Punch-Out!!

Simpson and I went out last night. She almost canceled the date at the last minute cause she had to take her mom to her sister's place (her mom is in from out of town and doesn't have a car here). The conversation went really well. One thing about Simpson is that I feel very comfortable around her. She is smart enough to have a decent conversation with but not so smart as to be self aware (which usually leads to awkwardness). At the end of the date, I didn't find myself laying in bed thinking about her. I don't feel inspired to write a song about her. I want to go out with her again. I just don't feel that extra umph. That unexplainable something that you feel with some people and don't feel with others. We made plans to do something on Saturday.

Today I rememberd that I had already made plans for Saturday with UpsideDown. UpsideDown and I used to work together many years ago. She found me on the facebook and I thought it would be fun to hang out. I don't know how serious I am/could be about dating UpsideDown because she has several kids and we never really clicked that well. I am gonna try and move the hang out with UpsideDown to Friday so I can do the date with Simpson on Saturday.

Notes: I told FormerLesbian that I would go running with her today. The poor girl is suffering from depression and I think she really needs some friends. Pulse told me she was hanging out with her exboyfriend. Since then, she has been fairly distant. In fact, she didn't even respond to my last text. On Sunday, I talked for a few seconds to this girl Filer. I have kinda known Filer for over a year. She is good friends with TheFlake. Filer looked really good at church and I found myself wanting to date her. The problem is, Filer taught TheFlake everything she knows about how to flirt with boys but keep them at arms length. It's like trying to beat Mike Tyson in Punch-Out!! before you are able to beat Don Flamenco. You are outmatched and in way over your head.

Fatal flaws of mormon dating

I agree with everyone's comments that I need to just move on. I have felt strongly about a girl/girls in the past and I hope that someday I can feel that way again. There isn't a lot of point in dating a girl that I am not falling head over heels for (other than making my mom and dad very happy).

When I was in college (back in my younger days...), if a weekend came up where I didn't have a date, I could just go to some party with a group of friends and walk away with a date for the following weekend. Those days are gone. I still have single friends and they still go to those parties. I even attend with them occasionally. But, I almost never leave having met a single girl with any real prospect. There are several reasons.

1. The mormon aristocracy. I talked about these people in a previous post. The mormon aristocracy dominates these parties. It's the same elitists at basically every party. Or at least a very large group of them. They all know each other. The guys in the mormon aristocracy are usually tools. Some may be nice guys but I would guess most of them are stringing along four or five girls. Likewise, the girls in the mormon aristrocracy are stringing along four or five guys. What you end up with is this giant web of self loving elitists. To break a girl away from that web, you have to convince her you are better than the four or five guys she is stringing along and the one guy that is stringing her along.

2. Molds. A girl already has plenty of friends that are guys. She has been used by plenty of tools. If she is 18, 19 or 20, she may not be looking for a serious relationship. If she is 21 or older, she has developed a mold. This mold is what she expects her boyfriend/husband to fit into. Who knows what is in this mold? They don't broadcast it. I am not even sure if a single guy at the parties fits into the mold. They want rich and tall and dark and handsome and foreign and loving and independent and caring and studly and able to do double back flips off of diving boards and have the ability to woo every girl in the room but somehow choose them. TheFlake is a perfect example of a girl with a mold.

3. Defenses. When I do meet a girl at one of these parties, she already has her guard up. Every guy there is a tool until proven otherwise and I have zero opportunity to prove otherwise. Lets say that I start a conversation with a girl. In my experience, I have two minutes. During those two minutes, I have to prove that a) I am interesting, b) that I am funny, c) that I am competent, d) that I am not a tool, e) that I am interested, and f) that I am attractive enough to warrant a date. It is basically impossible. "Oh Tripp," you say, "why can't you just ask them for their phone number and prove it on a date?" Good question. It's because these girls don't give out their number to guys they aren't interested in. If you ask too soon, then you are a creeper. If you somehow manage to get enough points to justify them giving you their number (I imagine that for guys that are much better looking than me, this is easier), you have to KNOW when you have reached this threshold and act on it before your two minutes are up. Once the two minutes are up, and two minutes is only an estimate, you have lost your chance. You are either interrupted by a guy that knows her and is more than willing to cock block you or the girl walks away from the conversation.

