White Knuckles and Sunny Mondays

I am not a good driver. This in no way means I am a bad driver, a far too encompassing and emotionally-laden term to be entirely apposite. In fact, I am a good driver at times, such as when I am going twenty-five miles an hour in a residential area with which I am well familiar. Particularly if there are stop signs, stop lights, or roundabouts at every intersection, no pedestrians or pets, no noticeable inclines, and provided that the sun is at an angle favorable to seeing forward.

But I am not bad. Per se. I am effusively, comprehensively polite, for example: I never go first at four-way stops, even when it is my right. (Largely because I can never figure out what is supposed to be right or left when it's all a circle, but that's beside the point.) I stop for pedestrians and children always. I likewise brake for dogs, cats, wayward ducks and geese, regardless of coloring, origin, or gender. I don't speed -- and not solely because my car lacks a usable fifth gear. I am circumspect; I check the side and rear mirrors constantly and, even though I can't actually see over the passenger side headrest, I do the right thing and at least attempt to check my blindspot prior to changing lanes. Which admittedly is seldom necessary, as I am sufficiently courteous as to remain in the slow-traffic lane whenever possible.

But all that circumspection, caution, and courtesy which would likely, in another driver, amount to boundless competence on the road, pale when matched against my utter and sheer lack of confidence. Sadly, while it may work for other things such as messy homes, body odor, and excess body weight, in this case 'knowing it is the first step to overcoming it' is a ponderously mistaken assertion. In this case, it is precisely KNOWING IT the makes the hands shake, the vision blur, the chain smoking fail to work, and the very balls of the feet and tip of the nose sweat. It is the foreknowledge that this can't possibly end well each and every time I have to get up to freeway speed or navigate a labyrinthine and wily Downtown Business Sector filled with greedy shoppers and angry, harried drivers. Being overwhelmed is not my problem: the problem is my awareness of being overwhelmed, which is insurmountable and irremediable. I have many pleasant, and even marginally utile, attributes. Urban navigation is not one of them.

There are so many places downtown that are appealing that i have just never gone to, since no one else suggested them when we were out and I can't drive myself downtown. I had a friend staying in one or other big hotel in the center last year, and I drove around in so many circles, and got stuck pointing upwards at what seemed to be 90 degree angles so many times, and stuck at lights even on the flat streets, and missing street signs, that I ended up parking about a half mile away, because I could never see the PARKING HERE signs until I was already passed them, or too close to pull in without getting rear-ended or shot....

By the time I got there, I looked as bad as I did last night at the end, except that the bald spots might even have been bigger, the pupils even more dilated and the skin yet more ashen and the voice still less audible or intelligible and the grammar far, far more tenuous, due to the fact that it was (cue funeral march) Sometime in the Afternoon that all this tragedy occurred, so there was about 8562 per cent more traffic than early in the night/late in the evening on a Monday.

Those whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes angry.

Which naturally brings me to the vast and at times soul-eating downside of Internet dating. True, I don't need to spend four hours with you, or even two seconds with your profile, if what you said in your introductory letter was so insipid as to put me off even oatmeal and soda water for a week. And I stand by the handy listing of facts in many ways: I think seeing 'does not want children ever' in literal black and white makes it seem a bit realer, even (or so I baselessly hope) to the sort of people who seem always to aspire to change their loved ones in significant ways. If one has the sort of goal which ostensibly can only be met by dating, those things about this type of dating are good.

But there is so much more that is unsettling, disturbing, maddening, and wrong. Take stalking, for example. I have been stalked in real life, and I admit that some chucklehead writing me desperate notes wondering if I'm okay because I wrote to him twice before and now haven't returned his letters in over two days! absolutely pales. I am in no danger, for one, which is a big difference, if there ever were one. It is irritation rather than terror, and even I am not cynical or misanthropic -- or passionate -- enough to prefer the latter. But it is extreme irritation, and I am not paying in hopes of receiving even a low-grade variety.

I think at some level perhaps many people unknowingly feel that each email in some way constitutes the equivalent of a discrete conversation in real life. So, if I have written you two, and you have written me nineteen, then we are, or could reasonably be supposed to be, as close as we would be had we met twenty-one times in the physical plane.

Which is patently not so. But email engenders an interpersonal comfort and fluidity that talking to a stranger while waiting for a cab does not. It as well inspires people to reveal things or be more candid (again, even without an in-person meeting) than they would while hitting on chicks in the wine bar. You think we have something we do not. That's scary. Really. Because someone who actually lives on my block and fancies himself to be engaged in a relationship with me of which I am unaware would be considered crazy. Were he to act on it, he would quickly be considered locked up.

Not so online. Not only due to the well-documented and seemingly inherent characteristics of email as a medium, but for other reasons, as well. One is the simple fact, generally ignored, that I and my interlocutor do not, in fact, know each other. You read my words, sure (and that this itself is a charitable assumption I can attest from personal experience), but you give them your own meaning. I am a newfresh electronic tabula rasa, the more rasa the prettier I appear. By even responding with thanks for a compliment I run the risk of 'proving' to you I want to meet you. By my not responding, you become by turns pleading, petulant, accusatory, and apologetic.

And I still don't know you.

But, you want to plead, we've shared so much! In many cases not realizing that it was really you doing the sharing and me the one refusing even to open any more missives from that address. Of course you can't see that, since you're not at my house, as you've never been to my house, since we have never met...

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Another aspect that is a definite downside for me and yet I suspect not so much so for others is having a bunch of random people think they like me. In my case, the only people I want to 'like' me are people whom I know and respect and whom I like in return. However, my profile accurately states that I am not overweight and have no children. This, I think, makes me very, very likable.

However, it also accurately says a bunch of other things which one would quite reasonably imagine would scare off nine-tenths of the male dating population -- but no matter, as I also have a picture up, and I'm not ugly, and a picture of an unugly girl trumps all concerns about religion, politics, personal finance, decor schemes, reading choices, musical tastes, medical problems and food allergies. Translated into action, this means you don't have to read my profile then: you just have to know I'm pretty. "'Yes, you've entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime is filled with you'" at that point. Not to mention the lack of 'baggage' represented by the lack of both children and excess weight. You can't bear not to write.

Of course Rilke also said that Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, but don't let that concern you. It's not Beauty you are after, anyway; it's 'pretty.' It's 'reasonable,' and 'good enough,' and 'companionship' -- not to mention the candlelight, walks on the beach, and 'good times.' And because I am a pretty blank slate, I am the pretty blank slate of your deepest, most deeply prosaic, dreams.