The Boston Flake

The Red Sox beat the Yankees last week.  The Bruins won the Stanley Cup last night.  Sarah Palin recently made all women and Americans proud with her retelling of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.  All these have had my thoughts on Boston.  And what better way to regale my dating ups and downs than to start things off with The Boston Flake.

I met The Boston Flake in the spring of 2009.  The charming, blue-eyed Massachusetts native required me to change my texting plan to unlimited for all the morsels we sent back and forth before our first official date.  Between respective trips to visit our parents, we finally found a night to meet up at one of my favorite midtown dives.  The laid-back, golden haired dreamboat flashed his teeth at me as I approached.  I was done for.

Our conversation was breezy as he pounded back beer after beer after beer, his eyelids lowering with every swig.  He talked of Massachusetts.  He told me his impressive resume.  He stood for what I thought was going to be an approach-and-kiss only to say:

“I gotta go drain it.”
“Excuse me?”
“The bathroom?  I gotta go.”
“Oh.  Um, alright.”

My internal monologue hazy from one too many Absolut/Sprites had me asking if that really just happened.  “Drain it”?  Classy.  I resolved I was done.  He sauntered back, pressed right up on me, lightly kissed me, and smiled.  His beer breath my instant weakness.  He tried to go home with me that night without success.

I was fairly new to the dating arena and certainly much less jaded than I find myself more than two years of singledom later.  So his antics were ones I fell for.  His baby-blues (another weakness for me) could have asked for many things and gotten them.  A few weeks later he invited me to Brooklyn for dinner.  I was very excited.  About an hour before I was to be there he texted, “Will you stop and pick me up some shampoo?”  Strange request from a guy I barely knew, but maybe this was how dating in the city goes between two adults.  The directions he had provided to his place were wrong.  I wound up in Scaryville, Brooklyn, NY, USA.  I called him, uneasy. 

“What are you near?”
“Warehouses?  Can you come get me?”
“Oh!  You’re on the other side of Williamsburg.  You should get out of there.”
“How do I get to you?  I have no idea where I am.”
“Just find a cab or walk toward the bridge.  You’ll figure it out.”

Not wanting to be anything less than a self-sufficient woman of the 2000’s I resisted the urge to get in a cab back to Astoria.  I showed up at his apartment an hour later.  His dimples suddenly caused all irritations to fade.  Dinner was wonderful.  His dog was perfect.  We watched some ridiculous show on A&E or History Channel about weaponry – my favorite topic.  And then he started snoring.  He was OUT.  I tried to wake him relentlessly for an hour.  It went from being a game to a frustration to a concern.  I called The Constant for advice.  “Just leave,” he said.  Gasp!  Really?!  How rude would that be?!  Ok… no ruder than Boston Flake asking me for shampoo, telling me to find my own way there, watching a show about guns, and falling into such a deep sleep his lady-guest was left confused.

I didn’t speak to the hot New Englander for a few days.  When I did hear from him, it was business as usual.  Flirty texts, “let’s make a date” banter, and whines about his unemployment ensued.  Oh, did I fail to mention that??  He was out of work… for the entire time we dated.  His parents paid his rent, and he couldn’t take me out.  However, his refrigerator was always filled with beer – cheap, gross Natty Light, but beer nonetheless. 

Knowing his penchant for the Red Sox and at-the-time lack of funds in the bank, I invited him to the Sox/Yanks game when my Boston Babes came into town.  A double-date as Bleacher Creatures at the new Yankee Stadium could never be a bad thing… until you figure the Sox having their butts handed to them by the Jeter-led Yanks.  We left the game early and found a Red Sox friendly bar serving tater tots covered in gravy.  At the table, Mr. Flake himself passed out.  Literally.  He was speaking one moment and sound asleep the next.  At the table.  Hilarious yet absurd.

Plans always fell through, moods never panned out, and eventually our relationship sifted into next to nothing.  I ran into The Boston Flake at a midtown bar the following spring.  Our instant connection was inevitable and my friends left me sitting there with him when it was time for them to head home.  Laughing until I cried we played catch-up as he told me about his new job and adventures to Massachusetts with his crazy family, and then he stopped short and said:

“It’s too bad we couldn’t work together”
“Ehn… everything happens for a reason”
“You do know why we didn’t work, right?”
“I do.  But I’m curious why you think we didn’t work.  Enlighten me.”

He began to list.  “#1 is that goddamn dog.  She is ugly and high-maintenace, and she makes you seem more high-maintenance than you actually are.”  I laughed.  He had met my dog once and I only initially even brought her up because he was also a dog-owner.  She never traveled with me, unlike his dog who rode in a bike basket everywhere with him.  “Please continue with your list.  I’m dying to know the rest,” I said to him appalled.  He went on, “#2 is the gay mafia.”  “Pardon??”  “Ya know, the gay mafia you travel around with.”

Just to be clear, I’m a single girl in NYC.  I love my gay friends.  They provide unending friendship and support, and I give it freely in return.  However, I don’t travel about with a merry band of homos.  In fact, he had only met a few of them at my birthday party the year before.  I don’t talk about them endlessly, and I’m definitely not one of those girls who have to bear the unfortunate title of “Fag Hag.”  I have my own life and don’t need to live vicariously through my friends who happen to like the same sex.

“Really?  The Gay Mafia?  You really think that’s why we didn’t work??”
“Well, I thought so.  Don’t get defensive.  It’s just intimidating – the whole package.”

And there’s the crux of the biscuit.  Intimidation.  The strong single girl’s paradox.

Since then I’ve spoke to him a handful of times, with each correspondence ending with a promise to buy me a drink, but never (and not expectedly) following through.  However, I still can’t take a Bolt Bus to Beantown or even see Mitt Romney on my television screen without smiling and shaking my head at the experience that was The Boston Flake.