J-date told me that he lived near Philadelphia, and as I was living in Manhattan at the time, I felt I can travel anywhere easily, especially for love. I saw a great smile, beautiful blue eyes and a short buzz cut. Paired with the headline, “Nobody’s perfect!” – I was already besotted. I was thrilled when, after taking a chance and sending him a message about how distance didn’t matter and I thought we would “mesh quite well,” he responded, saying that he happened to be coming to New York City for the weekend! It was clearly fate. We agreed via e-mail, and then text messages to meet the next day (Friday) at a café downstairs from the apartment where he was staying.

After freshening up from work, I was on my way to the Upper West Side to meet Dave. Turns out, the café was closed, but I stood there anyway, figuring that it is a nice Friday afternoon in Manhattan and there were plenty of places we could go. A muscular guy with a sandy-brown mop of hair approached me and in a questionably feminine voice said “oh, I guess it’s closed…bad choice.” Once he smiled, I realized that he was, in fact, Dave.

“Oh hey, how are you?” I answered, internally questioning the long hair and high voice but acting as though I knew it was him immediately. We started walking around while we chit-chatted about his bus ride to NYC with his friend. I quietly noted his fitted graphic t-shirt, wide chest and feathered hair as he went on about “Jon,” who sounded like a horrible travel companion.

We were near Lincoln Center, a cosmopolitan area of Manhattan, so the obvious place we ended up spending the next hour at was – you guessed it – Best Buy. He wanted to compare prices for video games, and a first date was a great time to get that accomplished. After doing that, Dave and I sat in the demo living room in the TV section and discussed our hopes and dreams. I pretended his voice was deeper and his hair wasn’t longer than mine…and that we were not in a retail store. As he set up my blackberry to receive BBMs, I noted his beautiful face and smile. I found him charming, in a high-pitched, cocky sort of way.

Once the appalling looks from employees and customers who realized that we were not, in fact, shopping for TVs got to be too much for me (he was totally fine with it), we wandered around a bit more, and ended up in a clothing store, where Dave was astonished by the prices of pretty much every item they had. He told me how much he loved to shop – that it was one of his favorite hobbies, and it seemed to me that statement was only true if he knew he was getting a good deal. After a short runway show, Dave purchased a pair of periwinkle pleated shorts they had on clearance.

It was still light out, and it being a Friday evening in the summer, I was very conscious of the valuable Happy Hour minutes burning away. Meanwhile, Dave somehow got me back to the apartment he was staying at. It was there that I didn’t get beaten to death as you may expect from such a poor decision, but met Jon, the travel companion. They were staying at Jon’s girlfriend’s studio. The girlfriend was “away” for the weekend. In the cozy apartment, Dave smiled at me, while brushing his brown layers away from his face as Jon and I got acquainted.

“Want to see the best tits ever?” Jon asked me from the kitchen counter, across from the couch I was tucked into, trying to look cute and breezy in front of Dave, who I still liked. Weren’t we sitting in Jon’s girlfriend’s apartment while she happened to be away for the weekend?

“Yeah, so?” he said to me as he clicked through a variety of profiles of different women on plentyoffish.com who he was in the middle of setting up meetings with for the weekend.

I couldn’t sit in the apartment anymore, but I still found Dave to be charming. As a self-proclaimed “work-out nut,” he wasn’t much of a drinker, but classy Jon made himself useful and helped me convince him to join me at the bar. Of course, Jon joined us and the whole situation was just as awkward as the apartment. I had purchased my own drink, as well as Jon’s. I went home soon after that, but promised to see Dave again the next day.

We met early the next day and I had a great time showing him different stores on 5th Avenue, where he wanted to “shop” some more. I thought I had hit the jackpot. I found a straight guy who loved to work out, wander around the city and shop! Dave did tell me that his mother had passed away a few months earlier, and shopping was one of the pastimes they used to share, so he felt closer to her when he went to stores. Okay, that is bittersweet, and I had no right to judge. Browsing for and pricing out pieces of menswear seemed to be a source of great enjoyment for him. Breaking him away for some coffee was a challenging task. As a nice gesture, I offered to pay for his water (no coffee for him), which he eagerly accepted, and then proceeded to take a few dozen photos of the two of us together. A bit awkward? Sure was. Especially when he sent each one to me later via BBM. I think I was supposed to save each one for the photo montage of our blossoming love.

[To be Continued]