Post-date recap: deja vu all over again :(

Are there any honest men out there in this crazy world of online dating????


So, about a week ago, a seemingly handsome gentleman from New Jersey (we'll call him Westfield, after his Jersey 'hood) and we'd spent all of last week emailing back and forth, sometimes several times a day.  He seemed smart, witty, genuine.  I actually let myself get excited for our first date, which was Friday night.  Shame on me, because I absolutely should have known better.


I show up about 5 minutes early to Black Door, which was selected b/c of it's proximity to Penn Station, scanned the bar for Westfield, didn't see him, so I saddled up to the bar to order myself a drink while I waited. Next thing I know, the bartender asks the guy next to me for the last name on his card so she can start him a tab.   And I immediately recognize the last name from his email address, and excitedly look to my right.


I should have left right there.


Westfield looked NOTHING like his picture.  The guy standing in front of me was a good 150lbs heavier than the dude in the picture could have ever been.  I was stunned.  Practically speechless, and those who know me well know that seldom happens.  But since he had already bought me a drink and had braved Jersey Transit to meet me, I stuck it out.


Over the course of the next hour, I realized something:  Westfield was truly delusional about who he was and what he looked like:


1.  Westfield's truth:  "I work in finance."   Actual truth:  He was recently fired.
2.  Westfield's truth:  "I play ice hockey all the time.  I play center."  Actual truth:  Due to physics and gravity, I'm 99% sure that's not possible.
3.  Westfield's truth: "I'm close with my family."  Actual truth:  He lives with his parents.
4.  Westfield's truth:  "I get a little sweaty when I'm nervous."  Actual truth:  Even in an air conditioned bar, he looked as if he'd showered with his clothes on.


I ended the evening politely, and when he asked where we were going to go on our second date,  I made up some vague work-related excuse as to why I was busy.  I thought he bought it.  Oh, I was wrong.


This afternoon, I got an email which read:  
"Haha so...was Friday night a bit of a letdown for you? Heehee"


Oh no.  Seriously?????


How the fuck did he think I was going to react?  Did he think I was just going to, what, jump into bed with him or try to start a relationship based on multiple lies???  Can someone really be that out of touch with reality????  And then to send an email like that????  Really????


Here was my reply:


"I'm going to be very honest, so brace yourself.  You put me in a very awkward position.  You look absolutely nothing like your picture.  If I hadn't heard you say your name to the bartender, I wouldn't have thought for a moment that you were the person I was meeting.  Honesty is super important to me, and I'm serious about trying to meet someone I really mesh with, but you started off our interaction by misleading me on multiple fronts (i.e. where you live, what you do, etc), which is something I just cannot abide.  A piece of advice:  if you're actually serious about meeting someone, about making this process work for you, you need to be comfortable enough with who you are and what you look like to represent yourself in an honest, accurate manner.  Otherwise, every woman you go out with is going to have the exact same reaction I had, and it's not going to matter how many jokes you crack, or how far you traveled, or how many drinks you bought her...she's going to be turned off by the fact that you started lying to her before you even met."


I give up.  I'm done. I'm going to die alone.  And as time goes by, I'm getting more used to the idea.  How sad is that...

Email of the Week: Oh boy, George...

This week's email is a veritable cornucopia of punctuation, spelling and usage errors, in addition to creepy content.  Jackpot!


"good evening i like hockey.
have for a while now like 10 years
what team do you like
i'm a fan of the brocklyn winter ale as well the pumpkin ale
winter ale comes out in nov.  i think.   i get a case but this year i think i will get two.
they don last that long maybe a month
as far as a dog you could adopt me?
im house broken and can cook prety good
i can also give you free food
not bad my name is george.
nice to meet you."


NO NO NO NO NO.


1)  First things first, "brocklyn"?????  Minimal requirement to date me: you should be able to spell the borough in which you reside.  I don't think I'm asking too much there.
2)  I am so relieved that you decided to share your potential fall 2011 beer purchase plan with me??????
2)  What kind of dog cooks for you????  'Cause I want to learn about that breed.  Most of my food prep involved either Fresh Direct or Seamless Web...


Boy oh boy.  I'm so not curious enough (or lonely enough) to meet this George.

Pervy Personal: Princess Beatrice has nothing on this guy...

So, for the past week, this dude has been peeping at my profile on a daily basis, and from the thumbnail, I could tell there was something strange about what was on his head.  Nope, it wasn't a puppy...It was a bit worse.

In every single picture, this dude has SOMETHING on his head.  Here's a sampling:

Lights. Rats.  Blue fur.  
Princess Beatrice needs to step up her game.

