another piece of good advice, courtesy of (formerly) awesome indie band rilo kiley.  

in the wake of the revelations about carlos and his appalling lies, i have done my best to not let his being a horrendous human being affect how i approach the world.  i really do believe that with every broken heart, we should become more adventurous.  i am still a (mostly) awesome person with a life filled with truly amazing people who love me, and carlos is still himself.  i think it’s clear who wins the war.  one of the most important things to me about that whole awful business with carlos is that i have no regrets about my actions or behaviour.  i can live very well with my part of our whole acquaintance.  yes, it ended terribly, but because carlos is a terrible person, not because i did something wrong.  i was truthful about how i felt and what i wanted from him.  instead of letting his epic manipulation make me closed-off and smaller, i endeavour to be more adventurous.    

all of which is to say,  i met someone.  like, met someone.  

it is surprising, to say the absolute least.  it is so unexpected, but super fucking awesome in a way i didn’t even know was possible.  i didn’t know a person could feel this way.  much to the shock of my little sister, this guy has turned me into a sappy, hand-holding mother fucker.   he is tall and beautiful and from the north of england—where the sexiest accents are from, as we all know.  he has green eyes.  he calls me a bonnie lass.  he is smart and goofy and sweet and just fucking wonderful.  he makes me happy in a way i never imagined.  any feelings i have had in past relationships aren’t even in the same universe as what i feel right now.  it’s overwhelming and amazing.  i didn’t know it was possible to feel this good.  

a welcome side effect of all of the feelings i have for my englishman is the sweet, sweet indifference i now feel for carlos.  it is such a wonderful relief.  not only do i feel full of awesome new feelings for this wonderful new guy, i am free of my anger.  it’s beautiful.  all of that anger was only hurting me.  i am so happy not to be carrying it anymore.  i am free of that terrible bit of my past.  

i met my englishman a little over a week ago, and it’s been this insane whirlwind ever since.  i have seen him most days since we met and talked to him when i didn’t see him.  i told my parents about him last night.  obviously, i can’t know the future, but i hope he sticks around for a good long bit.  with carlos, i expected from the start that it would just end at some point.  after four months, when it kept on not ending, i thought we should make it a thing.  with my englishman, i knew from that first date that i wanted it to be a thing, that i didn’t want to date anyone else.  why would i want to go out with anyone else when i have someone so amazing who feels the same way about me?  he asked me on the second night if i wanted to be his girlfriend, but i wasn’t comfortable with that, even though we had said at the end of our first date that we weren’t going to date other people.  being my usual sensible self, i made him wait a whole week before i was comfortable calling it what it already was.  yes, that’s right.  logical, practical me has a boyfriend that i’ve known for little more than a week, and i feel fucking fantastic about it.  you probably want to check out your window to make sure the world hasn’t turned upside-down.     

we met on okcupid.  you know, the way i do.  i was still hurting over carlos’s lies.  i was looking for distraction from my anger and pain, maybe some rebound sex.  i basically thought, “oh hey, this hot english guy wants to go out with me.  sweet.  maybe i’ll get laid.  at the least, i’ll get to listen to a sexy accent for an evening.”  you know me.   my expectations are generally pretty low.  

it was the best date of my life.   

i got there late because googlemaps lied super hard to me about how long it would take to get to astoria.  i was feeling anxious.  when i finally got there, he pulled me in for a hug, which i usually find off-putting from a stranger, but i didn’t mind it.  not even when he pulled me close a second time to get a better read on what i smelled like.  according to my englishman, i smell like the desert in the rain, which i am pretty sure is more poetic than accurate, but charming nonetheless.  half an hour into the date, he put his arm around me, and it just felt right.  i hate being touched by people i don’t know well.  it is high on my list of least favourite things, but when my englishman did it, i did not have my usual impulse to pull away.  when he put his arm around me, it felt right, and i just wanted to stay there.  [i know.  i warned you about how sappy i am these days.]

i can’t explain any of it.  all my usual walls and my general guardedness are not even a thing with him.  from the start, i never felt like i needed to be guarded with him.  it’s fucking insane.  it’s contrary to my whole usual way of being.  and i love it.  he’s so wonderful.  he makes me feel so good.  it seems unbelievable.  i can barely believe it.  i wouldn’t believe it except my phone is filled with texts and emails and a call log to back me up.    

so i am going to go with it.  i am being unguarded.  i am being open.  i am being more adventurous.  

did i ever tell you the one about how ex-bf isn’t technically my ex-bf because it turns out he has had a girlfriend since before he met me?

that’s right. the real truth is not that i was unknowingly the other woman this january. the real truth is that literally my entire acquaintance with carlos* was an enormous deception and manipulation of proportions i have had trouble wrapping my head around.

let’s back up though. i’m sorry to get all in media res on you guys.

sure, sure, i said that i was totally over and done with carlos. and i was. except that it still didn’t feel right. things didn’t quite add up or make sense. and i had this obsession that i needed him to look me in the face and tell me the truth about what happened. [the irony of this desire is not lost on me, given the revelation of the number of times he looked me right in the face and lied to me.] daily emails yielded nothing but a terse response telling me that “Quite simply. I don’t want to see you again.” to which i responded, “obviously you don’t want to see me again, or you’d have a couple of drinks and text me at 1 a.m. i want you to sit down with me in the daylight and tell me the actual truth, not the “truth” you tell me when you tell me when you are nostalgic, guilt-ridden and want to fuck me.”

part of it of it was the desire to make him tell me the actual truth. more of it was a desire to be the worst kind of ex. the kind of ex for whom one has only negative feelings. i wanted to burn everything between us to the fucking ground. i do not trust him, and i do not trust myself when it comes to him. i have proven more than once that, given the chance, i will invite him back into my life and bed. yes, i should be better at my life, but i think taking measures, like guaranteeing someone hates you and never wants to see you ever again, is a good precaution in case i am not better at my life in the future than i have been so far. i certainly mean to be better at my life, but one never knows. no. i know. i am not to be trusted with him. even after all this, if he showed up right now, yeah, i’d have a fight with him, but i would have sex with him. he is my fucking kryptonite. i cannot be trusted with him. burning it down was the only way out.

i had deleted his number after he told me a few weeks ago that he was seeing someone. so email was my only tool in this campaign, and it was not the atom bomb i was looking for. he was not going to give in to my repeated requests for a face-to-face. my choices were limited if i wanted to stay away from truly crazy ex-girlfriend territory. i was not going to, say, stalk him at work or at home, or at all anywhere. that’s horrifying and a line i am not willing to cross.

a friend made a remark that if having been the other woman was bothering me so much that i should tell the girlfriend. i initially dismissed his idea. i didn’t think i was that kind of person. on the one hand, their relationship is none of my business. on the other hand, this was just the kind of terrible thing to absolutely destroy any positive feelings carlos may have been harboring for me. he has pulled this shit before where he cuts off contact for months at a time just to pop back up again. this time around he had said out-loud to me that he felt like we have a connection where we will drift apart and always come back together. so you will understand my distrust of this current freeze-out. you understand my deep need to ruin it so thoroughly that carlos would never want to pop back up.

here is the narrative as i had guessed it, based on some clearly not in-depth enough twitter sleuthing and information he gave me while we were together last year:

carlos’s current girlfriend is the girl that he had referred to as his best friend while we were together. i thought that it was likely that he had been interested in her the whole time, and possible that she was the reason he dumped me. there was a picture on his twitter last summer referring to her as his girlfriend. i think this was shortly after he and i had sex last july. it was this picture that made me realize i had to stop checking his twitter and delete him from my phone. with the help of accountability to gat0rz and a financial penalty, i didn’t look at his digital presence again until shit went down this winter.

it hurt that he had dumped me for someone else, but life is messy. if he had secretly been into her the whole time, it made sense that he never wanted me to meet her. our relationship was casual. it hurt to feel like i had been a fill-in until he got what he wanted, but i had not been in love with him and didn’t want that from him. so i wasn’t heart-broken over it. just plain, old hurt.

i honestly did not think about the girlfriend while i was with carlos this january. i was having a great time, and it never crossed my mind. he made a comment about having been able to have sex four times that first night in december because he’d had a dry spell, but not to expect it every time. i mistakenly assumed this meant he was single, i guess.

after it was over, and i was left alone and hurt again. i did some more twitter sleuthing. except this time, i looked at the girlfriend’s twitter, too. i never had before. the idea felt gross. it felt gross this time as well, but i didn’t let it stop me. i needed to know what happened. i hate not knowing things. it drives me crazy. so i crossed that line, gross as it felt. i looked at her pictures all the way back to december. she was the girlfriend that whole time. was and still is.

i felt betrayed. the first time carlos and i were together, it was mutually casual. we were only exclusive for the last month of it, but this time i had let him get into my head. this time i had indulged in thoughts of “what if?” what if we tried a real go of things? what if we did have a real connection? what would it be like to explore that? what if i did let him into my heart? what would it be like to have him in my life? what would it be like to be in his life? i didn’t take these thoughts very seriously. i knew that i could never trust him with my heart. they were there though, in the back of my mind. they made his predictable exit more painful than last time. they made finding out that it was never going to be me hurt like i was not expecting.

i would like to say that i emailed carlos’s girlfriend from a place of genuine pain and the search for the truth. i would like to claim that i was doing it to give her the benefit of information that i had not been given. i did claim those things. i claimed those things in the email i sent to her. but as much as i would love to portray myself as the ultimate victim here, that was not the reason i emailed her. i emailed her because i thought that it was a way for me to destroy anything left between carlos and me. i knew this step crossed a line. i knew there was no coming back from it. i wanted to be in a place there was no coming back from. i needed to burn it to the fucking ground. i was fine with the girlfriend being a casualty. i had never before completely given in to my worst impulses, but there is a first time for everything.

