Yeah, I know you thought that was about someone else. Perhaps some sleazy douche veteran who’s always changing and bedding someone new, forever single–posting lonely ads on craigslist.

Oh, no, see, I have done the craigslist thing before. The last one I had was “If your pants are tighter than mine, it’s not gonna happen.” Which is so true, Between that and the pleat…god pleats are the worst invention, even more pointless than the tie. They are simply there to hide the male fupa, and yes, by fupa, you know I mean fat upper penis area. Disgusting! If you need pants to do that, you might just need to stop eating so much garbage, take a little run, do a little hike, or look-see somewhere interesting which requires physical exertion. Being a slob is not hot. And no, I don’t need any chiseled anything, my men have run the gamut…but a little soft is a lot different than a belly fupa.

It is my friends who call me the Masterdater because I am so good at it, at least online. I took myself out to dinner last night and sat in the corner patio alone, and recognized nobody would ever have the balls to walk over and talk to me, empty chair and all, because I am not pack verified by anyone just yet. Which is cool. I hate the idea of cliques, they drive me bonkers. And I have never had just one group of people I counted on and saw who were together all of the time. I am the uniter, the reason my friends come together even though they live in the same place is because I compel people to come out, I arrange the parties, I find excuses to flee in a swarm…

The problem with being the Masterdater is not the quantity of dates, no no. It is simply just the quality. I can do two dates a day over however many days and still have enough energy to keep you entertained throughout. But it’s just not necessarily always sharing and expending energy with good, solid, compatible people. People are fucked up, man. And the quality of the people you meet is always somewhat compromised because you are dealing with someone who is communicating with you largely in a digital two dimensional format, someone who can carefully craft their representative to be whomever they want to be, even if it’s just an illusion. I want to feel someone next to me, hear their voice come out of them, smell them (but hopefully not any odors haha), sense their mood shifts, watch their eyes move, and just feel the situation. 2 dimensional formats–the computer the text message…it simply can never replace in person interaction, the enjoyment you get out of being with someone you like to be with. It is cheap imitation, the modern day love letter, these emails we send back and forth…I want one mailed to my damn house at this point.

In fact, I want a fucking Say Anything moment, boombox out the window. These are the things I think about all of the time, especially when I sense bad news or disappointment is coming. I want the sudden appearance on my doorstep, body pushed against doorways, mouths hungry, clothes ripping off passionately–surprise, man. I cannot take boredom, apathy, indecision.  Monotony is my first enemy in life, and if I cannot have it, I can at least dream about it…and I am constantly putting myself in the weirdest situations simply for the story of it all. I dress sometimes up and run around town, will jump on a bus at a moment’s notice and genuinely have no fear because I let my instincts guide me. I will do anything at least once, except maybe eat weird animal parts–and I have sadly been banned from my favorite tool of amusement, the roller coaster. Which means no sky diving or bungee jumping (it is sad, I am telling you). I love the sensations of flying and being free…it is the literal manifestation of my spirit acted out. I love it more than I love any activity, and I still sometimes will shoot out of bed in twilight dream sleep, remembering the motion of falling as the coaster dropped straight down the tracks….

But, as are fairytales fucking always, these romantic dream sequence notions of men and their actions never happen. I know this because I have been wishing for the same thing since I was 15, when we all were jumping out the window and all I wanted was for the boys of the summer of ’91 to come find us at our windows again even years later, tell us it all meant as much to them as it always did to us. But you guys don’t think romantically, you are always so fucking practical. If you do anything actually romantic, it’s because you have seen it on tv or it’s simple and easy to do, or you’ve done it many times before and seen it work. I have had some of those tv moments already, and I just wish it would be cinema worthy instead…man, I don’t even get fucking flowers anymore. I buy them for myself. I haven’t had anyone give me a flower in literally…a year and a half? And that was indeed a single rose, given to me by a young suitor from Brooklyn who bored me to the point of absolute pass out, he scurrying out the door, insulted I would be able to sleep during his endless droning on about nothing and even less anything still…

