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Dating Scene Re-Entry~ Cerissa ~ Preface These first few negative numbers indicate that no "real" meeting ever took place. Still, with the emotional involvement that existed, the relationships have to be considered "real." T -3 The first time I went on AOL and my first experience in cybersex were one and the same. When you go into one of those chat rooms with a feminine sounding name, you can expect that, I guess, but it was before all of those HBO "exposes" and I knew nothing of it. I was amazed at the intensity of it. I remember after, I called a friend on the west coast to tell her "You’re not going to believe this, but I think I just fucked a computer!" Anyway, that was Tom. (Do I really need to tell you that even the first names herein are falsified?) We were both married then, and neither of us made any secret of it. We kept in touch until I had used up 3 "free trial" offers, and had run out of credit cards which with to open another. He would phone me at the office. Occasionally we would talk about meeting, but it fell more into the category of wishful thinking than any sort of planning. After the trial offers were done, I switched from AOL to a local provider, and that's where we fell out of touch. We remain friends, and write very infrequently to say "hi, how ya doin'." I learned from Tom that a man can be kind and gentle. T -2 Lloyd was the result of an early ad posted on the USENET boards. Yes, I was still married. Well, I didn't really expect anyone to answer! It just seemed like fun. Out of the dozens that did answer, only Lloyd lasted more than a week. In fact, our brief notes continued for over a year, right through my separation and divorce - and still continue, though only to exchange lists of jokes or major news. We exchanged photos and met on the IRC before I would ever give him even a phone number. (Yeah, I was paranoid.) I remember that IRC meeting with eerie clarity. I was trying to type to him while my husband kept shouting up the stairs at me. Somewhere in the "conversation," I asked if he was married, and he replied, "I was." Being the smart ass that I am, I asked if he had hit her once too often and she left. After a long pause, he replied, "My wife passed away." I guess we always remember the most embarrassing moments in our lives pretty clearly. I was certainly never to forget that one! Anyway, he wasn't at all upset about my gaffe, and we continued to write and talk on the phone. He lived a long ways from me, but thought that business might bring him in the general vicinity. It didn't. We planned to meet anyway, but a business emergency made him cancel at the last minute. Ditto the second time. Understand, these occasions were months apart. And he lived so far away that it didn’t seem unreasonable. Meanwhile, I had separated from the Odious Slug who was my husband. Lloyd could now phone me at home in the evenings. We talked about many things, including - just briefly - his wife. It did seem a little odd that he seemed surprised when I asked what she died of, and hesitated a good while on the answer. But I didn't think about it for too long. Totally unrelated, I started a new assignment at work that required trips to the reference room at the public library. They had a CD of phone numbers. Cool! I wanted to try it out. So, I entered Lloyd’s business name. Not there. Curiosity now peaked, I checked out the home number. That was there. So I wrote it down. One day, for no reason that I can put my finger on, I tried calling him at home. The woman who answered the phone was very soft spoken, but not quite quiet enough to be considered dead. I asked her if she wanted her carpets cleaned. Well. . . nobody ever said that I was quick on my feet! I confronted him. He claimed the woman was a sister-in-law who’d been living there. Right. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to make him admit the truth. I got a friend to post an ad that I knew he'd find irresistible. Sure enough, he answered it. Small Internet, isn't it? Only when he wrote to her, he said up front that he was married. Confronted again, he told me that he thought I’d forget what he’d originally said. Amazing. I learned from Lloyd that, in the world of Internet dating, the lack of a home phone number and/or postponement of visits should be viewed with extreme suspicion. T -1 Gary overlaps with Lloyd. Actually, he started later and ended sooner, but it was still pretty long term. We wrote daily right through my separation. Sometimes we’d be online at the same time, and would zap notes back and forth almost as though we were in a chat room. Sometimes the same friend who I’ve already mentioned would get in on these conversations. It was fun. Gary (allegedly) worked for the Department of Defense and lived somewhere around DC. I have to say allegedly because for him, I never had either a work or home number. Just some electronic voice mail box. If I left a message, he’d return the call. He phoned a lot after I moved into my own place, and in general he was very supportive during