The Harem: Rachel

Okay, so I failed the 30-Day Blog-a-Day Challenge. I always knew I wouldn't make it, but it was kinda fun trying to come up with things to say. Plus, I work all day so finding the time to write actual entries made it even more improbable.

For those of you who actually read this crappy e-journal (both of you) and who were disappointed that I didn't keep up with the days, I am going to add another chapter to my Harem series. I know I stopped it rather abruptly. It got to be tedious and also depressing to rehash my love life, or lack thereof. But this latest entry is still fresh in my mind, and even though the memories are still painful, hopefully I can gain a little bit of closure by writing it down.

I believe I left off with Angela. However, I'm going to fast-forward a few years to spring of 2010. I'm skipping over Jen because she and I are still friends and don't want to divulge any secrets of hers. I don't want to ruin our friendship due to any personal information being revealed.

In the spring of 2010, I was feeling rather lonely. The reason is the same stuff I mentioned in a previous entry. Basically because most of my friends were in relationships and dealings with children and family stuff. And the single scene at church is virtually non-existent. I was lonely for some more Christian friendships. I wanted to be able to hang out with a friend or two on a weeknight without the other person having to cancel because of family issues. Sorry, Stephen, if you're reading this. It's not your fault. Your kids come first. I know.

So I went onto the internet to look at local churches and see if they have any singles groups. Not for the purposes of finding a date, but to find a group of friends that I could spend time with. None of the churches in the area had any. In the eighties and nineties they were all over the place. Not anymore. Not even Pilgrim Congregational. It used to have a Praise & Worship night for singles on the first Friday of every month. That group was gone, too.

There was a group down in the Burlington, MA area, but that one seemed kinda sketchy. I think there was a membership charge because it wasn't supported by a church. No thanks. I was looking for something closer to home and fee-free. Call me old-fashioned, but friendships shouldn't cost anything.

During my search I came across a link to a website called ChristianMingle, a dating service for Christians. I was hesitant due to my previous experience with eHarmony, but I decided, What the hell. So I clicked on the link and set up an account. I wasn't expecting much results from the site. I don't think much of myself romantically or visually, so I doubted any woman would want to choose me out of all the suitors already available on the site. But I still put on my best face, so to speak, answered all the questions, put in my best answers, found a suitable profile pic and waited. I also prayed about it even though I didn't have much hope for anything to come of it.

Like I said before, on-line dating is a waiting game. You throw out some lines into the waters and hope that a fish will bite. And if you get a bite, you wait to see if the fish will stay on that line. With eHarmony, the matching process is long and tedious. You have to follow a series of steps before you can begin actual communication. The process on ChristianMingle is a bit more lax. As long as you have paid the subscription fee, you are pretty much allowed to start communicating right away.

I received a bunch of potential matches. Some of them looked fantastic; women who I would have definitely liked to have gotten to know better. I sent them some "Smiles", little messages you send to a match in order to see if he/she is interested. None of them took. I also received Smiles. They were mostly from women that I had no interest in. One of the Smiles was from a women down in Louisiana who had the biggest frown I had ever seen in a profile pic.

I received a match from a woman named Rachel. Upon examination, I discovered that she was kinda cute and lived in Providence, RI. Her profile got a passing grade on everything except one. It said that she loves long conversations. I'm not a good conversationalist. I have a hard time keeping a conversation going because I tend to summarize statements into ten words or less. After that, it is pretty much over. Conversation finished. So based upon that factor in Rachel's profile, I decided to pass on her because I thought she would find that I was lacking in social skills and therefore not worth her time.

A week or two later I received a Smile from her. I will admit that I was surprised to see it. It dawned on me that I could have been mistaken about her. There was still the risk that she would find me disappointing, but I decided to take the risk and respond to her with a Smile of my own. We started a correspondence through ChristianMingle that went pretty well. I liked her personality, at least that which I saw in her messages. After a while we started corresponding through regular e-mail and then via FaceBook. I explained to her some of my hobbies such as letterboxing, and she told about her experiences as a child social worker.