so i played my hand:

hello,

i don’t know the details of your relationship with carlos. maybe you two have an open arrangement, but i didn’t know about you. i apologize for writing to you like this, but i couldn’t find you on facebook and 140 characters didn’t seem enough. i’m sorry for crossing this line. i just wish i had known, and i feel that you deserve to know. i’m writing to you because i would have liked to know that you existed before i invited him over last december. i apologize if you and carlos have an open relationship, and you knew about me the whole time.

while we never met, you probably know that carlos broke up with me last may. since then, he has gotten back in touch with me every few months, usually late at night, telling me he felt badly about how he ended things and how much he always cared about me. i am embarrassed to say that i fell for it more than once. most recently, late december through january. i ended things in early february. carlos stopped returning my texts, and i felt stupid for, once again, believing his talk of how we had this special connection. he cancelled on me the night we were supposed to have drinks and a conversation. so i emailed him. i never heard back, and i was hurt. i guess i had hoped carlos might try to talk me out of ending things with him. recently, when i asked him if we could meet up to talk, he told me that he was seeing someone. from carlos’s twitter, i guessed that you are the person he is seeing. from your twitter, i was horrified to find out that it seems he was seeing you the whole time. i have been begging carlos to meet me for coffee to clear all of this up. i wanted to know the truth. i can’t believe that anyone could say all the things he said to me while he had a girlfriend. i wish that i had known about you.

i know what i must sound like. i am still shocked by what a fool i was/am. i am including links to two posts on my blog, for proof i guess, that i had no idea he was seeing someone else:http://dstaradventures.tumblr.com/post/42948980709/this-is-how-you-write-a-break-up-letter and http://dstaradventures.tumblr.com/post/45384640633/mistress-know-thyself

i thought you deserve to know about me. i deserved to know about you.

dorothy

yeah. i’m a real cunt sometimes.

it does hit all the right notes, yeah? do you know how long it takes to compose such an email? to hit that proper tone of hurt and incredulous without sounding like a nut? all i can say in my defense is that i had decided to give in to my worst impulses. it is not something i have done before. i do not think i will again. the only thing that comes from pain is more pain.

and anyway, it turns out she had a better hand than i. i am going to paraphrase her response. since she is the only half of that pair with the decency to be straight with me, i’m not going to turn around and put her words on the internet without permission. of course, in all of this, i only have her word to go on, but since she does not seem like a lying, manipulative piece of garbage and carlos is definitely a lying, manipulative piece of garbage, i choose to trust her.

• she and carlos began an open relationship in november 2011. [yes, you read that correctly. november 2011. that is a month before carlos and i met.]
• she first knew of me in december 2011. according to her, she encouraged him to tell me he was in an open relationship, as she had done in such situations.
• carlos did not tell me about his open relationship, and apparently lied to her about the nature of his relationship with me.
• eventually, carlos told the girlfriend that he had come clean to me about his open relationship. she did not believe him, but didn’t get involved. [thanks a fucking lot, p.s.]
• she knew carlos broke up with me in may of 2012.
• she and carlos decided to become exclusive in july 2012. [was that before or after he came over to christen my new bed?]
• she knew we had seen each other in january when she was out of town.
• though she never got involved, she says that when she and carlos talked about me, she always encouraged him to be honest with me.
• my email made her cry.

ditto on the last point, lady.

did i ever cry. i haven’t cried so hard since my brother died. i sat on my couch and cried so hard i couldn’t breathe. i was in shock. i had thought it was pretty bad. i had thought carlos was pretty bad, but it turns out he is a fucking monster. he is more selfish and manipulative and deceitful than i could have imagined. her email made true the feelings i pretended in contacting her.

my response:

i appreciate your honesty and candor. if i was horrified before, i don’t know that there is a word for what i feel right now. you have completely re-written a large part of my history. entire months of my life were a complete lie. i had beyond no idea. all i can think of is every single moment that he had to tell me the truth and didn’t, including many times when i specifically asked what our situation was. of course this is not your problem or fault. thank you for telling me the truth. i kept thinking that my opinion of carlos could not get lower, but this breaks new ground. he took away my choice. he took away my ability to choose what i wanted for myself by deliberately misleading me. and here i thought he was just a selfish coward. oh god. and when he agreed to be my allegedly exclusive boyfriend last april. it was all a lie. he lied right to my face. over and over. he told me what i wanted to hear. he took away my choice because he knew i didn’t want this. he lied to me to make me do what he wanted and then dropped me when it stopped being convenient for him. i can’t breathe i’m so upset. again. not your fault or problem. in january i literally asked carlos what the rules were this time. he acted as if he were fumbling through our reconnection the same as i. but he had all the information. not only was it never going to be me. it was never going to be me on such an epic scale that i can hardly conceive of it. it was never going to be me from the very start. from before the start. and all his talk of fate and how we were destined to keep coming back to each other. oh my god. his fucking pact on how we should be together if we hadn’t found someone in whatever bullshit he was saying when i interrupted him. he fucking has someone. there is no “if we haven’t found someone.” he had someone the whole time. oh my god. it’s such a enormous lie i can hardly process it. it was all a lie. i feel so betrayed. i am so beyond hurt. there aren’t words deep enough for how appallingly betrayed i feel. he let me introduce him to all my friends as my boyfriend. all the time, knowing that he already had a girlfriend. it turns out that i AM the consolation prize. i AM the back-up. i am his fucking real doll with the girlfriend experience that he picked up whenever he felt like it and put me away when i was inconvenient. not a thought for how i would feel. i have never been treated with so little respect in my life. especially from someone who professed to care for me. for someone he allegedly found intimidatingly smart, he treated me like the idiot and fool that i apparently was. am. i was only ever straight-forward with him. and he repaid me with lie after lie. so many lies i can barely comprehend it. it was all lies. from the day we met, just one lie after another. even at the end, he didn’t care enough to tell me the truth. if i never knew the truth. maybe i’d still be there on the shelf in two months or six months or a year. ugh. because we have a special connection and he can just drift in and out of my life as he pleases. oh god. i am so disgusted.

now, friends. that is what i sound like when i am hurt and incredulous. i apparently only believe in full stops and find sentence fragments much more expressive than full sentences.

i am still so shocked by all this. last night, i remembered asking him in january whether he had been with anyone else while we were together last year. he looked me right in the eye and said that he had been with people after, but not during. his ability to lie is staggering. for our entire acquaintance, he deliberately withheld information to manipulate me, or he outright lied. every time that he could have told me any part of the truth, he doubled-down on the lies. i still don’t have words to convey how deeply this hurt me. the lies. the lies are what hurt. the manipulation. the deception. the sheer enormity of it. it is hard to comprehend.

my trust was violated so completely. he stole my agency. if he had been honest with me, i may have still dated him knowing he was in an open relationship, but i would have had the knowledge i needed to make my own choice. he took away my ability to choose for myself. it is unlikely that i would have been with him for as long or in the same manner, if i had known the truth. he is more selfish and more terrible than i had given him credit for. he only thought of his own selfish desires. i didn’t want to be a side player in someone else’s relationship. i still don’t want that. instead of having his open relationship and not having me, or having me and not having the girlfriend, he chose to lie to everyone and have both as long as he could. he is appalling. he was never going to tell me the truth. as long as i never knew, he could come back into my life with his talk of fate and connection. and i would have fallen for it again.

the night that we talked about becoming exclusive last april is painful to remember. i told him that i wasn’t seeing anyone else and asked if he was. he said no. i asked him how he would feel if i started seeing someone. he said that it would hurt him. i said that i would feel the same way. i said that this didn’t mean we would become serious, just label the situation we were already in, casual but exclusive. he agreed. he sat across from me on my couch and told lie after lie. he told me that he cared about me and wanted to be with only me.

of course, he dumped me a month later. so obviously, even in the false narrative he created for me, that wasn’t true.

carlos didn’t want us to change our statuses on facebook. i literally could not have cared less. i hate facebook. it’s a well-known fact. i’m not 13. i don’t need to broadcast to everyone i’ve ever met that i have a boyfriend. besides, at that point we were still casual.

he told me that he didn’t really have any friends for me to meet. well, carlos is pretty lame and awkward. he had been through two serious relationships in four years that resulted in losing all his possessions, an ex suing him, an ex keeping his dog. it wasn’t unbelievable that he came out of that with few friends. i myself have only acquired a large group of friends relatively recently. this did become a problem towards the end. i kept pushing him to introduce me to his friends because i reasonably thought it a normal step after being together 5 months and exclusive.

carlos told me that the girl he interacted with frequently on twitter was his best friend. okay. i’m not a jealous person. if you tell me someone is just a friend, i will believe you. people have friends of the opposite sex. i have some myself. it turns out, this was the girlfriend the whole time. it now makes sense why he was so resistant to introducing me.

i mean, i guess these things are suspicious. i guess. they weren’t a big deal at the time. in hindsight, it’s more like, “oh yeah. that makes more sense now.” the way we interacted in person seemed so genuine that the rest of it didn’t really bother me. he seemed so obviously into me. our chemistry felt so real. like i said, carlos is my kryptonite.

the thing i have come to realize is that if i were put back into this situation, i would fall for it again. i treated him as i expect to be treated. the only way i could have prevented this situation is to have been a jealous, suspicious, crazy person. i don’t want to be that person. i don’t see this situation as a negative reflection of how i approach the world. carlos took advantage of me and manipulated me into doing what he wanted. he is disgusting. i will never forgive him. there can be no forgiveness for such a terrible, enormous, continued manipulation. at the same time, i refuse to let his being such an appalling person change me into something i am not. i have to believe that people will be basically honest. i refuse to view the world through a lens of distrust.

