Ahhh, now I remember

I thought something felt familiar about this time of year and the first Sunday without football brought it all flooding back. It was this time last year when I was all up in my own head. It was my first year in more than 40 where I didn’t have an official valentine and for some reason that fact hit me hard.

I went foot to the floor on dating and upon further review I made some glaring errors in judgement. The first was joining multiple dating apps at the same time. You need to be an air traffic controller to keep all of that straight, and I am not, so planes were dropping from the sky like snowflakes. I did things like forget who I was texting and confuse conversations. Ooof, that just brought back a full body douche chill memory.

I think I might have mentioned before that dating has changed quite a bit since the last time I did it. One of the major shifts is the ability to see someone else naked. With that in mind and during this period I got sent my first nude. Naked people are all over the internets so I’m not saying this was my first glimpse of other human flesh. This was a person who took a picture of herself meant just for me. I will tell you that the self confidence of that act was more erotic than the picture itself.

Okay, now that I’ve scared my kids away I can tell you the rest of the story. I got the picture and then immediately had a crisis of protocol. What the hell was I supposed to do? Not sending one back that was for sure but how in the hell should I respond. As I mentally wrestled with this I also imagined a clock ticking. I have no idea how much courage it takes to put your naked self out in the dating world but I know when I send a funny text I wait anxiously for a reaction…

With that in mind I decided to write my honest feelings. I’m not going to tell you exactly what that was because I feel like that’s an even further breech of her trust but what I will tell you is that I sent my reaction to the wrong woman.

Then the unintended recipient proceeded to light me on fire for asking to see her naked before we had ever been on a date. Ssshhhiiiiiiiittttttt. I tried to apologize but didn’t feel good about it. I couldn’t come clean because the truth somehow sounded worse in my head. I just took my lumps and got blocked. Then, when I copied and pasted it to the right recipient, I got a “thanks” in response. I promptly deleted both of those apps and moved on to the next. sticking to a strict one at a time policy.

This is why I’m still a bit skittish about getting back into that pool. I had a couple more encounters with foreign body parts and all of those interactions were equally awkward. Don’t get me wrong. I do so love the female form but in my day (holy shit I am old) you had to work a lot harder to see someone naked. I think that will only work for me if I have enough of a connection with the other person where I can ask what the hell I should do next.I

t’s a coin flip if I’m going to post this one or not…