the entire separation process. Regardless of anything else, I have to be appreciative of this. After we'd been in touch for a month or so, we made plans to meet. The day before we were to get together, he wrote to say he had an ulcer that had ruptured, and needed to have emergency surgery. Months later, after my separation, we again made plans to meet. The day before we were to get together, he wrote to say that he had a hernia and needed emergency surgery. Can we see some sort of pattern emerging here? Meanwhile, a friend of mine had spotted his email address on the USENET boards. It was in one of those "meet Russian women" ads. He had a home page up on the theme. I asked him about it, and he claimed that he had loaned the space to a friend and had no idea what it was being used for. At any rate, after the second "emergency surgery," I couldn’t even pretend to believe him. He became quite irate, and never wrote again. Very strange, really, when you consider that all of this writing had been going on for over six months. To this day, I don’t know if he was really simply married, or if he wound up withering away in a Russian prison somewhere on charges of white slavery. Gary. . . if you see this, drop me a line and tell me you're all right, OK? I learned from Gary that babushka is not the scarf, as we generally use the word, but in fact is Russian for grandmother. Can’t remember what the correct word for the scarf was, though. Liftoff This would, I guess, be Matt, a graduate student. There isn’t much to say about him. He was (is) very sweet, cute, and interesting. He is also way too young for me and not in the market for the same type of relationship that I was. What sort of relationship was that? Well, though I was in no hurry to remarry, it had become apparent that I am best suited for monogamy, at least of the serial variety. This didn’t stop us from getting together for several fun weekends. Biggest disappointment here was that I never got to try his seafood gumbo, which he assured me was "killer." I learned from Matt that cuddling can be fun, something that I’d completely forgotten over 12 years of a lousy marriage. T +1 Jon was divorced and lived in New York. We wrote for a while, decided that it was worth meeting, and so he made arrangements to fly to my place. I had enough space that he could stay with me, and being foolish, I let him go ahead and plan on doing this. As our e-mail made me suspect, Jon really was nice. What didn't come through in e-mail was that he had a real aversion to brushing his teeth. Finally, at the end of an entire day, I had to ask him if he ever brushed them. He informed me that brushing once a day, when he got up in the morning, was more than enough. Jon wasn’t a stupid fellow, by any means, but he couldn’t seem to grasp the association between sleeping with dirty teeth and the mouthful of dental appliances he had. Nor could he comprehend the equation "not brushing" + "years between dentist visits" = "very unpleasant dentist visits." According to him, it wouldn’t make a difference. It wouldn't make a difference. That was his outlook on just about everything. It was probably this fatalistic attitude that put the brakes on that particular relationship. I mean, I could make him brush his teeth, but I couldn’t change his entire perspective of the world. If this wasn’t enough of a turn-off, he informed me, via email, that I was still in good shape age-wise for the time being, but nobody wanted anyone after they turned 40. See ya ‘round, Jon! I learned from Jon that The Tick is a really funny cartoon. T +2 My relationship with Roger was very short lived, but I met him, so here goes. Even over e-mail he seemed stuffy, but I chalked this up to a formal writing style, as might be expected in a banker. In person, he wasn’t quite as stuffy, but he came darned close. I couldn’t believe that anyone could have been in the Philippines during a volcanic eruption, and all they could think of was, "The damned thing delayed my flight home." Roger also had hairy ears and made smacky noises when he ate. This one was doomed from the start. I learned from Roger that a person can be very intelligent and have a great job, and still be boring as hell. T +3 Over e-mail, at first, Ron seemed great. He assured me that he was a great guy, and even though he had some sadistic sexual tastes, he was always more than respectful of his partner’s limits. His words were convincing enough that he kept me hooked long after I should have known better, a fact that I find very embarrassing. Being with Ron has reinforced my preconceived notion that if anyone says that he never lies, he’s lying. Over the year that we were together, he repeatedly whined and moaned over aforementioned limits, even while telling me in the same breath that he respected them. I was actually put in the position of having to explain why I didn’t want to be beaten with a belt. Repeatedly! He claimed that he had no problem with children, yet cringed away from the idea of living with any. He claimed that, at age 52, he was finally ready to settle down, yet