible when you're dating - the person who does that earlier than the others is the person I will pay attention to, and everyone else will get shut out. Unless, of course, the sex turns out to be only mediocre, and in that case we've both just gotten some very important information early in the process, and saved each other a lot of time.

In a dating landscape like that, drawing out the time before the first sexual encounter really just has one advantage: It keeps you, yourself, from getting too attached to a person while you feel each other out, or more cynically, while you continue to play the field behind that person's back. Both potentially smart things, but, if your date starts to wonder why you seem to be applying the brakes, and they ask you, it would be better to explain how your behavior is about you not wanting to get attached too hard, rather than saying you doubt their sincerity and are testing it by making them run a gauntlet of sexual frustration.

Because if that's what you're doing, well, why? If you're worried that your date just wants to use you for sex, it might be worth pausing for a moment to ask, what do you intend to use your date for? Companionship, fun, and support ... but not sex? Perhaps you should make more friends instead then.

So, I was sanguine about her desire to move slowly. I would move at whatever pace she wanted to, while I was still dating her, and enjoy whatever we both felt comfortable doing. But though I couldn't say it, I knew it would just leave questions unanswered, and leave more runway for other people to arrive and delight me while Кэти was on my radar.

She'd already told me some of her dating history, and she asked about mine. I told her about what I'd been through with Моника. She was deeply disturbed by how recently this drama had all taken place - what had it been, four months ago? - and instantly replied, "I can't date you."

To that I responded, "If that's how you feel about it, well I feel sad about that, but it's totally up to you. I have absolutely no interest in arguing to convince you otherwise."

To her, that was apparently a curveball. She had been expecting me to bargain with her or make some kind of defense or rationalization. Since I hadn't, she accused me of being "flippant" about the whole thing. I told her, "Well, how is that flippant? You just said what you said -- you can't date me. Your mind is apparently made up. That's not something I would say unless I knew I really meant it. Who is being flippant here?"

She replied that she had merely been broadcasting what was in her mind at the time, and that it wasn't necessarily what she had concluded.

Right about there I knew she wasn't the right woman for me. I had already been on that ride before, many years ago: The one where my partner threw out whatever was in their head, and relied on me to hold my emotions in reserve and put the pieces together for them, and then respond only to the completed puzzle. It was a huge, loud alarm bell and I was determined to hear it this time around. The conversation trailed off and I decided I would not ask her on any more dates.

Before I could say anything like that over the chat console, Кэти declared that she had, in fact, already decided to dump me earlier in the day, and had furthermore already made plans of her own to go on a date Saturday night.

I did a double-take, then laughed out loud in the empty flat, and closed the chat window. Nothing more needed to be said. I too had already made plans on Saturday night, with someone new named Лариса.