Me dating?!
So, on Thursday night I had, of all things, a date!?
Replied to someone’s ad on craigslist (in romance, not m4m) and we got together for dinner and drinks.
He’s 28, Thai, originally from Bangkok, and a web designer in the city.
It brought up some flashbacks to my time in Thailand, although with more clarity on what was happening, since this time it was occuring on my home turf.
I think it adds a host of issues when dating someone who comes from a different cultural background. You sort of don’t realize how many subliminal, subconscious signals you get from the people within your culture on a regular basis.
Like, if he were born and raised here, I think I would have a better sense if we were hitting it off, suited to date one another, going to end up as just friends, or whether we should have jumped in bed and that was going to be the end of it all. But, nothing was that clear, which I attribute to the cultural shorthand not being there.
Neither of us is in any rush, and we plan to get together again, but it will be curious to see how it unfolds.
I do think there are a lot of interesting things about Asian cultures in general, and it will be interesting to experience some of it firsthand.
For example, on our date, he was describing a female friend of his, and his face just lit up and he started laughing, obviously thinking about some moments he has had with her. This happened right in the middle of him describing her to me, and once he stopped laughing, he moved on to another topic. Now, as far as what was actually said, I really know nothing about her. He literally went from beginning the description with almost no detail right into the smiling and laughing. But, on some level, he kind of told me everything, you know? It just doesn’t seem like anything anyone raised here would do, no one I know at least.
It is all about building those moments up, learning who he is, and everything else. We might be getting together tomorrow, we’ll see.
Dating is sort of strange, in that, I am interacting with people who have no clue I lost any weight, let alone 115 pounds. So, as a result, I do feel a little… strange when it comes to ordering food at dinner. We both got our own entrees, so it was pretty easy. But, at some point, shared plates and fried appetizers and such could enter the picture. And, until the fat is out of the bag, it’s kind of hard to say you can’t eat that because of your diet. When I told him I go to the gym a lot, he looked at me funny, like it would be strange that I would need to go often, not being overweight and such.
So, that part is kind of amusing. It does make things hard to navigate conversationally at times. Dating history is a bit tricky, since I attribute my lack of dating largely to body image issues, which they don’t know about. It will all work itself out, but it is sort of fun to interact with people who have never known me as other than being this weight.
Safe to post this here, as I use more anonymous e-mails for dating/job applications, since three years of journals is just too much information to give people in one clip.
As for the job hunt, it is going OK now. It is sort of strange when you have to put your last employer and salary down on the sheet, knowing I’ll be lucky to make a quarter of it at any job for which I am applying. Mainly hitting restaurants yet, a few barback openings, and some limited retail.
Like many things, the hunt for a job is the latest thing aiding my procrastination about the novel. It started very casually, like just sending a resume here and there, but now it is a full-on pursuit. I do think it would be good to have something like that boxing me in schedule-wise, forcing the editing on a timeframe.
But, everything will sort itself out in due time.
One other area of intrigue lately has been possibly getting certify as an "English as Second Language" teacher. Costs about $2K, and then I can basically go anywhere in the world and teach English. Lots of openings for this everywhere. I would only want to teach younger kids, as teens everywhere are a bit hellish. But living in Thailand, teaching 6-8 year olds some basic English, working on the novel at night,learning the culture, cooking my own meals, making enough money to pay for itself, it all sounds idyllic to me.
I also think it is better to write about American culture from outside of it. But, we’ll see what happens. A decent job or a decent man can certainly keep me grounded here for a while longer.