So, here is my frustration. I can't meet girls. I go on plenty of dates but many (if not most) are with girls I am not interested in. A lot are set ups. I almost never am interested in the girls that people are offering to set me up with. Sure I can give them a chance but statistically, I am not going to meet someone I am interested in on a blind date.

I have tried other methods of meeting girls. I have been to mormon dances. It's a wasteland. There are two kinds of girls that go to dances. 1. Girls who like to dance and are emotionally unavailable. 2. Girls who are looking for a man. Girls who are looking for a man like that are not the girls that I want to go out with. The girls who like to dance have no interest in a relationship. Most are too young for me to date anyway. I have tried meeting girls at church. The singles wards are full of girls right? Wrong. The singles wards are full of young girls who aren't even thinking about marriage and non-attractive girls. The whole mormon dating system is fatally flawed.

The Mormon Aristocracy

I just googled "mormon dating blog" to see when my blog came up. Yep, there it was, number 134 out of about 860,000. It made me feel pretty special to know I was in the top .02% of mormon dating blogs.

Last night I went to a Sub for Santa party. Everyone donates money and then we go shopping and buy gifts for some needy families. TheFlake was there. Well, she showed up late as we were wrapping presents. I didn't actually see her help at all. I think TheFlake is part of what I will refer to as the mormon aristocracy. Granted, it's no Paris Hilton or English royalty group. Nevertheless, these single beautiful mormon people seem to run the social scene around here.

It isn't so clear cut as to who is in or out of the mormon aristocracy. I am pretty sure that I have a number of acquaintances who belong to this privileged social class. I see them at the same parties. I talk with them for a bit. They usually aren't very interested in talking to me. It's almost like they can immediately sense that I am not mormon royalty and therefore not worth the time. If TheFlake is part of mormon royalty, that would explain why she is so standoffish.

There really weren't any other prospects last night. A couple cute girls were there. I tried to join into their conversation which sounded something like this "Right now I have two sets of season tickets to SportingTeam. One set is on the 6th row in center court. Well, actually they are my grandpa's but he loves me so much. Since I was little he was wrapped around my little finger." Yuck. I felt like I was in an episode of the Hills or something.

Is it for me?

So one of my friends Foot was doing her visiting teaching. Good mormon girl type activity. Now, I am not sure how it came up but she starts telling the girl she is visiting teaching about my date with SouthernBelle. Sometime along the way, the girl she is visiting teaching stops her and says "I went on that date! I am SouthernBelle." Yeah, pretty embarrassing. She didn't see the blog but I am sure that my level of dorkiness in her book went way up. I mean, what guy blogs about his dates? I had serious thoughts of ending A Date with Tripp Hazard because of this incident. Foot also informed me that SouthernBelle thinks I am kinda old. Now that really hurt my feelings. Anyone who has met me knows that I have a young spirit. I neither look nor act my age. I called SouthernBelle on it and she said that she hates gossip and that it wasn't what she said. Who knows?

On Sunday at ward prayer, I hardly said a word to SouthernBelle. The whole activity was literally crawling with 19 year old girls. I talked to two different girls for most of the time. Both were 19. Then I met MathCheerCoach. MathCheerCoach is a math teacher at a local high school. She also is the cheer coach. We talked a little but she didn't seem that interested in talking with me. Plus, she doesn't want to stay here. She wants to move someplace warm. That's great, except my house, my career, my family and my life are here. So it's two strikes against her already.

SouthernBelle and I agreed to go out this Saturday but she texted me last night and had to cancel. I am sort of up a river without a paddle right now. My first thought was to call TheWriter. She and I met online but haven't met yet. Thing is, I have seen lots of pictures of her (there are almost 1000 on facebook) and I am only attracted to her in about 10% of those. I know, what a weird number. TheWriter is goofy and fun and outgoing, but if I am not attracted to her, I certainly won't start dating her. My next thought was Aussie. I messaged her on facebook but she said her parents were in town and she had to spend time with them. I am still considering other girls, including MathCheerCoach, Virginia, and TheFlake. Virginia is a girl I have never met that added me as a friend on facebook. We have several mutual friends. Looking at her pictures, I am very attracted to her. TheFlake is a girl I have had a crush on in the past. She works at a dry cleaning place and is quite flaky. But gorgeous and spunky and fun and cute and just so attractive.

