A Brazilian Boy Named Daniel

I alluded to this in my tweets, but yesterday I had a sort-of blind date with a Brazilian boy named Daniel.

Back up to the weekend before. I was staying with my friends in Richmond, complaining about how I was going to meet men. When I moved to DC, I was in a couple, so I didn't think much about cultivating friendships with guys, mostly because I just didn't hang out with many of them other than my college best friend L. So, the wife, ever the aspiring matchmaker, starts hounding her husband about people he knows at work. He mentioned that there was a new Brazilian contractor who was my age, single, and a nice guy. But in typical guy form, he couldn't answer the question of how attractive he was.

Now, ok, looks aren't everything, but they are something.

Back up to Friday night. I'm hanging out with friends in Cleveland Park, and one of the guys is Brazilian. He starts giving me shit, and I'm giving it right back to him ("You're from Brazil, and you can't do the samba?? What kind of Brazilian are you if you can't dance the fucking samba?"), and he begins making annoying comments like, "I hope your date is ugly and can't dance."

Saturday morning comes around, and I am nursing my not-too-severe hangover, and I start getting texts from my friend. The day before I'd asked her to please text me a ranking between 1-10, to which she responded, "Well, if you were older, how would you rank my husband? I want to get a sense of your taste." Feeling slightly awkward, I replied, "Oh, he'd score very high!" As soon as I hit send, she had replied, "Or rank a celebrity if that's less weird." Yes, it certainly would've been less awkward than admitting I had a serious crush on her absolutely gorgeous husband.

Anyway, the texts start coming. "He's not particularly attractive, not ugly. He's kind of nerdy, but very sweet." Ok, this begins to worry me, but I think, "Well, maybe we'll click. You never know." Then she texts, "He's very nice once you get over the shorts." Oh. Dear. God.The shorts, as it turned out, were this hideous bright plaid that could be seen from one of the National Mall to the other.

Now let me just say what a nightmare it is for a local person to go to the National Mall on a Saturday in August. It is a big fucking nightmare! All of the things I hate about DC all in one place--crowds, lack of Metro etiquette, heat, tourists, etc. What's even worse is when people expect you to show them around and act like a tour guide. The only time I go to the National Mall is to play kickball! We eventually split up--me with the wife, and Daniel with the husband. And I ended up going home by early afternoon. I had a good time, but no love connection. Oh well.

Daniel is a very sweet guy, and I'm sure he'll find a really nice woman some day. But I'm not her.