date 9 - the socialist hungarian "professor"

There are those dates that you know beforehand will not aspire to much in the future tense, but they will at least entertain you. These date will at least be a good conversation, time well spent, something you didn't know and now you do...
And then you get disappointed.
Such was the experience with the pseudo intellectual.

False advertising
We all do it, don't we?
We can say a few words in a certain language and we claim we speak it fluently.
We can do creative things with a few vegetables and tofu and we claim that we are great cooks.
We were in some exotic place a few years back and we claim we are world travelers.
We all lie.
A little.
It's expected.
That is why once I set up to meet someone from the dating site I never return to their profiles to memorize their fantasies...
(Once, a friend told me, a friend of hers went out with this guy with a Masters, several languages, etc. When she met him it turned out he didn't have of the things he claimed. He said that he saw the profile filling like goals to achieve. She is still with him.)

Anyhow, we met at Cafe Olin. I got there half an hour early so I ordered a glass of white wine and read. I sent him a message telling him I was sitting outside. I noticed he had visited my profile at least five times in the previous hour.
I saw him come in and not see me. After a few minutes of mirth I asked the waiter to tell him where I was. He called me from his table, claiming it was more comfortable (it was).
He ordered a bottle of wine. And he could never stare me in the eye.
Here I thought I was meeting an Eastern European with several languages, a lot of knowledge and a very entertaining and smart conversation. We can all have  a little bit of expectations, no?
He was not a professor, as he claimed, or at least not in my books. Someone who teaches others how to pass standardized tests... well... that is very low on the scale of professorship. It is even below teaching high schoolers, even bellow middle school!

He was amazed at my languages, and, as usual, he wanted to guess where I was from. He, of course, didn't.
We ordered some food. Food! wow, this is the first date in a long time in which there is something solid, which will enter our mouths! (no pun intended!)
So a salad for me, a sandwich for him, lots of wine for both of us. Expectations rise!
And the conversation didn't flow. There was something there that just made it very difficult to engage.
We spoke of my classes and of his appearances in the telly (he was raised in London) in the Russian Channel. Mostly he spoke of anti-americanisms and the difficulties of going to academia.
He was very happy by the way the waitress uncorked our wine and he kept not looking at me.

At one point of the conversation, with the stumbling on topics without flow, he asked and asked questions, and I... started to lie.
I knew I would never see him again, he was too boring to waste another evening, and, why should I tell him real things about my life anyway? Who was he? Why did he, out of the rest of human beings in the world at that precise moment, deserve to hear bits and pieces about my life? What would it do to me to share something with him? Nothing.
So I lied. About my brothers' jobs, and about a trip I am about to take, I lied about my father and about my past... It was incredible how easy it became! He would never know and I, well, I continued to play with my fiction to take me thru the rest of the wine and the check so I could go home...

(Before I finish this one, he was very surprised I had a metro card even though he knows I live in this city. I found that very bizarre  And, when we stood up, finally, I was much taller than him, much. No more Oompla Loompa - Hobbits situations for me! (check post 1)

You are not (that) special

You think you are unique, you fill the blank profile. You will find love. You express yourself in ways that make you special. You do your best to stand out. You point out to attributes you possess which make you different from the rest. You acknowledge interests that you think very few others have. You are sure that those of the other gender (or the same) will distinguish your awesomeness. You are unique, you are out of the ordinary, you are uncommon and unusual...

or so you seem to think.
And then you start browsing others' profiles and the truth hits you...

Everybody loves to laugh.

Everybody is passionate.

Everybody's eyes are the first thing people notice.

Everybody has their passport on hand or is eagerly planning their next trip.

Everybody loves to cook at home or go out to eat (exploring restaurants).

Everybody loves a good time out or could snuggle inside with a movie (and you!).

Everybody wants to have adventures in this city.
Everybody is a great friend.
Everyone is a little funny/ witty/ inappropriate.
Everybody is working hard in something they love or in something that hate which enables them to do what they love. 

Everybody is living life (some to the fullest!).

So, if everybody is not so special, is that why it is so hard to find 'that special someone'?
He (She) simply doesn't exist.
Perhaps if you were happy with a mediocre someone who is very similar to everyone else then... but, really?

best profile quotes (1)

In the website where most of my dates are coming from there is a section in which you ask, like in a cybernetic wishing well, what it is you want the other to be like, look like, think like, etc. You write that in and throw a penny over your left shoulder in hopes that only those men (or women) will find you because they are what you are looking for.

Here some of the most amusing 'wants and needs' I have found so far...

