The Meeting
2003-07-17, 3:33 p.m.

To continue the to be continued entry...

So she sent out 4 or 5 emails. They were all decent looking non-smokers in the mid- to late-30's age range. Several wrote back, asking for pictures. Alas, after sending pictures, nobody wrote back. Having been hardened into the cut-throat world of dating, she did not take this personally, but silently thanked the men for knowing exactly what their "types" were, and for not dragging out the inevitable.

A week or so later, one of the Silent Ones who had never written her back, suddenly responded. He was interesting and interested, and they had some similarities. She sent him a picture, and he was still interested. It's not easy to find a man whose type is short, dark, and short-haired, she knew.

He gave her his phone number, and she called him one Thursday afternoon as she drove through his town on her way home from Austin. He suggested a meeting then and there, but she already had a date to get ready for. She countered with a meeting on the next night, a Friday, and he acquiesed.

They met at Alamo Cafe on Friday, March 16, 2001. He was attractive, in a small-town meth-lab kind of way. His personality made up for the scary facial hair, and after dinner, they played pool and drank beer into the wee hours.

To be continued again...