Imperfections, Part 2

Evil

(Note: This post is a continuation of Imperfections, Part 1)

It’s been a while since I’ve written about the iPhone girl. Partly because I’ve been so busy at work. But mostly because I don’t know what to say about the situation. There’s nothing really to say, I guess.

From time to time, I’ll see her appear on my Google Talk buddy list. Just seeing her name gives me a little lift each time. I want to IM her, but I never do. What is there to say? Sometimes I set my IM status messages to make it sound like I’m living an interesting and exciting life. Other times, I’ll set the status message to something cycling-related in hopes that it’ll catch her eye (she’s a big cycling fan and an avid cyclist in real life) and maybe she would initiate a casual conversation. But she never does.

The last time I saw her in person, we were out for a late, late dinner. We had just come from the opera at Lincoln Center. When we stepped into the restaurant, the hostess greeted us and comment on what a well-dressed couple we were and asked if we had just come from the opera. It struck me at that moment that, wow, maybe the iPhone Girl and I had really become a couple. It’s been a while since I’ve had that feeling – being a part of a couple – and it felt good. I placed my hand on the small part of her waist as the hostess walked us to a table. It was late, so the place was only half filled with people and half filled with the whispers of conversation.

As we sipped our glasses of wine and nibbled on shared small plates of food, we talked about all sorts of things. We were still getting to know each other. I had learned previously that she was raised Catholic, but was no longer practicing. That night, I was telling her about how I had attended my a good friend’s ordination into the order of the deacons and how, mostly out of confusion, I had received communion (“the body of Christ, the blood of Christ,” make the sign of the cross, receive the wafer and put it in your mouth, take a sip from the chalice).

“Oh, your friend became a deacon?”

A rhetorical question. She paused for a moment and glanced down at her hands. Then she continued, “You know, I was married by a deacon.”

I had just been thinking the day before about the iPhone Girl and what her “story” might be. She couldn’t be as perfectly right for me as she appeared. I mean, she’s 32. My age. People who are still single at 32 usually have some sort of issue. Some sort of problem. Imperfections. Downright flaws, even.

Some people are poor – makes them undesirable in the dating pool. Some people, not so smart. (Desirable in some dating circles, but loathed in others.) The physical flaws are obvious. So you see a really ugly person and you’re not surprised that they’re alone and no one wants them. But with the attractive people, like the iPhone Girl (so cute), it just makes you wonder.

I honestly never thought that dating a divorced woman would bother me. I had even thought about it in the past and the notion of marrying someone who had been married before didn’t seem to matter. The past is the past, right? I’m 32 and anyone who is around this age will have a history.

When she said those words – “… I was married …” – I didn’t know how to react. What to say. I was likely not very graceful in handling it because I didn’t say anything for what felt like minutes. And all the closeness that we had felt leading up that that point evaporated. It was obvious to both of us, sitting there, but just feeling totally odd and out of sorts.

That was the last time I saw the iPhone Girl in person. We traded a few emails after that dinner but the tone was cold on both ends. With each email, we drifted further and further apart. It didn’t take more than 4 or 5 emails before we stopped emailing altogether. And that was that.

The other night, I went out with a new girl. I’ll call her the Snaggletoothed Girl. It wasn’t our first date, but close. When I walked her back to her apartment, she nudged be against a wrought iron gate and proceeded to take to my lips the way that starving summer ants take to a spilled box of Hi-C fruit punch. She asked if I wanted to come up to see her place. I said, “I shouldn’t.”