I went on the date and had an awesome time. Natalie is an amazing woman, classy and educated, caring, great to talk to and attractive. We had dinner at the Bali Grill and then had a few beers at the Blue Grotto. I love a woman who drinks beer. Especially one who appreciates good beer and not just domestic junk.

Natalie works in marketing for a large mining equipment company which means that she has an understanding of my industry as well due to the events that she organises. This is a very important thing for me. Many relationships I have had in the past have always ended up at the same argument. “Why do you always have to work nights and weekends?” It’s my job, I love it and won’t change it. I work nights and weekends because that’s when the work is. If someone can’t handle that then it can never work out.

Unfortunately I’m now in that paranoid place in my head where I am wondering if she feels the same way about me. I called her to see if she would like to go out again this week but got her voicemail. I detest voicemail. Mainly because when I ring someone I have generally figured out what I am going to say and partially figured out the run of the conversation. Suddenly the dreaded “Leave a message” appears and I’m faced with summarising the entire conversation into a short message. It never comes across smoothly, I always think I sound rushed and a little strange.

So I left the message and now I’m waiting. It’s the wait that really messes with my head. You see, I know that she is extremely busy at work and I know that she knows I am working every night this week so available times where we are both able to make or take calls are limited, but my brain runs directly back to that mindstate of highschool that says I’m not the guy that any woman would go out with. And I question myself.

I’ll call her again tonight and see how she is.

14 minutes to go before I leave for the first “official” date I have had in 2 years. I don’t know if I should be nervous, scared or relieved. It’s been a while and I’m not sure that I remember the rules. The obvious ones stand out like, “Don’t stare at her boobs all night” and “Don’t mention your close relationship with a known serial killer” etc, but what about the small ones that used to be rules and now might not be.

Rules like, who pays, pulling out chairs for feminists, is it appropriate to ask if she has a hotter friend that might be into a threesome. I don’t know if they changed those rules while I was figuring out my life.

Expect an update over the weekend on the results of my foray back into the seedy underworld of dating. It could be a wild ride.

I have been extremely negligent. The blog has been ignored. My friends who read my ramblings have been left in the dark (although I don’t delude myself into thinking that any of you have truly missed me).

So, here goes, time to catch up in one giant post designed to bring you all up to speed on all things me.

The last post had me going to a party wondering if I was growing up. Based on my efforts at that party it would seem my mantra of “Grow old, never grow up” still holds true. I drank too much, flirted a lot, and woke up the next day with a hangover that could strangle a horse. And I had a great time. No regrets, no dramas, just flat out semi-wholesome fun. I don’t want to grow up because I think I can enjoy life and be responsible at the same time. Just because I get drunk occasionally, act like an idiot at times, and do things that most “Mature” people would be disgusted by, doesn’t mean that I’m immature, just that I refuse to follow the imposed norms of society just to fit in to my age group.

At work I am still the “Acting” Technical Manager. My holidays have refreshed my joy of the job and I’m down to business again. January and February were quiet but we start getting hectic again in March at which point you can probably expect any blogs that occur to be rambling gibberish. So, not much will change on that front

In more recent news, I went speed dating. It was a singles day at the races being sponsored by Blink Dating. It was a somewhat strange experience to be confronted with a new person every 3 minutes and having to not only present your best attributes but discover as much as you could about the other person at the same time. It would probably be easier if you were actually on speed just to cope with the rate of conversation.

The end result for me for the day was two different women competing for my attention (a wholly new and interesting experience for me, I must say). Unfortunately I also discovered the minefield that multiple women in the same room can create. I had already been collared by one when the other woman (gee, that sounds like an affair. Not my intent but it’s the only way I can describe it) told me that she was very interested in me and I should ditch Jade to be with her, Natalie.

This is where things started to go wrong. I was brought up in such a way that turning to Jade, who had already competed and at that point won my attention, and telling her that I was interested in Natalie was not an option. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and couldn’t at that time say where it was going. At the same time my brain, ok not my brain but you get the idea, was saying “You can have your cake and eat it too”. Alcohol will do that to you.

So, I get Natalie’s phone number and for some reason invited her to hang out with my friends, Jade and myself. I have no idea how I could have thought that it was a good idea to suggest that. I was drinking, Jade was very vocal about how into me she was, and so was Natalie. My brain (my actual brain this time) was in no state to even begin the deadly game of dating roulette in which I was now engaged. I took every chance to make them both feel they were getting my attention equally if not solely. One girls trip to the toilet gave me the chance to put in solid time, a run to the bar gave me time to sort my head out and plan my next move. It was like a blindfolded race across a minefield without a map wearing clown shoes.

