A THING THAT HAPPENED

Rather than talk about the strangely bad luck I seem to have had in the realm of romance (a thing that usually comes across as though I should be wearing a frayed, pilling emo sweater while writing a bad song on a dusty, bestickered acoustic guitar), I elect instead to show you, in the form of the brief story of One-Date Kate,* which has perplexed 100% of its female audience thus far.

- She started our first conversation. We met at a bar where I was about to play a gig with former housemate Peter.
- She stayed for said gig, and talked to me after the show.
- While I was trying to figure out some smooth way of figuring out whether she was single & interested, she steered the conversation deftly into giving me her number.
- We went out for dinner a few nights later. I took her to a Vietnamese place I like in the inner Sunset.
- Also coffee. Or actually hot chocolate. Whatever. Beverage!
- We had a pretty good time!
- There was -- I'm not going to lie to you -- some kissing involved at the end of the night.
- AND YET
- Two strategically-placed phone calls, which yielded only voicemail, resulted in no calling me back. I am pretty sure I did not leave freakazoid messages in said voicemail. Still: Nothing.

This is what passes for luck in my love life at the moment. I'm not going to be caught out on the street kneeling in the rain with my fists raised to the sky clutching bouquets of wilted roses and sobbing "WHY GOD WHY" anytime soon, but I need to point out to the universe that this was still uncalled-for.

Some character in a book I read once made a wish for a third gender that would do nothing but referee. The amount of sense this makes cannot be calculated by conventional means.

* Technically, I suppose it should be One-Datey Katie, since Katie was what she preferred to be called, but who's keeping track? Props to Alex, btw, for the nickname.