Attack of the Alpha Male (or Please Weigh In On What To Do With This One)

So, as many of you know from talking to me or reading this blog, I've posted an on-line profile on Match.com (if you don't know this you haven't been reading my blog very closely because I discussed it at length on the post previous to this one). Much to my relief, I've gotten a few winks and e-mails and, in turn, have sent a few myself. It's been entertaining, to say the least.

Anyway, so just a little while after I posted my profile on-line I received an e-mail from this guy who lives not too far from me asking me about my Peace Corps experience. I looked at the link to his website that he provided; he's been all over the world and seems to be interesting, so I e-mailed him back. What the hell, right?

What ensued has been, uh, pretty interesting. Right off the bat he started in with these pretty sharp, thought provoking questions. In his first e-mail to me, he asked me if my ex were strapped to a lie detector what would be the three things he would say he missed most about me and the three things he missed least about me. I won't go into my answers (unless you really want me to), but needless to say I was kind of impressed by the boldness of his question: this is no, run-of-the-mill "So what kind of music do you like?" sort of inquiry. So, I took the bait and replied.

That was when it got interesting.

By the third round of e-mails he was asking me three reasons why I should go out with him. Now, I thought at first this was just a tad arrogant and considered not responding, but then decided given the playful banter via our e-mails, he probably didn't mean to come across arrogant and was testing the waters to see if I'd go out with him. I responded with the typical bullshit about me being interesting and able to hold my own in a conversation, yada yada yada. Then I shot back with the same question: why should I go out with him? Why is he so special?

However, instead of giving me three good reasons why I should go out with him, he gave me three reasons why I shouldn't. The first reason was because he's unabashedly politically conservative (I called myself 'Very Liberal' on my profile, thus a reason why I wouldn't be wild about going out with him), but that he respects others' views and most of his friends are liberal, as he was in the past. (I wondered what made him go over to the dark side?)

The second reason was because he wasn't interested in getting married or having kids any time soon. This made me chuckle because, as most of you know, for years and years I was adamently opposed to the idea of getting married, let alone having a brood of children. I still have days where I question my ability to stay with one person for the rest of my life, let alone bring another person into the world.

The third reason was because he gave good neck and foot massages and would spoil me for other men (no, seriously, I shit you not, he said that). This is where the whole arrogant part comes, in just in case you hadn't picked up on that.

Needless to say, I wasn't sure what to do after receiving this e-mail. I'm so use to dealing with mild mannered, "soft" (as Brian so accurately put it) people, especially boyfriends, that I waffled about what to do. Do I respond? Do I ignore him? Do I shoot back with a who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are response?

After weighing my options I decided to take the bait. Again. I e-mailed him back and said that a) I wouldn't hold him being conservative against him as long as he didn't hold me being a feminist and liberal against me, b) I'm not looking to get married or have kids either, so that was a non-issue and c) what exactly was he looking to get out of this? Dinner? Someone to hang out with? Sex? What. I told him I was a little hesitant to go out with him. I also mentioned my neck had been giving me problems lately (I kind of regret saying that last bit, but I couldn't resist).

The last e-mail from him seemed to be a bit tamer. He basically said he just wants to have dinner to see if we get along and that was it. This seemed reasonable, and, I'll admit it, by now I was really curious to see what this globe-trotting Republican was like so I said have dinner with him, but that I wanted to chat with him a bit first.

So, I talked to him last night and he seemed like a pretty nice guy. Not arrogant. Just self confident. We chatted about Russia, my grad school plans, etc., and then we set up plans to have dinner in IC on Saturday. This is all fine and good except....

I'm actually really nervous about meeting this guy. What if he's a total dick and I'm stuck having dinner with him forevvverrrr? What if he's crazy? Worse yet, what if he's really cool (I'll overlook the whole Republican thing for arguement's sake here), and he doesn't think I'm cute or smart enough to date (see PhD guy episode from March)? What if I don't live up to the on-line expectations he has of me based on my pictures or profile? What if I'm a disappointment? What do I do? What do you think?