I thought it was all going passably until we decided that it was time to go to a different pub. Both Jade and Natalie wanted to come, and I still thought that it was a good idea. The whole group of us got up to look for a taxi and then Jade kissed me. Without thinking I returned the kiss and the proverbial shit hit the fan. Natalie saw the whole thing. I could see in her eyes that I had broken the one rule I have always tried not to break, “Do not hurt a woman in any way”.

There is no other way to put it, I was a cunt. I felt bad at the time and now I feel worse than I could ever imagine. I don’t think I intentionally went out of my way to mislead either of them, but I did, and that is unforgivable. Now I don’t know where to go from here. They both have attributes that attract me, they are both great people, but no matter which way I go, one of them will be hurt.

For any of the guys out there reading this, don’t ever do what I did. For the women reading this, I’ve learned my lesson, and I know that what I did cannot be excused. Hell, even my explanation doesn’t really cut it. Feel free to give me a virtual slap, and if you feel like it, I’ll give you my home address so you can deliver it in person. I deserve it.

I’m headed out for a combined birthday party for 3 friends tomorrow night. One of my friends told me that “there will be women we don’t know” at the party. I’m not sure when it happened, but our entire group of regular friends and the occasional friends seem to have reached that point where any kind of inter-group relations are just out of the question.

It’s a fact that all men, at some point, will consider sleeping with a friend of the opposite sex. We actually think about sex first before anything else when we see a woman. It doesn’t even matter how old or unattractive they might be, the first thought is always “Would I sleep with her”. But then we reach a point where we know our friends too well, and at that point there is no possibility of sex.

Maybe we are just growing up?

New Year’s Eve. A traditional party night. A night to spend with friends, perhaps meet new ones, drink more than you should, and generally enjoy yourself. This year my friends and I went out to a local pub to party and it gave me a wonderful chance to do some people watching.

You see, there are a few distinct types of people at a New Years celebration. There are the “Party with friends” group, the “Pick up random members of the opposite sex” group and the “Get as drunk as physically possible” group. The first and the last group are probably the least interesting to watch. They are either oblivious to the crowds around them as they chat with friends, or they are constantly in line at the bar attempting to drink the annual production of a brewery.

The second group is the really interesting type to observe. These people have an agenda from the moment they arrive. Friends are just accessories that make them appear interesting, alcohol is a means to buy or be bought drinks, and the crowd is nothing more than a target rich environment.

The males of this group will prowl the crowd like a lion hunting it’s prey. They hunt alone or in pairs, never more than that. The prey is easily spooked and the male of the group understands this. He knows that to approach a lone female with a large group of men at his side does two things. Firstly it intimidates the girl, and secondly, every extra man reduces his chance of attracting the prey. Even a large group of women can only ever be approached by at most two men. It’s statistically important to keep the ratio high.

The males will buy drinks, chat about inane subjects which they have no interest in, and generally attempt to appear as attractive and interesting as possible. They understand that drinks equal money, inane subjects infer listening skills and that all these things in the celebration environment are highly prized by the females.

The prime targets are generally the most attractive, closely followed by, as the night wears on, by the drunkest.

The women are far more devious in their attraction game. They know that they are the prey of every man in the place. Because of this, they have developed an anti-hunt to counter the male’s plans.

They lay in wait, affecting an air of helplessness and thirst, waiting for each marauding group of men to arrive, ply them with free alcohol and attempt to sway their preference. They have many defenses prepared. A trip to the bathroom never to return, a friend that needs help on the other side of the pub, a proffered phone number that turns out to be the local chinese restaurant. Any one of these can provide them with a perfect escape plan so that they can lay in wait elsewhere for the next unsuspecting man to try his attack.

It’s a game that, on New Year’s Eve, has a defined cut off point. Midnight. Both groups want only one thing, someone to share a New Year kiss at the zero hour. After that moment the game reverts to a standard night out and people stop trying as hard.

So, which group did I join on New Year’s Eve? The start of the evening was definitely “Partying with friends”. The end of the night, before I even knew it, ended up as “Getting as drunk as possible”. I contemplated joining the hunt, but after an hour or so of playing wingman to friends, I discovered that as I get older, I become less tolerant of drunk women. I can’t stand banal small talk, and I hate the games.

