Good on Paper

I went to my doctor last week and as he was reading through my blood work, good blood sugar, liver function, etc., he told me something that should have made me happy to hear: I'm good on paper. He said it very deliberately as if to suggest that he knew that although my blood pressure was a cool 120/70 my blood was boiling about something.

He knows me well enough to know when I'm not doing well. He went to the usual suspects. How much are you drinking? Are you feeling depressed? Do you feel anxious. But none of these things hit home. Really, I'm just angry. I have now trained myself to skip the whole sad insecure part of the process when anything upsets me and I go straight to being furious. And that, that's not so good on paper.

I have now added another type of bachelor to my undatable list: Triennial man. This man pops into your life once every three years, takes you out for an amazing dinner with conversation so good you completely forget that there is anyone else in the restaurant. You feel close and comfortable with this man. He usually has blue eyes and is almost uncomfortably handsome and has some dangerous sexy feature about him that raises his irresistibility to thermometer shattering territory. He's great in bed. And he has what seems like the most important characteristic in any man: he's genuinely interested in you. He seems to be perfect and you prepare yourself for an amazing three month relationship (three months is my arbitrary amount of time I give men to get tired of me).

You ignore your usual hard to get routine and text him that night after the date. You wake up the next day feeling amazing. Your skin is glowing, people are complimenting you and you're telling everyone that you met the most amazing man that you're going to spend the rest of your three months with. You wait two more days and then over the weekend decide to leave a really cute voicemail for him. It's perfect: funny, sexy, impromptu. You wait another two days and try to set up another date. Then after a week you e-mail him. You see on Facebook he is alive, going out, doing things, and maybe posing a little to close with another guy in some of the pictures.

It's at this point you figure he's keeping you on the back burner in case nothing better comes along, and let me tell you I am no stranger to the back burner. I'm basically the queen of until something better comes along. This doesn't even bug me enough to cut off communication. He responds infrequently citing business trips and cell phone problems. This behavior is not to be mistaken for he's not that into you, because he his, he's just into someone else more at the moment and you are being kept on the sidelines of his social life because you are clearly not fit enough to be in the game. Yet. 

A month will then go by and you will have started dating other people who actually return your calls but the dates will just not compare to this guy. You'll think of him about once a week and send a text message to let him know on the off chance that he might have nothing better to do than get coffee with you or maybe he'll let you tag along as he runs some errands, or maybe he will at least let you pick up his dry cleaning, and being the idiot that you are you might even pay for it. At this point I am aware of how stupid and pathetic even contacting this person is. But at this point it becomes a challenge. This is like the olympic sport version of dating. And thus comes this bachelor's name, because like the olympics you'll see him about once every four years. Because after you've have two-to-three other short term relationships he'll just randomly appear back on your radar looking for a little something something. And because so much time has passed you'll have forgotten his pattern and go on another amazing date with him.

But now you're wiser. You're graduated from college and working, and you're wildly successful with your blog that all of ten people read. And you know better than the send a cute text message. You're just going to ignore this guy. Then you get home after this amazing date and a ride on his Vespa and you're compelled to send that message. That message that dooms you. "Thanks for a great time." When what you really mean is, "I'll see you in another four years," and you will and you'll hope that by then something has changed in you that will make you more worthwhile and valuable to him.

But really, the thing that needs to change is him. Or rather, the act of giving him the power to treat you with such an epic level of disrespect as to not release you from his lunar cycle of one night stands. And like my bloodwork, triennial man looks great on paper. He looks cool as a cucumber martini, but he's really just lukewarm and has his finger nowhere near your heartbeat.