A Brief Vegas Encounter I Neglected to Mention

I just posted this on reddit in reply to a thread about interesting Vegas hooker stories, and realized I'd forgotten to mention it here. It's not a beautiful story. Do with it what you will...

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A few weeks ago I'd just finished winning a small poker tourney at the Venetian and had a pocket full of $100 bills. A hooker followed me into my elevator at Harrah's (yes, dump, but I just slept there and went elsewhere to gamble). She(?) strolled into the elevator then just stood there, smoking her cigarette. She didn't hit a floor button. She got off at my floor. As I put my key in the door I heard from behind me: "What do you think would happen if I came into your room with you?"

My thoughts came pretty rapid-fire: You'd charge me a bunch of money for sex, then when I went to pay you, you'd see my wad of cash and you'd hit me over the head with a lamp and the maid would find me naked and poor in a pool of blood in a few hours. Then they'd charge me an extra cleaning fee because it's a non-smoking room.

But instead I just said "Uh... no thanks" and shut the door in her face.

Flirt Dynamics

She's massaging my scalp. She was cute when I walked in, and now, with a warm towel over my eyes, another with a light menthol scent covering my chin, her strong fingers rubbing my hair, mussing, tangling and then pulling those tangles smooth as she brings my hair to a point of concentration at the back of my neck where the water drips into the bowl, her wrists abrading on my two-day beard, she is more beautiful than ever.

She pulls off the eye-towel and leans me up in my chair, and I come groggily back to reality. "Wow. You should have a deal with InSpa," I say. "Like crack, you know... the first little bit is included with your haircut but walk on down to our partner for a full hour of bliss." She smiles, says something awkward about there being an InSpa right down the street (which is why I mentioned it in the first place), and I'm brought back to an idea I've wondered about for a while now -- whether my conversation/flirting creates an awkwardness more often for good reasons or for bad.

It's a little of both, to be sure -- I just wish I were better able to tell when I should shut up and when they want me to continue. There are women I talk to who seem to be attracted, and the awkwardness there is a shyness, maybe something they're unable or unprepared to deal with for whatever reason, or maybe their shyness is their way of dealing with it (works for me), yet they apparently enjoy the things I say or the way I look at them. Then there are the women who are clearly thinking "As if!" and the awkwardness comes from their inability to tell me off because they're in a position where they're supposed to be nice, which makes conversing with waitresses and hair stylists tricky.

I'm a smiler, an observer, a conversationalist and a flirt. I love making a day brighter with a smile, and a beautiful smile returned can make my whole week. But I hate those occasional times when I seem to make a girl uncomfortable with my flirting eyes or some other sort of apparently unwanted sentiment. I'm not a big fan of boundaries, but not a day goes by that I don't wish someone would invent a pair of super-infrared (or super-something) glasses, like the spray that reveals a laser beam alarm tripline, that would help me figure out where the invisible boundaries lie before I cross them. I'd pay thousands for those glasses.

The Brutal River

My two weeks here in Vegas have been an up & down affair, with a big win, a smaller win, and several poker losses. The smaller win was one that just ended a few minutes ago, and I sit here on my hotel room bed feeling an odd sort of malaise over the cards that almost were, and the huge win that could have been, but won't be.

I originally came to Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but quickly tired of the huge buyins and minimal chance of success given the ridiculous number of players (and many really really good players) entered in those events. One of my dealers in a $1000 event there told me about the less expensive, more fun events at The Venetian, and I gave one a try about ten days ago. Since then, I've played probably seven or eight events with either $350, $560 entry fees, or the $120 nightly "Second Chance" tourney. About six nights ago I ended up essentially winning a Second Chance tourney when we did a "chip chop" when I was the biggest stack. A chip chop divides the remaining purse money by percentage according to the amount of chips held. So my stack earned me more money than the others.

But yesterday's tourney (which finished for me a bit ago) was special in that there was the potential for a $60,000 first prize. After fourteen hours of poker yesterday, I found myself with an average-sized chip stack at the resumption of play today -- right in the middle of the pack with 34 people still standing out of 450+ who all paid $560 to enter the tournament, a Deep Stack Extravaganza at The Venetian.