I went home alone, I have no midnight tale to tell. I did have a huge hangover. I now know even more about the type of person I am looking for, and I am 99% certain that I will never meet that person in a bar. A night well spent, in my opinion.

By now I am sure that any regular readers will be aware of my relationship nightmares. In fact it’s something I have almost exclusively blogged about over the last few months. What can I say? I say what’s on my mind, and relationships have been on my mind.

Well, today it got even more intriguing. We had a dance concert at the theatre today. Not an uncommon occurrence for this time of year. So, there I am standing on the stage, attempting to get through the blinding hangover and lack of sleep caused by a friend’s house warming party that finished in the wee hours, when a face from my past stepped out of the wings. (It’s all wonderfully theatrical, isn’t it?)

There standing in front of me was Karina, the first girl I ever kissed. At the tender age of seven, I had lived next door to this girl and her family in a town called Madang in Papua New Guinea. We had played together every day, went to the same school, basically we were best friends as kids.

One afternoon, while, and I can’t believe I’m admitting this, playing with her dolls (what can I say, even at that age I knew it was better to do what the woman wants), we kissed. Of course, before we did, we had to hide in a cupboard. The last thing we wanted was to be caught!

Six years ago I moved to Brisbane to study and she contacted me out of the blue. She had visited my mother and Mum had given her my number. We went out fairly regularly, just hanging out as friends. She had a boyfriend, I was single. That sucked.

Over the next  five or six months we spent a lot of time together. I fell for her, she still had a boyfriend. Things just weren’t working out in my favour. Then another girl that I knew expressed an interest in me. We started dating and not one week after that relationship began Karina called me and told me that she was single. GAH!!!

Not long after that I moved away for work. Whenever I was in town I called her to catch up, but by then she had a new boyfriend.

I think I had a shot back then. She was gorgeous, I was timid. That has always been my problem.

Anyway, I’ve got her number again. She has mine. If she has a boyfriend this time, I think I might just scream.

All in all, it was a great day.

Ok, it’s time to lay out some ground rules. No one ever seems to want to set out the rules of dating. People seem to want them to be a mystery, an unknown. I think it just makes it easier to change the rules on a whim.

So, here are some rules that I present for inclusion in the public record. No more hiding from these ones.

1. When a man calls to aks you out on a date, if you don’t want to go out, say so. Don’t accept the date, and then wait till after lunch the day of the date and cancel. You see, we are probably looking forward to it. Odds are that if we asked you out, we might even have adjusted our entire schedule just to make time for you. In fact, we would likely crawl over broken glass while being showered in vinegar just for the chance to spend a few hours in your company.

2. When you make a date and then cancel, do not have plans with friends on that same night. Strangely enough, we won’t mind as much that you cancelled if you spend the night working, or sleeping, or preferably pining away in your bedroom wishing that you were with us. What is guaranteed to piss us off is a cancellation at the last minute, only to find out that you went out anyway, just not with us.

3. Please try and remember that we have made you our first priority. We spend extra money, shuffle our work schedules around, blow off friends invitations to go drinking, and quite often the most important thing, we miss TV programs that we would normally have watched were we not spending an evening with you. Is it too much to ask that we get the same in return?

And now, on a wider note. Avi posted a list of reasons to date a geek. Not only did I laugh as I read the list, but I identified with each and every point. You see, for years now, I have developed a hatred for those pretty boy, different woman every night, use them and abuse them assholes that populate every nightclub and bar in the world. And somehow the women continue to fall for their lines. They fall for the “bad boy”, get crushed by him, and then cry on the geek’s shoulders at the end of it all.

If they really paid attention they would see that the geek, although not covered in muscles and expensive clothes, knows how to treat a woman right. We will respect you, treat you like a queen, and never cheat. We know what it’s like to be alone. We are in it for the long haul, not just tonight.

So ladies, next time you are looking for a date, try your local geek. I’m sure you know him already. He is probably the guy who fixed your laptop last month, or came and hooked up your home theatre system. And he did it all for free. No games, no debts, he just did it because he likes the gadgets and he probably likes you.

God has a wicked sense of humour! Here I sit, a blogger who for the past few weeks has been unable to stop opining over the latest woman in his life, when out of the blue I get a phone call from another unrequited love.

