"So who are you dating these days?"

The other night I was circling AT&T ballpark, desperately searching for parking as most San Franciscans who are dumb enough to own a car do on a Friday night when they insist on driving. It's bad enough that I'm an Asian girl in a car, but now I'm doing the "drive, halt, drive, cross to the other side of the street, stop in the middle of the road, repeat" in my search for the ever elusive parking spot less than a mile away from Bar Basic. Did I mention I'm trying to text, too? At the moment I am my auto insurance agent's worst nightmare and the culmination of every bad Asian girl driver joke. (For the record, I'm a freakin awesome driver.)

For some reason, my friend Henry decides this is as good a time as ever to lay that dreaded question on me:

"So, who are you dating these days?"

My mind draws a blank. How am I to explain to him that it's hard being single in the city when you are ridiculously picky? That I just don't see the point in dating someone unless I really click with them, and those ocassions are so far and few between? That I usually just end up befriending most guys rather than date them? That when I do find a guy I like and/or go on a date it usually ends up being a comedy of errors? And doesn't he know that I can't really have real conversations with people when I'm distracted by my quest for a parking spot on a Friday night when the Bo Sox are in town? (Whoa was that a parking spot? Dammit there's a fire hydrant there...). And so I blurt out the first response that comes to mind:

"Um. I don't date. I have awkward encounters."

This apparently required some explanation (once I found parking, three blocks away from the bar, woot!). And so, dear friends and Internet lurkers, here are my stories. Enjoy.