And in the End...i.e. Dunzo!!

I moved to NYC nine months ago today. It was a Sunday just like this one except much hotter, but I remember my friends Julia and Virginia driving me from LaGuardia to my new home in Manhattan as if it were yesterday. I was filled with such an inner excitement and anticipation and desire to really explore New York top to bottom, to experience life, to meet new and interesting people, and to rediscover myself while living in this brave new setting. Well, nine months down the road, have I accomplished all of that? I would say, yes, but obviously not completely because I feel these, at the time, unnamed goals I set for myself are things that start to surface but will inevitably keep shifting and changing and evolving as I continue to live here and grow more comfortable here but hopefully never become complacent. I will continue to shift and change and evolve. Afterall, isn't that the whole point of life? But I suppose the whole point of this blog was to ultimately discover what I was looking for with regards to love, if I preferred being single or pursuing a relationship, and if I truly felt I knew myself well enough to not settle for something just because it was there. Because in the end, in a place like NYC, everything is always just there, and you kind of have to figure out what exactly it is you do desire and pursue it aggressively. Otherwise, you really do end up with nothing at all because the one thing I've gathered is that this is not the kind of place where you sit on the sidelines, and things just sort of happen. The competition is too fierce, and you have to really have a strong desire to be you because that is the one thing that is really easy to get lost here--you.

So I've talked A LOT about men through this whole process, and I'm sure men who are reading this are probably like, "Come on, already. Women are not perfect either." Well, that I would agree with. I've delved pretty deeply into my theory that there are basically two kinds of men, and for ages I think men have said the same thing about women. I've always heard that there are two kinds of women--the kind you date and the kind you marry. Considering how many single women there are in NYC, it would appear that this place must be filled with the kind you date. What exactly does this distinction entail, and which one am I? Well, I think the simplest way to break it down is to use the example from Gilligan's Island of Mary Ann and Ginger. Mary Ann is the kind of girl you marry. She's sweet, wholesome, a bit naive, and absolutely the girl next door that you want to swoop up because you can build a home with her and make a nice life. A girl like this will not break your heart. Then there's Ginger. She's definitely the kind of girl you date because she is sexy, fun loving, exciting, and I suppose you could say unattainable. She's the kind of girl a man would always have to worry about not being able to keep satisfied. I think to the outside world I seem like a Mary Ann. For years and I do mean years, I was told by guys that I'm not the kind of girl you date. I'm the kind of girl you marry. And it's true, once I'm into that mindset, I'm so domesticated. I love cooking and playing house and staying in and watching really bad TV with a guy even on the weekends. But I think throughout this process I have demonstrated that I definitely have shades of Ginger, too. I have this ingrained desire to experience and experiment and constantly try new things even with regards to dating. This past year I have definitely come off as the type of girl who one guy could never be enough for. And ironically, I think that is one of the primary things that has made me so appealing to a lot of the guys. Guys like a girl that ultimately they're not really sure they could have.

But I don't think either role is distorted when I portray it. Instead I really do believe that I have shades of both. I've always kind of felt like I suffered from a bit of the Sylvia Plath syndrome. No, not the wanting to stick my head in an oven or anything like that, but have you ever read the "Bell Jar?" Basically the reason she becomes so distraught and depressed is because she has this overwhelming desire to do everything. She writes about how she wants to be a wife and mother, but she also wants to be a free spirit and have many different lovers. She wants to be a world traveler and live in South America and Africa, but she also wants to be a writer and a scientist and a journalist and a professor all at once. She becomes so depressed because she feels that by picking one thing, she ultimately has to give up all of the others. I've never been Sylvia Plath depressed over it, but I suppose in a way I grapple with a similar dilemma. Of course, I think what everyone realizes is that at a certain point in life you have to center in on something that you can really be happy doing and dedicate yourself to it, and with regards to love you sort of have to do the same. You can do one extreme or the other, and nothing is wrong with either choice if that's what you truly want in that moment, but you can't really do both at the same time. I remember I was talking with my co-worker, and he has dated a lot in NYC, but actually he's been dating this one lady pretty seriously for a bit now, and he goes, "I don't know. Everyone's different. You just have to do what's right for you, but if you want to have someone special and still be playing the field, that just makes you a skank." Well said, Co-Worker.

