The Feeding of My Obsession (With Tuneage)...

By Filthy cat (Own work) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

So, like; last post, I did a Goth/Emo morph and laid my heart bare (a bit), revealing that I regularly feel besieged by hostile, even evil, forces, seeking my ruination. Which was loads of fun. Today I'll peel back another layer, with a closer look at the heartache I've hinted at but not fully explained. But, you know, there's music coming with that, which should take the edge off...

No, Cupid; It's Not OK

Before I get started, I want you to understand that I ain't no dating guru*. In fact, I've rarely "dated," as such. The men with whom I've been involved were known to me in some capacity, so we weren't just starting to get to know one another from scratch. The idea of meeting up with complete strangers so we can size one another up as potential mating partners rather turns my stomach.

So naturally I decided to sign up with an online dating service.

I dunno what the hell made me do it. OK, it was having coffee with a friend who met her fiancé on OkCupid. That, and OkCupid's free. Well, unless you don't want folks to know you're stalking their profiles, in which case you have to pay. Which is what I'm doing. (No, not the stalking folks bit, the paying bit, so they don't know I'm stalking.) (Looking, not stalking. Jeez, GAH!)

Anyway, I signed up on OkCupid in August but I've yet to go out on a proper date, though it's not for lack of offers. It's just that...some of these dudes are creepy.

Or maybe I just find dating creepy.

In the first week, after getting a bunch of unappealing messages, a dude finally wrote something which engaged my interest. We had some fun exchanges and, though it wigged me out that he was 29 (coming after a 42-year-old Goth Mom!), I reckoned I'd just practice flirting and see what happened.

My stomach turned, is what happened.

I should've known things were gonna get gross when, in a reference to a note in my profile that I write romance novels, he asked me how I like my romance (in, like, his second message to me). (Well, at least he actually read my profile.) I wrote back, "Slow and steady wins the race." To which he admitted a preference for racing around the track.

I shoulda known.

We wound up on the phone one night. He was, by turns, contentious and arrogant, but to his credit, he was being upfront about what he wanted. He talked of enjoying older babes because they were more mature, and not silly, like chicks in their 20s. (For future reference, Lovers-of-Cougars: don't diss half of my sex when you're kissing up to me. I was once in my 20s, ass-hat.) What he really enjoyed was the racing analogy, and he kept going back to my "slow and steady" comment. When he hemmed and hawed at one point, I asked him what was up.

Dude: You seem to want me to be...blunt.

Me: I want you to be straightforward. (Thinking over what I've just said.) Like, gently and respectfully straightforward.

Dude: Well...it's just that I want to establish a baseline of what our expectations are.

Me (torn between amusement and horror): Go on, then.

Dude: Well...I said before I like to race around. I'm an experiencer of things, you know? While you...

Me (amusement drying up in the face of this last bit): While I like to take things slowly. Yes, I can see where we might have different ways of relating...

Dude: I don't wanna scare you off, though. Man, I'm not doing a good job of calming you down...

Me (feeling my free hand curl into an actual fist): I'm not going into hysterics over here, guy. I can appreciate where you're coming from, only it's not where I'm coming from. The thing is, it's been a while since I've...dated.

Dude (sharply): How long's a while?

Me (not seeing the point of being coy): It's been years.

Dude (after a pause): Oh. So the car hasn't even been out of the garage in a while.

At this point, I'm completely done with the conversation and struggling to find a polite way of bringing it to a close. Then the Dude obliged me by saying:

Dude: I just don't want you to write this off, you know? I mean, we've had some fun banter and we find one another attractive, and I just think, you know, if you wanted to get together, we could have a good time. Besides, I'm a fucking excellent mechanic.

At that, I laughed (loudly), congratulated him on his self-confidence, and got the hell off the phone. Haven't heard from him since, which is just fine, as I'm damned if I ever let him get his mitts on my chassis.

I was prepared to write that off as just a weird experience. But subsequent exhanges with other fellas (via message only) haven't exactly been inspiring. And, actually, it amazes me what some men find to be appropriate volleys for that oh-so-critical first serve. I mean, yeah, I get how difficult it is making that first move, but don't send me a message that contains only one line of text which reads:

sexy mama

or

hey there

or (and this one's my fave)

Hi ms lady

...and nothing else!

Other ways to make a bad impression upon me include writing me things like:

Hey you seem like a wicked ball of fun, would you be game for something "casual"?

No, I would not.

U look so damn cute!! excuse my language .
would u mind if we get to know each other ? Text me plz (phone number redacted)

If you have to ask me whether I'd mind getting to know you, then yes, I probably would mind.

Hello,
I am a 26 year old (profession redacted) from (city redacted).
I love older more mature women.
Do you enjoy younger men?

Not when they look like my kid. Ugh.

In the interest of full disclosure, there was another chap who seemed more promising: he was friendly, polite, attractive, used good grammar in complete sentences (rawr!), and appeared to be just a generally decent guy (even if he was a bit of a Hipster). I had a feeling he'd ask me out, and he did, BUT, he wanted me to trek all the way to where he lives (which is a 1.5 to 2-hour commute from where I live, though a meet-up in Manhattan after work would've been easy-peasy for us both). So I wrote back suggesting a "let's meet halfway" coffee date, and I never heard from him again.