A professor from Europe (he mentions his Continent of origin several times in his profile, as well as in the message he sent me) mentions how much he likes women al'naturel. He quotes Germaine Greer "Men who do not want their women shaved and deodorized into complete tastelessness are powerless against women's own distate for their own bodies." So there, the teacher adds.

A 41 year old tells of his story as a PhD in English, a Shakespeare professor and then his uphill change into a trading stocks at home so he could afford his addiction to, uhm, Italian shoes.
He keeps changing what you should be if you are honored enough to message him. Today is more demure, like talking about Roxy music and whatnot. A few days ago he had posted a link to his Flikr account and you should only message him if you looked like his girlfriend, who was on the pictures in the flikr url he posted. eery? He also mentioned that you should message him if you dress, yes, like his girlfriend or some other woman, and if you don't, he will buy you clothes soon, including Valentino when you marry.
Yesterday he posted a few links to some porn websites stating that you should only message him if you look like that and are into that.

A 33 Christmass tress salesman claims that you should only message him if you believe the dude abides.

A 40 year old has, as his main profile picture, himself as an undernourished karate-pose child. He speaks of his independence and fun life, and then he quotes Twain: "to have the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with".

A 30 something ex actor asks to be written to as long as you don't mind him taliing about Shakespeare characters as if they were his close friends.

A 40-year-old quotes Emilly Heller: I've been single for a while an I have to say it's going very well... Like it's working out. I think I'm the one".

He then concludes this part of the profile claiming he does have space for one or two, as long as they are respectful of his original attachmet. ( polyamory and your primary relationship is with yourself! love this!) 

date 8 - the actor / bartender

We met on a Tuesday night at the Whisky Ward. I was running late. He texted that he was sitting at the bar with a camouflage hat. As soon as I got there I was glad I had been lazy enough not to change from my comfortable summer cotton dress. He was wearing shorts. The bartender was appalled I didn't drink beer. I had a "four roses" bourbon instead.
I asked him if he knew my name, as I don't reveal it very soon on-line. He did.
He then said he didn't know where I was from.
Of course he didn't.

Excuses
For on-line dating I have discovered you need to create an excuse for a conversation. You post something about yourself on your profiel which is not completely clear, something which pikes interest and is a good conversation opener, hence the mystery of my nationality.

We played the 'where are you from' game for a while and I gave him huge hints.
It was clear this night was not going to go anywhere.
I knew he was an actor from his profile so I started to ask him about that. Nothing special, a Stanislavsky sort of method, not hitting it big, bar-tending at forty, you know the drill.

I did learn about agents (only take 10%, really?), and other nimieties of an out-of-work-actor.
When did he get into it? As a child.
He attended a christian school which did not believe in Halloween, instead they had a Founding Fathers Fest. They all dressed up as a Founding Father and prepared a presentation. The best ones would get to present it in front of the entire school, parents, teachers, the whole enchilada. He was five. He got the part.
Most of the other children had two liners, his was a whole five minute tirade. He told me about this with pride. That is when he got into acting.
It is a shame that thirty-something years later he still looks back at this episode as the peak of his career.

Conversation was non-existant. It was me asking questions and then silence which followed.
I claimed a work excuse and excused myself after 45 minutes and one drink.
I do believe 45 minutes is enough to know.

Good luck with your acting!

(un) date 7 - the sub

He asked, very bluntly over a message, if I would wip him into submission.
I responded only if he was lucky.
He said he was only joking.
I said, so was I.
Then he said, well sorta. I said ditto.
We were both out of the closet.
How did this happen? My nick.

Nicks and other naming

The world today is one of nicks. Once upon a time I used to use very different ones for my different cyber lives. Then I didn't. I was done with remembering what my Twitter, or Tumblr, etc. were. Once upon a time someone discovered the same nick in two very different pages...
anyhow. My nick nowadays is the amalgamation of two novels with a very distinct female character. One of them is just called O. The other one is called Venus.
You can unravel the rest.
My nick has oftentimes opened up the gate for very interesting communication. Men wanting me to partake in threesomes, polyamory, foursomes, orgies, or, as this was the case, they wanted me to show them what it was they needed to learn.

Back to the story...

He continued to communicate with me. He really wanted to meet. I told him patience was a virtue.
One Thursday I e-mailed him: today. He was eager and ready. At noon I asked what he was doing at that moment. He took forty minutes to reply, too long for my patience, I was already at a movie.
Afterwards I told him it was not convenient nor allowed to take so long to reply. I had chosen that day to allow him to massage my feet. He addressed me as 'Ma'am', which I, playing along, appreciated.
He said massaging feet was not what he had in mind. I asked him for his cellphone and told him he needed to be at my beck and call whenever I wanted. He agreed. Then he said he wasn't looking to be allowed to touch my feet. He wanted to be my 'boy', he wanted a mommy figure or someone to fuck the shit out of him with a strap-on.
I smiled and put his number away, to be used on a day when I had nothing better to do.