There are two pop culture examples that I can think of that sort of offer differing viewpoints on which is better. One is the totally cheesy one hit wonder ballad by Charlene called "Never Been to Me." If you don't know this song, check it out on youtube. Basically the narrator in the song sings, "I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me." She talks about how she's been everywhere and been romanced by all different kinds of men and really experienced the best that the world has to offer, but she's singing to a woman who is married and has a baby and feels like she hasn't done anything great with her life. Charlene tells her the truth in life is that baby she's holding and the husband that she fought with this morning, the same one she'll make love with that night. Okay, I know it's cheesy, but she's basically saying that the grass is always greener. Sure, her life seems glamorous, but she has nothing to show for it, no real and valid human connection. On the flip side, I recently just finished reading "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. This has been called cheesy as well, but I have to tell you I really liked it, and I do totally want to see the Hollywood production starring Julia Roberts. It's basically about a 30 year old woman who has everything a modern woman is supposed to desire. She is successful in her career. She's married and has a great house in the suburbs. Her husband and she have recently decided to start trying to have a baby, and it's when this happens that she realizes this is not what she wants at all. She freaks out, gets a divorce, and decides to take a year long break from her life to travel to Italy to experience pleasure, India to experience spirituality, and Indonesia to find balance between the two, and as fairytale as it sounds she finds love in Indonesia at the end but with a man who is willing and able to accept her unconventional desires in life.

I think about how these representations clearly talk about how women have to make choices in life. Are you gonna focus on career, marriage, family, travel, yourself, and is it possible to have it all? I'm an optimist, and I like to believe I can and will have it all not exactly as I'm imagining but in some related form. I know 50 first dates in NYC seemed like a lot to start with and kind of ridiculous in many regards especially when chances at love emerged throughout the process, and I had to ask myself--Why? Why did I need this arbitrary number to define that I had dated "enough"? The conclusion I came to is that I've always been this way with everything, and maybe this will just always be a quality that is wholly a part of who I am. For example, until I reached the age of 24, I literally couldn't boil water. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I couldn't cook. Campbell's Soup or Hamburger Helper anyone?? My college roommates and Albert can attest to this, but then I moved back to Texarkana for a year when my mom was sick and dying, and since I didn't have a lot going on in my life, I decided I was going to teach myself how to cook so I took one of my mom's cookbooks off the shelf, and I just started cooking every night for my dad and two of my brothers who were also living there at the time. By the end of the year when I was ready to move back to LA, my oldest brother was so impressed with my ability to suddenly cook well that for my birthday he gifted me with a Betty Crocker cookbook, and I took it back to LA with me, moved in with my ex-boyfriend, and cooked the entire cookbook for him over the course of the three years that we lived together. I couldn't just cook a recipe here and there. I had to cook the whole thing.

Then when I moved to Japan, and I realized how close all the Asian countries were I couldn't just go visit a country here and there. Instead I had to visit all of them or at least most. I visited 12 countries and every major city in Japan in the two years that I lived there, and it was amazing and life changing and for a time I seriously do think I was addicted to travel. Then when I moved back to Texarkana my dad passed away last April, and I knew I had to do something. Just as cooking had been my outlet when my mom passed away and travel had been my outlet when my ex-boyfriend and I finally broke up, I had to find something to help me deal with the loss of my dad. Thus my brother #2 who is divorced and the total bachelor who never wants to marry again and I took a 7 week roadtrip around America. Again I couldn't just go to one or two places. Instead, we packed up his pick-up truck and traveled around to 30 states from the middle of June to the beginning of August. It was so awesome and inspiring because I know the song says it, but America really is beautiful. Parts of it are just stunning and look like a painting. I particularly loved the vastness and quietness of the Plains states such as the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, etc. There is this calmness and stillness and very few people actually given the copious amount of space. I remember when we were in North Dakota we heard the story of how Teddy Roosevelt's mom and wife died on the same day, and he just had to check out of society for a bit in order to grieve so he left his home in New York and spent a year out in the isolation of North Dakota, and man is it isolated. I really related to that because literally my ex-boyfriend and I ceased all communication in March, and my dad died in April within a month of each other, and even though I didn't know the Teddy Roosevelt story beforehand, I totally felt that's exactly what I was doing with this roadtrip as well. I was dropping out of society. I didn't check email or have a cell phone or anything for 7 weeks, and it was spectacular.