I played well all day long, with no major errors I can think of offhand and one very nice call when I held a pair of fours and a big stack tried to push me around when he held pocket twos. He bet big on the river with a board of 5-8-K-K-J, and I considered everything carefully for a couple minutes and eventually called with my pocket fours. "Two pair," he said, no doubt expecting me to muck. I nodded, waiting patiently for him to flip over his hand, and feeling ecstatic with my call when I showed the table my fours, earning a round of "Wow"s and "Nice call"s for a huge pot that kept me going late into the night. Those fours were about the best hand I'd seen for two hours, as I was almost card dead for most of the night. I finally picked up some hands and knocked a couple players out to chip up, then doubled up a couple short stacks when I held mediocre hands (A-6 offsuit, J-8 suited) in an effort to knock them out, too. But I survived to the money. Then I prospered until the end of the night when we bagged up the chips for storage until the next day.

Today, after we resumed, I made a couple of moves early, picking up some blinds and antes when I raised in late position, and I also made two mistakes, giving up some chips when my suited A-2 hit only a deuce and I was raised by someone who, I believe, clearly had better cards after the flop. I also gave up a lot of chips to a chip leader when I tried to steal his raise from the small blind when I called with mediocre connecting cards (7-6 off-suit, I think) and the flop brought a king, which he check-raised me on.

But the reason for this post -- the bummer feeling of opportunity snatched away -- was when I raised with 1/5 of my stack and was re-raised all-in by the big blind. I called with KQ offsuit because we'd sparred a couple times before and I thought I might be ahead and he might do that with any king or maybe even a suited queen, since his stack wasn't much larger than mine. I was crushed when he turned over his AK. Then I was elated when the flop came K-Q-6 and I had two pair to his pair of kings. The turn brought a jack, which gave him a straight draw. At that point, there were seven cards in the deck that could make his hand. Any ten would give him a straight, and an ace would give him a higher two pair. He got an ace, and I was out of the tournament with only a modest win: barely three times more than I paid to enter.

Poker -- particularly Texas Hold'em -- is a roller-coaster game, and one that sees way too much obnoxious celebrating or whiny bitching about other players' poor play or lucky breaks, but my psyche is very well-suited for poker. My resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute. I can be as stoic, silent and calm as many of the best players you see on TV who care much less about the money than I do. And when I lose, I can shrug it off as well as anyone, remembering the many times that river has helped and brought me quiet elation while crushing someone else's tournament dreams. But this time, at the close of a long two weeks in Vegas, as close as I've ever been to a very large payday with a very well-played tournament, the unveiling of that last card, the river ace, just stung -- still stings -- in a way that's kind of hard to describe.

"Nice hand," I said to the guy. "Good game." I stood up from the table and wandered numbly up to the podium to claim my 24th place winnings, looking back just once to see my chips being pushed to the AK guy, hearing him say something about how he has enough chips to really do some damage now, and although he was best when the money went in, it's difficult after that great flop to not start planning, already, what I'd do with my newfound aggression when those chips were shipped over. I was already considering the chore of stacking those 240k chips and how I'd be amongst the chip leaders. I started wondering what the tournament LCD monitor's scrolling payouts said about the final table's minimum prize. I held my breath and waited for one more card. And then the brutal river took my tournament away.

TT

A Timing Thing

It always happens like this… I win a bunch of money playing poker, then I lose that same bunch of money playing poker at a level I’m not comfortable with, then I re-commit to my writing and my projects because, as it turns out, in the end I’m just barely a profitable poker player.

After two wasted WSOP entries and a nice comeback with a tournament win at the Venetian, I’m back down 2k again today after a suck-out gave some Italian guy a flush to my AK. I read him right, and knew I was ahead with just AK after the flop, but he called $900 on a draw and beat me on the river. Oh well… it’s a call I want that will usually win money.

So here I am having a bottle of wine and a cheese plate for one at a very cool café on The Grand Canal in The Venetian in Vegas. Still in a very good mood despite the day’s lost dollars, and ready to go home (wherever that is), soon, to my boys.

I really ought to have gone to Europe instead of pseudo-Euro Vegas. It occurs to me that it would have been cheaper. Still, I’m barely out any real money as this is still poker winnings from another poker tournament win from a few weeks ago.

I could do an “I Saw You” eposide/essay/vignette here. There are so many people out and about, like myself, having dinner or just drinks at 10:45 on a Monday night in the false vanilla sky of a manufactured indoor Venice. There’s a pharmaceutical supplies conference in town (or maybe just limited to the Venetian – I’m not sure) and last night I ran into a crazy group of women leaving the restroom and making noise, blocking the walkway. Once I’d passed them I realized I must have had a scowl on my face, because one of them, the cute one, apologized for her group and said “Give us a sign to let us know it’s okay?”

