The Compulsive Liar

I continued to look at other potential guys on Match.com and started to date a computer techy guy whom when I first started emailing, was 35 years old. We went through 4 cycles of responding and receiving emails before our first date. We appeared to like the same kind of bands like Travis and Andrew Bird. Things appeared to be going well via email.

Our first date consisted of drinks at Cesars in Oakland, dinner at one of my favorite Italian places on Piedmont Avenue and drinks at my local tiki bar where we shared our first kiss. Things looked good, he appeared to be a musician on the side as part of a Weezers cover band. He asked if I liked Weezer and I explained my corky story of my friend Sean and I listening to the songs over and over again to know all the lyrics when the blue album came out. Our initial connection was fun and flirty for the most part.

After two weeks of dating, we started talking about our ages and I said "Well you are only 35 years old, it's not like you are ancient." He looks at me with a serious look and says "Carolyn, I'm 41 years old." I demand him to pull out his driver's license to confirm and sure enough, he's 41. He tries to pretend that he told me on our first date, pretending like he didn't lie about it. I assure him that I would have remembered that conversation, I have an excellent memory. I ask him why he lied and he says that girls like me won't even consider him because of his age. I explain that this is not true, that honesty is the best policy. To lie about something as silly as your age and be comfortable with that, makes me wonder what other things are you comfortable with lying about?

Later I went through my emails from him from Match.com and find that after each email where he started with 35 years old, he would bump up his age by two years on his profile. By the time, he finished his last email, he was at his age of 41 years old.

A couple of weeks later, we are having appetizers at my local pub when a subject comes up of lying again but about things such as how many partners have you slept with. He gets really defensive and says that lying to your partner about things like that is necessary to avoid hurting the other person. He then explains that if he ever cheats on a girl that he is with, that he would never tell her because what's the point in hurting the person with that information? Then he tells me his number is in the ballpark of 60-80 people and that he can't keep track of all the girls.

The next day, I call him and end it right here. Someone who feels so comfortable lying about things concerns me, even with my history aside.

The Persian

Continuing to see if Match.com could provide better options, I met a guy whom I like to call the "Persian." The Persian began emailing me and before I knew it, we had planned our first date to have dinner in the city. The night before, he calls me and asks that instead of going to dinner, would I be interested in wine tasting in Napa Valley with him and a couple of friends. I'm pretty flexible for the most part and said sure. He plans to pick me up at 11:30.

At 11:45, he is at my apartment and appears to have thick, dark framed glasses. I have to admit that I am a sucker for boys with glasses. Whenever the girls and I get together to go dancing, I'm always eyeing the one with glasses. Although recently I have come to realize that there are geeks and nerds with thick framed glasses and there are those who are pretending to fake the nerdiness, in hopes of meeting girls like me. He appeared to be one of those.

I jump in the car and there are two other people in the car, a guy friend of his from Duke University and lady friend of theirs who they met from work. The lady friend asks, "Is this where you live?" and I say yes. The guys poke fun at her, saying why would you ask that question, and she says "Well, she could of come from another guy's apartment from a one-night stand." Shocked, I say "I'm much more classier than that." The car roars with laughter and continues to dart jokes at her.

The date continues with her snarky humor and me poking back at her and before I know it, she wants to call me her best friend. The Persian who is driving, is getting a kick out of this and keeps eyeing me from the rear view mirror. We make it to our first winery, a place that the lady friend recommended and has "connections". We walked in and she manages to negotiate some discounted tasting tickets and a tour of the cellar but not because of her "connections". As the Persian and I trail behind the tour, him and I share a first kiss in the cave. Both of us feel a buzz feeling and I don't think it was the wine. We eventually catch up with the tour and decided to head back to the city for dinner and for the Persian to grab his keys to his new apartment in the Russian Hill District of San Francisco. 

We decide to go to this wonderful sushi place with the two friends and after we were finished, the guys were becoming tired of their lady friend who was becoming slightly jealous of the boys and their easy spending on dinner and wine tasting. We drop her off in the Mission but she refuses to show them where she lives, so I imagine we dropped her off a couple of blocks from her home.