Post-Date Recap: The Ballad of Rob Dylan

Oh lord.  Where to begin?


Tonight's date (we'll call him Rob Dylan, for reasons you will surmise later on) arrived for drinks dressed in what he termed a "three-piece suit."  (Question:  Can you still call it a "three-piece suit" if you're reasonably certain that all three pieces came from drastically different suits?)  Before I relate the reason behind his choice of attire, let me just also relate that Rob looked NOTHING like his picture.  Usually, I can tell it's the same person plus 30-50 lbs, or minus 6+ inches in height, but I am convinced that the picture that he posted on the dating site may have been a picture of a cousin or a brother, but was definitely not of him.  In fact, as I read my book waiting for him, I kept wondering why this really creepy guy kept walking past my table and staring at me.  Anyway, once Rob Dylan came over and introduced himself, he revealed why he was in a "three-piece suit."  He had just come from a job interview.  As I still had 3/4 of a glass of Pinot Grigio left and asked him what he was interviewing for.  Rob had just come the Ritz Carlton.  Now I'm thinking "Oh, maybe this guy was a Hotel/Restaurant Management major."  Nope. He had just come from an interview to be the guy who answers the phone when you call for room service.  And he was jazzed.  He felt like he had nailed it.  He then related he had been a Philosophy major...and everything clicked into place.


Rob Dylan then launches into a monologue entitled "What Rob Wants to Be When Rob Grows Up."  I'll spare you the verbatim play-by-play, but he's narrowed it down to four possible career paths:
1)  the guy that takes your room service order at a 4 star hotel
2) a teacher
3) a lawyer
4) a folk musician


He told me his "back up plan," if he doesn't get the room-service phone answering job is to "teach for a year" while he "studies for the LSATS."  Or he could "always put out an EP and live off the iTunes residuals." I spent the next 20 minutes telling him all the things that were wrong with that plan, as tactfully and politely as I could.


After dashing his hopes and dreams, and given that I'm only 1/2 way done my glass of wine, Rob decides to turn the conversation toward art.  An excerpt from Rob Dylan's monologue on art: "Art is like self-mutilization.  It's like pouring out your soul and using it to write your funereal epigram."


I have never thought of art in quite those terms.


Meanwhile, at the table across from us, the most mismatched couple I've ever seen is practically making a baby.  He's 6'4", 400+ pound former defensive tackle looking guy, and she looks like Snooki's anorexic cousin.  He engulfed her.  He eclipsed her.  I couldn't decide whether she was into him or was having an issue escaping his gravitational pull.   


Back at the ranch, I've got a quarter of a glass of wine left and Rob Dylan starts waxing poetic about politics.  Rob on being an Independent: "I mean, Rob then would be like, I know, right, but like Rob now, like, he's like question everything, you know..."


Which is the Rob that doesn't refer to himself in the third person?  Because I want to meet him...


As he paid the check, Rob Dylan asked me what I'd like to do for our second date, and I gently clued him in that there wouldn't be one.  To which he replied, and I quote:  "I mean, I get it.  You're like so much older than me that I figured that you'd like want someone to have babies with and stuff.  I didn't think it would work out."


He's 26.  I'm 28.  How is that "so much older"??????  Also, my desire to one day (in the distant future) to have children was absolutely not the reason I didn't want a second date. 


Whatever.  If that's what Rob Dylan needs to think to sleep better at night, that's fine.  I've "got my mind made up" and I'm not "gonna change my way of thinking" for him.  (I can never resist a pun!)

Harmony? More like cacophony...

More general observations about the dating site that I recently joined which is, in theory, matching me to people based on 20 plus facets of my personality:

1.  On this site, there are no clever user names, and you go by your first name.  Thus far, I have received emails  from men named the following: Gelvis, Shawshank, Snake, Ram, and Octavian.  I have a really hard time imagining myself ever saying "I'd like you to meet my boyfriend, Snake." or "I love the way you touch me, Gelvis."  It's just not happening.  Maybe that makes me shallow, but I cannot imagine dating a Shawshank, someone who sounds like they wandered out of a meeting of Roman senators, or anyone named after an animal.

2.  I had been communicating back and forth with a guy who seemed pretty cool, until we got to the stage where he got to email me.  Here's a verbatim excerpt from his message:

"Hey pretty lady.  Whattaya know.  Here we are pretty lady.  I am happy to see that someone else is a fan of pumpkin beer!!!  Great stuff pretty lady. One of my close friends has opened my eyes to the amazing variety of beers out there.  I'm turning into a beer geek.  Do you like beer pretty lady?  Are you a fan or lagers or ales pretty lady?"

