The recurring bad date

I once read a great saying in a book. The author was my age, and in a similar position in life – interested in settling down, dated 101 men (usually only once), and couldn't find 'The One'. She wrote the following: "I don't know when it happened, but somehow I have made the transition from being Single, to being Still Single".

I heard those words resonate in my head as I waited for a friend to meet me for lunch one Friday. We arranged to meet outside a large shopping centre in Tel Aviv, and my friend arrived 15 minutes late. It was a lovely day. I was standing on the sidewalk, catching a bit of winter sun, and almost pulled a muscle trying to avoid bumping into someone I once went out with. I found myself doing a personalized version of an Irish jig as I spotted an ex-blind-date and had to get behind the nearest static object I could find before he spotted me in return. This was a guy I will never forget – a brother of the wife of one of my many cousins, who I went out with on one date about 6 years ago. He was the funniest person I have ever met, and I spent the entire date in hysterics. He had a knack of keeping a deadpan face at all times, but he told stories about his childhood that had me literally holding my sides and wiping tears of laughter from my cheeks. And then he didn't call again, and I was terribly disappointed. Not because I thought we had anything in common (we didn't) or because I was into how he looked (I wasn't), but he was funny enough for me to be willing to compromise on other aspects. It was only years later that I plucked up the courage to ask my cousin's wife what it was about me her brother didn't like, and she said he was offended that I laughed at him all night long, without even trying to hide my amusement. As it turned out, he had no intention of being funny, and my obvious delight at his dry 'humour' was completely misspent. Hence my need to hide when I spotted him on Friday. However bad some of my own dates have been, I'm pretty sure he considers me one of his very worst blind dates ever. He's probably written a story about me somewhere.

But the tale of the recurring blind date nightmare does not end there. Not two minutes after I successfully dodged funny boy, I found myself once more pretending to tie a shoe lace on my zipped boot, after nearly colliding head-on with yet another past (and almost forgotten) date. My memory of this date is cloudy, it happened a long long time ago, and what I remember most from that night was that I was running late and took a taxi to meet this boy. The taxi driver asked me where I was going and I told him I had a blind date, and asked him whether he thought my date would be happy with what he was getting. To which he replied, "Lady, I'm happy and you're just my fare. I'd be THRILLED if you were my date". Okay, he was about 60 and smelled like an expired yoghurt, but we take our compliments where we can get them. It was also a good boost for the ego before the date, which was traumatic only because we'd arranged to meet at a place that seems to be the meeting place for most people in Tel Aviv who have never seen each other before. In retrospect it could be a great way to pick up people: just arrive one night, stand at the spot and ask everyone if they're , and see if any of them take the bait. What happened on that night was that I spent 40 minutes trying to find the date, and another 40 trying to make him go away. It was a dull date, the feeling was mutual, we never spoke again, and I doubt whether he'd have recognized me even if I hadn't managed to smoothly avoid him on Friday.

Which brings me to my real dilemma: have I actually managed to work through the entire database of eligible straight men in Tel Aviv, and all that remains is to start round two with people I dated in a different era? I could have been fixed up with this guy again and he wouldn't have even known it, other than perhaps some vague feeling of déjà vu when he met up with me.

And fear set in. Fear that not only wasI still single, but so were those dozens of men I have had the pleasure of writing about over the years. And the fear sent me back to that dark dungeon of dating doom, cyberspace, where I quickly set up a date for that very night with the first eligible man I could find. The lucky winner was Yuval, 39, Israeli, and all I could tell was he looked nice enough and, most important, he was interested in meeting me (the only criteria I was really focused on in my moment of sheer terror). Anything had to be better than bad first date reruns. What Yuval's picture on the Web failed to reveal was a particularly bad case of overbite that should have been dealt with by an orthodontist 20 years ago, accompanied by a tongue thrust issue (and its twin brother, the spit dispenser), all of which were wrapped in a lisp that would make a speech therapist drool. Now I am a counselor by profession and I would never let a speech impediment come between me and the love of my life. But I think coping with dating in Hebrew and bridging the cultural gap is enough of a challenge, without adding additional communication stumbling blocks, no? It was all brought home when he told me he was writing a book on something I couldn't for the life of me fathom. I asked him to repeat the title 3 times in Hebrew (for those who know Hebrew, the title was "Tikthoret Ben Ithit"); eventually I blamed my confusion on the language and asked if he knows the term in English. "Interperthonal Communicathon". The guy is writing a book on how people communicate and it is practically impossible to understand him. He is possibly a terrific guy. I will never know. The obstacles were too many and after an exhausting hour of asking him to repeat himself while avoiding the backwash, I called it a night and decided to give cyber dating a break again. Suddenly, being single didn't look quite so bad…