Adjectives

Yesterday I reconnected by e-mail with a dear friend from the IBM Rockville days, 20+ years ago. This guy was my coffee, lunch, and crossword puzzle buddy while we were on the same programming team. We had lost touch when we moved on to other jobs, and through the magic of Google I found him again.

When I was composing another e-mail to him in my head this morning, I thought to say, "I'm seeing a really nice guy." But why would I need to qualify "guy" with "really nice". Would I date someone I thought was a scoundrel? Would I tell a friend, "I'm dating a scoundrel"? And don't I always thinks guys are nice, in fact really nice, if I get past date #2 with them?

Really, I think my friends think I'm a neat person, and I think they all want me to be happy. They all know I don't like being single and that I'm lonely, and they all wish they had some nice straight guy for me (yeah, and I had to insert "straight" 'cause I'm a musician and most of the guys I know are not straight). (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Maybe that's the problem — I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd.

So what does it take for a really nice guy to turn into a scoundrel? And why does it happen at about three months into the relationship? (Note to Mr. Match — you've got two more months to finish sifting through all those fish in the net!) Sometimes I realize it before the three month point, but I keep thinking the scoundrel characteristics I'm seeing will go away and the really nice guy will be back. Such an optimist, such an innocent! (Yeah, and I stayed with EEFFH for four years, way past the point when we all knew for certain that he was a First Class Scoundrel.)

I imagine this is where you want an example of a really nice guy turning into a scoundrel. The lawyer turned real estate investor will do nicely here. He lived about three miles from my office; my house was fifteen miles in the opposite direction. If he wanted to spend the evening with me, I'd pick him up after work and take him home with me. (We didn't spend time at his apartment because it was a D*I*V*E.) The next morning I would drop him back at his place on my way to work. Let's be clear - this added mileage and time to my commute, and made me arrive at the office closer to 9:00 than 7:00. After a couple of weeks of this routine, I said to him, "You know, you could drive yourself out at times." To which he replied, "I don't want to put the miles on my car." Ouch! I sang him a couple of choruses of "You're just not that into me" and shoved him out the door.

By the way, from the time he got shoved out the door until my next date was one year. One Year! 1/54th of my life!

So maybe the reason I want to tell my friends I'm seeing a really nice guy is: a) I can't believe I'm seeing a guy!, and b) isn't it wonderful, not only is he a guy and not only is he straight, but he's nice. Really nice.