Culture, culture and more culture

Hello my faithful readers:

It's Monday and I'm actually pretty excited about this week. I have the feeling that it will be even better than last week and I'm anticipating great news coming my way. Tonight I'm planning to hang out with my friends EB, The Roodster and EJ @ Carnegie Hall for "Ask Your Mama" which is based on the Langston Hughes poem of the same name. Jessye Norman and The Roots are supposed to be on the bill (Jessye actually curated this one); it should be a fantastic time. Typing this blog, I just realized that in all of my 9 years of living here in NYC this will be my FIRST time at Carnegie Hall; for me this is a HUGE deal to finally see something at one of the most prestigious venues in the city.

My date on Saturday was equally as lovely and Mr. Ex is someone I met on pof.com. I was the planner for the day - he isn't all that familiar with the city, because he lives in Freehold, NJ. He got in early because he took a bus in and I was about 15 minutes late because I miscalcuated how long it would take me to get into the city since the subway wasn't running between my stop and downtown Brooklyn (which is quite a pain in the arse!) Although I was running late - I was VERY GOOD about keeping him abreast of my progress. I notified him that I was stuck on the bus in Brooklyn, told him when I got on the train headed into the city and called him the moment I stepped off the train to walk over to the restaurant.

I walked into the restaurant and headed straight over to the hostess and told her I was meeting someone. After quickly perusing the place I didn't see anyone that looked like the guy that was my date (or at least the pictures I'd seen online) so I called him and asked if he was there in the restaurant and he said "You're too late, I am in a cab on the way back, you took too long." Now I was PISSED OFF, because I'd just talked to him less than 5 minutes prior to tell him that I was walking over and he hadn't indicated that he was leaving at that point. So I say "Ok, sorry to hear you feel that way," all while standing in front of the hostess, I think she was starting to feel sorry for me. I was already trying to decide whether or not I was going to stay for brunch anyway since I was sooooo HUNGRY, when he walks up behind me, taps me on the shoulder and says he was joking. I think I have a very good sense of humor, but we definitely don't necessarily have similar tastes in what is funny. Personally I don't find his type of humor very funny and given that we don't know each other very well, it's hard to tell when he's joking or not (something that people often tell me). What's interesting is over the course of our getting to know each other on the phone he's made several other jokes of the same ilk that I didn't find funny, which for me was part of the reason I was so unenthusiastic about him in my blog "Dating drought."

Our brunch was at 202 - a restaurant and clothing store, good food and fashion/houseware all into one cute chelsea location. 202 has the best pancakes in the city hands down! We both ordered the pancakes and although we got seated at a more communal style table than I would have liked we did try to get to know each other a little bit more than we had already done on the phone. Mr. Ex is a native of Angola, speaks 5 different languages (including Portuguese and Spanish) and has lived in the US for about 9 years now, initially moving here for school in Michigan. He's an attractive man and came to the date in a nice gray pullover sweater, black button down shirt and jeans.

After grubbing on brunch, we headed over to the Hank Willis Thomas exhibit at the Jack Hainman Gallery in Chelsea. The exhibit was cool, but took us all of 15 minutes to view, so we ended checking out a few of the other galleries on the block. I'd highly recommend going to check out the Nicholas Robinson Gallery - they had a couple of good exhibits there, especially the paintings by Wei Dong. Mr. Ex seemed to really have a great time and we talked a little bit about art and what we personally were interested in and I found out that he writes poetry, but has not done it in a while. I encouraged him to get back into the habit of writing and he said he wanted to start soon.

We left the block with all of the galleries and walked over to the Chelsea Piers area because he wanted to see the water. We continued to chat a little bit about what we're looking for in our relationships, why past relationships haven't worked out and here's where I admitted something to him (and myself) that I've thinking about a lot lately in my homework for myself. In the past I have NOT WANTED a committed relationship at all. Therefore I didn't seek, nor require it from anyone I happened to be seeing at any given time. He also astutely observed that I do want something special in my relationships, which I agree is true. I realize now that I should set about defining what is special to me, because being special could mean so many different things.

So overall I had a good time on my date. Mr. Ex seems to have a good head on his shoulders and he did something, that in my mind was very special; he called me to make sure I made it home safely. This might seem like a very small thing, but for me, doesn't seem to happen all that often at the end of ANY of my dates. It made me think differently about him and I'd consider going out on a second date with him, even though our senses of humor are so different. Plus he did bring up a couple of his past relationships on the date, but his calling me to make sure I made it home safely absolved him of those transgressions (for now)!

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog today. Hope you enjoyed and I'm looking forward to your feedback on this one. Have a wonderful week - I certainly plan on having one.

Mwuah,

Georgia Peach