I turned around and failed at flirting by just giving a thumbs-up.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, as I slowed to let them catch up to me while on my way to the poker room. “We’re just a bunch of boring professionals who don’t get out very much.”

“No problem at all,” I said. “What are you in town for? Bachelorette party?”

“No,” she laughed. “It’s a pharmaceutical sales convention.”

At that point I got lost, realizing she was indeed very pretty, and of course every pharmaceutical sales woman in the world is beautiful. After all, they need those doctors to be totally psyched to see them when they walk in with their samples.

And though she was clearly flirting or interested to some degree, I forgot to flirt back as flashes of a previous infatuation that may have been love (but was probably just lust) burst through my brain and over-rode the smile and wittily flirtatious space I reserve nowadays mostly for waitresses and women at the poker table.

I drifted back in time to 2000, where I met another pharmaceutical sales rep at a downtown Seattle bar. I was wearing my leather jacket even though it was about a hundred degrees in the bar. Lights flashing, music blaring and people so crowded together that the sweat and beer and liquor blended together on the sticky floor and actually smelled pretty good.

I saw M_ standing there, just next to the dance floor, and I’d had just enough to drink to be able to walk up to her, pull out my wallet and say “Hey. Look at my awesome nephew!” I flashed my picture folio like a badge. A badge that said: “Look at what my sister made. I have within me the ability to make things just as beautiful, and don’t you ever forget it.”

She admired my one-year-old nephew and we talked for a few minutes, and she showed me photos of her gorgeous family, too. She wanted to dance so we danced and sweated together on the dance floor. It was so crowded that dancing wasn’t really feasible so pretty soon we were just there, pushed together by the crowd, hopping to the beat and feeling everything and the moment required that we kiss. We made out on the dance floor amongst the masses in the thumping beats.

We closed the bar and because at the time I thought myself a very good drunk driver and her friend was in bad shape, I drove them to my car, which was parked at my friend’s office a few miles away. She asked me to come home with her. “Just more kissing,” she said. “I want lots more kissing because that’s really fun with you but you have to be good.” She said this while holding up a finger as if to warn me in a pre-scolding way. She was recently divorced – still waiting for the final papers, actually – and just needed to kiss, be touched and appreciated. She needed to feel, again, how awesome it was to hold or be held all night.

I considered the coolness of being so close to something so beautiful for a while longer, and agreed to her terms. After driving us all to my Jeep I then led them to her house because she was new to town and said, basically, "If you get me to XXXth street, then I can find it from there." I nearly missed her turn-off, but responded to her urgent bright-light-flashing and turn signal from behind me that said, “Hey – don’t forget to exit here.” It felt good knowing she was anxious, too, to spend more time with me. Where so often you expect to be ditched in that scenario, as she re-considers and thinks better of the whole thing, turning off suddenly and running away, she instead was concerned about me going the wrong way.

We kissed all night and I held her while she slept (I’m not sure I ever really slept), and when the light came through her window and ignited her smile, creating a shadow in her deep left dimple, she turned a bit and said to me, a little embarrassed and shy, “Hey there.” And me, the big spoon, one arm under her neck stretched out underneath the pillow and the other laying on her slim waist, cupping a breast outside her t-shirt: “Hey.”

I fell for her almost immediately, and was there to be the soft landing she needed to recover from her divorce and just to be a friend – someone to cuddle and eventually to make love with. “Timing is everything,” we always said, often in frustration as things slipped backward and she needed more space or I happened to call at just the right time to offer a Neil Diamond show after she’d had a difficult phone call with her soon-to-be ex. We went to Teatro ZinZanni, once – a Seattle cabaret / entertainment that includes the audience in the show, and they put us right up front where the little French bus-girl fell in love with me and gave M_ dirty looks. The performer stuck out her tongue at M_ as she and jumped into my arms to claim me, and we laughed along with everyone and that night we were a couple.

After the show she said rather urgently that I’d better find somewhere to park or there was going to be trouble, and we found the darkest spot we could as close the theater as we could, and we made love (or something like making love, considering I had a rather cramped Jeep) there in the shadow of the Space Needle at what used to be a Tower Records store, because something had to be done with that sort of awesomeness – with the night and happiness, emotions and an excitement that that could not wait for a long drive home.

