Shakespearian

Tomorrow I am going on a first Jdate. With a guy whose sister randomly came to my birthday party and whose other sister is fb friends with me. At a coffee shop owned by another guy I am talking to on Jdate but who I haven't met yet. Who might also be my mental health professional's son.

(have not seen said mental health professional since January, but still. The stuff of sitcoms.)

Empowering

The Rules? Empowering.

Making out with random guys from jdate in my hotel room in NYC? Also empowering.

But can I be a Rules Girl and a bit of a Jdate whore?

I think so, if I only do this out of town and keep my uh, physical activities in NY completely compartmentalized from my dating in Atlanta. So far it appears that I can do this emotionally just fine. There is just something inherently unattached about meeting some guy, having a couple of drinks, talking about upstate New York and indie rock and Mitch Hedberg, and then making out. You don't live near each other and neither of you plans to move. For some reason, it is easy to turn off my "I want this guy to want to marry me" instinct in this circumstance, and the experience is just pleasant. Having never been single before, I have never gotten to do the utterly random hookup before. It is kind of frigging cool.

Where do texting guy encounters fit in in all this? I'll save that question for another day.

Living up to my name

I'm definitely coasting to the finish line of my six months of rules. I think the most egregious breakdown I had recently was a fairly innocent one - I "requested communication" with a guy on eharmony. I know better than that, but he was a cute, relatively young, divorced, Jewish guy with a sensitive and intelligent profile. I also contacted a few people on my Chemistry.com free trial by accident - I didn't realize clicking interested would notify them. I'm about to go on Jdate and solicit New York guys because I want to set something up for the next 2 weeks when I'm out of town.

Probably most interestingly, I had two more interactions with texting guy.

The first one, I was a nearly perfect Rules girl when I ran into him at an event. Though I did hint that I wanted a ride (come on, I was wearing uncomfortable heels). Then yesterday he booty-texted me. Not in so many words, and he denied it later, but I pretty much knew what the invitation entailed and accepted it anyway. Yes, via text. The thing is, a) I wanted fb guy not to be the last guy I kissed, and b) I know the deal with texting guy. I don't have romantic designs on him anymore. We just have great physical chemistry. I didn't do anything dangerous, don't worry.

I'm going back to NY on business this weekend. I usually have some solid alone time there, so stay tuned for the following episodes, all made possible by my having hit the online dating circuit again:

• Rulebreaker reviews all the major dating sites, and how to apply the Rules to them
  
• Rulebreaker dates a man with a kid
  
• Rulebreaker dates a B-list celebrity
• Rulebreaker dates a doctor
  
• Rulebreaker tries to find a New York boyfriend to entertain her during business trips, including a friend setup
• Rulebreaker gets some serious street cred in softball
  
• At least four potential interests RSVP to Rulebreaker's 30th birthday party