Saturday, February 6, 2016

A Fool Three Times

“Hey guys I need your tinder/Internet dating horror stories or gushy romantic stories! Go!”

            This is a recollection from three years ago, similar season.  On OKCupid as the medium.  Determined to set up funny profile because I didn’t really take the whole process seriously, and I’m half-comedian. Or is it quasi-comedian?  Anyway, I’m not trying to be funny anymore.  I think that mostly what is funny is pure honesty, so if I was funny at all it was because I found that place of pure honesty.  I think that when you set out on the act of constructing a profile, like ‘this is what I want the world to know how I see myself.’ How is it that a personally subjective thing that I call a face is agreed upon with someone else when I describe it?  And aren’t you (when online dating) working in a system where all of these digital relationships are some sort of complex delusional construct?  New age navigating a sorting mechanism, and aren’t there enough deluded people out-there in the market?  I’m getting off track.  Her name was (let’s say…) Brita, but to me she was Brita II, and likely of comparison due to unlikely circumstances, (let’s say…) a Bart tattoo, somehow identical to yet another person I decided I liked better over fragments of time.   Maybe life is like a mandala or mosaic from the outside?  It’s not always crystal clear, unless it just came through a Brita filter, I swear I’m not sponsored.  And unlike these online relationship compilers want you to believe, they are not intergalactic robot Cupid, they are just OK.

The first filter put up is proximity, but what if the love of your life is not exactly where you are?  (In Paris or the stars…)  But that’s only if you believe in true, hilarious love.  If you (who?) are like most people you’ll settle for less (than the truth).  Sometimes I feel like I’ll never settle (not in a bad way).  Is that not prudent? The first Brita I met in BaAlexandria, and she’d come over to the restaurant where I worked after work.  She worked in some state department where she got Colin Powell’s autograph in a book for her dad.  She was a big Polish freak and I loved her, but I wasn’t happy with myself most of the time, I was still learning a lot, transitioning through some sort of youth in Old Town.  And I couldn’t stop freaking!  (And not just exclusively…)  I maintain that the best dating site is still whatever street you’re on.  And in fact, when Brita II and I started talking this was at a random house party where I recognized her from her online profile.  I used the dating site as a networking tewl after the fact, and had a proper online date, complete with pre-recorded profile talking points.  She wanted everyone to stop fracking.

I remember another filter they put up is how DTF you say you are.  Christian Mingle OKCupid is not; and debutantes these aint.  More a shallow sea of lower order control freaks who like to swing their hot messes.  I’m one to talk.  Apparently a Bart tattoo is common. I don’t have any tattoos because I don’t like pricks or Burns.  I can’t remember if I ate her shorts (like candy) or just took them off, but one thing led to another and before I know it she’s gushing in my mouth, sorry not sorry she does that.  Kind of gross; kind of hot:: kind of warm; kind of a lot.  I didn’t have a serious fetish for that (yet…). But her chest tattoo was practically identical to this guitarist’s from RoOKlyn I hooked up with one night after her show and I still remember how I felt the next day, early morning, walking through a Buffalo marathon in progress and the weather was perfect…there was a broken spell for Brita II, no warm afterglow, no lingering post-coital bliss.  I didn’t have the same urge to follow her.  You just can’t account for certain things, and nature has its own way when it comes to love, but I can account for this, the last thing she wrote me:

I'm scratching my head mostly because of the lice (kidding), but also because of this situation. I'm confused as to why after two weeks we're not getting closer but instead farther away. It's not a competition at all, the point I'm trying to make is that I seem to care about seeing you and getting to know you but your actions have showed me that the opposite is not true. I should not feel like I'm the only one putting forth effort, like I'm the only one excited about this. If I had to ask a question, it would probably be "Why have you dropped off the face of the earth?" The only way I can explain it with my limited view of what the heck is going on in your head is that you're not interested. And if that's the case, then it's fine, but that should be conveyed so I'm not left wondering. So I guess my second question to you is "How do you feel about me?" I'm not asking for you to act artificial or pretentious, I'm just asking for what the heck is going on in your own terms.
           

And that’s the way I left it…until a few months ago, when I reached out again, but unsurprisingly without response.  I didn’t know how to describe it at the time and I didn’t want to start a legacy of being unnecessarily mean, so I let it be.  And I dropped OKCupid (like a regular baby) on its head.

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