Shot Down at the OKC Corral pt 2 – Mustang Sally

Artistic representation of the state of my love life. What? No, I don’t fuck tumbleweeds. It’s a metaphor for desolation and desertion. Sheesh.

Being single when one doesn’t particularly wish to be is a confusing and frustrating time in anybody’s life but I can say this particular period has been the most confusing and frustrating time in my life to be dating. Or trying to date. Or whatever.

Besides Betty, there were other fits and failures to launch during the early days of my current singlehood. Ladies I had contacted via OK Cupid only to have promising communication suddenly discontinue without any sort of explanation featured prominently. And there was Celeste, who I used to work with and who said she had developed an attraction to me while I was still married. Actually married, I mean, rather than where I am now, which is legally married but in that strange limbo known as “separated.”

Celeste and I bantered back and forth a little bit after the separation began. She launched into the “potential dealbreaker” series of disclosures some people like to have at the beginning of a budding relationship. She gave me her phone number, sent an email with a few additional statements about her baggage and possible landmines and then vanished. I tried calling, emailing, texting, and PM’ing via social media sites to no avail and with no response for weeks. Then she popped up again, informed me that she had a stalker ex who had tracked her down, forcing her to kill her phone and hide out from the online world for a while and then promptly disappeared again. Since then, once every three or four weeks, I’ll get some kind of four or five word message from her and then back to radio silence. At first it was ego bruising, then alarming, and now it’s just kind of intriguing in a vague sort of “what if sasquatches really do exist?” level of interest.

The answer is “yes” AND they get more action than I do.

Into this world of unrealized potential stepped Sally. A fine woman from the land of OK Cupid who had a profile that intrigued me for her devotion to art, her grand and happy smile in her various profile pictures, and a declaration that she was absolutely fantastic at thrift and vintage store shopping. This last seemed good to me both because I rather like those random shopping scenes in Good Will Hunting and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and because my weight loss meant that I’d been wearing clothes that make me look like David Spade after raiding Chris Farley’s closet. Going out with a lady who might be willing to dress me and know how to do it on the cheap could be great.

We exchanged a few “getting to know you” messages online and, after she shot down a few of my date suggestions due to conflicts, she mentioned that she would be in Delaware for an art festival type thing where she would be selling stuff from a booth. I offered to come by and help however I could with set up and moving heavy stuff and such and she agreed.

ERMAGERD ERT

I left from work in the morning and, soon enough, arrived at the family farm/nursery (plant kind, not baby kind) just outside of Delaware proper where this art festival was taking place. A light rain was trying to decide whether to upgrade to heavy or just give up altogether when I arrived and was assaulted with a rush of random memories. I had been to this sort of thing before and completely forgotten about it. I mean, Delaware also has some festival type things like it downtown each year but there’s a different vibe when it’s a street fair versus one of the ones out in the boonies or semi-boonies.

I flashed back to several of this type of thing my parents had brought me to, usually on the way to or from a camping trip or while visiting my grandparents (who had retired to Prescott, AZ a few years after my folks and I moved to Phoenix). These art festival things that take place away from downtown tend to have a more rustic vibe to them in keeping with the venue. Where the art festivals downtown might have blown glass pieces or polished wooden carvings you could fit in a pocket or purse, more rural art fairs tend more towards fifty pound scrap metal sculptures and driftwood carvings. It’s that sort of subtle difference that triggered memories of being dragged to this kind of thing when I was a kid in a way that the more crowded ones in town never had.

I know, I know. Sorry.

Sally’s black. That’s only important for the next bit of the story here and that’s the only reason I bring it up. I had parked my car at the entrance to the nursery and walked in on foot and saw a black woman off in the distance. She didn’t look much like Sally’s profile pictures, which tended towards actually pretty slender looking. The woman I saw wasn’t slender at all and couldn’t be mistaken for it (maybe buxom or actually curvy but well short of what you’ll get in an image search for BBW) but, facially, she seemed to resemble the girl in the profile pictures. I suddenly got anxious and ducked into a porta potty nearby both to use it for its intended purpose and to regroup and think about what to do.

I did not want to fall prey to the classic “people of another race all look alike” trap. I made a decision as I was finishing up my business and I stepped out to put it into action.

I kept my distance from the black woman I’d spotted and I wandered among the various booths that were just getting set up at that time. Ah, very interesting carved driftwood there, lovely rusted scrap metal sculpture there, nuns selling something or other over there and not a single other black person in sight. So I decided to close the distance to the woman I’d spotted, walk by closely enough that she couldn’t miss seeing me while I would be looking off to the side casually so I could pretend I didn’t see her already, and, if she didn’t say anything, I’d walk straight on to my car and drive home.

Yes. It was her.

So, OK. Lesson learned. Most people who include photos on dating sites are playing a little fast and loose with reality. Older pictures, different angles, professional grade photoshop, whatever. Just something to file away and not be surprised with future encounters.

This is not to say that she was terrible looking at all. She was actually a quite lovely woman who retained the great smile she had in her pictures. But she didn’t look much like those pictures and it was enough of a difference that I really would have walked right by her and gone home if she hadn’t called to me.

We hugged hello and then I helped her and her boss put out a variety of fairly crudely done ceramic knickknacks and lawn ornaments. Sally and her boss worked for an art studio that provided space and materials and instruction to special needs kids and young adults and sold the resulting pieces at art festivals like the one we were at. I asked a few questions about their work and we chatted a bit until Sally suggested we go get some coffee.

Coffee and a variety of sizes of muffins, from bite sized to modest cupcake sized, were being offered inside a large open structure whose design was somewhere between barn and shed. Since this was well into summer, the shed was being cooled by a variety of electric fans and a similar variety of coffee makers was burbling away. At least until Sally got within about three feet of them. When she approached the coffee makers, the haphazard series of electrical connections that had been kludged together to power all of these things failed. A man who looked exactly like what you have in your head when I say “aging hippy handyman” started trying to get things going again while Sally and I laughed and chatted quietly with each other about the silliness of the whole situation, the fact that we both thought a nun we’d seen scurrying around was adorable and, oddly enough, the Amish.

I can explain how the topic of the Amish came up. On my way to the art festival, I’d seen an Amish looking guy – complete with fringe beard, straw hat, and suspenders – working in a field. He was especially notable to me because his work involved a gas powered leaf blower. So I’d brought this up as a little anecdote. Turns out this little anecdote triggered some kind of cascade in dear Sally’s mind and she spent the rest of our time together bringing the conversation back around to the Amish in one way or another, usually in reference to some kind of reality shows she had seen that featured them prominently. After the electricity situation was resolved, we returned to the booth and chatted for a while longer, a little bit about family, a little bit about her work and mine, and a lot about the Amish.

Seriously. It was like a Seinfeld episode.

Let it go, lady!

Sally was sweet. Sally was kind. Sally was easy to talk with. Sally wasn’t too hard on the eyes and seemed to have a good energy about her. She’s a great gal. And I had absolutely no attraction to her. Which, itself, was great when I realized it.

You see, I’d spent a morning with this woman and, despite the title of this post, I wasn’t shot down or shut down or rejected in any way. I simply wasn’t feeling it. We hugged goodbye and I drove home and, before I went to bed, I sent her a polite message telling her so and offering to meet up as a friend if she wanted to get together sometime when she wasn’t distracted by work related responsibilities. She later cheerfully declined that offer and we went our separate ways. And I felt great about the whole situation.

Because I realized I wasn’t suffering from something I’d feared I may have been given my reaction to Betty. I wasn’t desperate.

And it felt damned good to realize that.