So interesting and amazing the little things we do – whether based on timing or pure choice or chance – that determine a lifetime or multiple lifetimes. The children we made and the worlds we changed by the things we did. Here in Vegas I basically forgot how to flirt as I escaped into my memories and told the pharmaceutical sales girl to have a great night as I walked away to the poker room. Maybe she was destined to be something more in my life than the spark of a memory, but I’ll never know. The girl from Zazu, M_, circa 2000, not quite ready or divorce-recovered until she was finally ready and divorce-recovered and I’d already moved on, telling her not to come over during her last, tearful two-A.M. call when she’d finally changed her mind and wanted me for more than just her recovery, her bounce – her friend already driving her to my house. “No,” I said, painfully, already essentially committed to the woman who would eventually become my wife and the mother of my two beautiful boys. “I’m sorry,” I said to her that night. “It’s too late.”

“Timing,” she said, finally. “It's always has been about timing.”

Thoughts While Running Along the Beach

I write while I run. And I’m literally thinking that, while I run: “I write while I run.”

I don’t construct complete sentences (usually), but there are thoughts that drift in and out – some worthy of keeping and some that should be let go. I haven’t written much lately, though, because I’ve been too busy building a Content Management System and a web site for a client. It’s been draining. I forgot how draining a flat-rate project can be when it gets down to the end and the details never quite reach a point of completion. We’re there now, the back and forth of “well what about this?” and significant pieces of functionality that, upon deployment, we find still need to be built to make the thing complete.

It was just a run to the jetty. I figured it would be about a mile and a half each way. I put on my new shoes to break them in on the beach, because they’re lighter, faster, less-supportive shoes and I’m not sure my stride is worthy of them but I really wanted them because they’re orange and I had a credit at zappos anyway.

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All down the beach I zig-zag back and forth between the soft sand higher up and the harder wet sand when it's not too steep to be comfortable. It's early for the beach, as I've just returned from dropping the boys off at school, so there are only the ultra-committed vacationers who want to suck out every minute of beach time they can.

As I approach the jetty, there’s a woman. She’s standing on the jetty taking a picture or something. I feel something in my toe and worry that my new shoes are going to give me a blister my first time out, so I stop and sit on a jetty rock to check on my toes. She climbs down off the jetty. Gorgeous, and not a tourist taking a photo but a jogger taking a rest. She steps off the jetty twenty feet away, stretches her arms and smiles at me. She takes a deep breath and strides off.

And there's me: checking my toes for blisters.

When I started today’s run, I was planning on running along the beach to the jetty, then from the jetty through the state park back to my condo. I just didn’t feel like quite so much soft sand today. So I put my sock and shoe back on and start towards the barbeque cabanas that will lead me to the parking lot that will take me to the road back through the park. And my brain says to me: “What if she’s waiting for you? What if she “gets tired” and stops at one of the hundreds of resort chaise lounges along the beach for a few minutes rest, and maybe looks down the beach to see if you’ve turned around yet and if you’re coming?”

I go through the first cabana, turn left in the parking lot, then turn left again through a second cabana and hit the trail back to the beach.

As I reach the beach again, an appropriate song comes on my iPod. It’s Yeves Laroc and the song is an electronic / house-beat called “Nomadic Knights”:

As we all walk through life
As a nomad. A lone child.
Walking. Running. Going 'cross the desert sands.
Nomad.

Up near the parking lot the sand here in Panama City Beach is so deep and soft you can lose your shoes. You sink six inches with each stride. This makes for a horrendously difficult workout, but while “Nomadic Knights” plays I think of Lawrence of Arabia. I’m striding through the desert sand on this quest to see if maybe, just maybe, this girl is waiting.

I write the last sentence of an essay: “And I ran off after her, chasing in her the ideal I was not sure I wanted to attain.”

It’s been three years this month that my ex and I filed for divorce. I then spent two years fixing myself while sailing down the Pacific coast into Mexico, and another year fixing my body – coming out of the malaise, the carelessness and complacency of a relationship where physical fitness becomes less important than sleep and work and re-bonding every weekend over steaks and wine and warm chocolate cake.

Three years later and I'm back in shape. I haven’t bench-pressed more since grad school during the workout commitment just after a different relationship ended. Today, after some water and a banana, I will start on sport bottle #1 of today’s gallon of green tea. Yes, I consider that I may appear vain if I share these things. Yes, I consider how I look if I post a status to all my friends saying I got a honk while running. Ultimately, I think people who live their lives alone (for the most part) must compliment themselves because it’s too important to feel good about themselves and the things they do well. People don’t give each other nearly enough compliments. I resolve to tell my friends how great they are when they are great.

