He greeted me with a brief hug, a confident smile, and the wrong name. Not a different woman's name, which would at least have saved us some time. My name, pronounced incorrectly, after we had spent ten minutes on the phone practicing it.
I smiled and said it back correctly, with one eyebrow doing a little extra work. We had barely met in person, and already I was considering leaving.
At 51, I had recently become very efficient at ruling men out. For two months, any hint of incompatibility, inconvenience, or foolishness had been enough. I had a habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, I had now used up my entire supply.
There had been reasons to become more selective. One man wanted me to take time off work so he could give me a hickey. Another couldn't stop putting down his ex-wife. Two others got drunk on our first dates after assuring me they hardly ever drank. I was a shy woman hoping to meet someone, but lately my main dating skill was elimination.
The odd thing is that I am usually very relaxed about my name. Baristas get it wrong. Receptionists get it wrong. Some coworkers have been getting it wrong for years, and correcting them now would require reopening a fairly substantial file. I generally answer and carry on.
With this man, though, I decided it would be a test.
We had exchanged messages for a few days, then talked on the phone. Conversation came easily. He had passed the other tests I had quietly set, and when he called again the next day, he suggested meeting. Before we did, I offered to explain how to say my name.
I gave that explanation more time than I had ever given anyone. We covered the pronunciation, where the name came from, and why I had it. There was laughing. There were a few gentle corrections. I even suggested a rhyme to help him remember. It was a pleasant conversation with an unusually thorough pronunciation section.
So when he got it wrong at the greeting, I was torn between allowing for nerves and remembering that we had, quite literally, covered this.
A friend had already suggested I might be going overboard with the instant disqualifications. I could almost hear her reminding me to give him a chance. I stayed. We sat and talked.
Then he said it wrong again.
This time it was part of a little joke, a reference to something else we had discussed. The joke may have been good. I couldn't really tell you. My attention had stopped at the vowel.
What I remember most is the small, embarrassing flicker of satisfaction. There it was: confirmation. I had set a test, he had failed it, and some part of me was pleased to have the paperwork in order. A man who had seemed promising was now, in my head, the man who had wasted ten minutes of name practice.
I briefly imagined walking out and sending him a bill for my time. None of that was an actual plan. I had simply reached the stage of dating where two wrong vowels could occupy the whole evening.
For now, I'm taking a break from dating until I feel a little more like myself.