I toured a theatre show last year called “The Breath of Life”. The stage manager on that show is an amazing person. I fell for her hard but couldn’t do anything about it. I would have, believe me. For this girl I would have overcome every little insecurity in my body and moved heaven and earth. Why didn’t I? I know that’s the question that is bouncing around in your heads as you read this. She had a boyfriend. And not just any boyfriend. He is in the Australian Air Force and at the time that we were on tour he was serving in Iraq.

I am not condoning breaking up a relationship for your own ends. That is just wrong. But, how could I compete with someone who was putting his life on the line each and every day? Continue Reading »

If you don’t know who Girl A is check these two posts - A Surreal Evening and Isn’t it supposed to get easier. (I call her Girl A because I don’t know which of my friends might be reading this blog, and the last thing I want to do is embarrass people, and most importantly, her, by putting real names in my posts)

She is studying web design at the moment, but, her computer has been broken for nearly a month and a half. Understandably that makes it rather difficult for her to finish the assignments required for the course.

So, I volunteered to fix her computer so that she can get her assignments done. I’ve been playing with computers for years and so solving minor issues such as hers are fairly easy for me.

But, underneath my gentlemanly concern for her studies, there is an ulterior motive. You see, on Friday night at the party (A Surreal Evening) she mentioned that she was going to the guy’s house that she has been seeing for the last few months to use his computer for her assignments. Continue Reading »

I went to a friend’s party on Friday night after I finished work. It’s been three weeks since I moved to Ipswich and I haven’t seen any of my friends in that time, so, I was due for some catching up and socialising.

These parties are normally quite riotous and fun. But this one wasn’t. Sure the party was toned down a lot from what we normally have, but the people were still there that I wanted to see. The main problem was the two sisters that were there.

You see, one of the sisters, (lets call her Girl A for the sake of privacy),is the woman I am slowly but surely falling for. She lives at the house where the party was being held. I was really looking forward to seeing her because we have both been extremely busy lately and haven’t had time to catch up at all.

The other sister, (Girl B), is what I can only describe as my first real love. Unrequited as that love may have been, it was still the very first time that I can remember being head over heels, follow her anywhere, do anything for her in love with this girl.

Nothing ever happened between the two of us. I spent years trying my damnedest to win her over but it never worked. Continue Reading »

Neil from Citizen of the month posted this - “I Don’t Understand Women”.

Read that blog first, then have a quick glance through the comments and then head back here.

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Done? Okay. Here is my question to the world. Why are men supposed to do all the work? We are supposed to bring flowers, search the world for interesting and unique things/places to go/do on a date. We have to make the woman feel as though she is special, all the time.

What about us? When does a man get to be pursued? Told that he is wonderful? Even just calling us for a date for a change? Continue Reading »

I called a girl tonight. She didn’t answer, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is, that at thirty years old, I still get nervous when I’m calling the opposite sex.

I thought that these things were supposed to get easier the older you get. Surely age brings wisdom and maturity, gives clarity of thought, and settles the nagging insecurities that plagued our youth.

Well, I guess it doesn’t. I still fear rejection, worry that I won’t know what to say, or say the wrong thing, or just be boring and self centred. In the back of my mind there is a small voice that whispers, “You just aren’t that attractive/interesting/loveable”. I know that voice well. It’s the same voice that, as a child, made me shy and introverted around new people. As a teenager it convinced me that none of those intensely aloof, gorgeous women would ever talk to me, so why bother? When I was married, and unhappy, it whispered that this was as good as I could get and I should take the abuse and dramas.

That voice has held me back for 30 years. This girl is special. I think I’ll ignore the voice.

I’m single. Thirty years old and single. Have been for about six years now. Does this bother me? Not at all. You see, I’ve been married, been separated, and dealt with all the dramas of relationships that conflict with my job.

Working in theatre presents some interesting challenges to a relationship. I don’t do the 9 to 5 Monday to Friday thing. Some weeks I do, others I work 8am to midnight, Monday to Sunday or any other bizarre combination of hours and days. I’ve found that a lot of people can’t handle that inconsistency and it causes problems.

Over the past six years I’ve had some run ins with the opposite sex. Some have been fun, some would seem to have torn my heart from my chest and trodden it into mush on the ground. None have turned into anything more than a few weeks of fun.

In the last few months I have started to rethink my life. What is it about past relationships that has caused them to fail? Is it the women I choose to pursue? Or is it me, pushing them away before I get hurt again? Or maybe a combination of both?

All this thinking has led me to this….my Relationship Manifesto.