We all have dating eliminating factors, characteristics that, if we discover about a potential paramour, mean we will eliminate them from our dating pool, no matter how cute they are.  Maybe you don't like facial hair.  Maybe you won't date a guy with dogs.  Maybe kids or smoking are eliminating factors for you.  Those two are factors I'd like to avoid, but not absolute eliminating factors for me.  Unemployment and a history of psychiatric instability definitely ARE eliminating factors, however.

And this weekend, I discovered another one I hadn't encountered yet.

Things were looking pretty good after my second date with Diver Friday night.  We got along easily in conversation, and certainly had plenty of physical chemistry.  We had a long makeout session not watching a movie, and while he respected my wishes about staying clothed, he pushed the boundaries enough and we spent a large enough proportion of our time together making out that I wasn't yet entirely convinced that he was interested in me for anything more than getting laid.  But to be frank, my sex life is kind of slow at the moment, so even if it didn't turn into something serious, I wouldn't mind finding someone to pass the time with ;)  

But while he flirted at things we might do together in the future of an intimate nature (indicating a desire to keep seeing one another), when I asked if he still wanted me to go skydiving with him on the next Friday (my birthday), his response was... less than unenthusiastic.  He said "Sure, if you want to."  And then he went on about how he'd have to get the information to the dive school to me so I could call and make an appointment and see if they even still had any slots open for a first time jumper at the same time as him and and and...  a whole bunch of discouragements.

What the hell?  He'd invited me, unsolicited, to go with him, twice.  Finally, I agreed.  Now I was getting the impression he didn't really want me to go.  I didn't press it, but thinking about it later, decided to ask him about it the next time I saw him online, to clear the air, give him an out if he didn't want to go skydiving together, and to determine whether I should start planning for this to actually happen or not.

Late Saturday night, as I was battling a bout of insomnia around 3am, he IM'd me.  Drunk.  The conversation that ensued and the followup conversation today, well...  you'll just have to see for yourself.

My sister and her family are vacationing at the beach a few hours from here this week - they normally live a dozen or so hours away from here in the city where we grew up.  So I went out to visit with them for a few days, and one evening she and I decided to go out just the two of us.  We had dinner at a nice restaurant with an oyster bar in it.  After dinner, we went in to the bar for a few drinks and a few smokes (OK, for her to have a few drinks and smokes, since I'm a nondrinker and nonsmoker).  Within a few minutes, a group of a half a dozen guys or so came into the bar and congregated around us.  They were in town for some sort of sales convention, and were meeting up in the bar prior to having dinner at the restaurant.  They were very affable, one was even quite cute and sociable, so we didn't mind them starting to chat us up - EXCEPT...  one in their midst was drunk.  I mean really REALLY drunk, before they even walked in.  Aaaaaaand of course, he sat down right next to ME.

My friend set me up with a friend of hers...  it was someone who'd been a playmate before she got into her current relationship.  She warned me that he was probably not good relationship material, being a bit of an emotionally screwed up wounded bird, but that he was fun and cute and kinky and good in bed and so worth my time.  She mentioned that he'd had a problem with alcohol in the past, to the extent that he lost his drivers license because he couldn't seem to stop drinking and driving.  But that he'd gone through a treatment program and kicked alcohol several years earlier.  OK, expectations very much in check, I met him.   

Since I'm posting about it here, you can guess that it wasn't the most successful of dating adventures.