Appropriations

Recently the Queen and I enjoyed a night on the town with my good friend T and his fairly-new girlfriend A. I've met A before and I think she's really cool. But what I hadn't notcied before were some subtle changes in T's wardrobe that were very clearly her influence- and frankly, the fact that we met them at a tiny bar to watch an unknown band is also very NOT T.

It got me thinking about when people get into relationships and they appropriate things from the other person- habits, lifestyles, wardrobe, preferences in music and TV and movies. I had a friend who, when she started dating her last boyfriend, suddenly loved punk bands and became a vegetarian. Neither of these were harmful to her, but I thought it was odd for her to make a change like giving up meat just because her boyfriend did.

I thought about myself and what I may have appropriated from people I've dated. Some things were only for the duration of the relationship, while others were things that I truly grew to like on my own (hello, Top Chef!).

What do you think, readers? What things have you picked up, or have people picked up from you? Have you ever made a drastic change because it made you match a partner's preferences? Have you ever been concerned when you've seen a friend do the same?

On the Importance of Knowing One's Audience

Over the past couple of weeks I'd been chatting with a guy I met on the lovely internets. It all seemed pretty cool at first- we had some nice conversations and we had a lot in common. I was happy to accept when he asked me out.

We were discussing where and when to meet up, and he asked if I'd prefer to go home after work before meeting him or not. I said I would so I could drop my stuff off and what have you, and he says, "Yeah, plus you have to look pretty for me."

*blink, blink* Excuse me?

I laughed, because I couldn't think what else to say. And I thought, hey, I'll let that slide, because he was just trying to be funny. And I tried not to think about the guy from last year who told me that 15 minutes late was 5 minutes early for me since I was a girl, and how I laughed that off and he turned out to be a jerk. Because sometimes it's just a joke, right?

Well, right. But after that came another sexist joke, followed by a racist joke, followed by me saying hey, it's been real, but you have made me feel rather uncomfortable a few times now, so I think maybe we shouldn't hang out again. And that was that.

I've run into this sort of thing a few times- where I'll meet a guy and in the first few conversations/dates he'll let fly a comment (or several comments) that are anywhere from "Gee, I could take that a number of different ways and some of those ways are offensive" to "Holy crap, WHO SAYS THAT?" While sometimes it's that the guy truly is just kind of a jerk, sometimes I think it's a case of them not realizing that when you don't know your audience, there are just some things you don't say.

It goes without saying that anything racist, bigoted, sexist, or generally just fricking mean is pretty much never OK (for example, the infamous Crazy Starbucks Guy, who told me about how all women of a certain age are "Hos" on our first date). But some things can be funny once you're more familiar with a person and you know their sense of humor. I think in dating, and in any new relationship, it's important not to assume familiarity and comfort. Not that you need to be some fake version of yourself or flat-out lie to be agreeable- but it's a good idea to think before you speak.

Anthropology

My friend M has been making some extra money on the side hosting events for an event planning company for a while, and when she had to back out of a recent Speed Dating event, she asked me if I could step in. I agreed, since I'd never been to one before myself- I was curious to see what it was like.

The day before the event, I got e-mails from the event planner with instructions and materials. I showed up at the venue feeling a bit nervous, but pretty well-prepared. That was, until...

"Hi. I'm here to host the speed dating event tonight."
"Um...I don't know anything about that."
*blink, blink* "It's supposed to be here at 7PM...?"

Once he called the manager and confirmed that there was, in fact, an event there tonight, I felt a bit better. That was, until he showed me the "VIP room" where the event would take place, and it was a shoebox. A shoebox where I was supposed to set up fifteen tables with chairs on either side of them, leaving enough room for people to move around. Riiiight.

So I did what any person who doesn't want to piss off the people who paid $25 for this would do- I improvised. And luckily not everyone showed, so the grand total was eight women and seven men and we all juuuuust fit.

I was to let them rotate for five-minute "dates" and then have them move on, turning in a card at the end where they checked "yes" or "no" to say whether they'd like to contact each potential match later. Pretty simple, really. And it was- but I did get to observe some interesting things.

1. I'd rate the men who participated, on average, to be less conventionally attractive and more shy/quiet than the women, with a couple notable exceptions.

2. While there was a posted age range for the event, one woman was much closer to the high end than the others, and she did get fewer matches than the younger woman. One man even noted her age on his card.

3.The most conventionally attractive man in the group got two mutual matches. The man who seemed the friendliest got five.

4. One of the men, who acted like he was too cool for school from the first minute he was there, got no mutual matches, and the women who talked to me at the end thought he was creepy and seemed like a jerk.

All in all it went well, people seemed to enjoy themselves, and no one looked like they had a hard time talking to each other. It's probably something I'll try myself someday...but with another company, at another bar. I like my space.