Thus, what has been the point of me throwing myself into the dating pool headfirst and full throttle in NYC? What have I been trying to work through or escape from? Well, I guess in the most honest way I can say it I was probably trying to hide from myself because in having these fleeting, one night only interactions with people, I never had to delve too deeply or worry about going below the surface too much, but throughout the process I began to realize that when I discovered what I really was looking for and what would be a good match for me, it would be clear to me. What I have discovered is that I do know who I am and what I want, and the truth is that there is no set formula for who is going to make me happy. I don't have a type, and I don't really know what will define my happy ever after. Life is not a movie. There's no easy wrap up after 2 hours and cue the ending credits song or even after 9 months nor should there be. Let's face it, if that were the case, I would definitely spend the rest of my life bored. I don't want to know how it's going to turn out. I want to be surprised and enlightened, and the biggest learning I've taken away from this is that I don't want to figure it out before I experience it first hand. I can be a control freak at times. I admit it. For someone who is ultimately free spirited, I do tend to worry about the future. I remember sharing this with the Cuban over our last dinner, and he just smiled and said, "It's natural. You're a woman."

One of my favorite movies of all time is "The Object of My Affection." It's basically where Jennifer Aniston plays this very together Social Worker who knows who she is and what she wants, but she's thrown for a loop when she falls in love with her gay best friend. At a Thanksgiving dinner party, an older, wiser gay man tells her, "Don't arrange your life so that you find yourself alone just as you reach the middle of it." The conclusion she reaches in the end is that life is about picking one person and trying to make it work with them, but of course, nothing is ever guaranteed in life, but you have to at least start out by picking someone with the potential for it to work out with. So yeah, I think I really and truly have found one such guy. I like the Brit. This blog wasn't about me coming out of it with a perfect fairytale ending where I ride off into the sunset with the Prince on the white horse so I won't portray my ending that way. In fact, I promised the Brit I would not write about the outcome of our meeting today so even I don't know what will happen, but I will tell you this. In him, I've found a guy who I connect with, who is open to new experiences, who makes me tingly inside when I kiss him, who for the most part seems to accept me for my quirkiness, my dorkiness, and my unconventionality, and who is actually stable but not boring and maybe just maybe in the end may be the steady weight I need to keep me from floating off into the utterly vague definition of fun that dating in NYC can sometimes offer.

I'll tell you something. Last night I went on one more date not because I'm addicted and not so that I could write about it, but I wanted to see what it would feel like to go out with a guy just to be going out and not with the purpose of analyzing it. He contacted me on match.com, and he seemed nice and funny. He's a law student, and we met up at the Museum of Arts and Design which by the way is a very interesting museum. He then took me to a phenomenal Japanese meal at Sakagura and the world's best cream puffs at Beard Papa's followed by a trip to the top of the Empire State Building and capped off with more karaoke in K-Town. I am addicted to karaoke. In any event, my reaction was interesting. I could tell fairly early on that he wasn't really what I was looking for, and because I was not going to write about it, I found it to be less engaging and intriguing. In a way, I kind of felt like I was killing time. I especially felt that when we were standing at the top of the Empire State Building. It really is a very romantic spot. I can see what all the hype is about, and I enjoyed it very much, but it was at that moment that I had my answer. I wasn't there with my Cary Grant from "An Affair to Remember" or my Tom Hanks from "Sleepless in Seattle." Instead I was there with a stranger. The aesthetic of the situation was perfect, being at the top of the world looking down on NYC at the stroke of midnight, but in a perfect world I would have allowed myself to be there with a guy who had the potential to be my Prince Charming. I would have been there with the Brit. And that's when I knew for certain that I don't need to do this anymore. Sure if I really give it a pure and solid chance with the Brit and it doesn't work out, I'll have the gumption to know how to put myself out there and try again, but why keep trying right now when something great is already there.

My date from last night actually made a really good point while we were having drinks at the Heartland Brewery right next door to the Empire State Building before going up. He said he thinks men in NYC suffer from the "shiny pants syndrome." Fascinated I asked, "What's that?" He explained, "A guy in New York could be sitting at a bar with a great girl who's cute and smart and funny and nice, but then a girl in shiny pants will walk by, and he's distracted, and he's thinking about her when he's already got this great girl with potential right in front of him." It's a great way of encapsulating everything I've learned from dating in NYC. People always think and worry about something better coming along. I have been very guilty of that this year. You will never fall in love if you don't give people a chance, and things will never work out if when issues arise you don't give them a chance to resolve and instead just run away. I agreed with my date, and I said, "Yeah, men get a bad rap, but I have to say that in New York, I think women oftentimes suffer from the same syndrome as well."

