Once again I ventured into the exciting world of online dating, and once again I found myself wondering why in the name of heaven I do this to myself. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." By this definition, I may need to fit myself for a dating strait jacket in the very near future.

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I should have known right off this was doomed to failure, the guy in question had vanished on me mid conversation more than 8 months before, never logging back in or answering email. Was he abducted by aliens, hit by a bus, or just moved onto green pastures? I had no idea. Just as suddenly as he vanished, he reappeared on the dating site I use, and I found myself the recipient of a tentative attempt to re-establish communication. Feeling kindly, I emailed him back and soon found myself being invited out for drinks after work. Now, I will clarify this by stating the following information. He knew I worked until 5 and would be coming straight from work to downtown to meet him with no time to eat. He chose a pub as the meeting location, a pub in the heart of downtown, during the holiday shopping season of madness. He does not drive, but walked to this from his nearby apartment, leaving me to face the madness alone. $5 to park, a walk in the rain and I get to the door and discover, I’ve been lied to again.

Oh yes, I could recognize him from his pictures, though clearly it had been some time since he had updated them. The raven hair and beard of the photo had been replaced by grey, and the laugh lines around his eyes had deepened to a more permanent, timeworn appearance. Still, he was on time and so far nothing screamed “run.” Once inside, he chose a seat directly under a speaker, during a hockey game. This lastest less than a moment before I requested we move to a spot where I could actually hear him instead of the play by play. Clearly, his threw him, and he began to get agitated and nervous. The move must have upset him enough that when the waitress came by to offer us menus, he waved her off, ensuring that I got nothing to eat that evening unless I distressed him further and called her back. For the next 90 minutes I nursed a single diet coke and listened to him talk, and talk, and talk. He talked about his family and how he disliked and disrespected them for their cheapness and other charming flaws. He talked about his new job as a prep cook and how he had worked his way up from dishwasher over the months he had been AWOL. When asked, he explained that his last job had been as a web designer (please note this is what was on his profile) and that when that had ended he had simply turned off his computer and walked away for “a while.” A while in this case being more than 8 months. In my books that’s not so much a break as a breakdown.

As the evening wore on he finally ceased nursing the last dregs of his single beer and I felt it time to depart, only to be met with an offer to go for a walk. I pointed out both the pouring rain and my high heeled shoes, to which he gave me an odd look and asked in a derogatory tone “do you actually LIKE wearing those?” Guys, here’s a tip, when you are out with a new lady, don’t try to get involved in their fashion choices. At this point I made a comment about the time, getting home and all the vague comments one makes while trying to make a quiet exit. Instead I got an offer to walk me across the street to my parking garage. Admirable offer I will admit, if the short journey was not taken up with a description of his $1 umbrella and how thrifty he was to have bought it. Not a good sign having just listened to him discuss his family’s penny pinching ways. Another tip here guys, if you ask a girl out for a drink and make sure she gets nothing to eat and only a diet coke to drink, then have her pay for the drink herself, don’t start bragging about how thrifty you are right afterward. It tends to make the lady believe you’re a cheap bastard.

Once at the doors I attempted again to slip away, only to be caught in an awkward hug and a desperate prolonging of conversation by random topic shifts, and then… oh and then he did the one thing no man should ever do when he’s not sure how a date is going. He asked me for a second date and pressed me for a time and place. If I had been more cutthroat perhaps I would have been able to tell the poor man that I simply could not imagine us meeting up again, but my blood sugar was low, I felt sorry for him and had I yet to sort through my impressions of the evening, and so I tried a vaguely worded non committal comment. He pressed, I altered the subject without giving him an answer, and again tried to flee, only to be caught up in another awkward hug. Egads, this was getting difficult and people coming and going from the shopping centre I was parked beneath were starting to wonder what was up. At long last I managed to break away and flee home, only to find that during the 20 minute drive he had called me several times and emailed me as well. Now we have escalated from awkward from stalkerish, and I listened to the messages with concern, and then deleted them before finally getting something to eat. With my blood sugar rising and my mind clearing, I sent him a gently worded answer to his email declining any future invitations to meet up. As I drifted off to sleep that night I wondered to myself how it was that I have the magical ability to attract men who invariably end up not as relationships, but as fodder for this blog. If I ever get an answer to that question, I’ll let you know.