About three or four weeks after our initial contact, we started talking on the phone. She had a cute voice and an adorable laugh. It was apparent right away that she made a lot more money than me. It was a little intimidating, but I was willing to look past it. It was still early in our correspondence that I was willing to wait and see where that would lead. She was also outspoken, probably a requirement for her career. Within our third or fourth phone conversation we discussed our views on sexuality, and she was pretty up front and candid about it. It really caught me off guard. I mean, I was raised in a household where you don't talk about such things. At all. And life had taught me that girls don't like to talk to guys about their sex lives. So when we had that conversation, I was thrown for a loop to hear such talk coming from a girl, especially this soon in our correspondence. She said that it was part of her training to deal with cases of child abuse, to deal with candid talk about sexuality.

Our communication was progressing nicely. I decided to take the next step and ask her out on a date. She said yes. I proposed that we meet in about a month, just so that our relationship could develop further and so that we could get to know each other better. She thought it was a splendid idea. She let me do the planning. We agreed to meet about halfway for our first date at a place called Purgatory Chasm just southeast of Worcester, MA. We would do a little bit of letterboxing and then do some bowling and then go out to dinner. About a week or two before the date we changed plans so that I would meet her at her place in Providence and then go the the Chasm for letterboxing. I was hesitant about it because that's something you shouldn't do when you meet someone for the first time after corresponding on-line. But she insisted that she was okay with it.

We went on our date. I met her at her apartment, met her two Yorkshire terriers that would not stop barking, and shared a quick lunch of cold-cuts. I gave her a letterboxing package I had put together for her, just a beginner's kit consisting of a hand-carved stamp, logbook, inkpad & markers and a small canvas bag to carry everything. We had a hard time finding some of the boxes because most of the directions were pretty vague and much of the landscape had changed due to heavy foot-traffic. But it was a nice day out and we had fun climbing over all the rocks.

After that we went to a bowling alley in Providence. It was ten-pin style, and we paid for one hour. She had warned me ahead of time that she was competitive, and, boy, did it show. She wasn't nasty about it, but I could tell that she got upset whenever she bowled badly. But she was good-natured about it. I won the first game. She won the second. We didn't get to finish the third because time ran out. She claimed that she would have won.

At some point during our time in the bowling alley, I had that moment. It's that moment in time when you look at someone and realize that he or she is absolutely gorgeous and you realize that this is someone that you definitely want to have a romantic relationship with. Hollywood depicts that moment by having the person turn their head and smile in slow-motion while orchestral music rises in the background. Disney calls it "being twitter-pated".

I was sitting on the bench while Rachel was about to bowl another frame. She turned to me and smiled. Right at that moment, I was on the hook. She went from being cute to being gorgeous.

Rachel was overweight. She had warned me about it during our first phone conversation. I assured her that it wasn't an issue with me. All of my prior girlfriends had been overweight or had less than perfect bodies. What matters to me most is a woman's personality. Sure, it's be nice to date someone with the body of a Victoria's Secret model. But if she has the body of Megan Fox and the personality of Cruella De'Ville, I don't have the slightest interest. On the flip side, if she weighs over 200 pounds and has the personality of Willow Rosenberg, I may start to get flirtatious with her.

After bowling, we went to downtown Providence to a local Pizzeria Uno for dinner. We sat and talked. I had my usual Rattlesnake Pasta. She had something with spinach, I think. Blech! At some point she asked me if I wanted to keep dating and pursue a relationship with her or if I wanted to just remain as friends. Another upfront question from her, but I was a little more prepared for it. I told her that I definitely wanted to continue to see her, and I told her about the moment I had in the bowling alley.

The date ended and I drove home. All in all, I would say it was a success. That night when I logged on to FaceBook, I saw that Rachel had changed her relationship status to being "In a Relationship with Justin Shekleton." I changed mine as well. Apparently, we were a couple.

About a week later she came up to Nashua for another date. This time she stayed the night in the guest room. I took her to a butterfly conservatory down in Westford, MA. Then I took her around Nashua, showing her some of the sites. That night we went on a double-date with Stephen and Deidre. We went out to eat and then, on a whim, drove out to Hampton Beach. Rachel and I ended up making out for the first time.

All right, it's 12:30 am and I'm barely halfway through this chapter. I will have to continue the story soon. Hopefully the length of this entry makes up for the days I missed during this blog-a-day challenge.