J: Dinner with Mr. March

Exactly a month after my speed dating experience, I finally got my 2nd date with Suitor #4. Luckily for me, it just happens to fall within a new month which means that and luckily for him, he now gets the official title of Mr. March!

We met for dinner at a little hole in the wall Italian spot. The hostess sat us at what might be the very most awkward first date table possible. It was one of those “C” shaped tables. He got the short section and I got the middle super long one and was left with the awkward “how-close-do-I-sit” decision. What will it say if I sit too close? What does it say if I sat too far away? What the heck is too close? I made my best guess and settled in.

It turned out that we had a lot to talk about. He’d done the speed dating thing several times and had lots of great stories about his other experiences. We both work for large companies and so there was a great discussion about our separate corporate cultures. And we talked about his recent surgery, which was fascinating to me. We basically never really ran out of stuff to talk about. There was never an awkward silence, never a moment of “oh crap….what can we talk about next”. Nice...very nice and oh so refreshing…especially considering that our dinner ended up lasting for two and a half hours!

A girlfriend of mine asked me about the date the next day: Exactly how old is he? How long has he been divorced? How long has he lived in that fancy neighborhood? What’s his custody arrangement for his kids? Does he dance? Is he looking for a serious relationship? Etc, etc, etc. I couldn’t answer a single one of her questions…we just didn’t go any of those places in our discussions. And in my opinion, that’s perfectly acceptable for a first date.

All in all, I really had a good time. I sensed a bit of a spark and that’s more than I’ve felt for any of my other dates recently. I’m really curious to see if anything else will come of it.

As we were walking to our cars, he said “I had a really great time, we should do this again” and I said “Yes, let’s do!”

And this time, I meant it.