that being said, when i think about the enormity of the manipulation, it makes me nauseated. i spent two days physically ill with rage. i couldn’t eat or sleep. all i could do was be angry. all i could think about was how much i wanted to punch carlos in the face until his own mother wouldn’t recognize him. i had to/have to let it go though. that kind of anger only hurts me. if i could actually kill people with my mind, it would be a productive use of my energy. alas, this is not the case. all it did was make me have to down pepto in order not to throw up everything i forced myself to eat.

i am doing my best to breathe deeply and let go of my anger. i find it helpful to imagine jake gyllenhaal rubbing my back and telling me to breathe in love and breathe out anger. i know everyone’s all about ryan gosling these days, but did he ever play a teenage nerd rocket scientist from the 50s? i didn’t think so. [p.s. go watch october sky, if you’ve never seen it.]at the end of the day, yes, this is the worst thing anyone has ever done to me, but it will not break me. i will be fine. i still have a wonderful life, with wonderful people in it who love me. carlos cannot take that away from me. the carlos i thought i knew is dead anyway, or never existed.

at the very least, i burned it down alright. even if i am not to be trusted, i think exposing his lies to his girlfriend killed off any affection he may have been harboring for me. that, and i wrote him this:

from this moment on, you are dead to me. do not ever contact me again. if you see me out, do not speak to me or even look at me.

you violated my trust so deeply, i cannot even begin to express my anger and pain. you are an appalling human being. the level of deception and manipulation of your every word to me is horrifying. you took away my agency. do you have any idea how violating that feels? you deliberately denied me vital information to manipulate me into doing what you wanted. at times, you flat-out lied to my face. you are disgusting.

you are dead to me. if you ever talk to me again, i will fucking end you.

surely, that did the trick if nothing else did.

*the policy on my blog is that identities are changed to protect the innocent. carlos no longer qualifies for the courtesy.

oh, the changes around here!  

i deleted my old okcupid profile.  it felt like the right thing to do.  i wanted a fresh start for several reasons, both personal and technological.  lucky for you, it took no time for the messages to pile up.  

let’s get into them, shall we?

—

dear [redacted],

words mean things.  they have specific meanings.  yeah, yeah, homophones are hard, but it still remains that i have not, to my knowledge, peeked your interest.  i have never, surreptitiously or otherwise, seen your interest, and you certainly are not getting a glimpse of mine.  the phrase is to pique one’s interest.  call me a dick, but i find using words and phrases incorrectly to be irritatingly stupid.  it’s not that i’m immune to making mistakes.  i just have a lot of smart people around me who, thankfully, will correct me.  misusing words can be charming in children, but once you’ve reached the ripe, old age of 33, it’s not cute.  read a fucking book.  read lots of books.  or just use a dictionary.  it’s what literate adults do.    

it’s a commonly known fact amongst my friends that i have a serious thing for tall, skinny guys with messy hair and the skinniest jeans they can cram themselves into.  it’s gotten to the point that a friend of mine frequently tells me, “i saw this skinny guy in the tightest jeans i’ve ever seen and thought of you.”  it’s bad.  i blame it in combination on leonardo dicaprio and the strokes.  leo with his skinny hotness and messy hair in baz luhrman’s r+j, and the strokes for being the hottest guys in tight jeans this side of anywhere.  i don’t help matters by living in williamsburg, aka hot, tight pants-wearing hipster central.  now, this is probably unfair.  being someone who “seems real”—i.e. is fat—i probably should date chubby guys, but life isn’t  fair, [redacted].  it turns out that there are enough cute, skinny guys who want to hit this that i don’t have to date bald, goateed men from bay ridge.  

-dstar

—

nothing.  it just isn’t what i want.  

and fuck you.  this message infuriates me.  it some seriously disrespectful bullshit.  

if that sounds like a crazy leap to make from a single sentence, look at it this way: a reasonable person would see that i’m not interested in a casual relationship and move along if that’s what they are looking for.  you decided that instead of just moving along to someone who wants the same thing as you, it was a good idea to try and talk me into doing what you want.  that is the real purpose of this message.  it is the beginning of a campaign to manipulate me into seeing things your way.  it is disrespectful of my ability to know my own mind, and it plays into the false dichotomy of sex being something that men want and that women want to keep them from getting.  it’s false because it sets up these interactions which are, at their base level, men trying to get women to “give up” something.  and it’s all total bullshit!  sex is something that is awesome that two people choose to participate in.  it’s not something that one person lets another do to him or her.  it is a joint venture that two (or more) people gladly and excitedly undertake.  it should not be something that you have to convince someone to do.  this dichotomy feeds into rape culture.  and that’s disgusting.  

-dstar

—

(friends, my new okcupid name is star shark)

—

Ms. Shark, You’re very beautiful, and you have a gorgeous smile. Do you have any use for free housework? I would do excellent work for you. I’d make all your floors and appliances look perfect, and I’d work hard and do great work with any other chores I’m assigned. I’m very obedient, and I know my place. I would not expect any attention or anything else from you. I can also serve as a chauffeur-slave, providing you with free car service whenever you like.

dear sir, 

you do not know how fucking much i wish i could say yes to this.  i have all of the use for free housework.  i hate cleaning.  i have been sans boyfriend for almost a year, and good god, is that fact ever apparent in the state of my apartment.  sure, i’ve had guys over since then, but not with the necessary frequency to force me into cleaning with any regularity.  plus, if i have a gentleman over at night, you can barely see the dust.  so why bother?     

alas, i cannot say yes.  i cannot say yes because, despite your being someone who gets off on being treated poorly, i’m not someone who can treat another person like that.  it would make me feel bad.  i’m just not into the other side of your kink-coin.  sorry.  

-dstar

—

Wow!your beauty is like a song written by the hands of God…i m interested in you..[Redacted]

dear [redacted],

i know, right?  i am, like, the super prettiest.  there are days where i can literally get nothing done because i just cannot tear myself away from the mirror.  

just kidding.  you can cool it with the hyperbole.  i don’t understand why people write messages like this.  does it work?  what kind of person is so flattered by that nonsense that they ignore, say, the 3% match, or that you are super old and live in qatar?  (yes, folks, you read that correctly.  3%.  it is not missing any zeroes or other digits.)

flattery makes me kind of uncomfortable.  especially from people i do not know, or do not know well.  i distrust the motivations of people/men who lay on the unnecessary compliments.  can’t we just let things be?  i just feel like it gets weird if you start dropping things like, “you have the sweetest smile i’ve ever seen.”  like, really?  ever?  i guess i just assume that the guys i’m with think i’m attractive, or they wouldn’t be with me. especially when things are new, compliments are basically, “hey.  you’re pretty.”  well, thanks, but i already know that.  

now, genuine compliments from people that know me and with whom i share real affection is a totally different matter.   i just think flattery is some bullshit.  

and hey, it is entirely possible that it’s because i just came off a year+ of some on-again/off-again shenanigans with a guy who was full of remarks about how beautiful and great i am.  though in the end, it didn’t matter.  despite being so beautiful and amazing, i still wasn’t what he wanted.  

so what i’m saying is, fuck your flattery.  

-dstar

—

Hi , im [Redacted] nice to meet you, i live in rego park queens, im single , 33, work in fashion and finance, 
im a really nice guy , very friendly, and easy to be around, 
i think you look great by the way, and wanted a chance to talk to you and get to know you, 
im looking forward to hearing back from you, you can either get in touch with me here„ im also on aim or aol [redacted]@aol.com or yahoo chat [redacted] , if you prefer ill give you my cell number, we can text talk get to know each other , and maybe meet up for drinks or go to a cafe :) 
thanks talk soon :)

oh [redacted],

no.  

not ever.  

there is not a single period in your message except the one in your aol email address.  (fucking aol???  seriously?  is this 1995?  are you secretly in your 60s?)  you spend the whole message dreadfully abusing commas.  it’s a fucking massacre of punctuation.  i barely know where to start.  you neglect both full stops and apostrophes.  at one point you put a double comma.  that is not a thing.  

the cherry on top of this terror-sundae of bad grammar is the desperation.  write me here!  email me!  yahoo chat with me!  i can give you my cell number!  we can text!  we can talk!  we can get drinks! or coffee!  anything!  whatever you want!  pretty please!

gross.  first messages should be casual and not contain so fucking much personal information.  as anyone who has received a message from me can attest, i’m a big fan of, “hey!  you seem cool.  maybe we can meet up for a drink some evening, if you’re interested.”  if they reply, of course, i’ll be more of a human and less of a spambot, but i don’t see why i should write lengthy, personal messages when 95% of them will go unanswered.  it’s a numbers game, sir.  save your effort for people who give a fuck.

-dstar  

—

this next one is both a real message and my real answer.  for some reason, i felt like calling him on his bullshit.  

—

Am ready to date and fuck if you wish—-agree?

that’s a highly inappropriate message to send, and i don’t go out with guys who have a poor sense of what is appropriate.

—

well, i try not to go out with guys who have a poor sense of what’s appropriate.  

at least, it’s something new i’m trying.  no more guys who speak casually of a future when they have girlfriends.  no more guys who think that sex on the first date makes me a slut who you can’t have a real relationship with.  (p.s. fuck you. it would make you a slut, too, and that didn’t bother me.)  no more guys who think that kissing when sober implies something ultra serious.  no more guys who think enjoying his company means i’m falling in love.  (believe me, i would awkwardly let you know if i was falling in love.)

let’s all try to be appropriate!  

