Free INTERNET DATES FROM HELL by Trisha Ventker

imaginable fund-raiser and year-end party with my colleagues, the last three weeks can feel like months. What seems to compound matters most is the heat. Long Island summers come fast and furious, once the calendar reads June. Those cool, wet May afternoons quickly acquiesce to unbearable humid June mornings where kids seem to melt as fast as jumbo crayons errantly left on a windowsill.
    Nothing is more satisfying than handing the final report card to the last kindergartener and subsequently watching her hand the report card to her all-embracing, patient mother. Marked by the little departure tears from most of my students (unlike the separation-anxiety tears for their parents that they displayed in the beginning of the year), June 25 is a noteworthy day for all elementary school teachers. It is on that day that we, like the kids, have mixed emotions. Part of us craves the idea of a ten-week summer vacation, but the other part spells “emptiness,” as we pack the last box of chalk away in our closets. The last thing I needed were mixed emotions regarding my social life, too.
    Normally the drive to Manhattan from the middle of Long Island during off-peak hours takes approximately sixty minutes, but before I knew it, I was in the elevator to my apartment. How did that happen? I have heard drunks talk about automatic pilot, and I’ve also read about road hypnosis while driving, but this was something entirely different. My mixed emotions practically erased the entire drive home. Maybe this phenomenon prompted me to revisit my old habit of Internet dating. Let’s face it: watching those young mothers near or about my age jubilantly jumping in the schoolyard alongside their children threw my maternal instincts into an emotional tailspin. The older I was getting, the more intense this feeling was growing. I really felt it was time that I had a little jumping bean of my own.
    Like the phantom ride home, I soon mysteriously found myself fingering the computer keyboard, activating my personal ad once again. Within thirty minutes, Francisco, a self-proclaimed Mexican-bred classical pianist answered my ad. Phew! That was fast! I think that was the quickest reply I’d ever received after posting an ad. Maybe I was being overly dramatic, since it had been over four weeks since my profile had last been viewable. Before long I found myself responding. My normal practice is to not give my phone number, but to receive the man’s phone number and call him. No sooner did he give me his number, than I phoned him. I learned quickly that not only had he recently recorded his own CD of original music, but he was also working on a second CD of legendary standard tunes. His voice complemented the photo that was attached to his email. But, as most Internet daters know, photographs can be deceiving.
    With a soft-spoken, sexy Hispanic accent, he asked if I was available that same evening, since he lived in the same neighborhood, he could be over shortly to meet me. I told him that even though I wasn’t busy, it had been my last day of school and I needed to decompress; a container of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, or possibly Cookies and Cream, some cool jazz, and the latest tabloid would do the trick. I told him that perhaps we could meet up the next night. We agreed to meet for a light bite and early show at a jazz club in Tribeca.
    Fashionably late is not the order of business in a jazz club, especially for the early show. He had said 9:00 PM, and it was precisely 8:50 PM when I walked through the doorway. Thank God that I didn’t wear heels because these clubs could be so dark that I could foresee falling down the first flight from the street and never being noticed. Little did I know that the sandals I wore would save me some serious time.
    Rather than join the huddling mass at the bar for their last drink before the show began, I decided to take a table close to the stage, but not too close for comfort. I can count on two hands the number