Then we continued our night with dancing in the city at this place in SoHo district. For the most part, the Persian and I had very good chemistry. We decide to meet up the next day at his place for dinner and his brothers come over with their girlfriends. Overall, it was a great couple of dates, despite the corky lady friend.

The following weekend, we went to this fun event called Brazil at the Madrone Hotel. I wore my little red dress with my funky retro heels. We make our way over to the place with another friend of his and we were also meeting a couple there, later on. The boys decide to order bottle service which I'm not a fan of but at this point, I am not about to argue with them. Their choice, not mine. We start to drink and the couple stops by.  The Persian and I start dancing but I do notice that his friend is getting annoyed that he is alone. The Persian tries to perk up his friend by walking around the club to find other potential girls. The Persian had been drinking too much and I begin to wonder that he is getting too flirty with the other girls at the club. I look over from across the room to see his arm is around one girl at one point and then he was dancing with another later on. When he comes back and I explain I don't feel comfortable with his flirtation with other girls, he argues that he is being a good wingman to his other buddy who was solo that night. I explain that his buddy can take care of himself. He gets testy with me, claiming I'm a jealous type. I don't consider myself a jealous type but given the dynamics of being on my own with him and his friends, I was feeling uncomfortable watching the guy I'm dating flaunt himself all over the club with other girls. As we are heading over to the bar for water, we run into my friend Bennett in passing. The Persian gets extremely heated and jealous. He keeps bringing up Bennett throughout the night as an excuse for his flirtation with other girls. I become extremely annoyed and walk away at certain times so I don't smack him.

The next day over the phone, he tries to blame me for the entire night. I will admit to feeling sensitive but I don't think I was wrong in feeling the way I did. A man should know not to leave his lady like that especially on the first couple of weeks of dating. If you're interested in a girl, you make it clear with your actions. His actions demonstrated a lack of awareness and attentiveness to the woman he was supposed to be with. His buddy was the excuse to flirt with other girls, which is just an excuse. The next week the Persian would call to make plans but explain just how "busy" he was. I continued to ignore him because I was frustrated. Finally after dinner one night, he admits to dating different girls after the Brazil event. I break it off because I was already feeling like this wasn't right, that the dating wasn't going anywhere. 

We continued to try and see if this could work even after the break up, but there were other things that got in the way of us working. The Persian didn't own a car (the car for the wine tasting was his brothers) and refused to take public transportation to my apartment. I always had to drive over there for anything if I wanted to see him. He didn't have a job and had plenty of free time on his hands, which concerned me that he was spending money so freely. He was living off the packaged deal that his last job offered him before firing him. He had no interest to start working. He did not get along with any of his ex-girlfriends which I found to be strange. I have some ex-boyfriends that I consider to be good friends. He never appeared to be interested in my personal hobbies or qualities. It just felt off.  It ended when I realized when there was no point in trying. The minute I stopped calling him, he never called me. I knew at that point that I was just not that into him.

Law School Professor

After the Match.com excursion, I decided that meeting people in person was better than the online mystery. Throughout the year, I did date some people that I prefer not to name off in order to protect their identity. Their relationships fit my life at that time and I am not about to disclose how it was because it would take away a sense of meaningfulness to the relationships.

A year later, I found myself polishing off my Match.com profile, where I met my good friend Bennett. He had emailed me saying how he was interested in me. I emailed back but didn't hear back from him for a month. When I got his email, he seemed to be dating many girls, given the context of the email, so I slightly ignored him. Then I ran into him walking down Lakeshore avenue for my traditional Sunday afternoon coffee. He looked at me and both of us recognized each other from our profiles. We immediately became instant friends. He has become my mentor for opposite sex advise and opinions on corky boys and I have appreciated his hour long calls of hatching out the female and male perspectives. 

