The Tale of the Tall Interesting Gentleman

It was a dark and stormy night. Two bright, vivacious young women pulled up along the sidewalk in a sketchy neighborhood in front of their destination -- an old house undergoing renovation, designated by its portico festooned with twinkling lights. Uncertain what to expect, they entered the house...and fell through the rabbit-hole into the craziest party they had attended in South Bend. One of the bright, vivacious young women -- me -- came out with a folded paper in her pocket, on which was drawn, in green marker, a map to a Ukrainian Catholic Church, and, more importantly, a tall interesting gentleman's phone number.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am about to take you through the latest tale in my bizarre saga of frustrated possibilities.

I decided it would behoove me to wait till midweek to give this Tall Interesting Gentleman a call. As he had invited me to attend his church, and as I wanted a break from feeling like shit in Sunday School, I decided to take him up on his offer, both for the cultural experience of the Ukrainian Catholic Church (which, if I remember rightly, was Orthodox for awhile but in the 16somethings went back to Catholicism, preserving a lot of the original liturgical and artistic styles of the Orthodox church within itself) and for a chance to get to know him better. But I didn't want to call him about church on Monday and sound lame, so I thought I would call him on Thursday. Thursday's a good day. Close to the weekend, but with enough notice for him to include me in any weekend plans he might have, once I'd talked to him.

I was too inebriated to think to give this Tall Interesting Gentleman (TIG) my own phone number, and I was rather excited about the ball being in my court. Normally I discipline myself not to make the first move (the only times I have initiated anything turned out poorly, and the other times I almost initiated something I learned the guy in question was interested in/dating someone else, and for dignity's sake was glad I didn't actually get to initiate something), but in this case he was the one who'd given me his number, which counted, and I found myself terribly satisfied at the idea of calling him at my leisure, when I was ready to talk.

So Thursday rolled around, and I geared up my nerves, and dialed his number. (Actually I pressed the "Send" button on my cell phone, having saved his number into it.) I got all ready to say hello and go through the "I'm the Sarah you met last Friday at the party," when...he didn't answer.

I let it ring eight or nine times, thinking perhaps it was a home number, and then had to hang up so I didn't sound crazy, in case he was home and screening his calls. I was confused. I hadn't counted on this turn of events. In every scenario I had envisioned, he might have invited me out over the weekend, he might have agreed to come pick me up for church, he might have agreed to meet me at church, he might have invited me to brunch after church, but he always answered the phone. It didn't even occur to me to think that if I was ready to talk, he might not be.

MP suggested that as a grad student he might have been at an evening class when I called. So I decided to try him in the midafternoon on Friday. He didn't pick up his phone that time either, but it did go to the automated "The Nextel subscriber you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try your call again later" message. So I learned that he had a cell phone, and that he didn't have voice mail.

Hm. Well, I thought, I'm not calling him again today. My number will show up on his phone, so hopefully he'll see that it's the same number as yesterday and call out of curiosity. But I also don't want to look like a psycho repeat-dialer. So I'll call him one more time on Saturday.

No answer then either. At that point I wondered if perhaps he had dropped his phone in the toilet, or run it over with a truck. It was a Saturday, for heaven's sake. So after a conference with MP, she said she wanted a break from her church too, so we decided to trek out together to the Ukrainian Catholic Church and see if we'd run into him.

Of course this all sounded much more noble when we were planning it. In our minds, there was no hint of the desperate "I'm so single and you're tall and interesting and good-looking and well-dressed and you listened to me rave about poetry and you were interested in what I had to say about 'Spring and All' and the slower, better seasons in Pennsylvania and you know how to take care of plants and since I can't get hold of you over the phone I'll collar you in church just in case there was a good reason for not answering my calls and because my curiosity is piqued" symptoms of the woman who has lived too long alone with nothing to do but watch TV; we wanted the cultural experience of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and if the TIG happened to be there, so much the better.

So we went to the Ukrainian Catholic Church. And it was small and beautiful. The art is very Orthodox and richly colored and gilded. The liturgy is, except for the homily, the announcements, and one collective prayer, entirely sung. And the TIG wasn't there.

It's not like we missed him in the crowd; the crowd consisted of about twenty people. So we squeezed in next to this tiny old lady who was our Ukrainian Good Fairy for the entire Mass and walked us through the liturgy book and showed us when to stand and sit, and which refrains to sing, and asked us if we were baptized into the Catholic church, and when we said no, told us anyway how the Communion was served differently in this church than in the Roman Catholic tradition. She was sweet, and sharp, and adorable, and wonderful. And even though my vocal cords felt a little stretched after the service, I was glad for the cultural experience that I went.

But no TIG.

As we walked out of the church, I said to MP, "I think this is a SIGN FROM GOD." She laughed, and agreed, and I filed it away for my non-dating annals, and am now reporting it to you.

Although I did learn that the TIG is a part-time truck driver on some weekends. So maybe he was out of town; but that still doesn't explain why he doesn't have voice mail (you'd think that would be all the more incentive TO have voice mail). So regardless, I think perhaps he's a bit odd, and I'm not too worried about pursuing his cell phone any further.

At least I got a really cool Mass out of the deal.

And the bright, vivacious young woman resolved to laugh, and keep her chin up, and wait for the next adventure.

The End