Dating Blogger Amy: Ben the Aussie

None of my interactions with Ben the Aussie were promising.  Though I became quickly aware of this, he remained pathetically oblivious.   I received a voicemail from him a few days after I broke up with my live-in boyfriend.  He said he met me through EVon and wanted to take me out to lunch.  This was bad sign number one. I had no idea who he was.  I didn’t remember anyone like him in the slightest nor did I recall giving anyone like him in the slightest my number (which was especially unlikely at the time since I had a boyfriend).  But since he had an attractive Australian-sounding accent I considered calling him back.  I finally decided to go ahead with it when a good friend explained her theory on I-don’t-remember-giving-him-my-number calls:  If we give men our real numbers, there must be some attraction even if the person is too fucked up to know what’s going on at the time.

Her theory was severely disproved. 

I met Ben the Aussie for real at Cain shortly after I rejected his first lunch/dinner offer.  He was not attractive.  In fact he was too short for me (I’m 5’ 10” and do not consider shorter men), had a ponytail (as Best Friend would later say, Ben the Aussie turned out to be Ben the Ponytail) twisted into a bun and was just plain not hot enough to stand next to me. 

I rudely and unsuccessfully tried to ignore him that night. And he kept asking me out. For the next three-and-a-half months. I kept him on the backburner because a) suitors are amusing and b) suitors are often always good for something.  Ben the Aussie was good for two things:  he was “friends” with EVon (a crush of mine for 3 years) and therefore an outlet for EVon information/access. He would later reveal he had access to a private rooftop pool in the West Village.

He steadily asked me out a couple times a week—to lunch, dinner, Bungalow 8 (so over)—and I kept declining because there was always something better going on unrelated to him.  Then he went to Alaska for six weeks, where he caught a “200 lb. halibut” and “put a few bullets in some deer…” Such a poet.

When he returned to New York I bumped into him at Cain. Again. Cain was empty and Ben the Aussie was, if I remember correctly, with another guy. I arrived with T.S. Ben Ben the Aussie invaded my personal space while T.S. fetched me a glass of champagne.  I think he even tried to grope my ass as he proceeded to invite me to lunch the next day.  I said yes because I was tipsy and I just wanted him to go away quickly so I could focus on T.S.

So T.S. and I made out a few yards away from Ben the Aussie shortly thereafter. Of course, he never called me for lunch the next day, not that I can say I would have actually gone.

A couple weeks later he invited me over to his apartment to watch Entourage (!?!).

Why oh why after months of date declines would Ben the Aussie not get the hint?  Why would he think a short man with a bun like himself would be able to date a girl like me?  Did he not understand that I was at least three inches taller than him (and I like to wear heels, no less) and at least three galaxies better looking than him?  I even made out with someone else in front of him.  I slapped him across the face with rejection in nearly every way imaginable and he still thought I would be interested in dating him.  Is it plain to only my girlfriends and myself that I was only keeping him on file in case I could use him for something?  People are so. Fucking. DENSE.

There was no way in an outer borough I was going to go over to his apartment on Sunday night to watch Entourage with just him.  So I suggested we do something Monday night. Why the counter-offer? Because a) I wanted to prod him for info on EVon and b) I wanted to further the pool dialogue.

So on Monday night Ben the Aussie suggested a drink at Dos Caminos SoHo.  The offer should have been appealing because I’m quite fond of DC and SoHo, *but* I had made a resolution to give up drinking for a month just two days before (which I was successful in completing save two glasses of wine, thankyouverymuch). Ben the Aussie’s drink-specific invitation meant if I accepted I’d be forced to abandon my resolve. Had he suggested dinner I could have stayed the course. So I walked over from my apartment, arriving 20 minutes late (my therapist always says if you’re late, there’s a reason—further proof I was at least mildly dreading the encounter). 

I found Ben the Aussie perched on some fire hydrant-like apparatus outside the restaurant.  He intersected me as I approached, made some comment about disliking the DC hostess, and suggested we go to an empty pretentious West Broadway restaurant a couple doors down. 

We sat at the bar on uncomfortable chairs with seats made out of sparsely interlocked rubber bands. I ordered a glass of wine, he a beer.  We made the typical small talk.  I found out he works in finance.  And yawned.  I told him I work for Jewcy, an ONLINE MAGAZINE that’s not for really religious people, but, you know, people like myself who identify as Jewish in a cultural sense.  He replied that his sister just loved our sweatpants.  No no no.  All wrong, Ben the Aussie.  I did not say anything about clothing.  I said some things about online periodical content and Jewishness.  I did not say Juicy Couture.  I said Jewcy.  I even spelled it—J-E–W-c-y—for you.  So. Fucking. Dense. 

A third of the way through my Pinot Noir, he began this conversation:

“You know, the last time I saw you, Amy, you had texted me” [pause for dramatic effect] “And then you were making out with some funny looking guy in front of me.  And it was so funny because” [pause for dramatic effect] “he was shorter than you.”

Conversations that are exactly the opposite of awkward and insulting are my fave. I think I ended that one curtly by saying I was really drunk, which I sort of was.  And for his information, that “funny looking guy” was T.S., a really hot 24-year-old ex-model (the best kind) with a wonderful personality (no joke).  And if I had been taller than T.S. that night, I was wearing heels.  But I’m taller than Ben the Aussie when I’m not wearing heels.

So I finished my wine, declined a second glass, and Ben the Aussie decided, to my chagrin, to walk me home.  We started down Broome Street and when we came to Broadway he finally exited street North. God forbid he venture west of Broadway.