As I re-entered Match.com, one guy in particular started to email me before Christmas that caught my eye. He was a law school professor for a local university and appeared to be very passionate about his work and life. We met for coffee on a very rainy day in Berkeley and both of us had hit it off and decided for a second date that weekend. I took Bart to his home in the city where we shared an umbrella in the rain to a tea and dumpling restaurant. As he was giving me a tour of the house, we shared a passionate kiss in the hallway. We sat by the fireplace for three hours, talking politics and personal stories, while sneaking kisses in-between witty banter. I remember leaving his home, late at night. After our second date, he then offered to pick me up from the airport when I came back from Austin. He brought me muffins and bananas after my flight and we spent the day at his home, watching old movies, ordering take out and cuddling near the fireplace. Not bad for romantic dates. 

New Years Eve was drawing near and for whatever reason, I always get very nervous around my birthday. I am not a planner of my own events and I would rather plan someone's birthday rather than my own. Plus, a friend of mine was in town to help celebrate my birthday. As I am trying to coordinate with everyone, I find out that the law school professor is sick and won't be able to meet with me for drinks. This is fine with me, given that we just met and I can't really expect him to do too much for my birthday. On my actual birthday, he attempted to come out with us for dinner but was very sick and quiet. I understood completely.

After a couple of days, I received word from him via email that after having a conversation with his friend, Violet (whom I later found out was Violet Blue, SF Chronicle sex columnist and blogger, a woman I admire) he decided that we were both not in the same place in our lives. He offered to explain it further over the phone once he felt better, but at that point it felt unnecessary.  While I enjoyed our time together, I always kept questioning things and I never felt completely comfortable with him, like I was waiting for him to leave.  Maybe it has something to do with my previous relationships but at that point in my life, I had a hard time believing that I deserved something that good. He wasn't perfect, he had his own issues with trust and I felt like he avoided specific topics because he was just as scared as I was. For me, I felt like I was flawed and not ready for something serious.

He continued to occasionally look at my profile and email me saying that I had a nice profile picture. I was willing to leave it alone, given that he wasn't interested in me.  I found that despite myself, it was a success that I allowed myself to open up to him even if it didn't work out. While I feel completely comfortable opening up with friends who are like family, feeling comfortable opening up to a guy that I am romantically involved with will take some time. It's about finding the right guy to experience that with and finding that it is mutual for both people. I also realize I don't want to get caught up in the romantic idealistic moments which I recognize I have a tendency to do, disguising love for this image of love that is captivating in movies and songs. A romantic setting, a great kiss, and good conversation might appear to create this image of possible relationship material but it should go deeper than that. 

Owls Together

So I just finished my most recent painting "Owls Together." This one was inspired by my dear friend Bonnie. I really enjoy painting child-like animals and things so I might start a collection of child friendly paintings just for fun :)

Don't let the Crazy out in the beginning :)

After two months of flirting with boys at bars and receiving some wanted and unwanted attention, I decided to try my luck at the dating website, Match.com. I felt that paying for a dating membership would eliminate some of the odd balls. I was beginning to realize that some of the guys (not all of them) that  I was interested in were not of the quality standards that I was looking for. This began my experience with Match.com.

My first date from Match.com involved meeting at a coffee place in my neighborhood. It was a beautiful day outside so we sat at one of the tables that lines up on the side of the coffee house. He appeared to have his head on his shoulders, male, 39 years old, finishing his masters degree in Family and Marriage counseling at a local university. I enjoyed talking with him about my experiences as a behavioral therapist and he entertained me with his internship, working at a school during the Fall semester. His goal once he finished school was to teach men about intimacy and having group counseling for men. I felt like both of us shared an interest in self growth and becoming better people. He also seemed to enjoy mediation which was something I was working on.

The second date occurred about a week later, starting with dinner at this extremely organic, hippie restaurant where I felt like I was eating cardboard. As you can tell, this was his choice but I wasn't about to hold that against him ;) We decided to go back to my place for boardgames and some tea. As we entered my home, I took off my shoes because my carpet was fairly new and I didn't want to get it dirty. As we played boardgames at my coffee table, I didn't notice anything particular about him but I got the impression that he did want to kiss me but lost the nerve. We hugged goodbye and that night I received an email from him that started like this:

"Dear Carolyn, It was great to see you tonight. I look forward to our next date on Tuesday night. I will bring the wine. By the way, I really wanted to caress your feet..."