So–I have had three dominoed experiences over the past several years I have been single. They were always improvements from person to person, with the final culmination being someone who is doing something I have always wanted to do, taking off on my adventure, dammit. They are going to be separated into three tales…with Tale 3, the last one possibly needing delay in posting until it is really time. The first was Hidalgo, the master liar, weaving his tales in between declarations of love and lust, the kinds of things you’d want written out in a letter, who took texting to a new level, then there was the Canadian, Cowboy, who sucked me up into his life and sucked a tidy sum out of my wallet. Then there is T, someone with who I made such an easy and strong connection with who happens to be doing what I have wanted to do my entire fucking life, traveling the world and experiencing as many different cultures, scenes and people as he can. He is leaving this winter. For a fucking year. Take me with? Yeah, I only wish…

He is more of who I need to learn to be like. Because I am done with this dating shit for a few months until someone gives me a column–because writing all of this shit and getting nothing from it, not even making the money back I spend on the bus and light rail to escape from situations–it just makes no sense. I need to write my columns, I have a bunch of them about dating…but I need to write my columns and get it really down. The memoir is also coming along. I have a few months to get this shit largely done…and then I can relax.

I have been talking about writing about my online dating experiences for a long while, and I have decided instead of shelving it and my other nine billion ideas into the later pile, that I would attack these stories now. They are not attack stories exactly, but a reflection of what I wanted to see in people versus who they were, and the sordid tales of lying, stealing and could-be’s that will never get resolved exactly.

Hidalgo. It was the Fall of 2009 and I had been trying to distract myself from the Fabricio situation that had left me hurt and bewildered and a literal crying heap for weeks and weeks. After I finally started believing what I was saying about him being so wrong for me, I ended up resorting to online dating, again. This time on Match.com…I got caught up in Hidalgo’s spell: almost a literal metaphorical reference given the dude wore eyeliner on the weekends and played in a goth industrial band. He was close to 40, 6’3, with dark hair and blue eyes…He looked like he came out of a Tim Burton movie in some of the photos he sent me, but every time I was with him, he was wearing either skater sneakers or black boots, black jeans and all manner of tshirt or bowler shirt. He looked like a Hidalgo should, dark spiky hair and that slip of hair under his lip to tickle you with. He had a smooth well defined chest and though it was clear he could tan, I could sense he was more of a night owl than a beach bum. When we did see each other, we ended up making out in the lounge of Angels and Kings or in NYC, or in this darker bar over near Houston Street, with the enameled spoons and jam stirred vodka drinks. We had instant chemistry– almost literally tearing into each other because there was something sexy about our energy–he was a Taurus, and I had history with them, so I trusted him. (and yes, I know how infinitely lame that reasoning is)

The first few times we spoke it was via text message and email, and I soon planned to meet him in the city, after he got back from a drive to Salem, MA, where he had a group of witch friends he would hang with. Well, I really cannot legitimately say they were witches, but it’s a better explanation for his obsession with the energy there. So I met him in the bar and we proceeded to talk. He was hot, smelled good, and had a nice mouth. Yeah, I wanted him. Bad. The way he spoke to me, the way he looked at me, the things I would do to him. Yeah. That was instant hot.

The first time we hung out and he dropped me off at the train station, he looked over at me and said, “I can see you’ve been hurt. I look at your face and I can see it in your eyes” I took that as a promise he wouldn’t hurt me…

He had a few caveats. Well maybe three–two being young sons he shared custody of with caveat three being the ex wife. I am, as we all know, an equal opportunity dater, however, and a few little caveats really were not enough to dissuade me from thinking I had found a sensitive, poetry spewing, hot piece of ass, really, who made me want to crawl up the walls and into his pants the instant we saw each other. He was smart, he made me laugh, and he said and wrote super romantic things. What the fuck else was a 30 something girl to want? Not much in NYC, and that was almost overfilling the bill as it was.

