worst date ever

For some reason, I feel inspired this afternoon to tell the story of the worst date I’ve ever been on, nearly 12 years ago.

(Maybe because I had a particularly nice date a few days ago — which I’ve promised not to blog about. And I hope seriously not to have any future disastrous encounters that might top this one from 1996. Oh, and names have been changed — not so much to protect the innocent, but to keep me out of trouble.)

In April 1996, I met a young man named Henry. We were both 26, and he’d answered an ad my housemate and I had put in the newspaper, looking for someone to rent our third bedroom. A couple of hours after he came to see the place, he called and invited me out for coffee. He seemed pleasant enough, so I accepted a dinner invitation several days later.

It was a beautiful spring evening in Richmond, Virginia, and I arrived at his house — more accurately, the house he was sharing with a married couple and their child — expecting a meandering stroll in the direction of one of the many restaurants in the Carytown district. Instead, Henry greeted me at the door and said he thought it would be more fun if we stayed in and cooked dinner together.

I soon discovered that the reason for the change in plan was because he’d forgotten that he’d promised his housemates that he’d babysit for them that evening, and he didn’t want to reschedule our date. I also discovered that there wasn’t actually any food in the house.

The housemates had a huge row on their way out the door to the romantic dinner that was supposed to magically heal their relationship. It was pretty unpleasant to sit in the living room, a stranger to everyone around me, while the argument raged. They finally got themselves out the door, but then it was time to entertain the toddler, who would soon need to be packed off to bed. So I played with the kid while Henry tried to figure out what to do about our dinner — Order in? Leave me to watch the child while he ran to the grocery store?

Henry was obviously embarrassed and frazzled, and I tried to reassure him — even though I probably should have been at least frustrated, if not furious. I made some comment that Tax Day was nearly over — it was April 15 — and suggested that at least he could relax about already having taken care of filing his taxes.

He froze, and turned to me with a look of horror on his face. I’m hoping that child has forgotten the string of expletives that Henry spat out as he nearly tore his hair out of his head. That’s right; he’d not yet done his taxes.

I should have gotten up and left, allowing Henry the time and space to get himself together, tend to his babysitting duties, and get his federal paperwork in order. But I didn’t. Because I’m an idiot and always want to help. So I offered to help him do his taxes.

I sat down at the dining room table with his 1040 and a handful of receipts and bank statements. Keep in mind that we’d still not eaten anything — I was starving — and there was a toddler running about. Henry paced back and forth behind me, still muttering various curses. I looked up and asked him if he had any 1099s for contract work or investment dividends.

Henry stopped pacing and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “My wife has all those.”

Umm, your who?

Yes, this is how I discovered that the woman Henry had referred to as “the ex,” was a wife, not a girlfriend… and that they had only recently separated. Wonderful. I held my tongue. Getting upset wasn’t going to help in that moment, so I next asked where his W2 might be, which is when all the color drained from his face.

His W2 was on his desk, at work, behind several locked doors, to which he didn’t have a key.

Henry launched into full panic mode at that point. He got on the phone to his boss — it was about 9:30 p.m. at this point — begging him to meet him at the office to let him inside. Henry stormed out the door, leaving me with this toddler, who immediately began crying and screaming, because he was up way past his bedtime, and everyone who lived with him had left him. I scooped the little one up into my arms and sang to him. He quieted down, and I carried him upstairs to his crib. I laid him down and stood watch over him, stroking his hair and singing him back to sleep whenever he stirred awake.

That was the most pleasant part of the evening.

About an hour later, Henry returned, armed with his W2 and the 1099s — he’d apparently stopped off to see the wife on the way back. I’m sure he was still expecting me to do his taxes for him, since he had no clue what he was doing and I’d been doing my own taxes for years. I just moved him toward the table, sat him down in front of his own paperwork, and then slipped out the front door. I stopped off for Chinese take-out on my way home.

morris men and dancing dreams

Sometimes, I just love my job.

Last night, I got to hang out with the Bridgetown Morris Men for an article I’m working on for the spring. I’ve seen several of their performances in town, and these guys are something approaching cultural icons to me and my friends. Still, I had no idea how fun it would be to visit with them.

I only caught the last forty-five minutes or so of their weekly rehearsal, and I felt like I’d gotten a good workout just watching them. Morris dancing is definitely aerobic activity, and not for sissies. I’m still wondering how Morris dancers can look so manly while skipping about, wearing bells, and waving hankies in the air, but these guys have it covered.

If you’d like to see what these men do, check out some of their online performance videos. (My favorite is the first one: White Ladies Aston.) I spent most of the evening talking with Hugo (wearing sunglasses in the video), Phil (in the flowered hat), and Ed (new to the group, and not in the videos). They were all warm and welcoming, even when I was trying to wear my “reserved reporter” demeanor — a difficult task for me, especially when I tagged along to the pub where the group treated themselves and the gathered patrons to some hearty beer songs.

I had a blast with these guys! I was reluctant to leave, but when 10:30 p.m. rolled around, I knew I had better head home (clear on the other side of town). As I parted, I was invited to come back any time, and to bring friends.