Last night I went and hung out with FormerLesbian. I found it a bit disturbing. First, I met her mother. Overweight but nice. Second, I found out FormerLesbian has lost 80 pounds. She used to weigh 225. Now, that's great that she lost all of that weight but I still see that as a negative. Finally, FormerLesbian acts like she is in love with me already. I may be handsome and charming, but I am not THAT handsome or THAT charming. So it makes me awfully suspicious when a girl starts having feelings for me that early on that are that strong. Plus, when I feel lukewarm and they come on strong, it's definitely a turnoff.

Jackson Square

Last week, I went to the Q-Tip Concert. It was the most fun I have ever had at a concert. I really just let loose and forgot about worrying. I met several girls there. The one that I was the most interested in was TheFlake. I have actually met her before, at a dance party 9 months or so ago. She is this pretty little blonde, very flirty. I immediately had a huge crush on her. Of course, so do just about all of my friends. She is 26 and single. According to my friends, she is very good at keeping boys at arm's length. I also met M. She was a little more uptight than TheFlake but still way fun. And very pretty. I haven't decided yet if I want to take her on a date. I also met M's friend J. J is much more shy and she was there with a guy she likes but still, there was something about her that I found very interesting. FarFarAway was there. FarFarAway is this girl I have hung out with a couple of times. She is very busty and I think a bit manipulative. She was hitting on me pretty heavily at the concert. She just got dumped by this guy and I think her biological clock is ticking. She is cute, but probably the furthest from what I want or am interested in.

Friday, I went to this party in Bountiful. TheFlake was there and my crush was renewed. She is so flirty with boys though. I tried to capture her attention but only got a tiny bit of it. It kinda frustrated me a little.

Faline was at the party. I met Faline a few weeks ago and she didn't seem that interested. But on Friday night, we sat and talked for most of the night and it seemed like we had a lot in common. I got her phone number. We texted until late that night. I felt like we really bonded. Then, the next morning, the girl I had a date with for that night said she couldn't go. So, I texted Faline and she responded that she would LOVE to go to the fair with me. She showed up at the house and she looked really pretty. Although Faline is probably not as pretty as Catcher or TheFlake, Faline is still a very pretty girl. The fair went really well. I would say it was one of the better dates I have been on in the last 10 years. We found out that we have tons in common. We both like to read, we like to play board games, we like to run, we like to travel, and we like to try new things (like food). I was very impressed with how intelligent Faline was. More so though, I was impressed with how she acted around me. She was just super chill and fun. It was like I didn't have to work very hard to click with her. We went shopping at Walmart after the fair and then we hung up some pictures in my house and watched a movie. I wanted to hold her hand so bad during the movie but I refrained. I just didn't want her to think I was that kind of guy. I really really wanted to kiss her at the end of the date but I also refrained. I really hope it doesn't come back to bite me in the butt.

Faline was almost engaged a year ago, even though she is just 20 now. She is quite set on going on a mission next year. That makes me a bit wary but thus far, she doesn't seem to be holding back with me. Faline already seems like very decent wife material.

Sunday was the going away party for one of my best friends, TheCaptain. He is going to law school and we planned a huge party at my house. TONS of people showed up. TheFlake was there. FarFarAway was there. Esmerelda was there. Faline was there. A girl I used to have a crush on MH was there. It was so much fun. I bounced around meeting people and talking and just playing host. I took several girls on tours of my house. One in particular was W. She said several times that she hoped I would invite her over again to the house. We became friends on Facebook so it may happen.

Monday night (last night) I got a text from Ariel saying she was done with finals and she wanted to come over and paint. She came over and we ran to Walmart to buy some painting supplies. We decided to paint a Zebra for the jungle room in my house. Ariel is actually a very decent painter. I mostly just played guitar while she worked on the zebra. The painting was not finished but we both were tired of it so we went into the house. The mood was kind of different, but Ariel and I ended up wrestling a little. While we wrestled, I kissed her. Several times. She definitely kissed me back but the kisses weren't super romantic. I am not ready to move her back as a possibility but it was really fun hanging out with her last night.