Another memory story.
During the time wherein I was trying to build a new friend-base and a new life for myself in the wake of losing those high school friends I mentioned yesterday, I tried dating on Match.com (and AOL dating– which I think was powered by Match).
Dating people you met on the internet isn’t so weird now, but it was considered a little strange and more than a bit subversive back in the 1990s. I, oddly, met someone I was involved with for quite a while online, but I met her through trading bootleg concert cassettes. That’s a long story I’m not ready to lay bare (maybe for the 250th post?). But through the good ol’ Match.com machine, I met four women that I can remember.
- The most boring person I ever met in my entire life. She was like the pasta-with-butter-only of people. She was fine, I guess. We only went on one date because while she was polite and all, and wanted to see me again, we couldn’t strike up a conversation, and I get overly chatty when I’m nervous, so dating someone who won’t talk would be murder.
- A girl who had just turned 18 (lied and told me she was in her 20s) who was just sort of looking to work out some daddy issues. We didn’t even finish one date.
- One of the women I met was a single mother. That was strange to me at 20, but I was willing to deal with that as we grew to be friends. But then there were other things, like having hepatitis and herpes and feeling like I needed to know that before the third date. I know, I know, that’s the stereotype for the “first time” date, but come on…
- The last one needs a pseudonym so I can tell the story, so we’ll call her Rosemary.
The weird thing then about meeting people online is that while some of us were super-early adopters and were developing chat skills and posting skills and learning what to share and what to hide, the understanding we all have now of internet communication didn’t exist yet. So sometimes the conversations were… a little frank. And that could lead to cool stuff or to really uncomfortable stuff.
Rosemary and I hit it off emailing and chatting. She seemed cool. We were in similar situations, struggling to figure out college, supporting a family member, both aspiring writers. She didn’t find my chubby picture repulsive, and I really wasn’t an image obsessed person, so I wasn’t worried about seeing a picture before setting up a dinner date. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
Depending on what photo she might have sent, I might have been wise to have asked for it. But that comes later in the story.
She wanted to meet somewhere, I am guessing because if things went bad she wanted to have the ability to bail? It made sense to me. I’ve lived my life trying hard to not make people uncomfortable– particularly women when socializing– so it wasn’t weird at all in my mind. So we met, at a little Italian place in Muncie.
So I’m sure anyone reading is wondering after I mentioned not asking for a picture if this is going to be one of those stories. And no, it’s not. It didn’t matter to me, still, but she was quite striking– long dark hair, pale blue eyes, and she was wearing a striking, flowing blue-green scarf. She wasn’t someone that people would think was model gorgeous or anything (sorry if the catfish story fear led to the Penthouse letters fear– she was just a seemingly cool person), but she was quite pretty and had a nice smile. We ate, and we talked. The conversation went well.
Near the end of dinner, things started to get a little… weird.
I suggested we see a movie, as we wanted to keep the evening going and it was rainy and Muncie sort of sucks for things to do. She was a film buff, as was I, so suggesting the theater seemed smart. So she agreed. I offered to drive, then to bring her back for her car, since it seemed silly to drive in separate vehicles deeper into town when I’d have to go back this way to return home anyway.
When we got to my car, she told me that she needed to tell me something.
Bear in mind, “I have herpes and hepatitis c” was what I heard the last time someone on one of these Match.com dates told me she needed to tell me something, so I’m in Spider-sense mode.
She told me she had a “condition” where she might pass out. She said it was “like” narcolepsy, but she said that in a way that indicated to me that it was not, in fact, narcolepsy. She also referred to it as having a seizure, though she insisted she wouldn’t shake around and that she’d be fine if it happened. She just wanted me to know she might randomly pass out. I checked this off as a fact that was well worth knowing but also it made me just a little ill-at-ease. Not that I was afraid of her because it might happen or anything like that. It just struck me as weird how there wasn’t a more precise description of it and why she chose to tell me this now and not earlier, if in fact it was possible she’d just randomly pass out.
Still, it’s hard to make a good friend when you work at Wal-Mart and aspire to going back to college in your 20s. Also, the first three potential lady friends went super-poorly as I mentioned before.
So on to the theater we went. I let her pick the movie–seemed like the right move. She chose The Full Monty. If you know that movie, you can imagine that was a tiny bit weird, like maybe we were assuming a level of familiarity with each other we hadn’t achieved yet. I’m not one to make a big deal of such a thing, though, so let’s just stock this as “another weird thing.”
She was actually a fun movie date. We made snarky comments about the plot to each other, which is one of my favorite movie-viewing things. After the movie, coffee seemed like a good idea.
I know from Luke Cage now that I probably mistook what getting coffee was supposed to mean. I actually took her to a coffee house so we could drink coffee and talk about the movie, which we did, but I think in retrospect the girl who asked me to see a movie about male strippers then invited me for coffee might have wanted something else.
But this is where things got super-weird. I hadn’t thought that much about it, but Rosemary hadn’t taken her scarf off all night. It was warm in the coffee place. She took her scarf off. It was hiding a huge, hideous scar that ringed her entire neck.
Okay, the first thing you do when someone reveals a huge scar without saying a word about it is try not to stare at the scar. it was SO significant, though. Still, I didn’t say anything, but I’m sure my behavior switched a little. And again, it’s not that the scar made her ugly. It wasn’t an ugly scar, as such. It just looked like she had a big red ring cut into her neck. What was weird is that it seems like if you were going to tell someone all about how you might randomly pass out, or spend the amount of time talking about how your pinky toe is longer than it should be, you might mention nonchalantly that an accident left you with a huge scar around your neck.
After about ten minutes, she addressed it. And she was so matter-of-fact that I knew this just wasn’t going to work.
The scar was from the time, about six months before, when she’d tried to hang herself with a noose she made from electrical wire. She almost managed to kill herself but her dad stopped her.
Now, again, I’m not the sort of person who would dismiss a person because they attempted suicide. I understand depression, and I know that people end up in bad places.
What bothered me– what made me sure this wouldn’t work out–was what came next. She casually mentioned that she’d tried again several times but learned not to use wire because the cuts were deep but she didn’t have enough trouble breathing. Apparently she didn’t really want to decapitate herself.
So, half joking, I said “right, because suffocating is the best way to die,” and with no humor she said “see, you get it.”
I drove her back to her car and wished her goodnight. She seemed disappointed.
I emailed her the next day to tell her that I had a good time, but it just didn’t seem like I was what she was looking for.
She never responded.
I always hoped it was just that I was a bad date, but I also always secretly worried, because of, you know, the whole hanging thing. There weren’t any stories in the Muncie news about a young woman taking her own life, though, so I think it was just that I didn’t know what “coffee” meant and that my reaction to a woman nearly decapitating herself then dismissing it in casual conversation wasn’t acceptable.