11/16/09: Date or Networking?

Ok, here's the timeline:

Mid-September: met fellow at a happy hour for a professional organization that I joined and chatted for about 25 minutes before he moved on to shmooze with others and I rolled out

Late-October: fellow randomly shows up at my office with another colleague and we exchange friendly 'nice to see you' greetings and he asks for my card, which I gladly supply to him

Twenty minutes later, same October day: receive email from fellow saying that it was 'great' running into me again and welcoming me to stop by his office, a mere few blocks away from mine, anytime to say hi ... he also noted that he was giving me his personal email address, as opposed to a work one

Week later: I send fellow an email offering condolences on a professional setback I'd heard he suffered and jokingly asked whether he needed a drink

Minutes later, same day: he responds saying that he does, in fact, need a drink and asking what I had in mind

Um, I don't know ... sh*t. I was not prepared for that response.

Several other emails were exchanged and a plan was made to meet near our offices for a happy hour beverage. His last email included his phone number and directed me to text him when I was leaving my office and he would then leave his. On to the meeting (I hesitate to call this a date because I'm not really sure whether it was ... will need your opinion on this). We met at a place that I suggested because he asked what places around us were good. I don't know that much about the HH scene in the immediate vicinity of my work because I hate my job and when I'm done, I flee the scene like a criminal on the lam and return to my real life in my city. So, my pick was random. And terrible. I got there early and the place was destitute. Seriously, it was me, the wait staff folding flatware into napkins, and a really terrible version of La Cucharacha playing softly over the speakers. I was super nervous and readily welcomed his suggestion to go to another restaurant nearby.

We settled into that place and ordered drinks from the bartender. That he knew. By name. They shared several inside jokes throughout the evening and it appeared that they knew each other well. Given this development, I wondered silently why he asked me to suggest a good place in the area. Whatever. Maybe he was nervous making a suggestion himself and wanted the load to be on me. Moving on ... the original plan was to meet for 'a drink'. At his suggestion, that drink turned into food and several beverages. I had no problem with this because we were having a great time talking and was secretly pleased that he seemed to want to extend our time together from just one quick drink. Our conversation touched a bit on work but was mainly focused on our personal selves. Families, backgrounds, home towns, places we like to go in our city, music we like, what kind of gin we favor (Hendricks, the best gin ever).

When I first met this one, I had a sneaking suspicion that he was gay-ish. I say gay-ish because during our first meeting, he told me that he was divorced and has a pre-teen child. He's around my age and I've learned from other sources that the pregnancy was, ahem, unplanned and the honorable man's marriage proposal followed. So, I sort of wondered whether maybe he realized during the course of this marriage that he was gay and that was maybe the reason for the divorce. In addition to this, he was very neatly dressed, VERY well groomed and sort of had this effeminate quality that moved the needle on the Gaydar enough for me to be mildly suspicious. During our time together however, I was disavowed of this suspicion as he mentioned several times that he was a single man. If he was gay, his status as attached or not would be irrelevant to our situation and he probably wouldn't have felt the need to mention it. More than twice. Message received, not gay. Also, the longer we talked the less effeminate he seemed. He morphed into a normal, neatly dressed, mature, heterosexual man. And since that's what I'm looking for, I was pleased.

We left after about two hours because he had to be home by a certain time and we shared a hug on the street corner before going our separate ways home. Not the greatest hug ever but eh, MseDater cannot complain at this point, ya know? The men are scarce and I'll take what I can get. As he walked across the street away from me, he said that he'd "be in touch" and waved goodbye. I said "yeah" or something lame, immediately regretted it, and began pondering the evening on my bus ride home.

Number One, when I emailed condolences/drink offer, I meant it as a nice, rhetorical gesture and was genuinely surprised when he responded (within seconds) with his enthusiastic acceptance. Number Two, we met because we do the same work. At a professional event. So, I assumed that there was and still is the possibility that his making plans with me arose out of a desire to connect with a professional colleague and make that contact. The flip side of that is that he told me he has no desire to work where I work, or do the type of work that I do, and as I have no influence whatsoever over anyone who could potentially help him advance in our mutually chosen professional field, I have some doubts that this was professionally motivated.

So, back to whether this was, then, a date ... I define 'date' as meeting someone for the express purpose of getting to know a little more about them, giving them the opportunity to get to know more about you, possibly over some food and/or beverage, in order to decide whether there is a connection on a personal/emotional/intellectual/physical level (i.e. whether they set your pants aflame and you feel the desire to molest them at some later point. With their consent, of course). A networking meeting, as many of you I'm sure know, is about work. You talk about work. Work. Work. In this situation, we talked about work certainly, but most of the conversation was about us, as people. He told me that I looked good and said that he can't believe that I am the age that I am ... I'm about 10 months older than he is. So, compliments based on the fact that he checked me out. As in my body. Um, that's not really supposed to be a part of networking. Unless you work in the sex trade. We do not.

If he emails or calls with an invitation for another meeting, I'm for sure accepting. This one has really, really beautiful eyes and I found them very distracting at times. Speaking of, he apologized several times for watching Sportscenter over my shoulder on the TV behind the bar. Eh, no biggie. I just considered it further evidence of heterosexuality. So, what do you guys think?

PS. No nickname will be assigned to this one unless and until a second meeting is scheduled.