made repeated sarcastic comments about the sad fate of those who married. He constantly claimed to respect others’ viewpoints, but had no reservations about ridiculing those that were not the same as his. He claimed to feel no jealousy, but would pitch a fit if I was away from the computer for more that a half hour at a time. This last was a real strain, believe me. All in all, the stress generated by trying to reconcile his words with his actions was enough to make me ill, and in fact, I suffered from a string of minor for most of the duration of our relationship. The end of this one came when I just couldn’t take it anymore. His indifference was more than apparent, and I finally looked through his words to see it. I learned from Ron to trust my own senses, not the words of others. I knew this already, of course, but I seem to forget it frequently. T +4 During a brief breakup with Ron, I dated Lou, a race car mechanic turned student. He had a biting sense of humor, and kept me rolling at his observations about the attendees of my office Christmas party. He pushed things a bit too fast, though, leaving small personal items in my apartment from one visit to the next. It made me feel pressured, in some way. He also had the unfortunate habit of making up stories. Nothing malicious, mind you, just stories intended to amuse. What really put an end to this relationship, though, was Ron suddenly deciding that he finally knew what he wanted and that was to get back together. And my stupidity in running back. I learned from Lou that swearing is not mandatory during car repairs. T +5 Pete was one of the three local people I met on the ‘net and subsequently went out with. By this time, I was pretty well fed up with long-distance things, and the idea of going out for a date without packing a suitcase seemed like a luxury. If we had written longer, as we would have if he was farther away, I doubt that we ever would have met. As it was, though, there didn’t seem to be much to lose in driving down to a local watering hole for an evening. He turned out to be a pretentious cad who bored me for hours with stories about his brother’s fantastic condo, and his own ability to make a lot of money. He also told me that he didn’t like condoms because they have a tendency to just fall off. Kinda made me wonder about the size of. . . but it did not seem worth checking out! I learned from Pete that Railbenders, a local brew, is named that for a reason!!! T +6 Another short-lived one, Kevin was just a lunch date! He was a lawyer, but don’t hold that against him. He's a neat guy. His stories were hysterical, and the lunch was fun. After that one date, though, he "re-struck" a relationship with a woman he'd dated before. He seemed so uneasy telling me about this that I nearly had to laugh. I mean, it hadn’t been all that long since I’d been doing the same with Lou! It was particularly easy to accept, because the two of us were just too different to expect anything to work. He liked traveling to participate in marathons, and I think that running is an indication of insanity. Last I heard, the two of them were going to participate in a foot-race in Big Sur together. Sounds like a match made in Bedlam to me, but best of luck to them! I learned from Kevin that civil cases are easier to win than criminal cases, from a prosecutor’s standpoint. T +7 Freddy was the third local boy. He was a good time sort, just what I was looking for right about then. He lived above a bar, and we met downstairs several times for drinks and karaoke. What can I say? We may well still be seeing each other now, though I can’t imagine anything "serious" developing, if it hadn’t been for the next one coming down the Pike. What I learned from Freddy: Well, here I’m stumped. Can’t think of a thing I learned from Freddy, but we had a good time. T +8 Both Kevin and Freddy were results of the last ad I posted on a popular personals site. One of the last responses I had from that ad started out, "How irritating, another response to your ad." Could I have resisted pointing out that I would not have posted it if I hadn't been looking for responses? I don't remember. What I do remember was that, in just about a week, the challenge to a Scrabble tournament was thrown, and, in a mindless fit of competitiveness, I forgot every precept I subscribed to and set the date up for that very weekend. Oddly, I felt no risk at all in meeting him (even if I did have a panic when I realized what I'd said). After all, his spelling was flawless and his grammar impeccable. (smirk) We met at one of those places with the big screen trivia games. I set it up that way so that if we had nothing to talk about, at least I could whip his butt at trivia. As it turned out, I didn't kill him at either trivia or Scrabble. I don't think that we resorted to playing the former, and at the latter, he won by one point. (I'm still pouting over this. It's completely unfair for someone to get a seven letter word and empty their letter board in one fell swoop, when all the letters have been drawn!) This, of course, was Atreides. |
