Angst.com

About 11 years ago I used to work with this very plain woman. She was a journalist. She used to have screaming arguments with her boyfriend on the phone all the time. Even though I worked in the production room and she worked in the news room I could still hear her yelling at him. And what was funny was, she was very quiet, intellectual and demure. I’d go in the bathroom, and she’d constantly be brushing her hair between fights with her boyfriend. I guess even though she was plain, she wanted her hair to look nice.

Anyways, I guess she finally broke up with the toxic boyfriend because the screaming arguments stopped. I wasn’t really that friendly with her. Creative types and journalists don’t always mesh. Journalist wear suits. Graphic artists where shiny scarves and sneakers with green neon soles. But I was in the lunchroom one day and she was talking to the editor who I was actually friendly with. The editor K was a mess. She really wanted to get married. I mean really! She was involved with a married man. He was an idiot, so the conversation they were having was basically “MEN ARE IDIOTS”. K still wanted one, but the Plain Girl said, “No. I’m giving up men. Forget it! They’re not worth the trouble!” I think she was about 25.

Shortly after that it was Christmas season. I was alone as usual. I think K had a fight with her married man. And Plain Girl? Well, for some God-forsaken reason she decided to give sMatch.com a brief try. She was all meh, this will never work. MEN ARE ALL IDIOTS!!! So what do you think happened? Go ahead, guess?

She went out with her one and only reply. They went to a hockey game and it was love at first sight! And I believe they were married within three months. I wasn’t invited to the wedding, of course. I’m a graphic artist and she was a journalist and I might possibly do something crazy like spray graffiti on the wedding cake or something. But they’re still married, and have a nice house and two beautiful sons. I see her in the grocery store occasionally and she actually talks to me now. I guess she’s very happy.

The moral of the story? 99% of the woman I know who are on sMatch.com have horror stories. 1% have good ones. I signed up for sMatch.com this weekend. Sure I’m stone cold broke and just got my food stamps chopped to practically zero. But I’m also in this incredibly dire holding pattern in my life and basically I can’t stand it anymore. I need someone to talk to.

Who MADE me do this? The Shrinkster of course. I think he almost fainted when I e-mailed him and said I finally did it. Why? Because we’ve had this conversation at least 1.6 trillion times in the last 14 years. I did briefly stick my toe in the Match pond a long, long, long time ago, but I never dated anyone….which is why I asked you for advice, Cranky (http:///crankygirl.wordpress.com).

What happened then was this. First guy popped up on my Instant Message: “Hi! Blah, blah, blah! Do you want to know what I do for a living?” I was trying to be friendly, even though I was terrified he might type: “serial killer and I’m standing outside Your window.” But he told me about his fabulous career as a UFO Investigator.  He told me that his latest (cough) case was about a woman who had been abducted and then dumped in a local field and had to find her way back to the street and flag someone down to rescue her. DAMN THOSE ALIENS! With all that technology, you’d think they’d at least leave her off at a Denney’s or something. He asked if I believed him. I said, “SURE!!” (you damn Nutball). I guess he was excited that he had a captive audience, so then asked if I wanted a photo of him? Me: SURE! This was still in the day of slow dial up, so as his photo slowly unfurled on my screen, blipping 2 pixels at a time, it soon became very apparent that Mr. E.T. was al’naturale. You know, like no alien death-ray deflectors. Nothing! Ugh! This was long before I was OTAY with full frontal nudity.  Of course he did soften the blow slightly by holding a Chihuahua in front of the family jewels. And I was thinking to myself, “Duuuuude, you should at least round up a Great Dane, or something. Not the smallest dog on the fucking planet.”

The next responder was a guy who wanted Instant Message Sex. Click. Bye now!

The last guy was someone, in retrospect, I should have met. He was gentle, funny. He was a tall, gawky Jewish guy and one of the first photos he ever sent me was him dressed in a fluffy pink Easter bunny suit. He was an architect, but he also liked to draw cartoons and he used to send me cartoons with our frequent e-mails. We did this for three months, but I was too frightened to meet him. Not because of him. But because of me. I was pretty ill at the time. I had just been diagnosed bipolar. I had anxiety problems. I was agoraphobic. I even went into the hospital during all this, and he said he had no problem with that and said he missed our e-mails while I was gone. But he finally grew frustrated and ended it.

So “A” and I had a really intensive session this last week. We both practically needed oxygen by the end of it. At least I did. I was actually shaking. Anxiety I guess. But I know he’s right about meeting someone. He told me all the nice qualities I have to offer. That’s not something I get to hear very often and for some reason I totally burst out laughing during it and almost couldn’t stop. I think it was when he said I smelled good. WTF? Really? Ok. He must really be into smells because when I dated Handyman that was his advice then too. Wear perfume. Heh! I don’t even own any perfumes. I’m allergic to almost everything. And I hate men’s colognes.  But note taken.

So I put the damn ad on very late Sat. night. I still wasn’t really sure. Plus I don’t really read things very closely. I thought I had to pay before the ad would go  live, but the next morning I already had dudes winking at me and two e-mails waiting for me. It took me another 2 1/2 days before I even finally decided to part with my very precious money. This better be fucking good. By then I was really racking up hits and winks. I have over 210 hits the last time I looked. I mean I have winks from guys in Wisconsin and Virginia. Like where are we supposed to meet for a cup of latte ice cream? Pennsylvania? Plus a lot of them appear to be unable to comprehand my needs, like : NO SMOKERS. (period). Ages 48-53. And I have like Regis Philbin sending notes. Guys! Read the fine print! Oy!

But I have selected one very lucky fellow from the thronging masses for a witty interlude this weekend. He told me he’s a tree hugger and hates the war, so that pretty much already won my heart.  So we’ll see. Oh, and he also says he’s an optimist. I had to look that up in the dictionary. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

Tags: dating