Strongly Worded

A Whale of a Tale: UpDATES #500,225 and #500,226

First off, date #2 with the writer (the one who is not so social and not so into kids) was fine but also final. We went to the Museum of Natural History, and checked out glass flowers and a prehistoric whale. However, we did not fall in love and I don't think we'll be seeing each other again.

Then I went out with a journalist, whose profile made reference to Proust, Schubert, and several other hoity-toity cultural icons. I emailed him hoping that I'd be sufficiently high brow, and we exchanged a few messages before deciding to meet. Meanwhile, I googled him and found only a handful of bylines; he writes for a small paper in a nearby fishing town (we'll call it Roucester).

So I arrived at the cafe and waited for Mr. Roucester. An intense-looking guy careened past me, our eyes locked in that urgent are-you-who-I-think-you-are-because- if-not-we're-staring-weirdly -at-each-other manner. He kept walking; I assumed he was meeting someone else. Then he whirled around and asked me if I needed anything, which I understood meant that he was a random coffee house patron/staff member offering to get me some coffee. But no. That awkward, non-introduction? That was my date.

Once I realized who he was, we settled into the longest hour-long conversation of all time. He talked about growing up in Roucester. He told me about clams. And swordfish. And scallops. And haddock. He told me about going tuna fishing and about how everyone on the boat did drugs, and lobbed dynamite around the deck, and how they didn't catch anything after two long days at sea (shocking).

He told me about how he used to write for a conspiracy theory website, and how he also wrote a "very poorly edited" young adult book about the KGB, which got "lukewarm-to-negative reviews," but which scored him an inquiry from a Haitian newsmagazine with no Internet access. The clincher?

He also once wrote for a youth culture website, and was among the first to test-drive a nifty drug called GHB, and he tried it and shared it among his friends, before realizing that it wasn't so nice and then pitching it into the trash ("my friends were wicked disappointed, but what are you gonna do?"). I checked to make sure the lid on my coffee cup was securely attached, and then suggested we get going.

I did not want to be rude, but could not stop thinking about how much I wanted to go home, and how blog-worthy this experience was, and about how it is possible to a fucking journalist to talk for a solid hour about fucking seafood without asking me a single question.

I thanked him for teaching me about marine life, and he gave me his card and asked if he could call me. I referred him to my email address, and then stumbled to the subway.

Ahoy, mateys.

Posted by Dori at 8:10 PM