Not Quite Donna Reed

Washington DC: Day 3,829,238,494

Per a suggestion from a friend, I decided to hop over to the bar at The Jefferson on Friday night for an after work libation. This is where the washington power brokers congregate and I wanted in on that action. I grabbed a 14 dollar martini and worked the room nicely. I stumbled across a really interesting guy. Giving new meaning to the phrase "Like a moth to a flame", turns out he's in my dating "pool" so I finagled a proper Washington DC date out of him.

The Particulars:

Him: 29, resident pediatrician, lives in Nashville, doing advocacy work for the AMA in DC for the month

Me: Mesmerized

We went to dinner at Georgia Browns and then walked around the national mall and the monuments. DC is a great walking city, especially at night. The sound of distant gunfire and a constant barrage of homeless help-me-outs couldn't dampen my evening whatsoever. That's when you know its good, when your personal safety takes a back seat to a dating experience.

The good: We are both from small town NC. We have similar southern values and are ready for new relationships in our lives. He's dapper, intelligent and well intentioned and beyond eager to make it work despite any geographical, professional, social obstacles.

The Not So Good: He's a pediatrician, and so is my dad. While I realize theres coalition there, something about it just seems familar and gross-like. Because of his sexual orientation he will probably be forced to live a very low-key lifestyle for the duration of his career. He has every intention of returning to his small town (and I mean small) to join his lifetime mentors practice and small southern towns dont mind running queer doctors out of town.

So that started me thinking about living in a small town:

I think I'd make a fantastic small town gay. I'd work until I didn't have to then I would totally join the junior league; Then I could pull out my yellow/ palm tree embroidered Lilly Pulitzer golf pants and the make-me-gag green sweater vest. I'd throw the best parties for miles. I'd volunteer at the local women's shelter and put on a charity golf tournament every year that benefits the animal shelter. I'd coordinate the house staff, perfect the art of casserole making and sipping wine on the back porch in the evenings. I'd invite my friends for bridge and steaks on Friday nights. I would gossip behind everyone's back in an attempt to thwart the attention away from my own "no-so-private" personal issues. Little would I know everyone in town already knows about, and revels in, my problems.

Frequent trips to the Texas hill country to visit my equally fabulous friends 'Gladys Panzerhof' and 'Sammy Lee Bass' would be a must. We will all sit around while our significant others play golf and drink gin and tonics. We would make inappropriate statements about other races, perpetuate misinformation about our mutual friends and mutually exclude each other from feeling bad about the way we are acting.

In the evenings my partner and I will retire to separate areas of the house. I will watch reality TV, he will balance the checkbook and get mad about my spending habits. We will slowly start to resent our situation (and each other) but our fear of being alone at this point in our lives will muffle any appropriate actions we should take. Luckily we won't have any children to consider as we both spiral into the depths of our silent desperation.

In a perfect world he would preceed me in death so I can move back to the Texas Hill country and live out my days with my best friends a-la golden girls style. We would have a cute pool boy who serves us martinis all day long and a driver to take us everywhere in our big white cadillac.

We could all three be buried together in a small Tx cemetary under a weatherproof disco ball. This way, we wont have any problems finding eachother when we get to hell, of course thats where were going according to over 50% of the populations religious beliefs. Thats ok though, we will have the most fabulous condo on the shores of the Lake of Fire that Hell has ever seen and a fantastic tan to go along with it.