So in the end, what can I say about my dating experience as a whole in NYC? I had the best time ever. I saw so much. I ate at over 50 different restaurants and pretty much every kind of cuisine including the most phenomenal desserts as well. I got more cultured by looking at paintings, sculptures, photography, and the natural landscape that is New York. I was a total tourist riding the sightseeing bus, going to the Statue of Liberty, riding a boat around the Hudson River, taking a carriage ride through Central Park, having a semi-romantic moment or at least an enlightening one atop the Empire State Building. I dated so many different types of men from all different and diverse backgrounds--Asians, Caucasians, Hapas, Latin, Indian, African American. Guys from America and guys from other countries. And guys ranging in age from 25-47. I dated short guys, tall guys, skinny guys, chunky guys, shy guys, loud guys, funny guys, obnoxious guys, corporate guys, artists, altruistic types, guys with money to burn, and guys counting their pennies. I had day dates, evening dates, late night dates, dates that were Uptown, Midtown, Downtown, in Harlem, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Jersey, even a few minutes on Staten Island. I danced, sang, listened to music, watched movies, went to bars, went to performances, clocked some balls at a batting cage, bowled, played pool, watched sports on TV, walked around aimlessly in neighborhoods, walked around aimlessly in parks, had conversations until 4 o' clock in the morning, had moments where I was thinking will this ever end and moments where I was thinking I don't want this to ever end. I dated guys looking for romance, for friendship with potential, for instant relationships, for one night stands, for something indescribable and without expectation kind of like me. I made out with four and made so much more with only two. I fell into very strong like and back into budding friendship with one special Cuban, and I fell into very strong like and a place of hope but not knowing with one special Brit. In the end, I took more than I gave. I was adored more than I allowed myself to adore back. I was asked out for second dates more than I said yes. I was both certain and unsure equal parts of the time.

I guess the most sound conclusion I am left to draw and to state right here and now is that I realized that I want to be with a guy who likes me just the way I am--neurotic yet loveable, homebodied yet free, a little bit off but ultimately sane, and a wanderluster but open to wanderlusting around with just the right person. It takes a lot for me to open my world to someone. You see, I've been pretty open with this blog, but I think I'm layered and I've only revealed what I truly want you to see, and I'll save the rest for the guy I think is worth peeling the onion back for. Other than that, I'm just really excited to enjoy summer in NYC. I hear that it's amazing. Everyone's energy level is up just because the weather is so nice and you can be out of doors enjoying it non-stop. I can't wait. It was interesting for me to do a blog, and many people have suggested to me that I don't have to stop blogging just because I've stopped dating in such a premeditated, active way, but I have to say I don't know that I would start another blog. I would have to find a topic that I was super passionate about, and alas it's also very time consuming and requires a lot of effort. I loved every minute of doing this project, but honestly I'm a bit ready to stop writing about life and just kind of be present experiencing it and being in the moment. I'm excited to start traveling again as I will officially kick off my summer correctly by traveling to Panama and Costa Rica over Memorial Day weekend for 9 illustrious days of sun, fun, and once again dropping out of society. I can't wait. As much as I love NYC, everyone's gotta get away sometime.

Before that I will be getting away to Brooklyn this lovely Sunday afternoon. I am meeting the Brit at a pie shop to explain all of this in person and to see where we go from here. As he said to me prior maybe it's time for me to stop writing about the Brit and to actually start getting to know "Paul." That's his name, and in a way I don't think he'll mind that I told you that quite simply because it makes him special, and it makes him a person and not just some curve ball that landed in the middle of all of this. This experience has been incredible. Thank you all for reading and commenting and just being interested in seeing me figure it all out. I'm happy to report that I don't have it all figured out by a long shot, but I definitely have a better idea of who I am and what I want, and yes, I know I'm like the weather in NYC changing from day to day, but on this particular day I would like a piece of pie with a cute British boy, and from there anything is possible. Like my good friend and favorite commenter Yamato once said, "Until something happens, anything can happen," and man is she right. Anything can happen!!

The End...of The Beginning...in NYC

Museum of Arts and Design: http://www.madmuseum.org/

Sakagura: http://www.sakagura.com/

Beard Papa's: http://www.beardpapa.com/

Heartland Brewery: http://www.heartlandbrewery.com/

Empire State Building: http://www.esbnyc.com/index2.cfm?CFID=38261367&CFTOKEN=41583954

Wow Karaoke: http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/47405288/new_york_ny/karaoke_wow.html