(this includes knowing when it’s okay to be inappropriate.)  

comments here, if you have them!

do you know what is great about belonging to a gym in williamsburg?  

it’s the cute, hipster nerds who also belong it!

i don’t know new crush’s name.  i likely i never will because i have no wish to talk to anyone at the gym.  i am at my super grossest when i’m there, and i do not like to interact with attractive guys when i am bright red and sweaty.  (thanks for the genes, dad!)

anyway, i’ve been calling him google in my head because he is always wearing a google t-shirt.  either he works there or is a superfan.  you know the drill: dorky haircut, square glasses with black plastic frames, skinny, wears awesome/dorky hipster gym shorts.  what isn’t to love?  

so while i will never speak to him, i appreciate his existence.  having cute boys around just makes life better.  

i ran two miles today.  granted, it was on a treadmill with zero incline, but nonetheless, i fucking did it.  i didn’t think i could run even one mile, but it turns out i can run two of them.  sure, if you are someone who runs this is not a big deal.  i am well aware of how much of a non-thing this is to most people.  i’m not most people though.  so i’m super excited about it.  i think i’m going to do it again tomorrow.  woo!  as gat0rz says, “nothing fuels a run better than rage or incredulousness.”

incredulous is correct, my friends.  after some internet (let’s call it sleuthing) last night, i am now 99% sure that i was the other woman.  so when ex-bf said he couldn’t just be with me right now, after i interrupted his proposed pact, he was not speaking metaphorically of his emotional unavailability.  he was speaking literally about his actual unavailability.  because he had/has a girlfriend.       

so i have decided to fully embrace break-up cliches.  i got a wax that waxed off far more than i expected or desired, but by the time i realized just how much she was removing, it was too late to stop it without ending up with some kind of two-face situation on my ladyparts.  lesson learned.  brazilian means different things to different waxing technicians.  i finally went to the gym i’ve been a member of for a year now without once visiting.  i got drunk and danced around.  i finally had the guts to ask out a cute boy i’ve been crushing on.    

tomorrow i’m going to a show with my concert-friend.  my life is awesome.  i am awesome.  

any suggestions for break-up cliches to try?  my one rule is that i am not going to change my hair.  no way is ex-bf worth giving up my fantastic ‘do.  

yesterday, after much poking with sticks, ex-bf finally responded.  in a text exchange disturbingly similar to a scene in the short film gat0rz is writing for me to star in and her to direct, he informed me that he can’t meet up with me because he has a girlfriend now.  

well.  

that was fast.  

(was it fast, or was it happening the whole time?  guys, i think i might have been the other woman.)

and i was right.  i was right about not being the one he actually wanted.  i was right to end it.  i was right all over the place.  

i really hate being right.  

so i cried because i felt like crying.  then i called my good friend and closest neighbor.  she asked me if i wanted to come over.  i did not.  i wanted to be alone.  then i wanted to put on a pretty dress and get drunk and sing karaoke and dance and ask [new crush] if he wanted to go out with me.  

i did all of those things.  

[new crush] has a girlfriend.  because of course he does.  he’s handsome and awesome. we were chatting at karaoke, and i just asked him if he wanted to go out with me sometime.  he said that he would love to, but can’t because he has a girlfriend.  he said that we should still hang out, but i told him that i don’t think that’s a good idea.   i’m not interested in being his friend, not at the moment, at any rate.  i think it’s a bad move to hang out with someone you want to date, but who does not want to date you.  i can still go to karaoke.  it sucks for me that he has a girlfriend, but i kind of don’t care because i fucking did it.  i was courageous.  nothing exploded.  the world didn’t end.  he wasn’t weird or a jerk about it.  

i woke up feeling great.  i mean, that might have been because i was still drunk, but whatever.  it counts.  

i feel like i did exactly what i needed to do.  which i feel super proud of myself and happy about.  i listened to my feelings.  i let them be what they are instead of trying to make them what i thought they should be.  

sometimes you just need to cry.  then you put on your best dress and go dance with your friends.  in the morning, it’s always better.  

it’s good advice.  it is something i strive for.  knowledge of myself.  i think i do an okay job.  one of the benefits of being introspective and spending a lot of time alone is having time to evaluate my actions based on what i wanted, what i got, how i feel about that, and how to change my behaviour in the future.  

i have found myself still disproportionately angry over not receiving the slightest acknowledgement from ex-bf over the email i sent to him.  not to mention the multiple texts i sent him the night of our cancelled meeting, pleading with him to not cancel on me, that seeing him was something that meant a lot to me.  the total silence on his end made me sad and angry at the time, and the anger has continued.  every time i thought about it, i was furious.  i was mad at him for all of the above-mentioned bullshit, mad at myself for still being angry more than a month after it went down.  

i had to think long and hard about why i was still so angry.  if i were truly the person that i tell myself i am, it would have been simple to let it go.  he behaved exactly as i expected him to.  he avoided his own discomfort at the expense of giving me what i asked for.  if i were really, deep down, the person who made the decision to end it—the person who knows how to act in her own best interest and the person who doesn’t tolerate being treated badly—then letting go of my anger would be a non-issue.  it is not that i am not that person.  i am.  but i contain multitudes, guys.  

my anger stemmed from a secret hope that ex-bf had agreed to meet up with me because he didn’t want me to end things.  it was a secret i kept even from myself because i was/am embarrassed by it.  it is humiliating to admit to others or yourself that you secretly hoped a person who had, over and over, treated you badly, would suddenly and magically be a person who you could really be with.  the thing with knowing yourself is that you have to take the good with the embarrassing.  

so here it is, the embarrassing truth:

i wanted ex-bf to try and talk me out of it.  i had let myself get sucked in, once again, by his casual talk of the future.  it wasn’t ever big things, but all the fucking time, he would slip in mentions of “when we do this again…” or “next time we come here…” and so on.  he wanted me to learn a duet to sing with him the next time we went to karaoke.  in my conscious mind, i knew he was full of shit.  i knew that what was happening between us in january had an expiration date, but that kind of talk gets into your head.  secretly, i wanted to believe that he really cared about me.  secretly, i wanted to believe that maybe we could make a go of it.  secretly, i wanted to believe that he didn’t only get back in touch with me at 1 a.m. after a night of drinking because he was horny and lonely.  (shut up.  i am aware of how stupid that is.) i wanted to believe his casual talk of “us” because i liked him, against my better judgement and my friends’ criticism.  i liked the way he made me feel when we were together.  i liked how beautiful he thought i was.  i liked that we had over-lapping, but not identical, interests.  i liked how fucking easy it was to be around him.  

i wanted to meet up with him and lay out my concerns, which were the ones i wrote out in my exemplary break-up email, but i secretly hoped that he would argue with me.  i secretly hoped he would try to convince me that i didn’t have to end things between us, that he would meet me half-way.  simply by showing up, he would have indicated that he had maybe changed, that he could choose this thing that was important to me over his own comfort.  that is what i meant when i called him selfish and a coward.  he chose hurting me over experiencing discomfort or pain himself.  he showed me that he was the same person he was before, that i was right in my assessment of the situation he and i were in, and that i was foolish for hoping i was wrong.  

it is useless to speculate about what might have happened if he had shown up.  it didn’t happen.  he didn’t even acknowledge my email.  

i have a history of making decisions with my head, but not really wanting to stand by them.  i know what is good for me—truly, i do—and for the most part i act in my own best interest.  deep down, though, i harbor these hopes, these secret, embarrassing hopes, that people will be different than i know them to be, that things will work out differently than i expect them to, that a person will surprise me.  

i guess i am hoping, right out loud on the internet for everyone to see, that by admitting this weakness of mine, by airing my imperfections, that i can be a person who doesn’t have to keep things a secret.  that i can acknowledge the complexities of my emotions.  that i don’t need to pretend to myself or others that i am better, harder, stronger than i really am.  that weaknesses and imperfections are part of being human. that i am human.  

i am human. lying to myself keeps me from really knowing myself.  then i’m straight-up ignoring shakespeare’s advice, which is always a bad idea.  

p.s. happy pi day!

hello, hello!  look who’s finally doing something other than take naps and watch so you think you can dance!  (it’s me!)

i haven’t been on okcupid much these last few months.  first i was dating the square, then a lawyer, then the square again, then i was sleeping with my ex.  oof.  such an awkward life i lead, guys.  especially when you consider all the overlap between the guys i just listed.  yeah.  so much overlap.  oops?

on to the good part!

—

Hey there.My name is [redacted]. How are u doing Sexy? I am a 21 year old guy that is half italian and half irish. i am also half a gentleman and half a bad boy. ;) I would really like to get to know u and possibly hang out with u, take u out on a date, or talk to each other either by texting or talking on the phone. Would one of these ideas be ok with u?:)

oh, [redacted], 

where to start?  

oh i know!  you’re 21 years old.  gross.  

both your manner of expression and the number of times you wrote “u” instead of “you” literally makes me want to vomit.  ”half a gentleman and half a bad boy”????  could you write anything more nauseating?  just kidding.  that is not a challenge.  i take it back.  

let’s also address the way you capitalized the word “sexy,” as if it were a proper noun.  it is not.  i’m not sure where you got the idea that capitalizing a term of address that is not a proper noun was the right thing to do.  it isn’t.  just like if i wrote, “please fuck off and die, sir.”  i would not capitalize the word “sir,” even if i were prone to capitalization, which i am not.  

oh and the emoticons.  

this message is just filled with so much nausea-inducing desperation that i just can’t handle it.  can we hang out?  or go on a date?  or talk on the phone?  or text?  is any of this okay?  ugh.  

the answer is no, none of these ideas are okay with me.  