The problems started when he started standing me up, or not calling at all. He did this so many times that I lost count after about 9, and had a maybe 20% show rate, I calculated. The first time a relative died and a visit we were supposed to have with each other was instantly extinguished to grieve. I am not against it, no, but, there is a problem when you start betting yourself on whether or not a dude will show up, and the booby prize, which I won most of the time, ended up being a new dress, new makeup, something to boost my self-worth, even if just temporarily.

Because he was into the goth circuit, he was very into the Vampire scene. And of course I, having worked in fetish bars and in fetish clothing stores had known enough of the scene members to not be intimidated by them. So when the Vampire Anti-Valentine’s Day ball came around, we discussed going. I knew he would go all out, he would do it up. And when the night of the ball came around and I had heard nothing from him (not an oddity even at this point in the game), I took the tickets I had bought and took Lisa with me. We went dressed to the nines, she in a long slithering gold gown, and me in a black skirt and black lace corset. Here is the evidence below:

Lo and behold we go to the Ball, and for a while I don’t see him. Until I see him slither in with a rather plump pink-haired girl on his arm. His face is painted white and his eyes are rimmed in black. He’s wearing a douchey hat and part of me wants to spit on him. Instead, Lisa and I slide off into a corner with our drinks and observe. He sits with his hand on this girl’s leg and part of me starts to slide down to the floor. As we are sitting there he reaches over and starts kissing her. Yeah, this is about where I want to leave. Instead, I walk over and lean down to him, almost hissing, “that’s fucking adorable, H, so fucking adorable.” He looks at me blankly, acting like he doesn’t know me until I see the twinkle in his eye as he looks me up and down. I stomp away, imagining dumping my drink all over his face, smearing his suit with white clown makeup. What a douche. What a fucking douche, I think, aware that this has gone way too fucking far at this point.

Lisa and I discuss our options, what we can do, where we can go. We decide the leaving is the best option, and me, looking for that story again, wanting to experience everything, starts questioning my own sanity in even going when the signs clearly pointed to the fact that something was awry. We stumble out the door, light our cigarettes, and walk back to the Path train, questioning why I wasn’t even mortified. It was almost expected, I mean, I know men, right. It’s the way players play the game. And I was just played, and very badly…

But that’s cool. Not twenty minutes after I left I start getting the text messages.

Why did you leave?

I needed to talk to you. It’s not what you think. I love you.

He called me once and I told him he was an asshole–he asked why I left and I think I remember telling him in a super scathing sarcastic voice that watching my supposed date make out with some other chick was not the thing I wanted to do be doing. That some despicable shit has been done to me, and of course cheating is not the exception, but nobody had the balls he had, to be doing that shit in front of my face.

I’ve since deleted all of the text messages, thousands I am sure, a literal book of declarations of lust love, all that romantic shit, but he explains to me the girl was a friend. That it didn’t mean anything. That he loved me. That he wanted me. That he wanted to be with me, and after six years of celibacy had decided it was time to break it with me…

He was going to give his unvirginity to me. And so I, like any red-blooded thirty-something year old idiot, took him at his word. I believed that he loved me. I knew that he at least wanted me. I thought I had been saved from the mess of my life, that I had a future and someone to count on. But there was something always so temporary about our plans, and his cancellations became more frequent, until I discovered, looking at his Facebook page one day, that he was now dating a lovely 22 year old Czech girl. When I called him and told him off, he told me I had jumped to conclusions, why did I always assume the worst? He told me she was a friend, that her ex boyfriend was harassing her so she asked him to do her that favor. Of course I am compelled to help, he said. But I still love you. You are mine.