Ignoring the last part of his email, I started to respond with "I look forward to meeting with you." As I was responding to his email, he IM'ed me, saying hello. The conversation started off normal with how was your day, great, thanks. Then it turned ugly pretty quickly. He asked "What did you think of my email?" and I continued to ignore the last part of the email with, dinner sounds great on Tuesday night, I look forward to seeing you. Then he pressed on, asking "What did you think about the last part of my email?" Surprised (to say the least) I responded with "If it was the right time and place, then yes, that might work, but given that we haven't even kissed yet I would say that the timing was off." He responded with "Oh, you're turning me on!" As though that wasn't creepy enough and his response seeming like he may have been confused about what I just said, he then asked "Carolyn, do you consider yourself to be aggressive?"

Ready to run for the hills, I responded with "Assertive yes, Aggressive no." As though he couldn't be any more creepier than a chester molester, he pushed my envelope with "be aggressive next time".

At this point, I deleted my original email and began to rewrite my email to say, "Thanks for the last two dates but I don't think we are a match. I wish you the best of luck in finding what you are looking for. Sincerely, Carolyn" Click, send.

Ten minutes later I received an email that read in capitals "WAS IT THE FOOT FETISH PART?"

I ignored it, given that I had said what I needed to say. There was nothing more I could do to make it more clear that I was all finished was his type of flirtation and games. A couple days later, I receive yet another email at 11 o'clock at night saying, he would really like to kiss me and wondered if we could have a make out session right now. I ignored that email as well, refusing to participate in this conversation. Two days later, another email pops up from him, saying one word: Sorry.

A month passes and ANOTHER email pops up from him, titled "Games" and reading "Wanna play again?"

I responded with "Please don't contact me, don't call me or don't email me. Carolyn"

As though this story couldn't get any creepier, I received an email from him a YEAR later, saying happy one year anniversary and that he wished me the best. Thanks but no thanks, Mr. Foot Fetish but I don't find creepiness to be attractive. The end.

Meeting Boys in the Dark can be Tricky.....

My first date after Soren started three weeks after the break up. My friend Leah was in town to assist in my recovery and wanted to take me out for the night to go drinking and meet new boys. I was slightly apprehensive but decided I had nothing to lose. The bar "Spoon" had a nice decor that included fun bright blue walls and lighting and an old school photo booth. After we talked with some gentlemen and I exchanged numbers with one of them, we decided to head off. I went to the bar to pay for my tab and collect my credit card when I noticed this one particular boy who was sitting at the bar. We started talking and before I knew it, I was exchanging my phone number with his after sensing a good chemistry. After a week, we went on our first date and I met him at the restaurant. As I walked in and saw him sitting at the table, I didn't notice anything particularly different about him. He liked to talk or maybe he was nervous but I was happy to listen. As we finished our dinner, we decided to go and check out this corky little bar in Crockett that had a giant stuffed polar bear and an extensive bottled beer collection. As we headed out of the restaurant, I noticed that his walk was different and he looked as though he had an injury to his hips. I continued to notice that he was slightly wobbly but kept upright easily.

After working with children with special needs for many years, I could guess that he had Cerebral Palsy (CP). We talked as we drove over to the bar and I mention that I'm an Occupational Therapist and I work with children with CP. He immediately felt very comfortable with me and explained how hard it is to meet someone who is empathetic to someone like him.  I told him that it didn't bother me that he had CP and I was enjoying his company. As we sat at the bar, we talked about favorite bands and interests. There were times I felt like he wasn't listening to me or he was trying to relate but didn't know what I was talking about. For example, I would say I like Andrew Bird and he would say "I really like House of Pain, you would like them if you like Andrew Bird." After our date, we decided to have another date together the following weekend. Now normally I don't go with someone to their Christmas party on a second date but I thought I would go and it might be a fun environment for a second date. He picked me up at about 5 and we head down to Livermore for the Christmas party.