So, last night I dreamt about Morris dancing. Then I dreamt about rock climbing. Then more Morris dancing.

This morning, I awoke exhausted. But still smiling.

winter survival weekend

I spent this past weekend up on Mt. Adams doing a winter survival skills course. Anyone who had read my previous entry — the wussy report — will know what a big deal it was for me to do this.

I’m not going to write too much about the weekend just now, because I’m still pretty worn out, but I wanted to post a few photos, along with explanations.



Knowing that I’m prone to hypothermia, Jane — our instructor — insisted that I try wearing her supergaiters when we went out snowshoeing. I’d never been snowshoeing before, so it was a grand adventure all the way around. Surprisingly, I did not fall flat on my face, as I'd expected. Wearing 4-5 layers – depending upon which part of my body you’re talking about – I was one toasty little snowshoe bunny.

Ellie — the ten-year-old husky-yellow lab dog — kept me company while I waited for the other ladies to emerge, so we could strap on our snowshoes and get moving out into the woods, where we practiced various survival skills, including building snow shelters.

My team included Lauren (in the black jacket), Cidney (in blue, kneeling), Deb (in red, also Cidney’s Mom), Carolyn (holding the shovel, also my roommate for the weekend), Besty (in the multi-colored cap), and myself (in purple). Unfortunately, our photographer caught both me and Deb with our eyes closed, and you can’t see how deep we dug our trench, nor the pine bough bed we’d laid down inside. You’ll just have to take my word for it that an awfully snuggly snow shelter lay hidden beneath the protective green tarp.




There’s been quite a bit of snowfall up on Mt. Adams this winter. Most people I’ve spoken with since my return haven’t believed me when I said the snow was up past our windowsill inside the bedroom. Well, here it is:



That’s it for the photos for now, though I took quite a few more. All in all, I had a blast and learned a lot. And I’ve already gotten an invitation from another weekend participant to buddy up for more snowshoeing. Woo!

fuzzy lines

So, this afternoon — while I’m feeling particularly unmotivated and a bit scattered — I’m once again pondering the boundaries between personal and professional lives.

Part of this is brought on by Janet Malcolm’s “The Journalist and the Murderer,” about the blurred relationships between journalists and their subjects. My friend and fellow writer Jane Hodges recommended this book to me last summer when I was struggling with a few sources, and I’ve only now cracked it open.

But this has also been prompted by an article I wrote this week about dating in Portland.

This piece had me running around town like a more chaste Carrie Bradshaw (heroine of “Sex and the City”), talking to people about a very specific approach to attracting mates, and then experimenting with putting this into practice.

I don’t know that this reported essay was really all that revealing, but it did make me wonder about what current/future dates might make of this — and of similar pieces moving forward. There are enough writers who make their livings publicly exploring the intimate details of their personal lives, but how do their families, friends, and partners feel about this?

There are some people who are so intensely private — and devoted guardians of such — that they’ll clam up at the dinner table when they find they’re sitting next to a writer. There are others whose reaction is precisely the opposite: They are certain that they are so fascinating that they’ll regale the writer with endless facts and figures about themselves, and then take it personally when the writer doesn’t want to drop everything to write their life stories.

Then there are the people already in the writer’s life, who were generally there at the beginning when the first words and articles began to make it into print, and who have over time gotten used to having family outings and coffee conversations show up in a later essay in some newspaper or magazine. I imagine that there are lines drawn by the writer and his/her friends and family, so everyone’s on the same page in terms of what’s off-limits and what is fair-game for material.

I’ve not had to draw those lines in my own personal life. Not until now.

In an article that will run next week, I made brief mention — without using names — of a guy I’d met recently, to illustrate a point made in the text. If I continue writing articles in this same vein, this is going to happen with increasing frequency, and in much greater detail.

Other writers at least partially protect the names of spouses by using initials like DH (“dear husband”) and DW (“darling wife”). At some point, I suppose I could start calling a future partner The Boyfriend, or some such, but what to do in the meantime, while I’m out there dating and writing about my experience?

For instance, I’m really struggling with the “rules of dating,” to which I’m apparently oblivious. And/or such things don’t exist here in Portland. Take your pick. I’ve also been talking with friends about the seeming inability of Northwest men to “man up” and get their acts together, and I’ve had some recent experience of my own in this area. Perfect blog topic! But then I talk myself out of it.

Several months ago, a friend dragged me out to a book-signing where an author of erotica (thinly veiled as fantasy/science fiction) read from her new title. This author brought along her husband, and announced to the large, enthusiastic crowd that he had been the model for her main character’s most regular stud. The author and her husband seemed pleased by the thrill of the audience, but I can’t imagine drawing so plainly from my own intimate life in such a blatant manner. I wouldn’t do that to myself, nor to my partner.

(Not that I’m writing erotica, and not that I have a partner right now, anyway.)

Farther down the line, I guess any guy who wants to be in my life is going to have to get comfortable with the fact that elements of my personal life will appear in print, and this will sometimes include him. I dislike sounding so crass, but anyone who cannot reconcile himself to that is probably not a good fit. But in the meantime, I’m still trying to figure out exactly where to draw these often fuzzy lines.