A friend recently told me she and her husband of a few years were separating and filing for divorce, and one of his status posts yesterday was from a gym. Taking care of ourselves is just what we do when separation happens. It was a shock to me, this beautiful couple and their outdoorsiness together -- and what I’d always assumed was their shared passion for motorcycles and off-roading in their trucks. But I knew her better than I knew him, and never really thought she was meant for the suburbs and commuting and then the sand dunes on the weekends.

Who really knows who we’re meant for, or if we’re really meant to be with anyone forever. I’m growing more cynical, and the woman running ahead is not waiting. In fact, she’s farther away – a better runner than me or just on a different schedule. I slog at a pace of 13:00/mile through the heavy sand, leaning forward as the sand gets heavier. I think of a friend who just achieved a million miles in the air, a friend much like Clooney and Ryan Bingham (since Clooney is Ryan Bingham and Ryan Bingham is Clooney): handsome, single, 40s, hip, friendly. There should be a club for us, with Clooney as our figurehead. We are men at peace with ourselves and the world, handsome and experienced, in no hurry for anything but to enjoy being with someone, occasionally, until something amazing happens and we stand there at her door on a cold Chicago night and realize she’s not who we thought she was. We nod our head. We shrug, relieved, we suppose, that it didn’t take too long, this time.

But then there is the twinge of something else. This feeling that makes nature happen. This idea that if the timing were right and the woman were right and there was adequate money to do that and still live this life adventurously… there’s just maybe that bit of hope for just one more – I mean… I make such beautiful babies and Charlie Chaplin had kids at sixty (or something like that – so said Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally”).

At nearly four miles and back in front of my condo the lady jogger is nowhere to be seen. The watch/heart-rate monitor/GPS reads 3.8 miles and I think “That’s close enough. I’m still sore from Wednesday’s run.” I slow to a walk, stretch, and something fires in my brain. I determine that I will not quit before four miles, and to punish myself for even considering it I run in only the heaviest sand. I loop around a trash barrel and check the GPS: “3.89” – a little further and I can turn around. “3.91” and I turn around the second barrel and run back. I’m Herschel Walker working out in the off-season, my shoes sinking nine, ten inches each stride and my knees almost to my chest until I find a track from the Beach Patrol ‘s pickup and it gets easier. “Get out of the tire tread, you pussy!” I think. “Would Hershel Walker run in a fucking tire tread?” I breathe deeply each stride, grunting and “pshaw”-ing rather than the in/nose-in/nose-in/nose-exhale/mouth of my normal pace.

I reach my stairs at 4.01 miles. My shirt – an Ex Officio undershirt meant for the tropics, paper thin when dry, is now soaked through and looks like toilet paper clinging to my chest. I breathe, hands clasped behind my head, I take out my headphones. I walk up the stairs, kicking the sand off my shoes. I ride the elevator up to the eighth floor. I open my door and walk down the hallway to the balcony where I sit and sip my water, the families assembling below, the jet-ski and beach chair rental company preparing for their day. The Gulf of Mexico stretching off forever, and my mind beginning to come back to this world.

One of These Days, I'm Gonna Get Organezized

I have no idea if I'm spectacularly disorganized or spectacularly ambitious. It's probably both. On the ambition side, there are the two primary web sites at varying levels of completion, the two or three nonfiction books partially outlined and mostly thought through, the foundering novel and its even less considered screenplay both nearly abandoned due to higher priorities. And then there are the things I want to read. These are the things outside of paying work, parenting, exercise and social life.

I've detailed (as much as I care to) the writings before, but the readings are interesting: I've just set down Proust's Swann's Way (volume 1 of In Search of Lost Time which is better known as Remembrance of Things Past). In my backpack sits another book I'd planned on enjoying today at the coffee shop mid-way through a bike ride (the bike ride having been abandoned due to continuing cold and wind): Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

So I was sitting here on my sofa this morning reading in the quiet -- just the dryer working and muffled voices of snowbirds four floors down on the cold, windy beach, and somewhere in the first chapter of Swann's Way I had a thought I wanted to write down. Maybe Proust spawned an essay topic or the first few ideas in a longer piece. So what I did is I meta-bookmarked Swann's Way, holding my page open with the weight of a bookmarked book entitled Meditation Made Easy.

