I’m thinking about dipping into dating again. It’s been since March, technically, since I don’t really count what happened in those few weeks as anything but a perfunctory attempt. Crystal (not her real name) was beautiful and cool, but angry.
Dating apps are such a dubious wasteland. Bots outnumber pulses by exponential ratios. I’m using the app now where a woman I dated for about 6 weeks got involved with someone claiming to be a Marine held hostage by ISIS in Afghanistan. He needed $100,000 for release. This woman wired off her life savings to this dude, or syndicate. It may have been multiple parties at play.
This woman was no dummy. That is often the knee-jerk reaction from people who hear such stories. The reality is that being preyed upon for your emotional aspirations can happen to anybody. I’ve seen people talk, somewhat boastfully, of their correspondences with Nigerian scammers, as if they really had been chosen specially for this encounter. In a room full of people howling at her to stay away, to cut off the correspondence, I remember one woman just digging in to the possibility of having millions of dollars wired to her bank account. All this duty and duress started over a Craigslist posting for a mattress.
The dating site where the woman found the dude who syphoned away her life savings is POF.com, the one I’m looking at between typing these sentences. In my conversations and reckonings it is among the worst in nurturing bots, practically embracing bots and the human scammers to which they inevitably lead.
I’m better off flirting in person. I guess. There’s one woman, Cathy (not her real name) who seems nice, has a sweet body and a sunny yet cynical disposition.
Too bad I don’t know what she looks like. What a difference a mouth makes, as I have so memorably remarked to myself these past years of masking. One woman had been flirty as hell but I wasn’t sure what to make of her advances. She was half my age and palpably interested in me (for reason I never understood).
I might have resisted but oh man, when she took off that mask it was like she took off her shirt. This was a beautiful woman. I went for it, despite obvious warning signs. It ended amicably but went some weird places.
But it was that unmasking moment I remember so vividly. All my doubts and misgivings wiped away by my weakness for a beautiful mouth.
I don’t know what Cathy looks like under that mask. Maybe I never will. We can be pleasant toward each other, though. Of course.
I just feel so much safer alone. It’s tempting, in fact, to think that the pursuit of sex and companionship has been another drain down which my life’s energies are wasted.
A woman I knew for a long time hated when I complained about being unproductive in my days. I was referring to, I don’t know, writing, perhaps. Creating. Organizing. When I fail to do a lot of that I can hate on myself for it.
But her complaint about my complaint was that I’d talk like that after we had sex. How, she implied, could a day be “unproductive” when you had hot sex for two hours with your girlfriend?
What is waste? What is wasted time? Tasted wine? Tasted whine?
I get to work now. Yay.