It goes on like that for three more paragraphs.  Do you think he thinks I'm pretty?  I can't tell...

3.  I have seem some of the strangest facial hair decisions this week.  My favorite, you have to see to believe.  Allow me to demonstrate (to the best of my ability) on Wooly Willy:

It's like Ulysses S. Grant, Adolf Hitler, Mr. Clean and Alan Ginsburg somehow all had a go at this dude's head.  Takes hipster preoccupation with historical or enigmatic beards/grooming to a whole new level.

I have two dates lined up for this week.  I sincerely hope each shows up with socially acceptable facial hair, with the name they originally gave me, and refrain from calling me "pretty lady."  Is that too much to ask?

"The Frog Blog" proudly presents: Epic Failures of the Week

In the past 24 hours, I've been attracting rude and inattentive Long Islanders like bridge-and-tunnel moths to a Astorian flame.


Epic Failure the first:
So last night, I was at Beauty Bar, which was populated with the typical Friday-night-hipster-type-crowd, with one strange exception:  a group of gentlemen from Long Island.  One attractively scruffy gentleman in particular (we'll call him L.I.M for "Long Island Mike") spent a good amount of time chatting me up...he was laying it on real thick.  He had seen me from across the bar.  He had noticed how beautiful I was.  He loved my name.  He thought I had a unique look.  He loved my tattoos.  (N.B. He has an outline of Long Island tattooed on his foot.  I could not make this shit up!)  Finally he goes for his phone and asks for my number.  Before I can respond, L.I.M has entered what he presumes to be my name into his phone.  Too bad for him, my name isn't Anne.


Fail.  


Epic Failure the second:
This morning, I log onto the free dating site to which I subscribe and I get a message from a 48 year old gentleman, also from Long Island, proclaiming:  "Boy do we match."  I'm not a complete ageist, so I take a peek at his profile so I can decide whether I want to respond or not.  


Boy, we do not match AT ALL.  In his profile, he comes across as unjustifiably arrogant and incredibly lazy or willfully ignorant (I refuse to believe in 48 years you  haven't been able to manage to figure out the correct usage of "your" versus "you're").  


As I'm perusing, he's sending me more messages: "what u dont like what u see?????"
Umm, it's been maybe a minute since he's sent me a message.  Calm down, buddy.  
Then comes the kicker:
"forget it.  u make me sick"
Wow.  That is a strong response to my "slow" reaction time, with almost 2 whole minutes between the first and last message.  Perhaps this kind of anger management problem is contributing to why you're single...

King of Comedy? Or Master of Self-Sabotage?

Over the years, I have been blessed to have been friendly with some pretty talented and pretty damn funny dudes.  Three examples:


1)  I went to college with Mike Still.  He's funny at UCB on a regular basis.
2)  I also went to college with Dan Hopper.  VH1 thinks he's funny.
3)  I went to high school with Derek Waters.  Comedy Central and UCB LA collectively agree that he's funny.


By all counts, all successful, well-adjusted dudes.


Over the years, I have also known many a would-be comedian who engaged in, well, some less than productive behavior (i.e. excessive drinking, substance abuse, general thoughtlessness and lack of care regarding personal relationships, etc).  Heartbreaking.


Lately, whenever I meet a potential friend/romantic interest who claims to be in comedy, I always assume they fall into the first group of successful, well-adjusted, hard-working, good-hearted dudes.  I like to think the best in others.


And lately, I've assumed wrong.


Last night, Funny Guy sent me an IM on the free dating site I subscribe to.  Off the bat I notice that his status indicates that he's seeing someone.  


Huh.


So I ask, because on this free site, you can technically indicate that you're looking for "new friends."  He explains:  he lives in my neighborhood, and he would love to have friends nearby to grab drinks with from time to time.  His girlfriend is also looking to meet some close girlfriends so they thought they would keep their profiles to meet new friends.  


I am overly trusting.  It's one of my faults.  Sounded plausible.  It can be surprisingly hard to meet people in a city like New York, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  We talked for about an hour and seemed to hit it off, so we made plans to meet for drinks after his Saturday night stand-up gig.


Here's the gist of today's text message exchange with Funny Guy:


Funny Guy:  Fun talk last night.  Glad you gave me your number.
Me:  Well there's an overabundance of info about you online so I figured if I disappeared, the proper authorities would be able to locate me in your trunk.
Funny Guy:  Well, I feel like things are a little uneven considering there are like no pics of you on your facebook.
Me:  I have a bunch of profile pics and people tag me all the time. Let me check my profile settings.
Funny Guy:  So none like this?