You see... I'd bought a couple of books on meditation thinking I'd use mediation to get myself more organized and structure my time so I'd be able to actually get one or two of these projects finished. And if you consider bookmarking to be an organizational quality, then they've helped out a lot.

TT

I Pronate, But I'm Not a Bad Person

I was talking to a friend yesterday, telling her my plan to go to this running specialty shop today to get fitted for some shoes. My new running kick (heh) has finally pushed me to invest in some better shoes than the four-year-old cross-trainers I've been wearing for the past few months as I've ramped up my fitness. But I wanted to get an expert fitting because I'd never had my stride analyzed to see if I'm a heel-striker, a mid-foot runner, etc.... My friend said: "Remember, if you pronate it doesn't mean you're a bad person."

I'd heard the term "pronate" but didn't know what it meant. I guess I thought it was bad technique that could be repaired with practice, but as soon as she said that I really started hoping I don't pronate -- again, without knowing exactly why I needed to hope that. But after a short twenty-foot walk from a shelf to a window, Marshal at Freedom Sports, Panama City Beach, took me to the more cushiony section of the wall for flatfeet like me, and showed me a few different pairs having extra support. Without any prompting from me at all, he said something to the effect of "It's not a big deal -- a lot of people over-pronate." I'm sure that's true, and I'm very happy with my new ultra-cushiony scoots. But I still can't help feeling like the victim of a tragic accident that's left me somehow disfigured. An accident that's left me... a pronater.*

So... after all that: Behold my new running shoes. If you can't see (or have never felt) the awesomeness inherent in these shoes, you're obviously a lame-o. I have a few Pearl Izumi things from cycling, but they're just starting to make a name for themselves in running. I can't wait to hit the treadmill tonight on my new Pearl Izumi Synchro Infinitis. Bring it, arch-havers, non-pronators.

* And, technically, an over-pronater. After further research I understand I've way over-dramatized the issue of being an over-pronator. But this post would be even more boring if I hadn't.

Communication Issues

I wrote a lot in college, but that was way before blogs so I have notebooks somewhere crammed full of ink. I worked at the downtown San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina, and I'd head down to work early and sit at The Upstart Crow Bookstore & Coffeehouse, next door at the touristy shopping village, and amongst the books, at a table between the poetry and the philosophy, I'd write about everything. I'd describe people and the things they were doing as practice in observation and detail. I'd pull a Bukowski off the shelf and read and then I'd scribble my own odd and over-caffeinated poetic ramblings. Then I'd go to work and serve expensive wine and nice meals to tourists and business travelers in crystal goblets and on bone china plates.

After graduate school when I got all technical and started making money from being all technical, I quit writing for the most part, and only really took it up again after my divorce a few years ago. In recognition of this return to something that really makes me happy, my ex-wife bought me a divorce gift: an onyx and silver Mont Blanc pen. When she gave me this pen she said: "Someday you'll be sitting in a coffee shop or something and this pen will be a conversation starter. A pretty girl will see it in your hand or in your shirt pocket. She'll see that little white peak and she'll know it's a Mont Blanc." Sure, it's a little bit pretentious to assume that a $200 pen would make a significant difference, but it's just a simple fact that I like more sophisticated, more wordly girls. Maybe it's not a key indicator of worldliness and sophistication, but it's an indicator nonetheless.

I've used that pen for three years now, both sailing and ashore. My notebook and my pen are my loneliness crutches -- they're what I did while alone on my boat or now when I'm alone in a cafe or a restaurant and want to keep myself busy and not just stare at my phone or a bar's television. I've filled notebooks, ships logs and travel journals with roughed-out blog entries, sailing adventures, poems, screenplay ideas and even some novel outlines. I've done a lot of writing practice and when offshore I've even pre-written emails I'd transcribe later when I felt like turning on my computer. I've gone through six or seven refills.

This re-immersion in writing and creativity has made me an exceptional online date. I have a great story that includes lots of travel, passion, adventure and the pursuit of a better sort of life. I can write and talk about almost anything; I said in a dating profile once I can talk "from huntin' to Hemingway, Joseph Campbell to nanoscience, which makes me great arm candy at holiday parties. Plus, I own my own tux!" I photograph fairly well (from some angles better than others). I'm kind and generally friendly, and when I'm intrigued I can talk on the phone for hours like a teen-aged girl.

