Okay, so the date went off without a hitch. No, wait, one hitch- I gave her the wrong directions at the very beginning, and ended up borrowing a telephone from a theater employee to call her and correct the directions, etc. An inauspicious beginning, really.
Things didn't get worse from there, luckily; she came fairly quickly, and time passed by way too fast; we ended up sitting in the Old Point Tavern talking from 7 pm to 3 am, when the place shut down. Asked if I couldn't give her a ride home, and as we sat in the car, waiting for the heater to warm up, she said she didn't want to call it a night- did I know any restaurants still open that we could go and continue the talking... so, we ended up staying out 'til 7 in the morning, a 12-hour-long date.
After the initial high I felt as the date ended, a few things feel awkward; not to sound like someone from a 50s movie, but I almost feel like I'm dating outside of my station. A working-class slob who's somehow been picked out by someone who's got no real connection to the life of unskilled labor.
We were talking about our respective pasts, and she simply could not understand how or why someone would choose the things I have. What was the appeal of "rebellion" when I began living on my own; why listen to that music, wear those clothes, have those hairstyles, have those friends. Even little things- "why did you have purple hair?"- and that she couldn't wrap her head around the concept that I simply liked the way it looked... she didn't ask as a means of condescension, it felt like actual curiosity, but I really couldn't explain my side very well.
...I'm not really like that any more. I got a lot of that out of my system when I was young, and I see it (fairly simply) as just my attempt to create an identity of my own after living a couple of decades under assumptions and pressures from everyone around me. I didn't know who I was, and if, by pushing my boundaries by taking on looks/ideas/attitudes that set me against the people around me, I was able to become comfortable with who I was, I shouldn't feel ashamed...
...yet I do kind of feel ashamed. It's not like she castigated me- it just seemed like a set of alien concepts, and there was no way I could explain the mental struggle behind it all, and I began to feel that perhaps that kind of struggle is abnormal.
She said more than a few times, "We're alike in so many ways, yet we're so different." I think perhaps I wore my heart on my sleeve a little too much that night; we talked about a lot of the weirder parts of my past, and she joked a few times that she could make the date sound either really good or really bad to her coworkers. So, I told her I was just gonna brag to my friends "Oh, yeah, we spent the night together," leaving out that the night was spent in just talking.
Together we violated pretty much every rule of what one is "supposed" to do on a date. Talked about exes, religion, politics. She seemed to like me even as the date ended, and she's supposed to give me a call tomorrow night, so it'll be interesting to see if she's gotten some of these awkward feelings as well.
Her parents have given her much grief over the years about "settling down/having kids," and she's been afraid to tell her parents whenever she's dating someone. So, when she said at the end "I'll have to figure out how to tell my parents about you," I took it as a good sign.
...
I like her. Despite my trepidation, this is a lot more healthy than my attempted relationship with Stephanie, and way more promising than it should be after a single date.
Things didn't get worse from there, luckily; she came fairly quickly, and time passed by way too fast; we ended up sitting in the Old Point Tavern talking from 7 pm to 3 am, when the place shut down. Asked if I couldn't give her a ride home, and as we sat in the car, waiting for the heater to warm up, she said she didn't want to call it a night- did I know any restaurants still open that we could go and continue the talking... so, we ended up staying out 'til 7 in the morning, a 12-hour-long date.
After the initial high I felt as the date ended, a few things feel awkward; not to sound like someone from a 50s movie, but I almost feel like I'm dating outside of my station. A working-class slob who's somehow been picked out by someone who's got no real connection to the life of unskilled labor.
We were talking about our respective pasts, and she simply could not understand how or why someone would choose the things I have. What was the appeal of "rebellion" when I began living on my own; why listen to that music, wear those clothes, have those hairstyles, have those friends. Even little things- "why did you have purple hair?"- and that she couldn't wrap her head around the concept that I simply liked the way it looked... she didn't ask as a means of condescension, it felt like actual curiosity, but I really couldn't explain my side very well.
...I'm not really like that any more. I got a lot of that out of my system when I was young, and I see it (fairly simply) as just my attempt to create an identity of my own after living a couple of decades under assumptions and pressures from everyone around me. I didn't know who I was, and if, by pushing my boundaries by taking on looks/ideas/attitudes that set me against the people around me, I was able to become comfortable with who I was, I shouldn't feel ashamed...
...yet I do kind of feel ashamed. It's not like she castigated me- it just seemed like a set of alien concepts, and there was no way I could explain the mental struggle behind it all, and I began to feel that perhaps that kind of struggle is abnormal.
She said more than a few times, "We're alike in so many ways, yet we're so different." I think perhaps I wore my heart on my sleeve a little too much that night; we talked about a lot of the weirder parts of my past, and she joked a few times that she could make the date sound either really good or really bad to her coworkers. So, I told her I was just gonna brag to my friends "Oh, yeah, we spent the night together," leaving out that the night was spent in just talking.
Together we violated pretty much every rule of what one is "supposed" to do on a date. Talked about exes, religion, politics. She seemed to like me even as the date ended, and she's supposed to give me a call tomorrow night, so it'll be interesting to see if she's gotten some of these awkward feelings as well.
Her parents have given her much grief over the years about "settling down/having kids," and she's been afraid to tell her parents whenever she's dating someone. So, when she said at the end "I'll have to figure out how to tell my parents about you," I took it as a good sign.
...
I like her. Despite my trepidation, this is a lot more healthy than my attempted relationship with Stephanie, and way more promising than it should be after a single date.
that can work out really well