Me: I'm sure your girlfriend would appreciate that.
Funny Guy: You don't think she knows?
Me:  I thought you were looking to make friends.  My friends don't text me half naked pictures of themselves.
Funny Guy:  My friends do.  I thought it was funny.
Me:  Sorry.  Not really.  I have a feeling we have different definitions of "friend." Good luck with your comedy, best wishes, and I hope you and your girlfriend find what you're looking for.
Funny Guy:  Wait.  Are you offended?


Poll:  when was the last time you texted half-naked pics of yourself to a friend?  To a friend of the opposite sex?  When you had a girlfriend/boyfriend?  And you met the person you're texting less than 24 hours before?


Now, I have been called MANY things over the years, and "prude" is not one of them.  Am I alone here in  thinking this was grossly inappropriate???

I'll take "Things That Are Not News" for $500 please, Alex.

Finally, a new study backs up drunken co-eds have known for ages:  dudes dig girl-on-girl action.

According to a new study:

"Men’s likelihood of continuing to date a girlfriend if she had been unfaithful with a woman was 50 percent, on average. But if she had cheated on him with another man, that likelihood plummeted to 22 percent."

My gut reaction?  The only reason this number isn't higher than 50%?  In the hypothetical situation posed, the men were not invited to watch...

Post-pick-up recap: Once bitten, twice high?

Last night:  whirlwind.  

In addition to the hurricane-force winds that have been assaulting our fair city, I had a three borough night, and it's good to know I can still hang ;)  Started at karaoke at McLoughlin's in Astoria, made a quick stop in Manhattan at Fat Cat Billiards for an old friend's b'day, and finished off the night at The Woods in Brooklyn with J, M and J's sister, Baby B.  

Oh, Brooklyn.  

This was my first time going to The Woods, which, contrary to logic, has absolutely nothing to do with trees or nature in general (I wore my plaid shirt for no reason!!).  The crowd was your typical dirty hipsters and pseudo-intellectual trust fund babies.  The place positively wreaked of PBR and irony, but abounded with skinny artsy dudes, which tend to be my favorite mistake.  Shortly into the evening I struck up a conversation with one such gentleman we'll call Famous Amos.  

Oh, Famous Amos.

With a name like Amos, the way I see it, you have two options:  move to Amish country or move to Williamsburg.  He chose the later, but went for the beard.

Now Famous Amos, it turns out, runs some sort of company that deals with renewable energy.  He seemed like a really cool guy.  We had great conversation, great chemistry.  He got my number and we discussed meeting up for drinks.   I was feeling encouraged.   Maybe I just needed to go to The Woods to meet a man in the wild.  I even got a little kiss goodnight... 

...during which he bit me.

Not kidding.

As the kiss was ending, I'm not sure if it was intended to be playful or aggressive, but I definitely felt some central incisor dragging fairly roughly against the skin under my lip.  

Yeah.  He left a mark. 

I thought he had left (hence the kiss goodnight and his heading to the door), but about 15 min later, out of the corner of my eye, I spot Famous Amos chatting up J's little sister, Baby B, even though he had seen us together when he and I initially started talking.  It's incredibly poor form to try to pick up the friend of the girl you just finished picking up. Not as bad as picking up another girl on a second date, but still a no-no. Now, one of the things I LOVE about J is her extremely low tolerance for bullshit and bad behavior.  She walks right up to Famous Amos and starts giving him the business about hitting on the friend of the girl he just kissed.  He apparently told her that he found me "adorable" and was interested in me, but it became very clear very quickly that all Famous Amos was interested in was taking someone home to, ahem, nibble on his cookies, if you know what I'm saying.  (Actually, you may not know what I'm saying.  I tried *really* hard to make a Famous-Amos-chocolate-chip-cookie-sex-innuendo there, and I don't think it landed).  Anyway, Famous Amos and I said goodnight again, and again I saw him walk toward the door, so I assume he'd actually left this time. 

Oh, assumptions.

3:50 rolls around (I was a CHAMPION last night) and I notice Famous Amos is back by the bar, and he's nodding.  Eyes closed, leaning over, 5-6 inches of drool running out of his mouth.  All not good signs.  My gut reaction:  in addition to renewable energy and anonymous sex, Famous Amos is a fan of recreational drug use.  Regardless, whatever he decided to mix with his PBRs last night was going well.  I went over to him and slapped him around a little bit to wake him up, got him a bottle of water, made sure he was coherent enough to give the taxi driver his address, and helped the bouncer put him in a cab.  