So what's the problem? The problem is I'm actually too good at online dating - at sharing my cool story and listening to cool stories, becoming too interested too soon in someone I've yet to meet, and twice now in the last few years I've flown to different corners of the country to meet girls I've been fascinated by in email, IM, text, phone... only to find at the very first glance (or smell, or touch) that there was absolutely no chance of anything working out longer-term. And in the end, the in-person failure of this deep virtual connection always hurts one or both of us.

I was in San Diego, November of 2007, when I saw S_'s online profile at Match.com. She looked amazing -- cute and sassy with her perfectly-formed sentences and textual wit. She appeared on my screen as a suggested match after I'd written someone else ("Here are some other users you might like..."). But she was all the way back in Seattle. I read her profile and was intrigued but bummed that I hadn't seen her profile before I'd left Seattle. But I emailed her anyway, something to the effect of: "I'm out of your range, both age-wise and distance (I just left Seattle a month ago on my way down the coast), but I just wanted to let you know your profile made me smile. You sound amazing and cool and sweet. Best of luck to you. Take care." And she wrote me back, her tone almost arms-crossed-pouty, harumph (which is the perfect way to get to me) about how it wasn't fair to write her something so nice but to be so far away and on my way farther.

But we didn't let it go. We emailed a few times, and email led to instant messaging, which led to texting (drunk-texting, even), and finally, while IM-ing and wondering what we'd think of each others' voices, I just called her. For the next few weeks we talked nightly, sometimes for hours, or sometimes she'd not talk at all and just listen as I rattled off anything -- I'd make up a story about nothing or I'd recount a sailing adventure as she drifted off to sleep. She loved my voice and wouldn't let me stop. She'd sigh contentedly and I'd lay there on my boat and enjoy the sound of her contentedness.

I was visiting my boys in Florida when S_ and I decided we'd had enough -- we absolutely had to meet. It had been five or six weeks of... yes, really, falling in love without even ever having seen the other person. I wrote her a poem because she'd never had one written for her, which I thought an injustice; every girl, by the age of 29, deserves at least one poem. This was hers:

Fog

One day maybe we'll recall
How it was unpredicted,
How suddenly it settled in,
How thick, how heavily it lay,
Debilitated us for days...

But for now we sail along,
Carefully with radar on.
Stay warm and peek out now and then
To see it lift, or maybe fade,
But hope that it will always stay.

And another, an untitled, never-delivered haiku:

Spring thoughts in Winter.
Breaths rise with expectations.
And us, still unmet.

I re-routed my return trip to San Diego to make a three-night stop in Seattle to meet S_ and also get into the office. Because we had a meeting with investors my company even picked up the hotel room.

When I first saw her at the airport, she was amazing -- everything I'd hoped. She was wearing white jeans and a light blue shirt. She had big gorgeous brown eyes and amazing hair to match. She was just as fit and as glowingly beautiful as she appeared in her photos. I could go on and describe every detail, but the only detail that mattered, ultimately, was this: upon the first kiss and the follow-up first hug, I knew immediately that I didn't like her smell. And it wasn't her fault -- she wasn't dirty or neglectful. It wasn't her perfume, shampoo or soap. It was pheromones, body. It was smell you can't wash off or cover.

There was some research done that I'm too lazy to look up right now, but basically there were ten women and ten men. The men worked out in these t-shirts and when the shirts were good and sweaty, they handed them over and the researchers had the women smell them one-by-one and rate the attractiveness of the man who'd worn it. There were some likes, some loves, some ho-hums and some turn ons, but one result was surprising because of how utterly distasteful this smell was to the woman. It turns out the woman and the man were related.

I'm positive I wasn't related to S_. I didn't recoil and I wasn't even offended, but there was something about that most key of senses that wasn't working for me. I tried my best to work through it because I so wanted her to be as perfect there as she was in every other way, but in the end I had to end it because it felt somehow like nature was trying to tell me something. How do you tell someone "I don't like your smell"? Well... you don't. You spoil the night and the weekend at 11:45 on a drunken New Year's Eve, after she'd taken the train down from her family's visit to LA to see your boat, your home. You tell her that you've decided for certain that you don't want to have any more kids.

---

Since I've been here in Panama City, Florida, I haven't met a single girl I've been interested in dating. This is an exceptionally churchy town in a county that voted 70% for McCain this past presidential election. Those are two fairly significant impediments to finding a girl who won't despise me and my beliefs, let alone be a soul mate. So I set up a profile online and set my location to Washington D.C. (which is where I'll be, starting sometime around mid-June).

