Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, give a man pho and expect to never hear from him again at a fraction of the cost.
Enter New Character: CashlessEnter New Location: Than Brothers
Here is my small guilty confession for the week: I have been religiously using the free dating site OK Cupid (which, by no coincidence rhymes with 'this is stupid'). Regardless. I hadn't been on a date in a while. As has probably been noted, or is due to be noted by now. I wanted to remedy this situation- so, without seeking out dates (due to the fact that they find me); I agreed to go on several of them. The only problem was, they all turned out to be chicken shit, and for once I found myself on the side of the coin that actually wanted to meet up, blindly, with strangers.
And so, with this said, when a new stranger contacted me on OK Cupid about wanting to meet up for dinner spur of the moment tonight, and me, being just short of starved for attention (and food for that matter), warmly agreed. Surprisingly, this gave me more than enough confidence to actually go through with it. And after an initial unreciprocated phone call and text message, he finally came through and we agreed to meet for pho. Fine by me, I love pho- and it is cheep. Enter character Cashless.
Here is a little bio of this "new character"... the run down, so to speak: 27 year-old male, lives in the Greenlake area, job-free, going back to school for social work. Oh, and I almost forgot the most important part- full beard. Good, hat being said we can move on.
We meet for pho- he wanted to go to Pho 900, which I had never been to and he couldn't find, so we ended up going to Than Brothers, which I prefer anyway. Turns out, as many who are sans a job, that he is carrying no cash on him. Hmmm. Convenient, considering we are in a cash only eatery. He told me that he was living off of some sort of workman's comp or something, but nonetheless. I said that it was OK(cupid), and he could consider it a late birthday gift (seeing as his birth was 27 years previous to yesterday), after all, it was $5 ish pho. Right? Well, plus the extra noodles he got in his, so I guess that would put it on the higher end of a $5 tab. But who cares right? I mean, company is company...
No. No it is not. Not when company, promptly, upon finishing the complimentary cream puff, announces that he "oh shot" has to "run to pay rent" to avoid a "late fee". Now maybe, just maybe I buy this- but if I am to buy this, the least he could do is buy his own goddamn meal.
So I walked him to his bus stop and then found my way back to Bauhaus, which, in reality, is where I wanted to be any way. Oh, and as I was leaving, he gave me one of those really awkward hugs... which reminded me of the one date stand- an awkward, half-side, half hug really.
And speaking of One Date Stand, I found him as well on OK Cupid. The thing about OK cupid is that you can rate each other's looks and personality (or what you can gather by via the accuracy of an online venue). You can choose a 1-5 star rating on each category, and if you are extremely high or extremely low and the person you are rating feels the same way, and then you get a notification. Turns out we both voted each other in the 4-5 star category for looks, but I did not manage to measure up on his "personality" match. Shoot, and all these years I have been banking on my personality to get me through the hellish dating scene, when it turns out I should have been banking on my looks. Too late now...
Oh, and a side note, Friend-of-a-friend finally spilled the beans to Wifey about his girlfriend. Apparently she is in Turkey now and they will be living apart for 7 years. He said he tried out a long distance relationship before but it was a failure. This makes me a little more hopeful (especially when Wifey said he didn't sound too terribly thrilled when speaking of her), but still, I vow that I will never, ever, make a move on someone that I know is in some sort of relationship.
… But upon further reflection, I essentially did (with great success) follow through to find myself making out with a boy who had a girlfriend in my first year of college. If memory serves me right, however, it was not intentional.