-dstar

—

u meet in nj XXX-XXX-XXXX? call now

no.  

a million times no.   

no to the infinite power.  

i don’t go out with old men.  i do not take orders from strangers.  i do not date those with a tenuous grasp of the english language.  i do not go to new jersey on the command of a strange old man with a tenuous grasp of the english language.  

what the fuck is wrong with you?  in what world is this an appropriate first communication?  i’ll give you a hint: in no world is this appropriate.  i think you fundamentally misunderstood the nature of okcupid.  it is a dating site, not an escort service.  you can’t just message people with your phone number and order them up for the evening.  

also, you are 25 years over the top limit of my age range.  i might be able to forgive a few years.  we can’t all be 35 and under.  i get that.  however, it is also true that i’m not going to date a 60 year-old russian man in the middle of fucking new jersey who looks like an after-photo on a those posters that show the effects of crystal meth.  especially not a creepy one whose only photo is fucking creepy and your profile is minimally filled in with creepy broken english.  

-dstar

—

I threw my cat out the window before writing this message, no cat is worth not meeting you. I just wanted you to know the sacrifice I just made to establish a small connection to you.. I’m totes comitted.

dear sir,

well.  that is certainly a terrible way to win my favour.  i may very well be horribly allergic to cats, but i do not advocate their defenestration.  i fear that this act was entirely in vain.  i could never go out with someone who was so cruel to animals.  pets are our friends.  if for some reason, we can’t continue to care for them, it is up to us to find them a nice home, not throw them out the window at the first sign of a pretty girl with an allergy.  now who will be there to comfort you when you never hear back from me?  i mean, i am not all interested in you.  that cat though, it probably loved you.  (do cats love?)  you and i have zero in common, but that cat, it probably hung out with you while you did all kinds of stuff.  

i think you’ve made a huge mistake.  you better go see if your cat is alright.

-dstar

—

Bonsoir! 

OK, you and I.. joined at the hip. 

I’m still reading through your profile (haven’t even got to the rest of your photos yet), but noticed you were also online, and couldn’t help but press pause to send you a quickie. Heh. (I live in San Francisco, but so happen to find myself situated for the evening in your fair borough.) 

“Mainsplaining” !!! Classic. 

You rock (needless to say). And that ever-present smile? Delicious as a motherfucker. #justsayin 

OK back to your profile I go. You carry on, for the moment… 

Oh — and yes — drinks! Do you happen to be about, this evening? 

[Redacted]

15 minutes later:

**UPDATE** 

Good Lord, girl — you’re.. I mean.. seriously?!? 

Your crazy-sexy-cool snare has me in its grasp. Good work! ;) 

Right. This polite-but-foolishly-fun gentleman seeks your immediate accompaniment for, at minimum, engaging conversation and assorted cocktailery. (The business end of this might involve waking up bleary-eyed to blinding sunlight streaming in, with random chickens clucking about the floor strewn with discarded garments. #couldbeoneofthosenights) 

What, you’re still sitting there? Name your establishment, woman! :D 

[Redacted] 
+1 XXX XXX XXXX

dear [redacted],

first of all, we are not joined at the hip.  i feel certain i would have noticed a conjoined twin at some point in my 29 years of life.  that is a very weird way to say that you think we’re alike.  it is not a good metaphor.  you probably should have chosen a more appropriately descriptive phrase.  i’m just saying.  

i know that i say in my profile that i prefer meeting in real life to endless messaging on okcupid.  and this is both true and a lie.  it is true if i think you’re attractive and interesting, but it is a lie if you are not someone i would ever go out with.  i feel like i need to clear this up because i get a lot of messages that are like, “yes, drinks.  let’s do this.”  but just like everything with me, it’s only fun for me if it’s mutual.  it’s not fun for me for a guy to send me messages taking for granted that i want to meet him.  

you see, i don’t like guys taking my interested in them as a given.  it’s a little creepy.  if you take my interest as a given, despite my not expressing it, what else might you expect or take for granted though i give no indication i feel it or want it?  might you date rape me?  i don’t know.  i don’t know you. maybe you’re not that guy, but i feel really uncomfortable with a stranger telling me how it’s going to be and what to do.  wrapping it up in flattery doesn’t make it less creepy, it just says to me that you are accustomed to using flattery to manipulate women.  i don’t like that kind of guy in person, and i don’t like that kind of guy on the internet.  it makes me uncomfortable.  

plus, come on.  i know i’m super awesome and totally pretty.  you can calm down.  i am not actually so fantastic that you can’t finish a sentence.  no one is.  again, that over-the-top bullshit makes me uncomfortable because it feels so disingenuous.   it’s a turn-off for me for someone to be so enthusiastic about my profile.  it’s actually a turn-off in person, too.  it just feels so manipulative.  just be cool, man.  i already know i’m awesome.  

-dstar

—

I’m 5’10 foot tall, blue eyes and I am very pre-occupied with stimulating and intelligent conversation; while I love travel I believe the greatest adventure is to explore one’s passions. I define true passion as not just lust in the moment… it’s not even when you are touched so deeply that you find you give all that you have. It’s when you are touched so deeply you find things coming forth from you that you never even knew or imagined could be there. Can you feel that… would be an amazing thing to experience with someone? 
ME: I’m successful self-made lady, so you’ll learn lots from me about spirit and mind as well as body! I must be with someone adventurous who LOVES to learn new things and is longing for an amazing new direction. please to know much about our self write me here [redacted]@yahoo.com 
Thank 
[Redacted]

hey [redacted],

so here’s the thing: i’m a 1 on the kinsey scale, verging on a 0.  soooo.  i don’t really think i’m what you’re looking for.  i am do love to learn things, but i’m not terribly adventurous.  and i think the things i want to learn aren’t the things you want to teach me.  

plus, i really like guys.  i like dating them.  i like having sex with them.  guys are what i think about when i [redacted].  i’m just super into guys.  pretty irrevocably.  

i know, it makes me terribly boring, but it makes me happy.  

also, [redacted], you know that your message reads like the nonsense spam that tries to sell you penis enlargement pills, right?

-dstar

—

that’s all for today, folks.  i’ll try to not let so long go between installments.  

but then i am very unreliable and very fickle.  so who knows?

me: “[new crush] seems really cool and a grown-up.”
gat0rz: “wait, did you just use his real name?”
me: “yeah, i’m trying something new.” 

i am trying something new.  i’m trying this new thing where i don’t completely distance myself emotionally from my life.  i was accused by someone i love that i don’t let the boys i date into my heart.  i think i fairly rebutted that accusation with the fact that boys i have dated should not be let anywhere near my heart.  i wasn’t interested in anything serious, and i dated accordingly.  i want different things now, so i’m trying to change my approach to life to better attract what i really want.  part of that is not distancing myself emotionally by only referring to boys by nicknames.  boys are people, too.  real ones.  with names and personalities and everything.  apparently.  

[new crush] is all too new to write much about.  just that he seems cool and like a grown-up, but a cool grown-up, which, i hope, is what i am.  he is part of the reason that i felt it was necessary to finally sever things with ex-bf.  i am ready to let new things into my life, and that’s hard to do when you’re sleeping with your ex.  [new crush] was part of the reason, but not the whole reason.  i still know next to nothing about him.  he is attractive and seemingly cool.  so he probably has a girlfriend.  if he doesn’t and if he is interested in me, there are still a million things that could not work out.  he just made me realize that if i want to pursue new things, i should be free of old things.  if by an alignment of fate, [new crush] is single and wants to date me, i don’t want to ruin things in a potential future by an overlap of beginnings and endings.  if [new crush] isn’t single or doesn’t want to date me, the same thing is true for the next new crush.  

i’m trying something new, you guys.  it’s exciting.  

you know my feelings about breaking up with someone via email.  i think it’s super shitty, verging on inexcusable.  (though clearly not entirely inexcusable given how many times i hooked up with ex-bf after he dumped me via email.  fuck you, the sex was amazing.)

in my defense, i did more than my best to try and have this be a conversation that happened in person.   

i realized what i needed to do, once the afterglow faded from the several weeks in which ex-bf and i had all the sex.  like, seriously, all of it.  all the sex in the world, it was mine.  and it was awesome.  

despite some troubling post-coital moments:

• the revelation that he thinks of our relationship as similar that of hannah and adam in the HBO show Girls.  nope.  no, it is not.  because that either means i am hannah, the insecure, needy, selfish, terrible twenty-something.  or i am adam, the sociopath.  maybe he thinks it’s similar in how they are continually drawn towards each other despite their obviously toxic relationship.  
   
• the revelation that he thinks we have the kind of connection where we will drift in and out of each others lives and just keep coming back together.  again, nope.  i am not your magical dream girl who you conjure up when you’ve had a dry spell and are feeling lonely just to put back on the shelf when you’re done.  i am fucking human being.  please treat me as such.
   
