Courtship Connection, Romance and Dating

Courtship Connection: Get Some Sleep Prior To A First Date

By  
on

This installation of the Courtship Connection has some important advice for blind daters. If you are feeling sick or if you are feeling exhausted, or if you are suffering from those two conditions combined, you should just reschedule.

(Last week, one of our participants was sniffly on her date and still managed to make a love connection, but we should all think of that as the exception and not the rule.)

I had high hopes for these two do-gooder lawyers in their late 20s, who named First Amendment law and environmental law as their favorite classes in law school, respectively — and who managed to translate their noble passions into professional gigs. Both Donkeys — d’uh — he said that if he weren’t a lawyer, he’d be a “singer for an unsuccessful band,” and she said she’d be a “yoga teacher, park ranger, and world traveling vagabond.”

Such a precious pairing! I sent them to Adams Morgan’s Tryst on a Tuesday evening to drink environmentally-sustainable coffee and chat about how to keep Obama in office come 2012. She was enchanted and even went so far as to send a text post-date. Unfortunately, that text went ignored. Here’s why…

Both of our do-gooders were dilatory in getting me their write-ups. I waited anxiously for a week to hear back about their tryst at Tryst.

Captain Planet sent me his write-up first. It reminded me of a low-impact, two-week camping trip I went on prior to my freshmen year of college: no fire allowed.

Sponsored

My delay in writing you back is not because I’ve been busy with a torrid love affair since you introduced [XXX] and I. She’s a very nice girl, and if we’d met in another context I’m pretty certain that we would have become friends. But there was no spark.

Apparently, our lady lawyer needed a ring with the Power of Sleep, according to our bachelor hero:

I was excited when you picked out Tryst as our meeting place. I’d been meaning to try it for a few weeks, and I’d been particularly intrigued by rumors of mezcal-laced Mexican hot chocolate. I got to the bar a couple of minutes early and waited around a good ten minutes after the appointed time. Not a great sign, but she didn’t exactly have my cell phone number to fire off a warning text.

From the moment we met though, she seemed a little spaced out. At first I chalked this up to the inherent awkwardness of a blind date set up by Above the Law. The fact that the only available seats were half of a four-person table didn’t help things. However once we sat down she admitted that she was totally exhausted from work. When we managed to order, she got both a glass of wine and an espresso in an obvious attempt to perk up. Even with caffeine, she never managed to focus, and I kept thinking that something was going on over my left shoulder as she stared into space.

Despite her spaciness, they had lots in common:

It turned out we did have a lot to talk about… We were both pretty new to government jobs and to DC in general, so we had plenty to trade about places to drink and to hike. I asked a lot of questions, which she dutifully answered, but she just seemed too tired to focus on the conversation, let alone to lead it in a new direction. After a little more than an hour we called it quits, so that she could go home to a planned conference call and I could catch another episode of The Wire. We exchanged numbers and parted ways. The next day she fired off a text offering to show me her “fun, fully awake side” over the holiday weekend. I haven’t responded.

Sponsored

Ouch! He’s not a do-gooder when it comes to the ways of the heart.

She says:

I didn’t write sooner because I was waiting to see if XXX would follow up. He didn’t, so that’s that. We went on the date; it was fairly nice… aside from the fact that I was under the influence of sleep deprivation plus an unshakable cold. I sent XXX a text afterward and he was a typical (I’m told) flaky DC man in terms of communication etiquette… The End!

She offered up an alternative explanation for why it didn’t work out…

Epilogue: it crossed my mind that we may have exchanged inaccurate numbers. That would not be surprising under the circumstances, but unlikely because (1) we left just as the live jazz began (bad sign) and (2) he’s in contact with you, so it was easy for him to follow up.

… and subtly blamed my location selection for the date’s fizzling:

PS – Tryst is a fairly distracting date venue. So much movement and jabbering all around. I love the place, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not somewhere I’d go again to meet someone for the first time.

My suspicion, though, is that this date could have worked out had she been rested and healthy.

But Captain Planet ended his email to me with this:

Should I have given her another chance? Maybe. As I said, she’s a nice interesting girl, and she knew she wasn’t bringing her A game. But the evening was just odd enough that I decided it was better to let this one go. And besides, who wants to tell their friends that they met someone through Above The Law. Imagine the shame.

Not everyone’s embarrassed by it; some even use it to chat up ladies at a bar. And better Above the Law than Craigslist, right?

Earlier: Prior installments of ATL Courtship Connection

Kash is an editor emeritus of Above the Law. She now spends her days at Forbes writing about privacy, technology and the law at The Not-So Private Parts. For a background on the creation of ATL Courtship Connection, see “My Weird Hobby: Matchmaking Lawyers.”

Topics

, , , ,