Less than a week after I set up that profile, I started talking with E_. Smart and artistic, we hit it off right away, and in less than a week we'd already exchanged enough emails to believe that there was something good there. We talked for hours on the phone, and after just two weeks I cashed in some miles and flew to D.C. to see the city I'll be moving to soon and to meet a girl. It was almost like I'd completely forgotten about S_ and the whole idea that you simply cannot fall for someone until you explore way more than what you can share in text or voice. This first meeting, too, in the metro station outside the airport, was much less than expected, and this time without even a hint of physical attraction.

---

So after all of this, once again I've got mixed feelings about the whole idea of connection-creation via remote communication. It would be great if someday those over-blown expectations would be met, but I've taken a significant step backward and modified my approach (if you can call it an "approach" at all). I hid my D.C. profile and have decided to just stick it out here in Florida, solo and content until the actual move. But if nothing else, my trip to D.C. for that date showed me what a great city and what amazing and beautiful people await me. After the failed date I spent two days walking around the National Mall, seeing the sights and museums like a tourist but feeling like that city -- if it were a bit warmer -- would be just the place for me.

I heard the sounds and smelled the smells of a city, my good shoes clomping past drum-beat buskers on the Chinatown sidewalk and Rodin busts at the Hirshhorn. I felt the echoes and marble-slab vibrations at the Lincoln Memorial.

And yes, of course, while out at dinner one night I even met a real-live girl. Beautiful and brilliant and even more world-aware than myself, she was there with a friend as I sat down a couple seats away at the sushi bar. I pulled out my journal and my pen and began working on something -- maybe it was the beginning of this entry, which started as simple frustration over yet again unfulfilled expectations. At one point her friend went to the restroom and I said something about the fact that they'd been speaking Spanish. Maybe I said something about Mexico. We talked for a couple of minutes and I told her I was in town for a failed blind date but happily looking around anyway as I'd be moving there soon. Her friend returned and they got back to their food and their conversation; I got back to my writing.

A little while later, as she and her friend were trying to sign their checks, rushing to make a late-night movie, the waiter's pen failed them. "May I borrow your Mont Blanc?" she asked, saying Mont Blanc with a perfect French accent.

She signed her check, pulled out a business card and wrote her number on the back. "That's my non-work number, if you have any questions about the neighborhood...."

I smiled, thanked her, and remembered how nice it is to meet a real person as the first step towards connection -- to know right away that the attraction part is there. Most of all, it's nice to know that no matter how meaningful the words may be later, how sweet the voice on the phone if that happens, how pretty the two-dimensional photo, how perfect the giggle, there's a real, physical frame of reference that your nose, your eyes and your body have already pre-approved.


TT

Stupid Perfection

So, just to jump back into it here... my latest blogging hiatus has been due to not wanting to just post crap or unfinished / unpolished thoughts. But I'm frustrated with myself that I try a bit too hard to post "essays" here rather than just what could be "interesting thoughts" which may or may not provoke comment, create traffic, etc....

I'm moving past that (again), and I've decided to post a couple things that have been on my mind lately. In a nutshell, there's the thing about creating a great connection without ever having met someone in-person, and having that real-life meeting totally bomb but having it somehow turn out okay anyway. And then there's the thing about Taylor Swift's videos bumming me out and launching a sad internal analysis about whether or not true love is only for those crazy teenagers -- no longer for those of us who consider ourselves post-procreative.

So anyway, I'm about to start doing more of that off-the-cuff stuff, if you'd like to check back soon. Sorry to those who have found my blog over the last few years and were hoping for more writing (especially if you're hoping for more writing about sailing); there's some interesting stuff coming, but you can also expect it to be way more random, not quite as long, and definitely not as focused. I should save that polishing for actual publication, someday, anyway.

TT

2010: The Year We Make Contact

I'm not much for New Years resolutions, but I've stumbled upon one I need to make. I was walking into Starbucks for my first coffee of 2010, and I just wasn't ready for the pretty girl's smile. I looked away immediately upon eye contact - you know... how you do when you're hung over and not feeling terribly social, and in the process of looking away saw her begin to smile at me. I looked back half a second later and she was still smiling but already turning back down to her book. It was an opportunity lost--not necessarily for a shared coffee, a date or the love of a lifetime--but I missed my chance to share a smile.

So I've resolved to be more ready this year, for both the giving and receiving of smiles and hellos. And, let's not forget: more eye contact and less iPhone.

TT