• the pact of unknown terms that he tried to get me to agree to.  it started with, 

“we should make a pact that if we haven’t found someone—”
 ”no.  if you want to be with me, then be with me.  i am not a consolation prize.”  
“well, i don’t really think i can do that right now.”  
“exactly.”  

please don’t ask what specifically this pact was going to be.  literally everyone i’ve told this story to wants to know, and quite frankly, i am extremely curious myself, but none of us gets to know because i was so reflexively against any pact that i cut him off mid-sentence.  i apologize to you, my friends.  i swear on a stack of bibles that the next time a guy tries to make a bullshit pact with me, i will at least let him lay out the terms before declining. 

all of this was easy to overlook in the glow of multiple orgasms.  i mean, isn’t pretty much anything?  i’m not unusual in that, yeah?  i feel like that’s the reason anyone stays too long in a bad situation.  

anyway, left on my own, once again in the land of unreturned text messages, my head shook free of the orgasm haze.  it was the same old bullshit of a year earlier.  except now he had explicitly said to me that he felt free to drift in and out of my life.  

fuck that noise.

plus, i have recently had the feeling that i want more.  that while all the casual sex has been fantastic—i do not regret a minute of this adventure—i just want more now.  i want all of it.  i’m not satisfied with only part of it.  i want the whole deal.  i am terrified and excited at the idea of having awesome sex AND feelings.  it’s crazy, i know, but it’s how i feel.  i have felt like this before, so be warned this buzz of mine to maybe possibly fall in love sometime in the future may give way to old patterns.  i mean, i don’t think i will, but i always think i’ll be different and that’s not always the truth, in the end.  this has been building for awhile.  i think the events of this winter were just the catalyst i needed to clarify my feelings.  

blah blah blah.  here’s what you’ve been waiting for.  this is the email i sent saturday  night, after it became clear that ex-bf was not going to give me the face-to-face i wanted:

[ex-bf],

i am really glad i checked my phone one last time before i went into the subway tonight.  i think that if i had spent part of my evening sitting alone at the dove, i would be angry and more hurt.  as it is, i am just disappointed that things turned out this way.  

here is what i wanted to say to you tonight:

i had been feeling bad about the way i let you back into my life.  it was shitty of me to invite you in because i was mad at another guy.  that is not a move i am proud of.  i was feeling hurt and it felt good to be desired by someone who thinks i’m beautiful.  i apologize to you for that.    

i didn’t believe that you were really moved to reconnect with me out of some sense of guilt or remorse.  all of that happened way too long ago to still be feeling guilty about.  i assumed that you were horny.  as the last couple of weeks have played out, i think i was correct about that.  you have said many times that you care about me, that you always cared about me. the thing is though, you have never treated me like a person that one cares about.  you do things, like not responding to my texts, that you know hurt me.  maybe this is how you treat the people you care about, but i hope not.  i hope that you are deceiving yourself about your feelings for me.  i think you tell yourself that when you want to reach out to me it’s because you’re feeling badly about how you treated me and that you still care about me, but i think that if you examine your motives, it’s because we always had really great sex, and you wanted to have that again.  i’m not saying this to make you feel bad, and i’m not angry or hurt by that being your motive.  i just really think that you could benefit from some self-knowledge when it comes to you and me.  i really don’t think you care about me.  i think you like having sex with me.  it’s not like i am on some moral high-ground here.  i just think knowing your true motivations might help alleviate the guilt you say you feel.      

i am not sure why you are so fixated on our brief relationship as something that you can come back to over and over.  we dated for such a short time.  and even in that short time, i don’t feel like you were ever really in it.  i let you into my life, but you shut me out of yours almost completely.  don’t you think it’s strange that in five months i never met one of your friends?  that you only agreed to be my boyfriend as long as we didn’t change our statuses on facebook?  that, at times, i had to plead with you to give me an indication that you were alive?  that you would tell me that you didn’t really have any friends for me to meet as you made plans with them on twitter, which you must have known i would see? [ed. it was his idea to follow each other on twitter, like 2 weeks into dating.]  i really do not understand why our brief relationship holds so much meaning in your mind.  it was mostly sex on my part, and entirely sex on your part.  you said that i freaked you out when i talked about how happy i was with you.  you know what?  i was happy.  i liked you.  i was having a good time.  i don’t think i was inappropriate in the way i expressed that, and if being honest about how i feel made you freak out, i think that points to incompatibility more than my having done something wrong.  i don’t want to be with someone who makes me feel like i need to hide what i’m feeling, especially when what i was feeling was so reasonable.  i was not declaring my love, or planning a future, or any number of crazy things.  

it hurts me that you said that you think we have a kind of relationship where we will continue to drift apart and come back together.  that kind of thinking makes me feel like you don’t see me as a person, but as this thing that exists for you when you need me.  i am really not okay with that.  i will admit that my behaviour in july and again this december contributed to that idea, and i apologize if i gave you the wrong idea, but that is not how this works.  i am not something to be picked up and put down at your whim.  you don’t get to drift in and out of my life.  i am no one’s fucking back-up.  

if this is it, then this is it.  for good.  

i had a really great time with you over those weeks when we were having all of the sex.  it was amazing.  you continue to be fantastic in bed.  you made me feel really great.  until you didn’t.  which i think is how it would always play out with you.  

i do not regret those weeks.  i do not regret reconnecting with you.  

i just want more.  i have had a super fun couple of years slutting it up, and i had a fucking great time.  i more than made up for the late start i got, i think.  i just think i’m ready to move into a different part of my life.  i still want sex, but i’m not scared of feelings anymore.  i want great sex with the possibility of more, of a future, of love, of being able to give my heart to someone.  i want all of it.  i’m not okay with only having part of it anymore.  i deserve to be someone’s first choice.  i deserve someone who is excited to see me.  i deserve someone who makes me feel great, someone who respects me and treats me like a human being with wants and needs and feelings.  

i really wanted to see you tonight.  i wanted to say all this to you in person.  i wanted to tell you that i do not regret anything that has passed between us and that you have to stop making yourself feel bad about how you ended it in may.  i wanted to tell you that you have to stop romanticizing our relationship.  it was only five months long, and it wasn’t what you wanted.  i was not what you wanted.  i continue to be not what you really want.  and you are not what i want, not really.  you are not interested in giving us a real shot, and i am not interested in anything less than that.  i am definitely not interested in being in a situation with someone who makes me feel bad, especially if i’m not getting laid.   

i am happy that things are going well for you.  i hope that your life continues to go well, that you have more joy than sadness, and that you are happy. 

-[dstar]

——————

and that, my friends, is how it’s done.  clear, straight-forward, honest and direct.  

i wanted to have a final conversation in person.  he cancelled as i was leaving my house to go meet him.  even at the last, he couldn’t not be selfish and a coward.  yes, ex-bf, i realize that it would have been a hard, un-fun conversation to have, but i think it’s important to have hard conversations.  

there has been no response from ex-bf, of course, because even at the last, he couldn’t not be selfish and a coward.

a guy whose message i posted in “let’s answer that!” #3 wrote me a very long message on okcupid last night.  i’ve since removed his message from that post.  to be honest, it was never a very good or snarky addition to the piece.  it’s absence won’t really be noticed.  i was short on interestingly bad messages, so i padded my entry with a message from a normal enough guy in whom i had no interest.  

but that in itself doesn’t much merit a post.  

his complaint about being featured in my blog seems to be twofold: 1) i took the time to write down my thoughts and feelings about him on my blog, but not to him directly and 2) his not being a creep deserves better treatment than ignoring him to his virtual face and posting about him on the internet.  

let’s address these separately.  

1) oh hey, i’m doing that thing where i write about you on my blog and don’t respond to your virtual face again.  man.  you just never catch a fucking break, huh?

this is not about you.  my blog is about me.  it’s my personal blog about my experiences with online dating.  i write it to entertain myself and, hopefully, my friends who live far away from me.  i have never claimed to be objective or fair, or nice, for that matter.  my taking time to think about a response and posting it to my blog doesn’t actually affect you because making it to the blog means i had already decided not to respond to you.  it’s not as if the time and effort i put into the blog post took away from time i would have spent writing back to you.  

i was never going to write back to you.  

i’m proud of you that you’re so fancy that you’ve invented a specific phrase that you use in every message so that you can google its occurrence on the internet, but i still don’t fucking care.  you built into your message a way for you to find my blog, as well as any other time someone took to the internet with your magic phrasing.  i think that you got what you deserved.  you went out looking for what people wrote about you, and now are upset that someone has written about you.  i didn’t link to your profile.  i included no identifying information.  i didn’t expose you in any way.  you found yourself, but unless all your acquaintances are intimately familiar with your message syntax, you would be anonymous even if they all read my blog, which i guarantee you, they do not. i am basically a non-thing on the internet.  most of MY friends don’t read this blog.  

2) not being terrible is not something that deserves a reward.  congratulations that you are able to contact people and move through the world without being completely disgusting.  you are now a regular person.  i take issue with you claiming that wanting a negative response from someone who isn’t interested makes you silly or idealistic.  that is some bullshit.  what it makes you is entitled and demanding.  you think that behaving in a manner that isn’t terrible earns you special treatment.  

not being terrible is not a good reason to get a response from me.  you say that we should all reply to everyone who writes to us full sentences and a modicum of clarity, even if the reply to to say, “sorry, no thanks.”  i completely disagree.  it’s a fucking dating site.  part of the point is that we all get avoid having to experience that rejection in person.  i think we should contact and respond to people who strike our fancies.  i neither want to hear from someone that they’re not interested nor want to send out those messages.  

you seem to suffer from that delusion of many guys who consider themselves “nice guys.”  a lot of you think that just not being terrible is a fucking virtue.  no.  not being terrible is neutral.  it should be the goddamn default.  it makes me so fucking angry that you feel entitled to a response from me, or fucking anyone, just because you’re not terrible.  being polite, expressing yourself without vulgarities or overt misogyny, using appropriate punctuation: these are all NORMAL FUCKING BEHAVIOURS.  they do not make you especially worthy of my attention.  

here’s what make a guy worthy of my attention: i find him attractive and interesting.  period.  

if he feels the same about me, then it’s game-on.  if not, it’s nothing.  

even knowing that you’re a google-pro, i’m going to excerpt from your message because this particular bit makes me furious, and i don’t want to dilute the effect by paraphrasing.  