The way I see it, the Universe owes me.  I have been wading through assholes lately, so I eagerly await my karmic retribution.  

No V-Day plans? Curl up with the Frog Blog!

Chat of the Day: Cupid missed my letter :(

This evening, I was checking my messages on the new dating site when a IM popped up from a seemingly cute and normal gentleman who lives in my neighborhood.  It started off normal but quickly veered down a skeevy road.  We'll call him SkeevyMcGee:

SkeevyMcGee: hey, how was your weekend? fun saturday night?

me: umm, pretty low key.  i watched a movie and stayed in.  you?

SkeevyMcGee: nice. def debauchery. hehe

Ok. Not bad.  Par for the course.  Then shit got interesting.

SkeevyMcGee: hope u like honesty


me: ha i do

SkeevyMcGee: u know...lotsa drinking and admittedly late night hooking up.

me: good for you?

Bit of an overshare.  On a dating site, as someone you're in theory contacting as a potential date, I really don't want to hear about who you hooked up with last night.  But like it or not, I was going to:

me: That's not really where I'm at right now.  I hope you like honesty.

SkeevyMcGee:  ah, u r due.  i love it.  it was nuts. ended up fingering a girl i met on this couch at the bar.

  

me: wow.  good for you???

SkeevyMcGee: yea. and then she sucked me off behind this curtain. it was wild

me: sounds it

SkeevyMcGee: no good hookup/sex lately?

me:  Not that I want to share with you.  Good luck with your random couch fingering!  I think we're in different places.

Geez oh man.  Why do people feel the need to share these things with me?????  I mean, tomorrow is Valentine's Day for christsake.  I'm not asking for romance.  Just maybe some common decency?

Email of the Week: a juicebox of my own??? Really?!?!?!?!

Maybe rockin' the poof in my profile pic was a bad call ;)


This morning, I woke up to the following email from the most "jacked guido" I have seen in a very long time...I think that's what the kids are calling them these days...


"I'm not good at writing emails to strangers but bare with me.

There was something about your profile that caught my attention, I'm not sure what it was but I'd like to find out. Something tells me that you might be more than just a pretty face.

I'm willing to bet you a donut that you're getting about 500 emails a day from 75 year old married men offering to be your sugar daddy...

If that's the case then this email should be "really" refreshing for you.

I'm not the one to talk about myself, but I'll say this: I'm 25, tall, attractive and really funny, so be ready.

Worst case? You might make a cool friend, so lets get together for a drink/coffee sometime...

E***"


A few things:
1) "I'm willing to bet you a donut that you're getting about 500 emails a day from 75 year old married men offering to be your sugar daddy."  Actually, surprisingly, on this particular site, I have not yet received any "sugar daddy" type emails. Probably because the site is 
free.  So someone owes me a donut.  I prefer Boston Cream.


2)  "this email should be "really" refreshing for you."  Pondering these extraneous quotation marks.  Are you quoting someone?  Trying to be ironic? Sarcastic?


3) "There was something about your profile that caught my attention, I'm not sure what it was but I'd like to find out. Something tells me that you might be more than just a pretty face."  Nothing like receiving a line out of a form email to make a girl feel special.


4) "I'm not the one to talk about myself, but I'll say this: I'm 25, tall, attractive and really funny, so be ready."  Oh, I'm ready.  Lord, I hate reading profiles or emails where the ratio of physical description to real insight about someone's personality is 5:1.  I get it.  You think you're hot, but what are you like?  If that's all you've got going for you, or that's an accurate reflection of where your focus is 80% of the time, we're not gonna get along...


I think the kicker was the wide array of pics that featured E*** either shirtless or in a wife-beater.  His arms are MASSIVE.  Like, anabolic steroid abuse massive.  I know it's ignorant, but all I could do was channel Snooki:  I think I found her gorilla juicehead soulmate.  Maybe I should email him back...maybe to suggest a summer foray to Seaside?

Post-date recap: Back in the saddle again...only to promptly fall off the horse...

Namaste, bitches.  I'm back.  I took a little time off from the online dating scene to try to meet a mate in the quote unquote "real world"...and well, that didn't go so hot.  So here we are.  Thinking maybe I needed to shake things up and swim in a different (slightly more pocketbook friendly) pond, I joined a different site and struck out afresh.  And promptly struck out.


