The Dating Express has now stopped at my most feared and hated destination. That wasteland exactly between Friendship and Love: AmbiguityLand. Not only has it made its regular stop here, but the train appears to have stalled.

Some people love AmbiguityLand. You can see these weirdos walking around in their visors, cameras in hand, reveling in relationships that are not quite platonic, but not quite sexual, or relationships that are sexual, but not quite committed.

I am not one of these people. I stay inside the train, cowering. Headphones clamped over my ears. This is because I am, as Sexy Boy put it recently, in that quaint Alaskan way of his, “a straight-shootin’ son of a gun.” I do not like ambiguity in any form, but most especially when it comes to matters of my overly-tender, overly-optimistic heart.

When the train breaks down (as it has before) I’m forced to step outside sometimes for fresh air. But every time I do, I get smacked upside the head and knocked down in the gutter. Or I do it to someone else. Or maybe both at the same time.

Like last night, for example. Which, by the way, was not the first official night of fall. Because this year, I declare that fall begins TODAY, September 22. I have been waiting for fall for the last two months. For the beautiful, honeyed Seattle fall to carry away the heartbreak of this summer. Autumn is the time when my life starts turning bright jewel tones, like the leaves.

And so the stupid, stupid, heartbreak I felt last night when I made my misguided venture into AmbiguityLand was, I’d like to say, for the record, not indicative of how my fall is going to be. Because I am not stepping foot in that godforsaken place again, even if this train stays broken, and I have to sit my ass onboard forever.

• CuteBoyCallBlock® has been activated on my phone
  
• I am terminally impatient and easily bored
  

Last night, I made a foray into the online personals. And oh, quelle reward! A mere 24 hours later, I have 14 responses! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about, baby. Numbers!

A couple years ago, I ventured into the personals too. I met K., now one of my best friends. I met S., who fell madly in love with my friend R. (who also writes a mean blog) had twins with her, and then turned out to be Anger Boy.

And I met P., a short, insane rock climbing elf, partial to setting himself on fire, scaling buildings, and smoking pot, whom I dated for a rollicking two months until Loser ditched his ex-girlfriend for me (what goes around comes around, doesn’t it?).

I must mention, too, that despite being technologically-challenged, I actually took a photo of me and you-know-who, and, using Photoshop, cropped him out of it, and posted it in my ad! Now that felt good! You graphic designers are laughing at me, but figuring out how to crop a picture for me is akin to apes learning to bash each other’s heads in with rocks. I think I’m going to crop him out of all my pictures!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. A snippet from one of my responses. What you must know about the personals is that they are an orgy of cleverness; everyone trying to outdo each other with verbal shenanigans. To wit:

“So, how do you want the world to end? If you saw some variety of Transcendent White Light beckoning to you while you were getting your appendix out, what would keep you from joining it? What are you drinking now that summer's past and the g/ts are distant memories? What do you see when you close your eyes?”

Recently, a sexy boy (SB) of my acquaintance used what I thought was an apt metaphor to describe relationships. (Note to all men: I am easily impressed by apt metaphors).

He said that physical attraction is the "diving board" that gets you into the "swimming pool" of a relationship. The pool may be empty, but you’re never going to know unless you jump in, and you’re never going to jump in unless you think the other person is, in some way, hot.

Most sane people, after diving into an empty swimming pool, would get the hell out. (The metaphor breaks down here, because you’d be dead after diving into an empty swimming pool, but SB still gets an "A" for effort). There are those of us, however, who, carried away with physical attraction, dive right into that empty swimming pool, and keep “swimming,” sometimes for years, until something forces us to realize that we’re just flopping around on concrete.

And usually the something that forces us (ok, me) to understand the situation is getting dumped. Maybe my, um, goggles are on too tight, or maybe I’m too scared too see the truth because that trusty old biological clock is ticking, but it’s usually le garcon, in recent years, who has to say, hey chicky, let’s get out of this empty pool. (See “Crushdom,” Aug.25, for more information on this phenom).

But now, thanks to the events of this evil summer, I am becoming a more evolved human being. One who will no longer make the sexual frisson into my religion. (It would help if I had a real religion, but oh well). In my evolved state, I will be able to be overwhelmingly attracted to someone, and perhaps not sleep with them, unless I know there is water in that pool. Or, if I do, by accident sleep with them, I will nonetheless be able to stand back and say, well, just because we have hot sex doesn’t mean I’m going to marry him.

I’m not saying this is going to be easy. Au contraire. I’m a hot-blooded girl in my sexual prime! If I didn’t form emotional attachments so easily, and wasn’t such a nice, sweet, wonderful person, I’d be a real predator. As it is, my evolved state will require patience and probably many cold showers. Luckily, this is not a problem as the shower in my apartment is a piece of crap and doesn't heat up for 15 minutes anyway.

Muscle Bound Climbing Boy (MBCB) walks into foyer where I am innocently getting my mail. I glance over, see who it is, and go into FlirtAlert®.

“Hi!” I say. Friendly yet cool. Opening my mailbox. “You’re H., right?” Turn away from mailbox and smile. He is looking stubbly. Tres masculine.

“Hi,” he says, processing. His tone is neutral. As in, Who is this girl? Have I met her?

“I’m BB. We met just as I was moving in.”

“Oh, right!” Light clicks on in his glacier-blue eyes. “You know, I’m sorry I missed your party, but I was climbing in the Cascades that weekend.”

But of course.

“Really?” I say, very interested, but turning back to my mailbox so as not to appear too much so. “What did you climb?” As if I am an expert on the myriad summits of the Cascades.

“Mount Forbidden.” The name of this precipitous peak trips off his tongue. He waits to see what kind of effect it will have, and I do not disappoint.

“Ooh,” I say. “I’ve heard that one is really hard.” Voice goes down a register on the final word.

“Do you climb?” There is a hint of eagerness in his voice.

“Yeah,” I say, casual, modest. Perusing my one piece of mail. So what if I haven’t climbed anything in a while? Look up at him, and, just perhaps, the eyelashes bat. “But nothing that hard.”

Then MBCB launches into a description of just how hard Mount Forbidden actually is, with its many thousands of feet of exposure. As he talks, look directly at him and shake my head a few times to indicate incomprehension of how a person could accomplish such a manly feat. Meanwhile, am sending subliminal signals. “You want to ask me to coffee…you want to take me climbing…you want to...”

“Well,” I say, when he is finished, “It sounds much more exciting than coming to my party.” Turn towards the stairs to indicate that I am ready to exit. Mustn't overstay my welcome.

“Yeah,” he says, rueful. He is regretting – just a little– that he missed my party now. After all, he would have seen me in a backless dress.

“Well I was committed to it anyway.” He starts heading down the stairs to his basement apartment “But next time you have a party, be sure to invite me…”

But of course.