I messaged you because we’re a 96% match, and that’s tended to actually hold weight in my experience. Reading your profile it seemed like we’d get along (although after reading your blog, admittedly, I’m not so sure anymore), and I find what you do to be really awesome. I find you quite attractive, as I mentioned previously, and I would’ve been overjoyed to take you out. I was/am/whatever also looking for something fairly casual, as life can be busy, so I figured that’d work out just swell if we could be each others’ “every now and then we hang out and be nerdy and bang”-people.

let me tell you a story.  it’s a story that involves a guy.  a ridiculously attractive guy, who—because of links he posted in his profile (i am not a stalker.)—i discovered was also funny, talented, and didn’t just have a good headshot but was actually super hot.  he was tall and seemed like the kind of boy who wears skinny jeans.  oh, and he had this goddamned hair.  i have a special weakness for great hair on a guy.  i love that messy wonderful look that all the boys were doing about 10 years ago.  (yes, i am fucking old.)

anyway.  i read this guy’s profile, watched the short video posted on his website—again, which he had linked.  i am not that crazy—, looked at his blog, found him super attractive, thought we would get along and were interested in similar things in regards to dating.  so i wrote to him.  he wrote back asking what exactly i was looking for on okcupid.  apparently my answer wasn’t the right answer for whatever reason, and i didn’t hear from him again.  

here’s the difference between me and you, i don’t feel entitled to a response from him just because i thought that we’d have a good time together.  i don’t think he needs to explain why he isn’t interested or even inform me that he isn’t interested.  the only thing that matters is that, despite what i thought about us potentially having a great time together, he didn’t feel the same way.  just because i would have been “overjoyed” to hook up with this guy doesn’t make a bit of fucking difference.  my thinking he’s beautiful and has pretty much the best haircut that exists in the world doesn’t fucking matter.  all that matters is that it was not mutual.  that’s where it ends.  

(although, clearly i have reserved the right to wax rhapsodic about his fucking great hair and pretty, pretty face on my blog.  feel free to write whatever you want about me, wherever you please as long as you return the courtesy of anonymity.)

i don’t give a fuck how attractive you found me.  i don’t give a fuck how well you thought we’d get on.  i don’t give a fuck how perfectly you thought our dating ideas aligned.  i don’t give a fuck how overjoyed you would have been to take me out.  whatever perfect picture you had in your head doesn’t matter.   none of it matters because i was not interested in you.   that is the only relevant fact.   

forgive me for expecting people to write in full sentences, use correct punctuation, and not start off a message with a request for obscure/mythological sex acts.  perhaps i am the idealistic one.  what you think deserves special consideration, i think is the bare minimum.  i am not impressed by your full sentences or clarity of expression.  

i refuse to set the bar so fucking low.  

my goodness.  it’s has been fucking forever since i wrote one of these.  i have so many terrible messages to fake-answer.  

let’s get down to it, shall we?

—

Hey my name is [redacted] and I m from Rome Italy.
Would like to take you out for good dinner and good drinks and tons of laughing!
Let me know
Ciao 

now, look here, [redacted].  you are 42 years old.  that is so many years, sir!  i’m having a hard time getting past how fucking old you are.  do you know how long it took me to see guys in their mid-30s as not too fucking old to go out with?  it took awhile and a ton of mental effort.  

plus, i’m not into the douchey mediterranean guy thing.  like, at all.  sure, maybe you are the outlier.  maybe you are the cool, open-minded, not misogynist, not creepy and gross, middle-aged italian man.  

but, come on, you aren’t that guy.  you’re a gross old man who writes to young-ish ladies on the internet and says that you want to take me out for dinner and drinks and laughter, but your profile is a shirtless picture of you and you have sex listed three times in the “Six Things I Can’t Live Without” section.  

-dstar

—

I have something fun in mind if you’re down for an adventure. Let’s go to a park sometime and I’ll give your body some discrete pleasure.

nope.  

i am not down with that.  i do not at all want to have public sex with a stranger.

oh, i’m sorry not public sex, “discrete pleasure.”  

still not into it.  

what the fuck is wrong with you?  there is nothing in my profile that indicates that this is an offer i’d appreciate.  yes, i do indicate that casual sex is something i’m interested in.  acknowledging that i like sex does not equate to asking for weird offers from strangers to fuck me publicly!  

do you even see that these are two entirely different things?  

your bullshit makes me super angry, in case i wasn’t clear enough above.  the attitude that enjoying consensual sex must mean that i’m up for anything, anywhere.  this is the same attitude that equates buying dinner or drinks into somehow being owed sex.  or that anything other than explicitly saying or indicating that i want to have sex with you ever means that i want to have sex with you.  because that’s how it fucking works, you piece of shit.  it would only ever be okay to propose what you did if i had communicated to you that i would be cool with that.  

now i’m not saying it needs to be some draconian code that requires you to ask my permission for every fucking thing, but jesus christ.  i don’t say anything in my profile about being an exhibitionist, or, i don’t even fucking know!  because i am not seeking out this kind of offer!  so i’ve never much thought about how to invite it.  though clearly, i needn’t have worried because there will always be some fucking guy who thinks you want to get raped have some discrete pleasure in a park.  

-dstar

—

Where do you go to listen to live music? I would love to visit a place like that with someone who knows a lot about it. ^^ 

hey,

here’s the thing.  i don’t take dates to concerts anymore.  it’s just such a bummer.  the last time i did that was a few weeks ago, and i realized it’s just bad news.  my date was weird and awkward with my concert friend.  and all i wanted to do was giggle and dance with my concert friend, but i had a date with me.  so that would have been rude.  long story short-ish, i resolved to not mix music and dates ever again.  

also, i’m not your fucking cruise director.  i know i’ve said this before, but i’m not really into being the indie colour in someone’s life.  i don’t actually think you would enjoy going to a show with me.  if going to shows was something you enjoyed, you’d already be doing it.  it’s crowded, noisy, and the floors are sticky with beer.  people will shove their way past you toward the front all night.  sometimes the bands are not as good as you had hoped.  inevitably, some 6’ tall guy will stand right in front of me.  your feet will hurt, and i will not want to go sit down to give you a break.  sitting at shows is for fucking squares and old people.  

sorry, dude.  

-dstar

—

I liked your profile and wanted to say hello. Just out of curiosity, what’s your beef with Mastodon?

hello!

i am glad you asked.  

mastadon totally earned my undying hatred.  though if we’re being entirely fair, i hate them a little less than i hate the mother fucker who curated the line-up at the pitchfork music festival 2007 and put them on after iron & wine.  who thought that would be a good idea?

picture this:

my little sister and i went to the pitchfork music festival in 2007 about 5 days after we buried our oldest brother.  it’s not so much that we necessarily wanted to go, so much as we had the tickets and it felt like eddie would have wanted us to go.  he was super into music.  i had spent the previous week barely eating and not sleeping.  that weekend i learned that it is, in fact, just as easy to be miserable surrounded by a bunch of people, listening to your favourite bands play live, as it is lying on your couch at home.  well, i found it to be just as easy.  perhaps others would have been uplifted by the experience.

after half a day of trying to enjoy the festival in earnest, my sister and i lay down on a blanket to listen to iron & wine’s set.  it was fucking beautiful.  the band was great.  the sun was shining down on us.  and we fell asleep to sam beam’s lovely voice.  this is possibly the most pleasant way to fall asleep.  

the next thing i knew there were thundering drums and screaming guitars.  waking up from a lovely sunshine/iron & wine nap to the sounds of mastadon is definitely the most unpleasant way to be awakened.  and for that i will hate them until i die.   they ruined the first nice moment i experienced after a terrible week that was filled with pain and grief.  i don’t like metal on a good day.  and i super fucking hated it that day.  

-dstar

—

i feel like i should stop, guys.  this has been way heavier than i intended and not up to my usual standard of snark.  i guess bringing dead brothers up always kills the general sense of fun.  

i’ll try to write a more fun installment later in the week.  

you know the rules.  comments here, please.  fuck facebook.  

wow, back the fuck off, mom guys.

yeah, that’s right, kids.  apparently the fun, new way for the boys of the internet to slowly turn me into a proper crazy person is some variant on the question, ”so…what exactly are you looking for?”

when did dating turn into the fucking spanish inquisition?  

i do feel that, perhaps, i might be somewhat to blame.  my profile is carefully crafted to be pretty vague, but that’s because i don’t fucking know what i want.  i thought i had accurately summarized my position with this bit of non-committal vagueness: 

i am eventually looking for something with the possibility of long-term potential, but i don’t want to jump into something serious. i’m open for whatever happens.

it is totally accurate.  that is exactly what i want.  it took weeks to write that first sentence.  i don’t want to misrepresent myself as seeking a serious, long-term relationship when that’s not really what i want, but i don’t think i’d run away screaming if that situation presented itself and it felt right.  

maybe i should just put that into my profile.  

it’s fucking tough, guys.  super fucking tough.  if my profile has too much emphasis on the casual, guys who are actually looking for something serious aren’t interested.  and vice versa.  i mean, i’m open to something serious…eventually.  probably.  i’ve had moments in which i thought that i was what i wanted.  it might have been hormonal though.  i just don’t fucking know.  

so here it is.  this is what i am exactly looking for.  

—

i am not goal-oriented in terms of dating.  i don’t really look at things in terms of whether we’re going to be together for weeks, months, years, or (this is very difficult to write) the rest of our lives.  i really like having sex.  i know, right?  it’s weird.  it’s almost like i’m a human being in that regard.  

i’m not into days/weeks of prolonged messaging over okcupid.  it’s boring, and it doesn’t really inform how you will interact with that person in real life.  if i think you seem cool and handsome, i want to meet up for drinks.  if i like you in person—meaning you are actually awesome, not just dating profile awesome—then i will definitely want to make-out.  in fact, i will probably not wait for you to kiss me.  yep.  when we are about three drinks into the evening (i might be impatient, but i do have some self-control), it is entirely likely that i will just kiss you.  i will be super awkward about how i make that happen, but not awkward about this kissing itself.  i’m terrible with the set-up, but i always stick the landing.  if the kissing is fun, i will totally want to head back to one of our residences for sex.  if the sex is great, i will want to see you again.  if you don’t want to see me again, well, that sucks for me, but it takes two to fuck, as they say.

here’s the important part, so read carefully, if i want to hang out/hook up frequently, it’s because i really like having sex with you and think you’re cool.  i am not falling in love with you.  i want to have sex on the regular with a guy that i think is awesome.  i’d like that to continue as long as it’s still fun for both of us.  if the situation changes, and i want more, i will straight-up tell you.  

see that’s the thing.  in general, i will just straight-up tell you.  i’m really bad at playing games.  i will just tell you the truth because i’m bad at manipulation.  i would super fucking love it if you did the same.  i mean, you won’t.  but i would sure love it if you did.  

