We met at Starbucks for coffee and talked for four hours. I was shocked at how well we got along... as if we were old friends. His plaid shirt and bright blue eyes didn't hurt either. I wound up smitten, and by the time the second date rolled around I was more than keen. The second date ended up lasting three days. By the end of day one, my phone battery died and all my friends were panicking...
Last Time in Love, Awkwardly: Another setup gone awry, leaving our ‘hero’ in the dust of Failed Romance Lane. With the ghost of Relationship Past looming, and two bad friend set-up dates in the can, perhaps it is time to find someone the hard way. And by hard, I do mean online.
Thanksgiving weekend was fast approaching, and two of my friends were headed to Vancouver island to visit their families. I ended up house sitting for them in Kitsilano and taking a few days for myself to decompress. I took a trip to the corner store for snacks and ended up running into my old coworker, Sam. Over small talk she told me how she'd met the guy of her dreams. Recently skeptical on love, I was not impressed at her answer to my question of how they met: "Craigslist." This concept was new. Wasn't Craigslist a website for selling your couch and finding a new job?
I walked back and popped in one of my favourite movies, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Watching this is always a dilemma for me. Every time the memories of love and love lost are erased halfway through the film, I have the same internal dialogue: “Never having love, or to have loved and lost it.” This particular viewing was exceptionally painful. By the credit roll, I wondered if I would ever feel again what I felt in my relationship with “the ex”. Still, despite the film’s idealistic views of love being projected onto me, I figured if Sam could meet someone so great on Craigslist, why couldn’t I?
I grabbed my laptop. I wasn't even aware Craigslist had a personals section. When I logged onto the Men Seeking Men section, it was not to my surprise that I found postings mostly along the lines of "Hot Daddy Seeks Blowjob In Stanley Park At 1 AM" or "Rim Me In My Car In Ten Minutes." I was not defeated, though. I decided to make my own post. I titled my ad "Not Just A Hookup" and explained that I was looking for someone to connect with on a more personal level than just premature ejaculation. I even referenced Eternal Sunshine, stating that I was a romantic looking for the same. Essentially, I was a bleeding heart in a sea of throbbing penises.
The first and only person to respond to my posting was a guy named Andy, a pleasant and tall Italian ad exec only a few years older than me. We met at Starbucks for coffee and talked for four hours. I was shocked at how well we got along, and how I wasn't insulted or disgusted with anything he had to say. We talked about some pretty personal things and the conversation had a very natural flow, as if we were old friends. His plaid shirt and bright blue eyes didn't hurt either. I wound up smitten, and by the time the second date rolled around I was more than keen.
The second date ended up lasting three days. By the end of day one, my phone battery died and all my friends were panicking over my unexplained absence.
Although physicality remained relatively tame, we were soon seeing each other quite regularly. By the third week, after one of the many dinners he bought me, we went back to his loft and, in the middle of cuddling, he broke some pretty rough news to me: "I think you're really great, but I'm actually quite deeply in love with someone else." I was outraged. This person, who responded to an ad I posted explaining that I'm not a typical whore, who I told some very personal things to, who was the first person I was intimate with since my relationship, throwing a total curve ball at me out of nowhere! But the look on his face didn't have sexual misconduct written on it at all. With his face completely stern, he looked right at me and said "I'm in love with my best friend, who died two years ago in a car crash." Suddenly, my spiteful thoughts came back to haunt me in a karmic twist. The idea of love felt so temporary and fleeting, that even in this fraction of hope, I was instantly brought back to reality. Nothingness at square one.
I went home that night and removed my Craigslist ad in defeat. I now understood the nature of all the other ads. Anything more than a quick fuck on a place like Craigslist was simply unobtainable. If only I was like the rest of my demographic, and searching for "Bear Loving Twink for Threesome." Ugh.
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