We set up our date almost a month in advance since the ArtMurmur only happens on the first friday of the month. It was a long wait but I was kept very busy in the meantime.

I decide to BART over and walk up to our meeting place. He selected the one place I actually know in Oakland so I was happy for that. Of course, I arrive early. I text him that I am there and will grab a table. He texts back that he is still 10 minutes out with bad traffic. It is friday afternoon after all and peak traffic time.

When he finally arrives, mmmm, he is tall and gangly. more handsome than his pictures which make him look a bit goofy. He orders us a drink – he is going non-alcohol and i have a gin and tonic.

We talk about past lives (old jobs, old places lived) some talking about physics, finance, ux design – our jobs, not being married ever. Then we are off to go to look at art. We make the rounds of a variety of galleries, discuss some of the art and make our way out to the street to the vendors there and into a bus which has pics from burning man. Turns out the the first two are images of his piece he made last year for burning man. He describes a very cool project and shows how it works with the two photos.

He has to talk to the proprietor of the bus and ask about the images and who made them. He gets her contact info. Then we head over to the next street and explore a bit, stopping for a tamale in one of the big open warehouse areas full of artisan stalls. 

The next stop is the gallery where I have work and I get to show him some of my work which he says he liked.

Our last stop is an upstairs gallery which had some very cool sculptures and music going. It was like a party up there.

By this time though, we both hit our art wall – by now we had been viewing and discussing for 2-3 hours. Turns out he had been sick all week so he was fading fast. 

I ask if he could either walk me or drive me to the BART station, because by now it was dark and it was about 10 blocks away through some sketchy areas that are worse than in the daylight. So we walk to his car and ride to BART.

He says he’d like to do it again and I say how about in SF and he smiles and says yes.

There was no kiss, no touching – when I touched his hand he admonished me to wash it because he was still sick – and then I got out of the car and headed away to go home. I am home by 9pm.

I later emailed him to give him my email address since i had his. He replied in the morning with a very sweet note but no mention of another date. I replied the next day and hinted at SF again but haven’t gotten a response.

So I’m pretty sure this won’t happen again which is sad because he was a super cute, engaging, smart guy who is my age, single, homeowner, with parents still married and the oldest child of 2.

Hmm maybe we are too much alike.

Argh – I hate this shit of waiting for the guy to make the next move and not knowing if there will be a next move.

The passive aggressive silence irritates the hell out of me. If you aren’t interested just say thanks but no thanks. I suppose I should just calm down because I have been the same but I hate the not knowing and because we are doing this online thing, we don’t have the overlapping social interactions and cues to just get it out in the open at commonly attended events or activities.

[postscript] three weeks later and I still haven’t heard from him. I guess the potential was just felt on my side and not his. Oh well.