Christmas eve with an atheist

I had a Christmas eve drink last night with a West Village, sport-watcher, in-finance man. This is the sort of resume I would normally gloss over, but the enthusiasm of his cover letter was noteworthy, and I called him in for an interview.

What I could of, and perhaps should have done instead:



As with 80% of the men I've gone out with, his choice of venue was within stumble distance of his apartment. And like all the others, the man will end the post-boozy night with startled mention of the proximity, like it's a coincidence. "Hey, you know what? I'm just around the corner if you wanna...." Before continuing my narrative, I will kill the suspense to say that his use of this universal "secret" weapon of the ya ya brotherhood was a failure.

I did not run out the door when he asked me for a second date with a specific time and place five minutes into date one. I was merely thrown off by the unconventional approach and declined, stating I was busy.

Nor did I run out the door 20 minutes later when he invited me to his family's Christmas party in the Bronx. I actually accepted. The foodie in me and the Margaret Mead in me do not decline invitations to Puerto Rican yuletide feasts in far flung boroughs.

Nor did I run out the door when the conversation turned to children, and he wondered without sarcasm whether I would like to have three of his. Nor when he said his self-titled first son would bear the suffix "III." All this amused me greatly.

However...

His emphatic declarations that I am "smoking hot" were beginning to be followed up with unsolicited and overbearing kisses, and like delivery contractions, were coming at increasingly short intervals. While annoying displays, these were not necessary deal breakers. His fate was sealed however at the nature of his aforementioned stumble-distance bedmate bid. Through warped logic, the 37-year old spoke as though a girl would find comfort in the assurance that nocturnal operations would be limited to cuddling in the face of decreased blood circulation to a certain somewhere in his advanced age.