DATE 12 PRETTY WOMAN: THE HIGHS AND LOWS WITH EDWARD DAY 1

“Did you sext with him? Were you dirty Skyping?” My friend Doug asked.

“No!” I replied, “Not even close! I barely shared stories with him because I wanted to be sure we had things to talk about while I was there.”

“Then it was totally inappropriate and presumptuous on his part,” Doug concluded. From the mouth of a guy, so I guess it was normal to have the reaction I did…

But let me start from the beginning.  My friend of over thirty years set me up with her cousin.  We’ve been texting and speaking on the phone daily since our first contact at the end of July.  He lived in NY, I’m in FL, and he’s passionate about travel.  First date… a trip to New Orleans.

I was excited to meet him. I was excited to explore a new city with him.  So, I laughed off the guy in the airport who found it so bizarre that I was meeting a first date in New Orleans, that he insisted on giving me his number in case it didn’t work out.  As if it wouldn’t be more bizarre to call this stranger to save me from a bad date.

And it wasn’t a bad date. It was an amazing date and it was an overwhelming date. Therefore, I’m going to break this blog entry into 3 parts: Day 1, Day 2, Day3/Aftermath.

DAY 1

The day had finally arrived. Edward was flying me to New Orleans, he’d given me the hotel information and I was going to meet him there.  At this point, I had looked up the hotel and it was extravagantly gorgeous.  He had texted me to meet him at the hotel… our room number was 1007.  I found that troubling.  While we hadn’t discussed room accommodations, every other man who had proposed an out of town date, led with, “And I’ll get you your own room so you feel comfortable.”  I just assumed that him being so gentlemanly and thoughtful, he would have reserved me my own room… I mean even Chris Harrison waits two months before he offers the women the option to take their own room or go with the Bachelor to the Fantasy Suite.

But, then again, he could have gotten a suite with two bedrooms, and all of the pictures of the rooms I’d seen online had two queen-sized beds, so I decided to wait to see what the story was.

He greeted me in the lobby with a big kiss on the lips. Not a peck, a kiss like you’d give your girlfriend whom you haven’t seen in a month. Okay, so this guy is more affectionate than me. Not that I’m not affectionate, it just takes me time to warm up to someone, trust them, feel comfortable with them before I go “all-in.”

When he opened the door to our room, it was huge and beautiful as I walked through.  And then I saw it…

One king-sized bed! As Julia Roberts would say, “Big mistake, Big… Huge!” I honestly believe I was in shock.  My gut had a hundred questions it wanted answered immediately before it went into panic mode, like “What does this guy think I’m going to do with him?” “Did I give off some kind of signal that I am a slut?” “Did just agreeing to come here send a message that I am going to sleep with him?” Sh*t! This dating stuff is new to me and I don’t know the rules!!!!

Then my brain/logic side took over, “You are here for two nights and 3 days, you are not going to do anything you don’t want to do, you can handle this!”

So, I put my luggage down, we got in a cab, and we drove off to a part of town he wanted to show me.  First thing he did on the quaint little street was take me into a store and buy me a cute NOLA t-shirt.  He said that we could stop in any store I wanted, and do anything I want to do.  He also wanted to buy me lunch since I hadn’t eaten in 6 hours, but I wasn’t hungry yet. We went into a few art galleries and thrift shops.  He kept telling me how beautiful I am and kissing me, while we shared stories getting to know each other.  It was very normal, and natural, as I’d expected it would be from the phone calls we had had, but something was brewing inside of me.  He had a business call which gave me time to eat a little something, as I had no appetite and I had to force myself to eat.  My brain was not letting my gut speak up but my gut was fighting hard.

After his call we took a cab back to the hotel to get ready for a walk to the French Quarter. I could feel my nerves growing as we got closer to the hotel and the moment the cab dropped us off, I pulled Edward away from the hotel to a bench and sat him down.  (This is my Tweetable for this entry because I believe all women should speak their mind when they are uncomfortable)

“I’m really uncomfortable about the room. I was not expecting a king-sized bed, & I’m not sure what you’re expecting.” @50FirstDatesG

“We’re both adults,” he said, “We can do what ever we want. If you just want to kiss and cuddle that’s fine, if we want more, we can do what we want.”

I can’t stand that “we’re adults” crap.  So what, we are adults, what does that mean? Adults drive drunk, gamble away their homes, and murder people. Being an adult has nothing to do with sex other than you’ve learned through your many years of experience that it has consequences.  I had to put my foot down and set some boundaries or this trip would be ruined. “I am fine with kissing, but nothing else, I want to be clear about that.”

I was clear because he was a perfect gentleman after that and I was able to enjoy the rest of the day.

The French quarter was so interesting; street performers, architecture, ghost tours, fascinating window dressing, colorful art galleries, music, history, food… We explored a voodoo museum and then went to a famous dueling piano bar. He bought me NY Giants beads and told me I had to wear them all weekend.  I have never seen a city as committed to a sports team as New Orleans is to their Saints!  It was a risk, but the way the Giants have been playing, I figured no one would feel threated.  We walked down Bourbon street which was already crawling with drunks in the middle of the afternoon, carrying their open containers.  I decided I did not need to come back to this street at night when they were completely wasted and in masses.

We went back to the hotel, showered (separately), and he took me for a lovely dinner at Commanders Palace Restaurant.  A table of drunk, though striking looking 60-somethings, sat next to us. They kept apologizing for being loud and obnoxious.  Edward told them we were on our honeymoon and as an actress, I had no trouble improving the scene with him.

After we went to the French Quarter to listen to music.  One woman insisted on seeing my ID and was not kidding when she looked at me and told me that she thought I was an underage college student.  For that I needed to take a picture with her.

Edward’s romancing me continued as he found the street poets he’d read about and had one type up a poem for me.  It had the Monkees in it, so I loved it. We listened to a little more music and then, both of us being tired, went back to the hotel to go to sleep.

He did as he promised and kissed me goodnight and was asleep in seconds.  The stress of the situation had taken it’s toll on me early on, and so I put on a meditation MP3 and went to sleep, wondering what day two would bring…