Abe Lincoln

In order to avoid becoming a complete solitarian this winter, I've been forcing myself to spend a few hours a week at a coffee shop two blocks from my apartment, where I sit amongst the living, drink overpriced herbal tea, and write these pretty words that you're currently reading.

One afternoon, the cafe was unusually crowded, so I agreed to share my table with Jim, a gentleman who was in need of a place to sit. He set his coffee mug down, settled himself into the wooden chair adjacent to the table, and complimented my Wonder Woman notebook. I thanked him, and then became engaged in a half hour-long conversation about the Beastie Boys, monster trucks, and the Yiddish language...overall a completely non-flirtatious and wholesome exchange.

As I was readying myself for a graceful exit, Jim mentioned that he was going to sell his LPs, including some Beastie Boys albums, but if I was interested, we could meet again at the coffee shop, and he would bring his unwanted records for my perusal. Since he seemed harmless enough, coupled with the fact that I find it nearly impossible to pass up free shit, I gave him my number and left quietly.

At 3 o'clock in the morning, I awoke to the grating sound my IPhone produces when I receive an incoming text message. I rolled over, tried to focus my eyes at the glowing screen, and this is what I read:

"Hey it's Jim from the coffee shop. Why don't you come to my apartment for a drink"

Now I'm no mind reader, and I have yet to receive the late night text message decoder ring I ordered off my box of Corn Pops, so I could only hypothesize that the true meaning of this guy's missive was along these lines:

"Greetings possessor of female genitalia. I struck out at the bar and/or high school I was trawling at and desperately want to get laid. I hope you maintain the same nonexistent amount of respect for yourself that I hold for you, and partake in what you will later describe to your friends as the worst five second ride of your life."

I sighed audibly, placed my phone back on the nightstand, and rubbed my forehead with the palms of my hands, frustrated, yet sadly, not surprised. This hadn't been the first time that I had received one of these bird-dog notes from a veritable stranger, and it caused me to wonder if this interaction was an indication of what is currently passed off as courtship.

Perhaps my last long-term relationship served as the equivalent of a cryogenic capsule that kept me frozen in the culture from three years ago, so now that I've awakened in futuristic 2010, I'm having difficulty adjusting to the newfangled, high-tech interpersonal relationships, where people communicate their feelings through the use of emoticons, and men email pictures of their junk in lieu of sending roses.

I'm trying to pinpoint the exact moment where romance died and the act of earning intimacy with another person became as obsolete as the eight-track. Did courtship go the way of the dinosaur or is it merely bankrupt like Nicholas Cage? Hundreds of classic poems were composed about the slow, sensual yearning for a lover, and pining after one's paramour over the span of a lifetime. Unfortunately, these days I feel like I have the amount of time it takes for the Final Jeopardy theme song to wind down to bed someone, or else they move onto the next willing female from the conveyor belt of options, while I am left to dust the large chip on my shoulder and tend to my growing garden of neuroses.

Although I can't recall when I transformed into the archaic caricature on the deck of Old Maid playing cards, up until recently, I never considered myself to be old-fashioned. I don't want to spend the remainder of my days, seated in a creaky rocking chair, muttering, "He's out there, I know it!" until one of my sixty cats eats my face, but I also cannot manage to find it flattering when a man wearing a "Trust Me I'm a Doctor" tee shirt instructs me to "Take your tits out" while I'm trying to have a drink with a friend.

Since there is no satisfying compromise to this pickle as of yet, I vow to keep myself from becoming a puritanical stick-in-the-mud by exercising, becoming a Twi-hard, and memorizing the Urban Dictionary, one word of the day at a time.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=abe+lincoln

Amazing stuff.