Tuesday, September 28, 2021

HAVE WE MET BEFORE?


At first blush, it sounds self-absorbed for me to say I’ve been reading a few of my old blog posts over the last twenty-four hours. Is that like spending a day gazing at all your selfies? (Okay, I had to do that too, but I limited it to twenty minutes. I’ve got an article that’s supposed to get published and they need a photo of me. Made me realize I don’t have anything other than selfies, in part because I’m too embarrassed to ask anyone to take my photo, but also because I do most things on my own. Not a sad thing. I enjoy Me Time.) I’m telling myself it’s okay to reread some of my blog writing. People can spend afternoons looking through old photos or reading past journal entries. Let laughs and horror abound. 

 


I waded through past posts for a reason. I’d received another “Someone Likes You” notification from online dating site Plenty of Fish and, when I looked at the profile, the pics seemed vaguely familiar. Do I know you? 

 

I recognized that he was one of those longtime fishermen on the site. (Hey, me too.) Sadly, this was confirmed as I clicked on each of the five photos he’d included. He’d gone through the trouble of giving each one a caption to provide some context. Good move, generally speaking. It shows more attention to creating a profile than most guys. Unfortunately, his photo captions included the date of each photo as well. 2009. 2009. 2010. 2011. 2009.

 

Okay, mister, what do you look like nowadays?

 

Many of us would like to believe that we are ageless. Surely there’s no difference between fifty-six-year-old me and forty-six-year-old me. Heck, maybe I even look younger. (My hair stylist, Melanie, can do wonders!) Even if I can’t see the signs of aging when I look in the mirror, I know others do. Compared to a decade ago, I get called “sir” so much more. If Queen Elizabeth had knighted me, I’d be okay with it but, that not being the case, it rattles me every time. Good god! What is it they’re seeing? (Note to self: Get Melanie to dye my graying sideburns.)

 


Later in the day, I logged into another site. It’s for hookups. I’d set up an account when I decided my 2020 New Year’s resolution was to loosen up sexually. As with most resolutions, there was a flashy start—I’m doing this!—then nothing. I’ll blame COVID. (Sometimes a pandemic comes in handy.) Whenever I see a message on this site, I panic. I can tell myself that a quickie would be good for me, but the only reason I’d want to drop to my knees immediately upon entering a stranger’s home is if I’d lost a contact. (Heck, that would be awkward enough.) The guy who liked me on POF sent me a message on the smutty site, too. 

 

Isn’t this a little stalker-ish? Keep it to one platform, please.

 

The message was lengthy, squirmy Either/Or blend: Let’s date…or let’s just meet and do these (very) specific sexual things. What a mess.

 

The message also confirmed that I did know him. We’d gone on a coffee date at some point more than six years ago based on information he recalled which was, in fact, a lot: where we’d had coffee, things I was writing, other parts of our conversation.

 

If it was ringing any bells, the sound was faint. I now had a foggy image of us having coffee on Granville Island. I have some sense that he was okay. He liked me, but I felt relief that he lived in Victoria which meant he wouldn’t be in Vancouver all that often. He would have had to be much more than “okay” for each of us to be coordinating ferry rides to the city. 

 

Still, I was curious to get a clearer account of that previous date so I blog-checked him. I’ve written about so many dates. I did a quick search of “Granville Island,” another on “Victoria.” Posts came up but nothing about him. 

 

He wasn’t blog-worthy. 

 

That confirms he was indeed okay. Not a horrendous coffee date which is always oh so bloggable and not a hopeful coffee date that I might blog…unless I didn’t want to jinx things. If it were that great, a blog tour would have been unnecessary. I would have remembered, even with the fuzzy brain of a guy who is frequently called sir.

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