—

so that’s what i want.  i’m still trying to decide whether putting it in my profile would be useful or generate more messages like this one:

Hi. I’m a nice guy but I have a small penis. Would you make fun of it and have to cheat on me?

i can’t tell from this message whether he is worried that i would make fun of his small penis and cheat on him or if he wants me to do that.  

either way, fuck that noise.  i don’t date douchebags from staten island.  

which reminds me!  i’ve got like a zillion messages just begging to be fake-answered.  i know it’s been so long.  so you’ve go that to look forward to on tuesday!

my concert friend and i were trying to find a day this week to go down to the mercury lounge to pick up tickets for a show we’re going to in october sans ticketmaster fees.  i also need to pick up tickets for a show at music hall that i’m going to with a boy on friday.  after much back and forth, it turns out we aren’t both free until thursday.  

“will you still be able to get your Friday tix?”

“i am feeling ambivalent about the guy i’m going with.  so if it sells out, i won’t be too heart-broken.”

and how.  

this guy is pretty much the master of the mixed signal.  all other humans should kneel before him to learn the craft he has perfected.  

for example, on our first date, we hooked up, but on our second date, he didn’t want to kiss good-bye because that implies a level of seriousness that he wasn’t ready for.  

because that is totally a thing?  

(that is not a thing.)

then he said that he needed to text me as soon as his friend left town and headed back to wherever because if we don’t hang out on monday, he can’t see me until thursday,  but when i texted him to make plans, he seemed really reluctant.  it is likely that it is something external that has nothing to do with me.  or maybe it is a failure to communicate effectively via text-based interactions.  or maybe i should trust my instincts and cancel.  

so we’re going out friday?  i mean, i think we are.  as i said to my friend, i am feeling really ambivalent about it.  the first date was a lot of fun.  he seemed really cool.  i was feeling cautiously optimistic.  now, my feelings have been down-graded to extremely cautious and not optimistic.  he makes my head hurt.  and our last interaction left me feeling wrong.  not like i was wrong (as if!), but like the whole thing was wrong.  you know that feeling in your stomach when things just aren’t good.  like maybe you want to throw up, if it weren’t such a disgusting thing to do.  that’s how it left me feeling.  

so i haven’t decided if i want to go out with him on friday.  i guess you should check your calendar.  i might have an extra ticket to see body language and the hood internet at MHoW on friday.  

(comments here, please, if you have them.  not on facebook.)

well, well, well.  there’s nothing like checking the box marked “casual sex” to make the messages just flow into my inbox.  luckily for us, most of them are terrible.  

let’s get right to the fun, kids!

—

Hi, hoping you had a good week.

I am hoping to find someone someone who is older, who can understand my sadness and can have some compassion. A teacher who is willing to teach me how to how fun and show me different things.

Let me know if you want to find out more, I hope you reply.

I am just a simple, honest, sweet guy looking for someone to have fun with at the same time share respect.

dear asshole,

what the fuck, dude?  i am only 3 fucking years older than you.  

let’s add to that the fact that, yes, i am turning 30 in a little over a year.  do you know what people approaching 30 do not like hearing?  that they’re considered enough older than someone to be a mrs. robinson.  i have no idea what in my profile gave you any indication that i would have interest in filling this role for you.  for real, i just re-read my profile right now, and i fail to see why you thought this was a good idea.   

rather than understand your sadness and show some compassion, i’m going to make fun of you on the internet.  i just can’t believe that this tactic of calling ladies old and then asking them to be nice to you works very well.  who the fuck wants to be nice to someone who implies she is old enough to have some fucking wisdom to share with you?  i certainly don’t.  your profile is full of references to how happy and optimistic and smiley you are.  so is this sadness something you invented to evoke compassion from old ladies, or is your profile you trying to put on a happy face because no one wants to date a depressed douchebag?

here’s a pro-tip: if you want someone to help you learn how to fuck better and how to please ladies (or at least that particular lady.  you do understand that we don’t all like the same sex-things, right?), DO NOT CALL HER OLD.

-dstar

—

Turquoise hair girl,

I find you rather charming and infectious .
Love your love for indie rock music, love your art. Love your tendency o actually get to know people after the Internet acquaintance .
You indeed have some of the purest profiles that I’ve seen here on OKC.

Eager to read from you……. 

dear hat-wearing sir,

i am sure you are eager to read from me.  i bet you didn’t expect it to be on my blog instead of a direct reply to your message, but such is life.  you’ll get over it.  

i’m sorry to hear that you find me infectious.  i will contact the CDC directly, and let them know there’s another one to put into quarantine.  i really do hate it when this happens, but you know how it goes.  i don’t want to be put into quarantine, and i am basically willing to let the entire population suffer as a result.  it is, in fact, my ability to write such a pure profile that keeps me from having to surrender myself to the state for everyone’s protection.  that’s right, there are so few awesome ladies out there making okcupid profiles that the president issued an executive order to let us continue to operate despite the serious human toll caused by our remaining at large.  i probably shouldn’t be writing about this on my blog, but i’m pretty sure that personal blogs were excluded from the NDA i had to sign.  (i’m really great at negotiating contracts.)

let’s clear up one of your accusations though.  i don’t have a tendency to get to know people after an internet acquaintance.  1) that is a really weird way to rephrase my statement that i prefer getting acquainted in person.  2) it’s hardly a tendency.  please refer to the people who write to me who do not get to meet me.  there are currently over 80 messages in my inbox on okcupid that i have received in the past 3 months.  i have gone out with 5 of those guys.  i think the number speak for themselves.  3) what makes you think you have any right to point out any alleged tendencies of mine?  you don’t know me.  you read a carefully edited profile that i posted to an internet dating site.  that is the total of your knowledge of me.  you have no basis for this judgment.  this is extremely irritating and presumptuous.  just like i hate it when guys try to mansplain things to me, i fucking hate it when they presume to have some unfounded insight about me.  

yeah, sure, you didn’t mean it that way, and i’m being an over-sensitive bitch.  but you know what?  i don’t care.  it’s one of the benefits of being such a bitch.  

-dstar

—

What’s up sexy how are you lets talk sexy

hey douche,

not much, douche.  i’m fine, douche.  let’s not, douche.

what have i said about denying me punctuation?  i fucking love punctuation.  i even added a bit to my profile about how i get messages lacking punctuation and then mock them on my blog.  what this says to me is that you fucking douchebags never learn.  

i get it.  we ALL get it.  i’m like super, super pretty.  that is not a reason to just dash off a terrible message after only glancing at my pictures.  not that my saying this matters at all.  clearly.   i have said it here.  i have said it on my profile.  i could tattoo it backwards on the foreheads of all you morons so you see it every time you pass a reflective surface, and still i would get these messages.  every fucking douchebag either doesn’t bother to read my profile or thinks my insistence on grammar and spelling doesn’t apply to them.  

it does.  

it totally does.

-dstar

—

Hiiii I’m the type of guy that likes an intriguing woman ur very cute read the profile I like wat overall hit me with a message if you like aswell

 aw, come the fuck on, man!  this is basically word salad. 

bullshit you read my profile.  i refuse to believe it.  you cannot have read my profile and thought coming at me with this jumble of nonsense was a good idea.  

exactly what is so intriguing about me?  that i am so clearly head and shoulders above you in IQ points?  that i used big words you didn’t understand in my profile?  that i can manage to spell basic words like “what” correctly?  let’s be real: it can’t have been my reference to the oxford comma.  or maybe you googled oxford comma and then were super intrigued that i understood the concept enough to make a joke about it?  

seriously, dude.  what the fuck?

-dstar

—

hi,
i really liked ur profile and would luv to get to know u. so, if u r interested and don’t mind a indian guy then do drop me a line.
also, my correct age is 34 but the site won’t let me change it now.
bye!

dear sir,

i’m actually a little offended that you felt the need to drop in the comment about how i should write back if i am interested and don’t mind an indian guy.  what the fuck, man?  way to basically say i am a racist if i don’t want to go out with you.  

let’s go over the reasons why i am not interested in you:

1) you fucking live in new jersey.  nothing against new jersey, but it’s fucking far away.  do you have any understanding on just how far brooklyn is from new jersey?  i have good friends who live in new jersey and refuse to come to brooklyn unless absolutely necessary.  besides, i barely like to date outside my neighborhood.  i am certainly not going to date someone who is in another state.
2) we are a very, very poor match.  i don’t know why people are so quick to disregard okcupid’s matching algorithm.  i don’t think someone needs to be a near-100% match for things to work, but if we are less than 80%, it indicates to me a bad match in terms of values, goals, experiences, expectations, desires, and so on.  also, based on your profile we have nothing in common.  our careers, interests, activities, and tastes are so totally different.  
3) the spelling.  oh, the spelling.  if there is one thing i fucking despise, it is fucking webspeak.  ur is the capital of ancient mesopotamia.  love is spelled with an ‘o’ and an ‘e’ with nary a ‘u’ in sight.  
4) you implied i am a racist.  unfortunately for you, i am confident enough in my non-racist status that this implication will not make me go out with you just to prove you wrong.   

-dstar

—

that’s all for this time!  don’t worry.  there seems to be no end of weirdos/creeps/misguided fellows sending me messages.  i’ll probably be back next week with another installment.  

you should leave comments, right here on my blog instead of on facebook.  in fact, you can now log in to disqus with your facebook account and not have to create a whole new account just to comment.  

exciting, yeah?