WTF? Wanker.

::sighs::

I  haven't taken down my profile, though I really don't know why I keep it up.

Anyway, things are getting busy with the day job, and I have a mini-anthology I want to put out in January, so I've got stuff to keep me busy. And I reckon that's the only thing I can do. Keep busy, leave the profile up, and just...be.

*I ain't no dating guru, but my pal Mac Perry, a fellow blogger, writer, and online dating vet, is. Check out her advice for the guys, as well as for the dolls.

Streaming Consciousness: The Kid

...So many responses to my most recent post center around the essential "Holy fuck, not Putin?!" theme, yet no one commented on the fact that my Kid's due to go to Russia next week, for a month-long stay. Perhaps y'all were so tightly clutched in the grip of horror at my taste in man-candy that this salient fact escaped you. Never mind. I've nerves of steel and feel perfectly blasé about the fact that it'd take me 10 hours and over a thousand bucks to get to Balthazar in the event of an emergency, from June 12 to Bastille Day.

...I'm clearly lying about that last bit. I plan to tipple steadily throughout the day this coming Wednesday, the day the Kid embarks on his trip, so I can just not give a shit that he's flying an airline I've never heard of before and will be almost completely out of reach till mid-July.

...Balthazar's girlie and some of her fam were in Europe themselves recently and had a brief layover in Manhattan yesterday on their way home, so he and I went downtown to say howdy. When Balthy and his gal reunited, I was struck by how much love for him poured out of her eyes. My next thought, which haunted me for the rest of the day, was how painfully vulnerable we become when we love and how easily our beloveds can destroy us. (What the Kid's initial response was to her I can't quite tell you, as I deliberately turned away so they could suck face in relative privacy.)

...The Kid finished his first year of college! Holy shit! I'm happy to report that I'm over the devastation of Empty Nest Syndrome and have come to enjoy the freedom of not having to rush home from work every day to care for my not-so-little birdling. I'm enjoying the weird journey from Goth Mom to Goth Mom Lite and rediscovering myself as just a chick again.

...Balthy's got way more clothes than I do. Waaaaay moooooooore. And that pic doesn't show even half of his crap. Who the hell's got time for that much laundry, ain't nobody got time for that! (The Kid obviously doesn't, else his threads wouldn't be in a mound on the floor, awaiting the tender mercies of Tide.)

What is love...?

"...love is desire sustained by unfulfillment." ~ Angela Carter


“Love is a fiend, a fire, a heaven, a hell, where pleasure, pain, and sad repentance dwell.” ~ Richard Barnfield


"Love is a grave mental disease." ~ Plato


Baby, don't hurt me...


"Love isn't a battlefield, it's a genocide." ~ Balthzar, The Kid


"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." ~ Matt Groening


...don't hurt me...


"Love is so short, forgetting is so long." ~ Pablo Neruda


“A mighty pain to love it is, and 'tis a pain that pain to miss; but of all pains, the greatest pain, it is to love, but love in vain.” ~ Abraham Cowley


"...love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*." ~ Ronny Cammareri, Moonstruck


...no more.

Au revoir, appartement...

Still no Interwebs set up at my 'rents' place, so I'm staying late at the office Friday night to prep something for my regular Monday post.

Moving day came and went. 'Twas a longie. I was up at the ungodly hour of 6am to get myself ready for the movers. Stepped outside for a smoke and became mesmerized by the unexpectedly dense white clouds above...

Before the fellas turned up, I snapped one last pic of my nearly naked bedroom...

And living room, where The Kid and I spent most of our time...well...living...

Was done with everything much later in the day and finally sat down to dinner with my parents around 8ish. I was exhausted. If I'd toted any more barge or lifted any more bale, I don't think I'd have survived. As it was, I was so beat, I took to giggling for absolutely no reason at all. Like, a lot. I went to get something out of the trunk of my dad's car and inadvertently set off its alarm. I doubled over laughing as I tried to figure out which button to press to quiet the infernal thing. And every muscle hurt. That evening, I moved with all the ease and grace of a nonagenarian in her ninth month of pregnancy. Which is to say, none at all.

Things are OK. I really shouldn't complain.

But I will.

I miss my own space and not having to worry about pleasing anyone but myself. I miss my privacy. I miss my pretty village street. I miss my teal bedroom walls. But mostly, I miss that sense of independence. The seven years Balthazar and I spent there were the only in which I completely supported myself. (And him, obviously.) I miss these things deeply, with an ache springing from the pit of my stomach. The empty-nest thing really kicked my ass for a couple of weeks, but I was getting over it, you know? I began to delight in my solitude and, dare I say, freedom. Now this...

Le sigh.

These doldrums shall pass, eventually. Unless I die before they do, but you take my point. And maybe someday, I'll have happier personal tales to tell, though I truly wonder...Anyway—for now, there's chocolate. And music in which I can indulge my 80s-based inner Emo...