Speaking of Karma, I feel the need to cleanse mine after blogging about the Date of Doom.  Sometimes an entry hangs over me,  like I throw the words out into the world, and the mean ones kind of stick, suspended.  And the only way for me to move through them is to say something nice.

Still, if you want to talk about dating in college, at least on the casual level, you have to throw up some quotes –  “dating.” At least that was my experience. “Dating” was two people, trying to make a go of something in one of the most developmentally volatile times in their lives. Maybe they stopped transitioning long enough to grab a cup of coffee.  Or a one night stand.  Whichever.  Ask me what I had learned, then, and I’d throw up my hands and yell, “NOTHING! I LEARNED NOTHING!” But perhaps, like a lot of things, the lessons were there - I am just slow. I am just now learning them.

[The Doogie Howser theme song just popped into my head. Why? I mean, I've been typing out my thoughts for YEARS and this is the first time. Weird.]

Anyway.  I just came across one of my old, and few, “friends-only” journal entries.  It detailed my date with a guy from one of my classes whom I aptly named “Art History Kid.”

It was some catch-all course, a 101 covering everything from Renaissance to Modern.  I was finishing out my senior year, and I was ready for school to be over. [Shakes my former self: "For the love of God, CHERISH IT."]  He was a sophomore majoring in fine arts, young and full of ardor. Okay, I’m making it sound like I was some sort of cougar at twenty-one, but he was nineteen, and doesn’t that just sound young? (She asks? At twenty-five?)  The fact that I had the maturity of a thirty-year-old paired with that inevitable chasm that occurs once you turn twenty-one — my mind was already against it.

Which was too bad, really, because it was a great date. He took me out for sushi, and the only thing I remember from the conversation was that he was OBSESSED with ceramics.  At dinner he carefully studied the Japanese cups that held our green tea.   He talked about pottery in such a way that made you believe if he died, he would like to come back as a tea pot.  We went to an art opening at the campus museum, then the post-party at the art studios. Everyone was cool, and drinking PBR, and had interesting things to say, and there was dancing.

Regardless, he was nineteen, and proceeded to get drunk, and started gushing, which immediately freaked me out. The sentences started off with “I’m probably saying too much…” and sadly, my guard was already up. I was graduating in a few months and I was not looking for a boyfriend or a one night stand or a husband or anyone, really.

He walked me back to my house, and as we sat at the kitchen table I nearly drowned him with cup after cup of water to sober him up.  “You’re amazing, really amazing. Has anyone ever told you that?” I can remember everything about that moment.

A few days later he called to see if he could stop by. He made me nervous, now, someone who just put everything out there. He wasn’t playing the games to which I had grown accustomed — he wasn’t playing it cool, feigning ambivalence.  When I answered the door he was holding a single orchid in a small pot that he had made.  He had inscribed on the bottom: “A very strange pot for a very strange flower.”

We never went out again.  We met at a weird crossroads where the timing was completely off, where he was bright and optimistic and I was cynical and mellow.  Right before writing this I looked him up on Facebook, and although there was a page of people with his name and none of the pictures looked like him, I knew in an instant which profile was his: Interests: Ceramic, Tea, Pots. Apparently he’s teaching English in Korea.  He has albums upon albums of all his work, hundreds of vases and mugs and plates and bowls and they are BEAUTIFUL.  And although we just had this brief passing in each other’s lives, I couldn’t be happier for him.