I met the Screenwriter for drinks last week.  We completely hit it off.  Nothing is sexier than a man that can make me laugh, and that he did, for four straight hours.  He was flirtatious, but not crass.  A little zany for my taste, but I chalked that up to nerves.  No goodnight kiss, but I'm told by my friends that, contrary to my gut response, that was actually a good sign, that it meant he respected me, that he wanted to get to know me better.  


Oh how wrong that assumption turned out to be.


I got an email from him the next morning asking me out again, and we arranged to meet at an acoustic showcase in my neighborhood where a friend of mine was playing (along with his very attractive female high school classmate).  He showed up a little late (train traffic), but texted before my 20 minute cut off window, so all was forgiven.  The night started off really well.  We had drinks and food.  We laughed a ton more.  We flirted and played footsie under the table.  He met my friends.  He was outgoing and conversational. All good signs.  It was by all accounts a wonderful second date. 


Until the last 20 minutes.  


As we were standing up to put on our coats to leave, the Screenwriter, who apparently is also a wanna-be-musician, decided to chat up my friends v. attractive high school classmate. For 20 minutes.  And in the blink of an eye, I was watching the flirtation, the blushing, the suggestive playful touches, the exchanging of phone numbers.  And instantaneously, I was downgraded from "date" to "wingman."


I get it.  It's a second date.  There is no expectation of exclusivity, but though he is under no obligation to me, it would be nice if he were polite enough to not to schedule his next date during our date unless that date is with me.    


FAIL.

Well, I learned something...

The freaks are out in full force!

I could not make this shit up.


1.Saturday night:  I ventured out to Floyd's in Brooklyn for a friend's 23rd birthday, and about midway through the night, I'm headed back from the bathroom to my spot on the couch when I notice it's been taken by a v. peculiar looking gentleman.  


Follow me here as I paint a picture of him:  Imagine Legolas from Lord of the Rings.  Imagine he's tall with long, flowing hair.  Imagine that hair is jet black, pulled back into a pony-tail that cascades down to his ass, and that on the underside of his head, his hair is buzzed. Now imagine him in a tight black t-shirt and black jeans.  Still with me?  Age him, because although he's in his mid-twenties, he has the face of a man who's spent half of his life smoking and drinking.  Give him a goatee and alter his facial features so that he looks a little like Lucifer.  


That was, I shit you not, Damien.  


Now, having spent a lot of time in the theatre in college, I have met many a techie with a D&D past, so meeting this Dungeon Master looking dude was actually  a little nostalgic.  I assumed that he's a friend of the birthday girl (side note: this turned out not to be true.  He was a friend of another guest, and this was the birthday girl's first intro to Damien) and politely joined in the conversation already in progress.  Damien, it turns out, is in a death metal band. Of course he is.  I asked if his band played in the city a lot, and he said yes.  When I asked where, he turned a little red, giggled awkwardly and looked down.  
"We play in fet clubs." 
He was almost whispering.  
"You play in fet clubs?  Like, fetish clubs? Like, S&M, bondage type of clubs?" 
"Yeah."  He was still avoiding eye contact.
"Wow.  So you're the soundtrack to all the kinky shit that goes on in there."
"Well..." He's hiding something.
"Wait.  Do you participate or something?"
"I tie people up."
"Really..." 


The longer the conversation goes, the more comfortable he becomes, and then the inevitable happens:  he asks, "You want to see some pictures?"


On his smart phone, he shows me a site called FetLife, which is like the Facebook of the bondage set, and downloads several pictures of himself, topless, tying up some acrobatic almost-naked goth-looking chick.  


He asks if I'm Wiccan.  No.  He then explains how the webs he's creating with the ropes are like the webs of a spider, which were created by Mother Nature, so bondage is actually very spiritual.  


Uh huh.  I'm buying that.  Not at all.


He tells me that he's been in some bondage videos, usually in the background, as guy-in-vinyl-mask-with-ball-gag #4 or something along those lines, but he just scored his first major role (i.e. penetration role) and that the film is currently in production.  He doesn't use a stage name, and promised me that, if I could wait a few months, I could google him and see his, ahem, work.  


Marking that on my calendar...