Rejection and other inconveniences

You write or are written to.

It amazes you the messages you get from individuals you have no interest in... Some are boring, some are ugly, some are dumb and others are just plain blunt... Asking to be part of a polyamorous whatever (of that, probably later) or to be their sexual slave, et al. 

those messages remain unanswered... 

Then, why am I so aware of those messages I send with an empty inbox as a response? Is it because I consider myself a catch? Because anyone whom I approach should feel attracted to me by the personae i portray on my profile? "They should feel utterly lucky you wrote your two letter approach: hi. They should feel honored and try to woo you immediately, my alter ego murmurs..."

Why? Aren't those men also allowed to say no? 

Why can rejection (from a person who only exists on your screen), in its passive silent mode, be so uncomfortable? 

(A man who is so pompous I actually find sexy finally responded today. He said I have written to him three times. If he were interested he would have responded from the start. He only wants 26' waists. I don't tell him but mine is an inch wider than that... Not a deal breaker inch.

I access another man's profile. He sounds interesting. He is cute. A musician. I want to write him. I realize I already have. A few weeks ago I asked him about his music. A few weeks in online dating time is months.

He never replied. )

date 6 - the geek

A man slept in my house. He is the first man who sleeps in my house in a long time. He slept on the couch.

I found his profile early in the morning. His main picture attracted me. I started reading and found him funny, a bit cocky (just enough), very smart (so sexy) and... he lived on the other side of the country.
I reached out. "You sound amazing. Shame you live so far away..."
He responded quite quickly. "You sound pretty cool too. And I am in town for a few days..." And so it was that within twenty-four hours we were face to face.
For some reason I felt this date was going to be special, I did a little dance while I was putting on makeup and as I was at the door I turned back to review my outfit and decide if a change was in place or not.
I was the one who chose the meeting place. Blessed be 'Yelp' and its advanced search features.
When I got to the bar he had sat in the outside area and his face was in shadows. I ordered a drink and we started to talk right away. It was so easy and fluid. We spoke of the French class I had come from and I cursed "Fuck the plus perfect". He laughed and tried to figure out which one that was. He tried to guess my nationality and gave up very quickly.
We spoke of what we both our doing in our lives at the moment. We digressed into our areas of expertise. His: coding. Mine: literature.
I confessed my weakness for coders and how sexy I find Ruby and Python. He was extremely well read for, well, a geographer. He is also a linguist, by the by.
We had to move to the inside part of the bar. We did.
His face was no longer in shadows and we sat and talked some more. There was the genealogy talk, and the geography discussion. God, the universe, religion and Douglas Adams; astronomy, rock climbing, martial arts and hackathons; erotic literature, Ecuador, Academia, my teaching and dating.
Before midnight he said he had to go, he didn't want to but the place he would be spending that night (his cousin's couch) had an expiration date. I said fine. We walked out.
And then I did something I never really do: I invited him to my place for a drink. I said I had a couch where he could sleep and that way we could talk some more. He thanked me and we set off to my apartment.
The drink invitation was clearly an excuse because my alcohol pantry is a very sad one. I have mezcal, wine, ice wine and, uhm, yes, hard cider in the fridge. That is it. Rubbing alcohol does not count.
We got to my place, we walked my dog. He told me about his year squatting in London with his ex-wife and how, years later, he hired the father of his ex-wife's child. We came back and we sat on the couch and talked. He had water as did I.
I offered him my magic box. We both inhaled. And laughed.
He told me about Apple's conspiracy (and the reason he still has no iphone), and my secret desire to learn how to code. We spoke about hoodies as an essential clothing item in his world.
We shared music. I introduced him to my fun music, trying to get a laugh or a smile out of him. He introduced me to some of his music too.
At two in the morning we were both done. I showed him his bed and I leapt into mine.
We both slept soundly, separately.

Why didn't it go anywhere else? I don't know. He didn't try and I didn't try.
I felt we could be great friends and sex could have been awkward. It could have also been great. Buit it could have also been a disaster.
Also, he wasn't as cute as his profile picture. His voice was extremely masculine and his brain extremely sexy.
In the morning I walked him towards the Public Library where he was going to give one last workshop. We exchanged cards. We exchanged a long hug.
This was my most successful Internet date yet.