Eleven Blocks to the Love Shack

While slightly disheveled and considerably hungover, I staggered into work the next day still reeling from my previous night's encounter with the very charming Alejandro. I settled in at my desk with my morning coffee and protein bar, unable to focus on my fourteen unopened emails and the eighty phones calls I was required to make between now and 5:30pm.

"Well someone got laid last night," quipped Giggles, my balding, beer-bellied teammate who lived for the New York Jets and Kentucky Fried Chicken. For someone who was more excited for the NFL season to start than his upcoming nuptials, I could tell he was more than eager to find out why I looked like the cat who had swallowed the canary, or in this case, the girl who had been kissed by a European.

"I actually kept my pants on, Giggles, but thanks for your vote of promiscuity," I retorted. "And I'd love to hear what went on under the covers in your house last night, but considering you only get laid when you bring home a commission check and payday is a week and a half away, I'll assume you have nothing to report."

My other teammate and our manager chuckled while our fourth teammate, who had the potential to go postal at any moment, silently surfed plentyoffish.com for his next coffee date. As I launched into my lengthy anecdote of Alejandro, Vladimir, leather jackets, and too much sangria, I felt like Carrie Bradshaw as she brunched with Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda in an episode of season six, excessively excited and overly optimistic about her relationship with Jack Berger that didn't actually exist, as they had yet to go on their first date. But rather than have three women feign excitement and pledge support of my fictional relationship with a man I had known for twelve hours over mimosas and Eggs Benedict, I had four co-workers chortling and eye rolling as they prepared themselves for a day of cold calling and rejection from CFO's and EVP's who had absolutely no interest in market research.

Needless to say, in between daydreaming of my next encounter with Alejandro and the anticipation of the "day after text", I was extremely unproductive that morning. At 11:30am it finally arrived, asking if I was free for lunch. We met at a cafe a few blocks from my office where we spent more time making out than eating, much to the dismay of the other patrons who were attempting to gag down their paninis and Pellegrinos in between our hour of lip-locking, hand-handing, and eye-gazing. But in my opinion, our romantic antics were far more appropriate and endurable for a lunch crowd than the near pornographic scenes I had seen in the dark corners of The East End on a Saturday night.

By the time Thursday night came around, I had seen Alejandro on three separate occasions and couldn't have been more smitten. This was the best three day "relationship" in my New York dating history and I was ready to take our "relationship" to the next level. But I had to ask myself, was it appropriate in such short time?

I didn't want to come off as some sort of "fast" American woman, but my pocket rocket could only get me so far. And while I realized that this wasn't the age of Little Women and chastity belts (hell, that thing was long gone, anyways), I hadn't dated anyone in quite sometime where I had been properly courted--where it wasn't their primary interest to get in my pants by using the classic "let's go back to my place for a drink" line two hours into a first date. Alejandro's gentlemanly approach was refreshing (and rare) and I didn't want to take it for granted.

I calculated the number of dates Alejandro and I had been on in order to assess if I could in fact take this to the next level. After all, if he was terrible in bed, this could go no further. Monday's meeting technically counted as two dates, as there were two different locations over the span of several hours, then lunch on Tuesday, and the tour of the condo he was currently selling on East 82nd Street on Wednesday made Thursday's date number five. It could take people a month to get as far as I had gotten in a week, so kudos to me for such efficiency.

As we finished our drinks at Tin Lizzie, Vladimir in black leathered tow, I demurely suggested that Alejandro come back to the Love Shack for the evening. As he handed Vladimir his keys and finished his vodka and coke, he jokingly said, "You must have heard that the Spanish are good lovers."

Spanish, English, Uzbekistanian, first date, fifth date, I didn't care. I grabbed his hand and led him out of the bar and up Second Avenue, eleven blocks to the Love Shack...

Mission Man-Picking: Accomplished

After three too many martinis and coming to peace with the fact that I had no other option for picking up men in Manhattan than in a bar, Alejandro had whisked me off my staggering feet to a bar in Murray Hill. The bar was (predictably) a stone's throw away from his apartment--the very same apartment where he was currently housing a leather-rocking Russian and God only knows how many tonnes of enriched uranium. Yet, I was so smitten (and perhaps somewhat unsober) that the sixty blocks between me and my bed and the looming hangover between now and tomorrow morning didn't phase me one bit.

As Alejandro, the Russian, and I gathered around a small outdoor table piled with bread, olives, various tapas, and pitchers of sangria, Europeans suddenly flocked from all directions. One from behind a set of burgundy velvet curtains, another emerging from behind the bar, and yet another from the depths of the kitchen. They were all speaking in tongues with arms flailing and wine glasses clinking (ok, so they may have been proper Romance languages such as French and Spanish, with a little Russian here and there, but tongues nonetheless to the girl who could hardly speak English at this point in the night).

Should I Purell my cheeks? I wondered to myself. The European from the kitchen smelled of Grand Marnier, curry, and mutton--who knew what he was gnawing on back there that could have now transplanted itself on either, if not both, of my cheeks. It was a wonder that Europe hadn't seen a bubonic plague, Black Death-style, since the fourteenth century based on all of the cheek kissing that these people partook in with complete strangers.

"Would you like to have a cigarette with me?" Alejandro offered, diverting me from my thoughts of pandemics and sanitizer.

He pulled out a pack of Nat Shermans from the inside pocket of his suit jacket as the Russian pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds. I was impressed by Alejandro's classy tobacco preference and was surprised when the Russian didn't light two cigarettes at the same time--there was no way that Vladimir didn't have a black lung.

I was also relieved by the fact that Alejandro hadn't offered me a "fag" as many an Englishman from across the pond would have. Ask any of the NARS make-up artists at Barneys what smoking a fag is in this town and you'd never venture past Splash in Chelsea after dark or remotely think of a cigarette ever again. I mean, if I ever wanted to hear about fags, loos, and shopping trolleys, I could just turn on the BBC, for John, Paul, George, and Ringo's sake.

Alejandro was not only charming and handsome, but completely intriguing and unlike any other man I had ever met in New York. He was in high-end real estate and spoke more languages than Jason Bourne and The Pope combined. With a Belgian/French father, an Italian/Czech mother, born in Spain and brought up in London, Alejandro was a bona fide European mutt.

My Ohio roots paled in comparison. Brie and pinot noir were as far as I could get in French and my Spanish consisted solely of requests for condiments, garnishes, and alcohol that I had developed through my interaction with Mad River's bar backs over the past four years. Hell, I couldn't even find Belgium on a map.

Alejandro extinguished his cigarette and stepped closer. "I'd really like to kiss you right now, but I'm not sure if I should," he said with asking eyes.

"Well, I think you should," I replied, holding his gaze. I had kissed both an Englishman and a realtor before, but they paled in comparison to this Second Avenue lip-lock.

The imaginary fireworks that lit up the East side's skyline and the oh-so-real fireworks below my belt during Alejandro and my's first kiss were a reality check that my American girl ass needed to call it a night before my vodka hallucinations could continue--or worse, before I decided that I wanted to see the nuclear warfare bunker otherwise known as Alejandro's apartment in search of some European lovin'. I wisely hailed a cab and said goodbye to Alejandro and his international crew of chain-smoking Russians and mutton-eating Moroccans.

Only time will tell what Alejandro will bring for me and Sex & the Upper East Side...but for this week, Mission Man-Picking was officially accomplished.