Date #39: The Lawyer

Lawyer winked at me and I winked back at him.  He emailed a few days later and we started a back-and-forth correspondence which continued for 2 or 3 weeks. Eventually I answered one of his questions with "I'd be happy to tell you more about this in person", and so he took the hint and asked me out. We met at a nice place at the beach for a glass of wine.  I wore the magic dress, and he wore a nice soft leather jacket and expensive shoes. I felt good as we talked, and I could tell he was appreciating me as much as I was appreciating his nice smile and sexy Italian looks.  After a glass of wine, he asked me to stay and join him for dinner, which I did, and it was lovely. We had both lived in Hawaii as kids and we shared a lot of history and culture. He was very charming and his kisses were very sexy when the date was over later that evening. He asked me out right there on the spot for a second date; to go sailing with him and some friends a week later.

Lawyer is a very good communicator. I liked the fact that within one week he called twice and emailed me at least 5 times. We discussed our upcoming outing at length. He wanted to drive 30 miles in rush hour traffic to pick me up at my house, then turn around and drive us back down to his yacht club to meet the boat.  I couldn't decide if he felt the need to check out the value of my house before we got involved, or if he was hoping I'd invite him in after the night was over. I offered on 2 different occasions to drive down to meet him myself, since it made so much more sense than him driving 60 miles before our date would even start. He insisted upon driving, though, so I adjusted my time accordingly, and in the end was grateful for the extra hour in which to prepare for the event.

 Then, shortly before he was supposed to be arriving to pick me up, he called to say that that he was still in court. His trial had been delayed, and he asked if I'd be able to drive down to meet him after all. I agreed, despite my new rule about canceling if a man changes the date details, because this was a new excuse to me and it did seem plausible. Even though I really liked him, I was quite grumpy about this change of plans, because it was a Friday. I was tired from working all week, the traffic was heavy, and I had to stop and fill my car with gas on the way there. I was totally unprepared for this unexpected twist and I felt that it foreshadowed bad things to come.

I arrived at the yacht club exactly at the same time he did, in his new Jaguar, and the parking attendant seemed to look down his nose at my not-so-new Japanese car with its Obama and peace sign bumper stickers plastered on the back. Lawyer gave me a quick hug (what, no kiss?) in the parking lot and then we proceeded to the 40-foot yacht where several friends of his were meeting for cocktails and a cruise around the bay at sunset. They were polite enough, but I felt like I was on display; being carefully scrutinized from head to toe, especially by the women in the group. The demographics: The men were all older by 5-10 years than their wives/girlfriends, and all had money and big boats. The majority of the women, if they were working at all, were not earning salaries at careers which would allow them to support themselves in their current lifestyles. This irritated me and made me feel out of place. The seating arrangements were old-school; the men all sat together and talked shop, while the women gathered at the other end of the cabin and spoke amongst themselves. There were 4 couples besides Lawyer and me. I was tired and weary from fighting traffic and was not in the mood for trying to be polite and feign interest in their idle chatter about people and things I had no knowledge of.  After all, I didn't agree to go on this date to get to know Lawyer's friends' wives. Time was moving very slowly and I was getting crankier as the evening wore on. It was hard work trying to think of vacuous conversation starters, and trying to respond politely and charmingly to their comments and questions was almost beyond me. If they hadn't been serving extremely tasty cocktails I would have bailed. After a few hours of this tiresome scenario, where every now and then new couples (everyone was a couple; now I realize why I had been invited) would drift in and out, someone decided that it was too late to go out for a trip around the bay. Someone else decided that we would all walk over to a nearby restaurant where live music was playing.

 Thank god for the change of venue, because it was the only truly enjoyable part of the night. I actually got to sit next to my date, relax, feel comfortable, and enjoy some conversation and dinner with him while a band played blues in the background. I asked him if he ran all of his dates through the gauntlet of his friends' cocktail hour. He laughed and said no; I was the first. A while later I asked his friend, a retired fire department captain, to repeat a story that they both had been chuckling about. It concerned an emergency call that the fire department had received one day about an unconscious man in the restroom of a bar. When he and his men responded, they noticed upon entering the establishment that all of the patrons were shirtless young men. After they realized that it was a gay bar, none of the firemen were willing to go into the bathroom, so they just turned around and left. Everyone at the table (except me) was laughing at this story as I was wondering if it is even legal for a fireman to refuse to help a person in need, not to mention how heartless and wrong it was. Strike one against the Homophobic Lawyer.

I tried to steer the conversation back to something positive. Lawyer had attended the same elite prep school as our president had in Honolulu (although not simultaneously). We realized that we had both been born in the territory of Hawaii before it was granted statehood, a statistic which we're both proud to share with the president. Then we chatted about politics. It turns out that though he voted for Obama in the election, he now regrets doing so. He is actually a Republican. And he voted for Bush in the previous election!  Strike two for the Homophobic Republican Lawyer.

One of the couples at the table seemed nice; they told me that they had been married for 30 years, which is quite an accomplishment these days. I asked Lawyer how he had met them, and he said that they had hired him to represent them. It turns out that they sued the yacht club after the wife tripped and fell while disembarking from their boat one night. He alluded to the fact that it was not really the yacht club's fault (she had been drinking), but they all made a lot of money from it, enough to buy a big boat, and that was that: Strike three, you're out, you Homophobic, Republican, Unethical, Sleazy Lawyer!

As he walked me towards my car after dinner, I knew he had sensed my increasing disenchantment with him throughout the night, but still he asked if he could call me some time. The epitome of the difference between men and women: we won't say we'll call you when it's obvious we never will.  I mumbled something like "If you want" and got in my car, ready to make the long drive home. Later I wrote to Mimi of Sexagenarian and the City, and described the Lawyer's nightmare of a social group and the exhausting events of my date. "Is this really how grownups have to behave?"  I asked her, feeling like a hopeless case and knowing I'd be doomed to be single forever if it were true.

Bless her heart; this is what she replied:

"No: just Republicans..."