Everything was going well until about 10:00 when I realized my date was drinking way too much alcohol to be driving me back home at midnight. He kept drinking shots with his co-workers, and coming back more wobblier each time he would visit the bar. I was beginning to get concerned. After his tenth hard liquor drink at the bar, the bartender refused to serve him anymore alcohol because he had too many. The date then proceeded to get angry because he felt like he was being discriminated against because he had Cerebral Palsy. Now, granted I am willing to support individuals with special needs and defend their rights when it is necessary. I would also imagine that this kind of thing happens all of the time, where a bartender has to make a judgement call when someone is too drunk to drink anymore. But after watching him slur his words as he explained what happened with the bartender and how it wasn't fair that he has to go through this, I was beginning to side with the bartender on this one.

After insisting that he wasn't drunk in the most slurry-ist speech possible, he then explained that we should get a room at the hotel where the Holiday party was held at, to be "safe" and avoid any possible DUIs. Annoyed, I said no but I won't be driving home with you. I then proceeded to call a taxi to take me back to Oakland and forced the boy to pay for my taxi ride back to Oakland. Even after his ridiculous offer of sharing a hotel room together, he asked that maybe he could join me back at my apartment where he could sleep over.  I looked at him with the "Are you kidding me?" look and said no and I wish you the best of luck in finding a ride home.  I found out later that he stayed at the hotel that night.

We continued to text and message for about a week when I finally said that this wasn't working. What really got me about this boy was he sent me a text message of the Grinch (the cartoon) getting a blow job while I was working with my students. Then he wondered why I was annoyed afterwards.  When I explained that you don't send gross graphic pictures to girls you just met, he shrugged and said "Oh, I thought you would like that."

Emotional Intelligence

This painting was created after a huge transition in my life. I call it "Emotional Intelligence" because I wanted my mind to have control over the emotions that involved love. The anatomical heart is a representation of wanting to see my heart in it's most intelligent form without the concoction of love or other emotions that clouded my brain at that point in time. The woman is wearing a skirt that is also a presentation of hills and flowers as the sun comes up on the corner. Collage of pictures and words are also used to describe the strength of the woman in all her dimensions. "Emotional Intelligence" is probably the most personal painting I have created, representing a direct window into the heart of the artist at that moment in time.

The Beginning.

Three years ago, I began an unexpected journey that I wasn't expecting.  I remember coming back from the Bridge School Benefit show and my fiance sat frozen on our couch. I was ignoring his facial expression that appeared serious as I continued to tidy up the apartment. I finally looked over at him to hear him say something to the lines of: "I've been dating that girl from the grocery store....I can't do this anymore.... it's over Carolyn." The reality didn't set in as I continued to move around the apartment, that maybe if I continue my "I didn't hear you" phrase while holding my ears that we could pretend that that did not just happen. But it did. The neurons started firing as my reaction started to set in. I felt like my emotions had taken on a mind of their own. There was no control of my feelings and they weren't going to stop. I wanted so hard to stop the tears from flooding my cheeks but there I was, crying.

As it set in, I attempted to sleep and curled into a ball on our bed. I don't remember how I feel asleep or how I woke up but once the day started, I began the phone calls that started my life over. As I write this now, this is not the story I want to tell. There are enough sob stories of girls who got hurt from boys who were retarded. Trust me, every time I get to tell my silly sob story again, another girl comes out of the woodworks and announces the same thing.

The story I want to tell is the one that came after all that. When it did happen, I thought my life would pause for a second, that I would have a moment to exhale. Instead my life went into a whirlwind of spinning until I was completely dizzy. The dates of boys and insanity that followed has made this adventure interesting to say the least. This blog is to walk you through this little adventure of mine in hopes that I can provide some clarity, humor and light on what should of have been a very sad story. Luckily, life has a sense of humor.