God, a Neanderthal, and Hope
by Neely Steinberg There I was, late one Saturday night, drunk as a skunk and praying to the porcelain God. It was an upsetting moment to say the least and one that will probably stay with me for quite some time.
Not only was I tanked, but I was also incredibly angry. So what you may ask had me in such a drunken, furious state?
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By 10:30 pm the object of
my affection had finally arrived |
The previous night, I happened to meet an incredible guy. Granted, we met at a bar and both had already consumed a couple of drinks, and perhaps I was just being naive about the “connection” we shared, but I really felt like there was a major chemistry between us. He was smart, handsome, hysterical, spontaneous, and fun, and I liked him. The bar closed, and he offered to walk me home. On our walk back, we shared an incredible kiss. It was one of those kisses that made me want to drop to my knees and thank God, evolution, intelligent design or whatever or whomever, for creating man and for sending such a fabulous one my way. By the time we got to my apartment, he wanted to come up and “hang out.” After some internal deliberation, I decided to throw caution to the wind and let him. For all of my constant analysis, I wanted to let go of my head for once and just “be.” Maybe God had finally sent me my match.
Of course, there was a limit to my just “being.” A few laughs and one hot make-out session later, I decided it was time for him to go home. He didn’t want the night to end, and somehow I believed that it was because he felt we had a connection. Now, I certainly wasn’t born yesterday, and I know all too well about a man‘s below-the-belt motives, but I just wanted to believe that maybe this time around, it was different. Maybe this time, fate was on my side. I always hear about two people making a connection right off the bat, so why couldn’t that scenario happen for me? His friend was having a party on Saturday night and we agreed that we would see each other then.
The next night, a friend and I made our way to the soiree. By 10:30 pm the object of my affection had finally arrived. To my dismay, the caution that I had blindly thrown just the night before had been pitched back and was staring me in the face in the form of a Neanderthal. Not only did the Neanderthal barely acknowledge my presence, but when I did try to talk to him, it was almost as if he had forgotten everything we had talked about the night before.
I felt like I had been played upon and duped. How many times would I have to go through this? How was I to know what was real anymore? In my anger, I chugged a few glasses of Pinot Grigio, grabbed my friend’s hand and got the hell out of there. I certainly wasn’t going to stand around like a cave woman, waiting for him to club me over the head and drag me back to his lair at 2:00 am. It made me never want to trust anything a guy said or did ever again. Maybe that was an extreme reaction, but to have a guy do a 180 on me like that was hurtful and embarrassing. So much for my experiment in just being – all I got in return was a nasty curveball.
As I was staring down my toilet later that night, I began to wonder, if there was a God and I was praying to a porcelain one, why oh why did he have to send me another Neanderthal?
Was everything that the Neanderthal had said and done just a crafted way of getting into my pants? “How could I have f---ing believed his bulls--t lines, he just wanted to hook up with me, I’m tired of this bulls--t, when am I going to learn,” I sobbed to my friend as she rubbed my back. “You’re only human Neels, don’t be so hard on yourself, sometimes we just want to believe in something,” she said.
I woke up the next morning still drunk, sick to my stomach, and emotionally spent. I stumbled over to the couch and turned on the television. The Shawshank Redemption was on. Towards the end of the movie, Morgan Freeman’s character reads a letter from his prison pal played by Tim Robbins. In the letter, Robbins’ character writes, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies.” Now that was something I could believe in. And somehow, amidst my miserable cocktail flu, I managed to smile a little.
And so, right then and there, as I watched Morgan Freeman reflect upon what it meant to renew one‘s faith in hope itself, I resolved to keep putting myself out there in the hope that one day it would all finally work out and my life with a wonderful and CIVILIZED MAN could begin.
Let’s just hope my days of seeking answers in a toilet bowl are over.
Neely Steinberg is a freelance
writer and a contributing
editor at nuts4chic.
Email her at neely@nuts4chic.com
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See Also:
Confessions of an Internet Dating Junkie 
Left/Right Love
A Matter of Necessity
Meeting Mr Right Now
Missed Connections
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