Mormon on a Vespa

I'm a bad blogger, I know. I haven't updated. I really overdid it there for a while and am just now beginning to recover. But I'm back on the case, and I had a lovely date yesterday.

He is 6-foot-4, with lovely blue eyes, a Vespa and a smooth deep voice that carries traces of Montana. I've been waiting to meet someone that's a walking Hall & Oates song for a while now, and he comes pretty close. Very suave. The first thing I said to him was "Gosh, you're tall." He replied: "Didn't you read my specs?" I said it always feels different in person.

If I may toot my own horn, I had the brilliant date idea of going to the Chinese New Year Parade. While the parade wasn't very organized or spectacular, it made up for it in ambiance what it lacked in spectacle. We waded through the crowd to watch dancing puppets of each lunar year-- dogs, boars, rats and crocodiles. Turns out he's a tiger and I'm a ram. Go figure.

It was freezing, so we ducked inside a Vietnamese place and had pho, tea and spring rolls and talked. That's when i found out he grew up in Utah. His brother went on a mission to France, he mentioned in passing. It was odd because I had been reading that morning about Mitt Romney doing his Mormon mission in France and was puzzled. Why would the Mormons try to convert the French? Wouldn't they go somewhere where they'd actually have a shot? But blue eyes said they go everywhere.

Turns out he was raised Mormon but stopped going to church at age 16. Now he describes himself as "comfortably agnostic." I laughed because it reminded me of that Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb." He told me, at the risk of sounding "new-agey" that his religion was nature. I was sold. We talked about travel and school and food -- he's a foodie to reckon with, makes incredible stuffed grape leaves and is learning French cooking. I could get used to this.

He is very intelligent, currently in law school, said he originally wanted to get into human rights law but didn't know he would find civil litigation so interesting. Interesting? Civil litigation? Oh well. And I told him about my temp gig and my various prospects and interviews and we had a good time, even when our Vietnamese waitress kicked us to the curb prematurely because the place was so busy.

Outside it had started to snow, and the Chinese parade-goers had just lit a "five-story firecracker" suspended from a crane in the middle of the street. It crackled and smoked and dragons of different shapes and sizes danced around it. The snow made the whole scene look even prettier, like home-made confetti falling on the dragons and on people's hair and eyelashes.

After a little while he had to get going before the snow got too bad, since he had the Vespa and all. He said to get in touch if I wanted to hang out again. We hugged and I descended into the metro on the escalator, watching him, but he didn't look back. I e-mailed him this morning. I don't like playing games and having rules about when it's o.k. to make contact. That, and I really would like to see him again.