The Angry Poet

We first exchanged glances, and then a brief introductory conversation, at the party of a mutual friend. I found him to be charming and attentive in a not-too-cloying fashion. He also had a sense of style that smacked of a European gene – which I later discovered to be accurate. He’d been in the US for many years but was originally from Europe, moving to Canada as a teenager. (He had me at "three passports".)

When our friend called me for permission to share my number with him, I was flattered. Then I thought about it for a moment (He-llll-ooo! There does come a point...you know what I'm sayin'?!), and cautiously agreed.

Our first date was casual and fun – a lecture followed by a long chat over some nice wine. He was funny, intelligent, curious and creative – a poet, in fact.

Danger, danger! Proceed with caution. Artist near.

We spent a second evening sharing a take-out dinner and more fine wine as he gave me a private reading of some of his poems. The early summer breeze puffed the sheer curtains away from the windows as Miles Davis and John Coltrane played in the background. Over the course of the evening, we laughed as we discovered how much we had in common and relaxed into the pleasure of playful flirting. But there was something niggling at me about this fellow that I was unable to shake. With my past experiences clearly in focus in my rear-view mirror, the familiar illusion of clarity born of hope (and an irritating positivity) with which I had always barreled into the future had been replaced by a pea-soup fog. From here on out, it could only be one foot in front of the other.

By the Third Date - a critical juncture in many conventional wisdom-spouting dating experts' views - I saw his emotional shirt buttons pop and the sweet poet morphed into a bilious control freak. This fellow, who was all smiles and jokes and charming poetry and touchy-huggy with me one-to-one became strangely hostile and combative with the flip of a switch.

After a long walk through a little beachside town, we stopped in at lovely little restaurant for dessert and coffee. Simple, right? Up walked a 20-something waiter, addressed us with "Ma’am" and "Sir" and was quite polite and accommodating to us as he handed us the menu. We could have easily been his parents (notice of his rockin’ body and bedroom eyes aside) and I thought his comportment was quite respectful.

Mr. Sunshine started asking questions about the dessert menu as if he’d been sent to interrogate this youngster about some secret enemy spy code embedded in the list of pastries and puddings. The waiter was taken aback (who wouldn’t be?) and started to get edgy. This only provoked Mr. SS and after gently putting a hand on his forearm only to have it jerked out from under my not-so-magic touch, the next thing I knew, I was looking under the table to see if I had dropped something - anything - just to escape the escalating hostilities. Nope, nothing under the table. Damn. It went downhill from there:

"This pastry must be stale. It is absolutely tasteless."

"Why can't these places make decent coffee? This is weak and cold."

The list went on. (And if what is said about wait staff and irritable customers is true, there was probably something nasty in his millefeuille that he just couldn’t see.)

"I find this all a bit awkward," I said. "I thought we were having a fine evening but everything seems to have changed for you when we walked into the restaurant. What happened?"

"What do you mean?" he said, and at that point, any further discussion was pointless. This guy was clueless to his own bad behavior. It did not want the job to correct/teach/scold/cajole/coax etc., etc.

When the night was over, so was any future for this new exploration.

As I unlocked my door, he suggested that we go out again. I said, "I just don't think this is going to work for me."

He balked and began to assert how much we had in common, blah, blah, blah.

"I'm not at all comfortable with the way you treated the waiter tonight," I said, "This just isn't a good fit for me." At which point, he had a minor tantrum. (C'mon...really?! When a woman turns you down, the way to impress her is to behave like a two-year old, right? Pfft!)

There are plenty of challenges in making a relationship work. Tying myself against the mast of this guy's anger was simply not going to happen. Yay me!

Honestly, how insecure does one have to be to take down a 20-something waiter to prove he's got a big dick? (Only a guess, but...I'm just sayin'...)

Next.

photo courtesy CreativeCommons ©skittzitilby