Storytime: Greetings from Taos/Speak Up, Please

So I’m at a writers conference for the weekend, aka a place where the male-to-female ratio is approximately 1.2 to 300.

Let’s not even get into who’s actually single. But the whole scene has gotten me thinking that, as much as I deserve blame/intensive psychotheraphy for being compulsively drawn to men who are emotionally unavailable–the feeling is often mutual.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a human hologram: attractive only to people who are prohibitively involved with other women or unhealthy substances.

Which brings me to a public service announcement of sorts: I understand it’s a delicate question, when two people come together in a potentially flirtatious context, at what point someone who is otherwise attached ought to say so. Too soon and you seem presumptious, too late and you seem like a jerk.

But I’d like to take this opportunity to recommend that all of us abandon our collective pride and for the sake of hopeful single people everywhere, tend toward the former. If after thirty minutes of talking and trading book recommendations I still don’t know you’ve got a girlfriend, that’s about twenty-five minutes too many. Because honestly, you’re not that smart or interesting and your writing isn’t that great and I really like to get eight hours of sleep if possible. I’ve got enough friends. We both understand hormones. Out with it.

Storytime: One Romantic Evening

As I battle against my bout of writer’s block–and contemplate how to prevent this blog from becoming a daily exercise in shoddy and dull academic criticism–I’ve been trying to think of amusing stories from my dating past that I might share.

You see, I’ve been single for a long time. Relative to my twenty-six years, I should probably say. Please, do not misinterpret my wealth of dating (mis)adventures as a constant or compulsive habit: the experiences I’ve got have been racking up for quite a while.

Anyway. The one story that keeps springing to mind involves my attending a ball while I lived in DC. This is probably because I wore a little black dress borrowed from my friend A that I believe she and her then-boyfriend dubbed the “sexy dress” because no one has ever felt so sexy as when they have worn this dress. Certainly not me, and it’s a nice moment to recall.

I think that I also keep recalling that night, though, because it may have been one of the most bizarre romantic  experiences I have ever had.

Let me explain.