2.  My commute home today:  I'm on the Q train, per usual, and at about Queensboro Plaza, I get this feeling like someone is staring at me.  I look up from my book and, sure enough, a scruffy gentleman in lightly-tinted aviators and an iPod is busting out his best white-man's head bob, gazing in my general direction.  When he sees me look up he starts humming, loudly, in a sort of falsetto:  "Hmmmmmm  HmmHmmmmmm HmHmmmmmm!  Hm Hm Hm Hm HmmmmHmmmmm!" He's incredibly off key and very loud.  I  hope this is the result of some late-day liquid lunch, because,  by this point, most of the people in the car are staring at him.  He has no idea, or he doesn't care.  He's still staring at me and I go back to my reading, as not to encourage any more drunken humming.  But out of the corner of my eye, I can see him biting his lip, jutting his chin out to the rhythm, thrusting it in my general direction.  And then it happens: he starts singing, staring right at me:
"YOU!!!! YOUR SEX IS ON FIRE!!!"  
Wow.  His voice sounds like someone kicked Steve Perry in the balls, and everyone in the car is looking at me, and looking at him, and looking back at me. And just when it can't get worse:  he takes off the aviators and WINKS AT ME.
Was this some sort of weird performance art?  An Improv Everywhere bit?  Was I being punked???  I kept looking for some producer to slide over and ask me to sign a waiver...
But no.  This was happening.  Apparently I was doing a piss poor job of hiding of completely floored I was by what was taking place, so he takes an ear bud off mid-"your-sex-is-on" and yells across the car at me "What?"
Seriously?
So I say, "Seriously?"
Falsetto Steve Perry:  "What?  Did I get the words wrong?"
Me: "You're off key.  And there are children on this car."  I point.  Two kids wave for his benefit.
Falsetto Steve Perry: "Wow.  That's embarrassing."  He's slurring a bit. Maybe I was on the right track with my liquid lunch theory.
Me:  "I'd be embarrassed if I were you."
Falsetto Steve Perry:  "That wasn't cute?"
Me: "Nope."
Falsetto Steve Perry: "So I'm not getting your number?"
Me: "Nope."
And we finally arrive at my stop.  As I go to get off he calls out
"I bet it is, though.  ON FIRE!!!"


Icing on the cake: the other people on the car were giving me dirty looks!  Like I was asking to be drunkenly serenaded at 5:50 on a Tuesday!!!  Come on!

I have discovered two more of my dealbreakers:  
1)  Men who work in porn, or another industry that encourages the donning of excessive amounts of vinyl and spikes.
2)  Men who drunkenly sing to me about my sex being on fire when they, in fact, have absolutely no prior personal knowledge of my sex.


Oh, Paula Cole, where have all the cowboys gone?

When the moon is in the seventh house...and Jupiter aligns with Mars...

My horoscope for today:

"If you have ever tried talking your way into a love affair, then today you are going to have a real good shot at success. The energy of the day really stimulates your urge to discuss and debate, but also to impress others with your obvious wit and brilliant intelligence. You could talk them to death, or better still talk them to the bedroom, but eventually you'll have to shut up - won't you?"

Ummm, is is just me, or is my MSN daily horoscope trying to tell me something...

Well damn.  If I had any inkling that the universe was going to be working in my favor today, that my "obvious wit" and "brilliant intelligence" would send men racing into my bed,  I wouldn't have spent the day alone in my apartment, reading and cuddled up in my sweatpants.  

Opportunity missed.

See Jack fail.  Fail, Jack.  Fail.  

Email of the Week: Pot calling the kettle black...

Woke up to this in my inbox:


"Joan Rivers just sent me a wink.  What's up with that?"


Funny on multiple levels:  
1a)  I haven't perused many single ladies' profiles, but it would totally not surprise me if there were some elder cougars on the prowl who've had a bit of the nip and tuck.  
1b)  With all of the Botox Joan Rivers has had injected into her iconic visage, I'm not sure she's been able to wink (voluntarily) since the mid 1970s.
2) The gentleman in question is in his early 60s.  I'm pretty certain that women in the general Joan Rivers age range are supposed to be winking at him. His contacting me?  Two words (or three...I'm not really sure what the implications of the hyphen are...):  Mid-life Crisis.  In short:  just because you're taking a shot at a fellow elderly person and quoting bad SNL sketches does not make you young!  

Pervy Personal: I have very similar feelings about pants...

"Sometimes I just sit around without my shirt
Other times I'll watch TV, clean and organize without my shirt. Occasionally, I will look out my window only to find shirted people. Then I go back to just sitting around without my shirt. 

I guess I'm looking for women who could appreciate me without a shirt. Not get jealous when I do wear a shirt, or get suspicious when I'm wearing a different shirt. 

If you're interesting in all that other boring stuff, I am all of the following: 33, quite witty, successful with a job that allows me to buy expensive shirts that I try not to wear....."



