Okay, so logging in to online dating sites wasn’t all bad. I just needed to get what has always bugged me out of the way. I get frustrated because there are guys who, to be blunt, don’t give a shit.
I’m single, I’m looking. I spent three minutes creating a
clever name: HotGuy69j. Go figure that nine other dudes
already thought as clever as me.
Well, I’m done. Just waiting ‘round for all the messages
to pour in. Love when guys send stuff like ‘how r u’.
Again, so clever.
All right, I’ll move on. I assure you, I look away from literal train wrecks. Need to work on transferring the skill to the figurative world.
There were some decent profiles. Four or five caught my eye. Because the good ones are relatively few, I tend to feel a sense of urgency when I see one. Must message immediately! He’ll be taken by Tuesday, married by October! “Cheers to the happy couple!” And then I’ll have to cross my fingers for a quickie divorce.
One of the guys lives about fifty miles away. Not normally an issue. I’ve had a long-distance relationship with a guy in Portland, Oregon (320 miles away). Right now though, it is an issue. My car is in another part of the province, waiting for a part to arrive from a place that is apparently the most remote spot on the planet, suffering terribly with no Amazon delivery service and a state-run postal system still operated by stagecoach, all of which are currently out of service, parts pending from the second most remote location, on a different continent, of course. I’ll spare you the car story. As you may surmise, it’s a LOOOONG one.
I’m too old to hitchhike. And too old to be picked up. I hereby forfeit my chances with fifty-mile-away guy.
Another guy lives about thirty miles from me. I could walk it, but I don’t like the idea of lugging a tent on my back. I like even less the prospect of putting up the tent on the first night of my trek. I know my challenges. It won’t transform into a tent and will only serve as a tarp to lay on a bench so I’ve something between me and crusty bird poop. Ixnay thirty-mile guy, too.
This is all good. It narrows things down and improves the likelihood that Guy 1 and Guy 2 will be scooped up by other suburban gays. Let this be my sacrifice to allow more people in smaller towns to have a personal connection to gay marriage, sitting on either side of the aisle.
To put things in perspective, I’m more bummed that my car is being held hostage by a posse of conniving rural mechanics than about the fact I lost out on two men who were clearly marriage material. It would have been embarrassing if I were in a wedding anyway, having no one sitting on my side of the aisle. (“Really, Mom, how good is that symphony orchestra in your neighboring East Texas community of 10,000? And there will be other mah-jongg tournaments.”)
Bright side to everything, folks.
Over the next few days of reactivating my Plenty of Fish account, several people pressed a heart button in the corner of my profile. Bing. New email! “HotGuy69c likes you!” Ick. Good thing nineteen other guys got button-happy, too.
This kind of action is slightly better than that whole secret crush phase from junior high or, for me, my twenties. Like, heart, woof, wink…it’s bland and easy, but it is, technically, doing something.
Over to me then. Gee, thanks. I wasn’t feeling so invested just yet. Presumably, I was still getting over losing two Mr. Rights living only a %@$*!6# car ride away.
The minimal response to a like/heart/woof/wink is to do the same thing in return. So I did. Two or three times.
Ha! Your move, RicoSuave2!
This was progress!
A day later, I decided to be bolder. I would send a message to one of the guys to whom I’d sent like/heart/woof/wink.
I see you and I raise you.
This could actually lead to a coffee BEFORE I get my car back.
Even before opening my laptop, I’d decided the person I would message: an accountant in one of Vancouver’s closer suburbs. I could bike it or take Skytrain, our quickest form of mass transit.
You may be thinking, An accountant? Aren’t there any professional surfers or lion tamers or helicopter pilots? Where’s the excitement? What about self-made billionaires or wildly successful physicians? A free meal might be nice, right?
Really, an accountant seemed right in my lane. Aware of stereotypes, he promised in his profile that he had a personality. He even led with a joke, a decent one even. He posted three reasonably photographed pics, smiling in each. Like it or not, Calculator_Wiz was getting a message from me.
I logged in and had a message waiting for me. A first. Someone had dared to communicate beyond a like/heart/woof/wink.
Calculator_Wiz.
I braced as I always do before opening a message. I had to prepare myself for facing blatant grammatical errors and incomplete sentences, if there were, in fact, more than three words in the message. Sometimes it’s just “hey,” a slightly more attention grabbing version of a like/heart/woof/wink, but always a stunt that backfires. Really? That’s the message?!
Calm and ready for worst-case scenarios, I opened the message. I glanced at a standard salutation and then words. Plenty of words. Enough to make sentences, each correctly punctuated. I swear I wasn’t getting aroused, but I did let go of the tension in my neck and shoulders.
By god, there were paragraphs. In the right places! I may have been a tad excited…not like winning the lottery, more like being informed I got a free bonus play because two out of seven of my numbers showed up on the Wednesday draw.
That’s what I seem to aim for now. Two out of seven is a good day. It beats nothing matching at all.
Calculator_Wiz hadn’t written me a dissertation and he hadn’t dazzled me with wit and Pulitzer-quality prose, but he’d communicated. Clearly. Properly.
I messaged right back. Never mind that old game where you’re supposed to wait XX period of time to reply. Calculator_Wiz seemed of similar mindset. And so now it’s set. Coffee. I can bike to the spot, maybe make it a long walk.
Ready or not, dating world, here I come.
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