Dating Dimes* on a Dime in DC

*slang noun in relation to physical beauty in place of a "perfect ten"

By Westmoreland

09. The Road Warrior

The landscape is uneven and barren. Those who have survived are ravaged, hardened, and bitter. The women, done up in leather bikinis, high heels and spiked hair glare at the men who are truculent and paranoid. Gasoline is a precious resource, dearly protected.


I rented ���Mad Max��� from Blockbuster ��� who knows how long ago. But I saw it on a VHS tape. What a simpler time. I remember Mel Gibson wore that filthy leather outfit and carried a sawed-off shot gun. I dug the movie, but I smirked at the director���s vision of Australia���s future. It was bleak and a little ridiculous. Well. The joke is officially on me. I imagine, now, what my life would be like if I had hoarded gasoline at 95 cents a gallon.


I have a renewed appreciation for simplicity. I was in a serious, monogamous, relationship for a little more than a year. I was (as my cousin has described it ���boo-ed up���) in Annapolis, Maryland for much of that period. Annapolis is the capitol of Maryland, but it remains a fairly slow town. Not much in common with metropolitan DC. It���s simple. There were a lot of families. Restaurants (not only restaurants, but also bars) had high chairs available for the little ones. I fell into that pattern of stable familiarity. We both carried Safeway savings cards. We went to the movies on opening weekends. I took out the trash and cleaned her bathroom. I was over there a lot. It was very suburban. We bought red wine and cuddled up on the couch to watch Flavor of Love and laughed until tears welled up in our eyes at how desperately sad Flavor���s bachelor life was. ���Oh, Flavor. You���re such a scamp!���


Nothing would have prepared me for what I would face returning to Washington, DC as a bachelor.


It���s Beyond Thunderdome out here.


I have resumed my dating life, it would seem, 150 years into the future. I feel like Buck Rogers. Nothing is the way I remember it. Not only do you have to be sharp to face the future, but you also have to face up to the confrontational nature of this dating business. It is not war, obviously. But martial law is in place. It is combative. And I mean combative. You have to protect resources while you move your mission forward. Oh, and you better have a reconnaissance team. I have a very good person that feeds me information that I can use to make dating decisions. The challenge, however, is that I see the dating world through an obsolete lens. Dating is moving at a much faster clip, and I am not tracking.


I am old school, and that is too bad. I am the British Infantry dispatched to put down the colonial insurgents -��� dressed upright in bright red jacket and polished boots -- moving against guerrilla tacticians that are taking completely unpredictable positions. Today���s urban woman has adapted the technology and integrated trend analysis into their dating packages. They are prepared to ���date��� in a manner that reflects the up-tempo, competitive and confrontational environment that the DC singles scene has become. They are locked and loaded. I am armed with a little cologne, a starched shirt and a neat shave.


I had observed earlier evidence of dating���s militarization, but I guess I dismissed it. A few years ago, I was seeing someone that I had a crush on way back in college. She asked me if I have ever ���been��� with a man. I just stared back at her like she was the stupidest person that I have ever met. (Uh, weren���t you there when we slept together?) First, I told her I had not been with a man. Then I told her that it was a really dumb question to ask. And then I just stared back at her like she was the stupidest person that I have ever met. Well, I basically forgot about it until this month. Our brains are trained to throw out memories that are not likely to be useful in the future. I have dated two people since my break up. They both asked me about ���being with men.��� I stopped seeing one based on the question alone. But by the time I heard it again, I was numb and desensitized. That is the world these women live in, today. It is frightening.


But single women are adapting or evolving or degenerating. Some bachelorettes have strategically taken to wearing as little surface area covering as possible. I was at a bar last night, watching the basketball game. There was a woman in a fatigue green (Army style -- complete with epaulettes) jacket sitting in the corner. She was not wearing a blouse. Just a jacket and a (black) bra. Anyway, in keeping with the military theme, her bosom had apparently been drafted to recruit. In my mind I heard a faint bugler���s call. Perhaps, ���Taps��� for tatas. Her bosom was stacked (like armed warheads). If I had to guess, I would say that they were approximately 65% visible. I watched them because I was both fascinated and curious. I was fascinated with her chest bulging out over the bar and kind of hovering there over her highball glass. I was curious about how she could have chosen a bra over a blouse? Had the bra and the blouse become comparable garments over the last 15 months? I spent approximately 80% of the game gawking at her floating chest. There was a time where I would have felt embarrassed to openly objectify a woman. But I guess I am adapting.


I will have to adapt. I will have to adapt if only to resist the urge to be bitter about the reality that is modern dating activity. I do not want to retaliate. I guess that is the bottom line. I don���t want to bear my frustration as an additional piece of luggage in my baggage. But sometimes a working relationship is just that. And sometimes a failing relationship is just not working. I will fight for a relationship, but I won���t fight in a relationship. I don���t have anything to prove. I want to enjoy the woman I am seeing. And that is a bigger challenge, at times, then I would have expected. I have considered just conscientiously objecting to the whole thing, but I just dig women too much to remain unengaged. So, this week, I am going to remind myself to be positive. I just want to be with a woman with whom I can see eye to eye. And I don���t mean eye to eye just as she head butts me, snatches my gasoline can and takes off in her Bluetooth enabled jeep with the machine gun soldered onto the back.