Questions/Comments:
1)  Why would one get jealous if you chose to wear a shirt?  Generally, when I'm dating someone, I prefer him to be shirtless as much as possible, but I don't tend toward jealously when the shirt goes back on.  Disappointment?  Maybe. But jealous?  I mean, shirts do come back off...
2) In the past, have you had problems with women becoming suspicious when you change your shirt?  Unless you're Charlie Brown, I can't imagine why a variance in wardrobe would cause alarm...unless the shirt you're changing into is a blouse or a mesh tank top...both would certainly prompt some questions on my side...
3)  This shirt talk...is this an example of "wit"?  Is that what this is?  Hmmmmm  I guess I have a different understanding of the word.  Maybe if I took my shirt off, I could gain some clarity...

UPDATE: Post-date recap: Self-serving philosophy?

"Post-date recaps" are quickly becoming more "post-cancellation regroups" than anything else :(

The Johnnie-ist and I were supposed to have dinner tonight, but he texted me earlier today to say:


"A friend of mine is going through a mental breakdown & I gather that I'll be called upon to help alleviate the mental stress with my superior therapy skills...Blah! I'll know closer to 6pm."


I love that in addition to being a self-proclaimed spiritual guru, Johnnie is also a freelance therapist.  Being that its gross outside, and truth be told, I'd rather spend the night with a good book than listening to some pseudo-intellectual narcissist drone on and on about how awesome he perceives himself to be, I replied:  "No worries.  Just let me know one way or the other."


I haven't heard anything since.  Since the forecast called for potential, but not verified, cancellation, I wonder if this as being stood up?  Or just left hanging?


Regardless, if you recall, one of the tenets of the Gospel According to Johnnie, his "biggest maxim" if I remember correctly, is to "give people what they deserve."


Apparently, according to Johnnie-ism, I do not deserve dinner.  

Apparently, I am in no way memorable :(

This morning, I woke up, per usual, to an inbox full of flirtations from the gentlemen of the online dating service provider I currently subscribe to.  What was unusual about this morning was that of the dozen or so winks and emails I received, three of the gentlemen who felt the need to introduce themselves I ALREADY KNEW.

• I worked in the same office as Bachelor #1 three years ago.  I believe he worked in the tech department, or in human resources.  Regardless, I walked by his desk several times a week, and he appeared in my inbox on a regular basis.  We were forced to attend the same lame team building retreats.  Yet, he emailed me this morning to INTRODUCE HIMSELF.  We were colleagues.  I'm pretty sure we've met. 
• Bachelor #2 attended a professional development workshop I gave two years ago. He sat in the front row and either text messaged, BBMd or blatantly talked to the girl sitting next to him (while I was talking) the entire time.  I remember him to be very arrogant and very rude, and terrible at teaching writing.  I'm actually not surprised that he didn't remember me, given that he didn't pay a damn bit of attention to anything I was saying...but I do find it funny that the tables have turned, and I get to ignore him ;)
• Bachelor #3 sent me an introductory email as well.  He and I DATED for SEVERAL WEEKS a few years ago.  He's a graphic designer.  Every time you watch a baseball game and you can read the score, thank him.  He wants to be married with tons of children by the time he's 35.  He comes from a large Italian family that he's very close to, and wants a large family of his own STAT.  He also once confided in me that he had a freakishly large penis, and that had been a problem for most of the women he's dated.  I remember all of these things about him, yet my face doesn't ring a bell, because he felt the need to INTRODUCE himself.  

Have the years treated me that badly that time has rendered me unrecognizable?  Or am I just really not that memorable?  

Pervy Personal: Cast multiple lines, better chance of catching a fish?

Oh boy.  This guy is was doing everything in his power to get laid yesterday. 


Exhibit A:  
"White male looking for an indian or middle eastern girl - 27

Cute young looking white male here. I'm educated, outgoing/ relaxed with dark brown hair, hazel eyes.

Email me if you are interested"

Exhibit B:

"Any women prefer attractive men with smaller tools? - 27

White male here, dark brown hair, hazel eyes. Just curious maybe you prefer it that way or are tighter. Email me"

Exhibit C:

"Fantasy of 2 bi men and you? Email me - 27

Hey there,

I’m a 27 year old white male. I’m 5’7”, 155lbs, good shape, brown hair, hazel, and very young looking. I’m educated, relaxed and definitely disease free. I am very bicurious,

Email me if you are interested!

Oh please women only right now"

Now, every time I see a 5'7", 155lb, young looking guy with dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and (potentially) a very small penis, I'm going to wonder if he's bicurious with a preference for small penis loving Indian and Middle Easter women.

My morning commute just got a lot more interesting.