Blindly Hunting for a Man Truffle

It's days like today when I can't help seeing the similarities between dating and writing a blog. Sometimes, like now, the writing doesn't come naturally, just as an easy personal connection doesn't always happen on the first date. This is when I have to commit myself to sitting down and doing the difficult work of slogging it out, sentence by sentence, without the benefit of inspiration or a funny anecdote. Or make myself go on a second date with a guy with whom I haven't established an instant rapport in order to get to know him better. Even though both take much more time, I am sometimes unexpectedly rewarded, like a blind pig rooting around the countryside and discovering a truffle.

Whenever I go on a mediocre first date, I am sometimes left with the depressing feeling that the odds are so against me meeting someone special now at this point in my life. And even if I do, our personal circumstances (distance, life obligations, careers, etc.) will not allow a relationship between us to flourish. This is when I try to remind myself of the summer romance that almost didn't happen because I was ready to throw in the towel way too soon.

The summer when I was 20 and working in Florida, I met a nice guy when I went to a movie with a group of friends. Three weeks later he called me up and asked me out. We went to Bachelor Party, a movie with Tom Hanks before he was *the* Tom Hanks. But I adored him. Not my perfectly nice, bland date, but the wild charismatic character played by Tom Hanks. I adored a made-up character in a ridiculous movie. And I couldn't help thinking how poorly "Florida" my date fared by my unfair comparison of the two.

When Florida dropped me off at my place, he politely asked me if I might be interested in going to the beach sometime. I said sure, but only because I just wanted to be done with this lackluster first date. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go out with him again. He was good looking, but I didn't feel a special spark for him. When Florida called me a few days later to ask me to go to the beach with him for the day, I said yes, even though I wasn't very excited about it. I could have just as easily said no, but at that moment, when I was facing the prospect of yet another weekend with no scheduled fun, I was in the mood to say yes.

Since we spent the day together--first in the car on the 90-minute ride to the beach, then at the beach for the afternoon, then afterward at dinner, then in the car ride home--we spent a lot of time talking and laughing. He relaxed around me and was able to be himself. And that's how I got to know Florida and fell for him. Hard. And it was gratifyingly mutual. And exhilarating. And surprising. After that second date, we were inseparable for the rest of my time there before I went back to college. It was a perfect summer romance that might never have happened if I had given up searching for a man-truffle after a mediocre first date.