Kissing Kamal

If the right man came along at this very moment, would you seriously date him? If a relationship moved in the right direction would you settle down? If you’re answering ‘yes’ to these questions while checking your ManHut account, are you being honest with yourself about what you’re ready to believe in?

Notice I mentioned “belief” and not “desire.” I believe that I am honest with myself about what I’m looking for in life and in my relationships. I want a companion. I want an adventuresome marriage. I want to be a good parent. I’m clearly aware of my wants and when I can, I put effort into making these things reality. But does this effort and clarity of purpose mean that I’m ready to believe in the reality of what my desires currently are and what they can become in the future? Read more…

I’ve been away from the blog for almost a month and the first thing I notice is that the traffic spiked through the roof while I was gone.  I’m glad so many of you liked the last post on Douchebags of Grindr and I promise that the story will continue very soon.

Why the absence you ask?  In short, writing is hard.  And as I’ve written about before (read here), writing a reality blog is even harder.  Finding time to sit down and write lately has been a challenge, but I hope to change that going forward by incorporating a newer style of writing into the blog.  Look for shorter posts that relate a thought, idea or story about dating, in addition to my regular vignettes.

And yes, I will continue with An Episode in Dating but I just want to remind folks that this story is not happening in real time.  In fact, very little of what I write happens in real-time given my self-imposed rules against writing about situations directly after they happen.

Also, please continue to keep your topic ideas coming.  As you can tell by now, I’ve been on plenty of dates and chances are that I’ve been in the same situation before.

And now on with our show …

Amy Winehouse had a voice that spoke to me the moment I heard it. I was living in the midwest at the time Rehab came out, and I remember a friend talking about “the rehab song” that they kept playing in the clubs on the weekend. I went home and downloaded the album Back to Black and became immediately hooked.

Back to Black is a beautifully crafted album, and I could go on about it’s arrangements and borrowing from the Motown style. But what caught me about the whole thing was this woman with a deep, soulful voice, singing about modern love and relationships in a way that said, “I’ve been there too.” It wasn’t just the lyrics themselves, but it was the way she sang it with her voice that let you know she’d been there and back, and sometimes there and back again.

After listening to her album, I decided that I had to see this chick perform live. Read more…

Yesterday’s post of An Episode in Dating sparked a lot of feedback from some loyal fans, so I want to take a moment to address that and also discuss some issues I deal with in writing about reality.

I had a feeling that the post would raise some eyebrows, and the comments I heard boiled down to: were those Matt’s actual emails and how could you re-post them on the internet?

Yes, the emails I posted yesterday were from Matt.  The reality of what I do, which is different from other blogs, is that I don’t narrate experiences to you verbatim or as they happened.  I reserve the right to make edits for the sake of being concise, but without changing the true nature of the experience or what was actually being said.

The “emails” I used in yesterday’s An Episode were a summary of an email thread that was longer than what was actually represented.  Technically it went exactly like: I don’t think we should do X because of A, B, and C. But I think we should because of D, and E. But what about C and D?  Okay, I apologize and agree to not do B and C.  Fine, but I’m doing A.

Confusing isn’t it? Which is why I edit. Read more…