Paul Photographer

Age: 32
Height: 6'4"
Occupaton: Engineering plan-drawer and photographer

Paul was one of the first fish I caught on the new website. He's works in city engineering as his day job, but fancies himself an artist on the side (much like me being a writer!). He sent me his own website, where he has posted his professional photography. He's taken some amazing pictures. If nothing else, I wanted to meet him for his creativity.

After a couple of brief e-mails, he asked if I wanted to meet for a coffee. I said sure. That was on Thursday and we met tonight after work. I was a bit nervous because I really didn't know what he looked like. He changes the picture on his profile fairly often and the first one was of him skateboarding (no facial shot) and the second one was of someone windsurfing. I managed to catch one where it was his profile and that's what I was looking for tonight.

When I got to the cafe, I immediately grabbed a table and went up to get my tea. I looked around and couldn't see anyone that looked like they were waiting for me. I took my tea to my table and then spotted a guy, texting on his cell. He had the same brownish hair and looked about 6' or so. He had notebooks in front of him, which was not in line with what I thought Paul did but I went up to him and said, "Hi, are you Paul?" He looked up briefly from his text and said, "What? No, sorry, not Paul." And went back to texting.

I sat and pulled out a book. There was this table of cute guys beside me, one guy in particular that was yummy-licious. He spoke with a sligh Irish accent and was very "metro". I thought he was gay, but he was just pretty.As I opened my book, I noticed a tall, brown-haired guy walk in. He turned to the side and I knew it was him. He got his drink and I could see he was looking around for me. As he walked by my table, I smiled and said hello.

He sat down, shook my hand and apologized for being late. He had a slight accent, Polish as it turned out to be, and he immediately reminded me of my best friend from high school who is also Polish and also tall with brown hair. I wondered if that would make a difference to me in terms of assessing his attractiveness.

Two questions in, he said, "So, how are you finding the site so far?" I was honest - I said I was fairly new but I thought there were some interesting people on it. I posed the question to him and he said, "Yeah, there's some nice people. Actually, I was out on a date on Saturday with someone I met on there." People's honest sometimes blows me away.

In my politeness, I asked how it went and where they went. He said it went really well and that they had gone to the Libra Room for drinks and that he thought he'd see her again. "Just so you know," he said. I smiled.

"Of course. That's why we're on the site, right? To meet people." The rest of the conversation was fine. After a personal pot of tea, I really had to pee (hey, that rhymed!) so towards the end, I was only thinking of whether I should use the washroom at the cafe or waddle on to the mall where I know they actual maintain the cleanliness.

He offered to walk me to the train, which I declined. I thought he should've just walked me but I figured he wanted to be polite. We shook hands goodbye and then, very awkwardly, we stood there for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say.

I opted for the, "Well, I guess we can e-mail again....?"

He went with, "So, I'll let you know how it goes with the other girl...."

At least it went a little better than the other dates, to date. He kind of smiled when he saw me and he almost backed into someone as he was saying goodbye and walking away. Progress is progress, no matter how small