And so it wasn’t until a week or so later that I started seeing him showing up in photos on her page, looking a little more than cozy, faking it very well. After I confronted him yet again we decided to call it all off and go our separate ways. Especially after I emailed her in warning, and she, of course clueless, never understood or could grasp the fact that we both thought we were dating the same man. He called her Teapot, a nickname of sorts, and I started seeing them proclaiming their undying love for each other, while at the same time he was bombing my phone with declarations of his undying love.

It’s not that I didn’t finally tell him off or stop talking to him entirely for at least several weeks. But when your relationship is largely nonexistent and purely textual in nature, you start to recognize that again, for the story, you will put yourself in emotional harm’s way so that you can experience the most you can experience out of life. It is not always about harm, mind you…he was excellent masturbation inspiration, that was for sure. But every time I went to get waxed before one of our dates, ready to finally fuck his brains out…every single time he didn’t show up, followup, or call up. Never did he do this until I called him hysterical and threatening to expose his stupid ass for the liar he really was. And so when he texted me, “Let’s get married,” and then asked me “would I marry him?” of course I said yes. I mean, not in a yes, I agree to marry you this year or next, but yes, I’d marry you. Granted this is not the most responsible thing to do unless you are dead serious, which I definitely wasn’t. I kept wavering between the lines of caring entirely too much about him to thinking nobody was going to want a girl who wasn’t going to spew out kids. And he had his already so his mission to replicate and desire to actually procreate had already been fulfilled. He was an artist doing 2-d design, he had his own company. He promised me the world and all of the most romantic things.

This continued through the late Spring, some 9 months until I decided enough was enough, our almost completely textual relationship based on no sex and words alone was nothing for me to bother with anymore. We have still to this day only talked on the phone maybe 5 times. Later that summer he told me he was going to get married in the Czech Republic to his Teapot…something would I be so kind to attend?

Give me a fucking break man–I am all about acceptance and understanding and all of that. But you’re getting married now? No way, douche. No no way.

The marriage idea lasted some 2 months and they were broken up again, the Teapot finally seeing the kettle for what it really was, black inside at least. He called me, of course, well, no, he texted me again. And I entertained it…I mean it’s not physical right? No, it’s not. He texted me several times over the following months, and asked me if I would be his, finally.

I told him I was moving to Denver. I wanted to play him, stand his ass up, then have him call me and have me not even be in the fucking state when I’d arrange to meet him for a date. But I decided the karma wasn’t worth it–an experiment in messing with someone else’s feelings were not what I wanted. And so I moved, and I settled here in Denver at the end of March. After about a month I got another message: Will you marry me? Sent via text, again. I cracked up, telling him he was an idiot, that I could never trust a liar, a fucking bullshit artist, a douche of a man to be there for me no matter what he said.

Why did I even do that, I am sure you ask? I mean, we never had sex or did much more aside from make out, maybe five times over a year or so. Yes, it was psycho that he told me he loved me, but you know…psycho can be entertaining. You know it. You’ve done psycho before. hahaahahahahhaha

But also because you never know what anyone will say. You wish for your Say Anything moments, you wish for the grand apology, the show of force, the creative way to score forgiveness, the confirmation that something meant more than the weight of words, flighty and cheap at best.

**And don’t worry, I am humiliated and I am most definitely humbled by these experiences. As Kristen asked me the other day “what ever happened with Hidalgo?” I answered “Um, yeah so he sent me another text proposal,” and I threw my head down, laughing my ass off, knowing what she was thinking. It was what I was thinking, too–“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I’m telling you, I don’t take anybody seriously anymore, and he was no exception. But the story? Man, the stories he told me and the ones he showed me, so fucking worth it.

Kristen remarked that we should have finished that book we started about him. And when and if I find the illustrations we had–it was going to be a children’s book, but when and if I do, I will post those photos along with some summary about the illustration and our ideas for accompanying text…Fabricio drew them, and Kristen and I developed the ideas with some thrown in by Lisa too…oh man, we were funny.

Masterdater Part 2 Coming Monday, September 5th…