Conversation I’m most proud of

I wish I could tell you the username of this lad, but to protect the imbecilic, I shall just tell you that his username was a combination of a large animal and slang for penis. So I shall refer to him as Large Animal Penis Man.

First of all, Large Animal Penis Man spammed me:

Re: heyJust hitting you up to see if you are interested? I saw your ad and I am very interested. I am sending you my picture! I am 30 years old, 5'7" tall, 175#, medium build, hazel eyes, shaved head. Hope to hear back from you! XOXO

I found this entire situation amusing, and egged on by friends, I sent this reply:

(Large Animal Penis Man),I'm afraid we wouldn't fit.-MouseTwat

I was pretty proud of that. That may be the best email I’ve ever sent. But alas, it was lost on Large Animal Penis Man:

Okay are you being serious your not interested???

Let’s review, shall we?

1.) Ridiculous username

2.) Spamming

3.) Missed sarcasm

4.) Wrong form of “you’re” (obviously the worst offense)

Yeah...good luck on the dating scene!

Dating a Stripper

I realize that a direct result of not going on any dates in awhile is that I have no embarrassing, awkward, and/or borderline horrifying stories to entertain you with. It looks like I may be going out on a few dates soon, but until then I thought I'd entertain you with a dating story from my not-too-distant past.

Awhile ago, and I still can’t believe I’m saying this, I went on two dates with a stripper. The male variety.

As I enjoy taking classes in a variety of subjects, it was no surprise to anyone when I took a class in the art of stripping for your partner (no matter that I had no partner). What was a surprise was I emailed the teacher afterward and asked him out.

For our first date I dressed like a whore. Now let me explain – I did NOT do this for him. He had already expressed that he thought I was hot, and was fairly established as a sure thing. I dressed like a whore because I was going on a date with a HOT HOT STRIPPER, and honest to god my biggest fear was that people were going to look at him, look at me, and think, “What, he couldn’t do any better?” Or, worse, “I bet she has a great personality.”

After chatting for well over an hour while we had a couple of drinks (that he paid for with crushed dollar bills. Nice.), I was struck with the brilliant idea of playing pool. Instead of being stuck on bar stools where neither one of us could really make a move, walking around a pool table would afford us a multitude of opportunities for something like, say, him running his hand across my back. Success!

Unfortunately, we played the worst game of pool that two able-bodied adults have ever played. It took 45 minutes of us missing and missing and missing some more, and by the time I finally sunk that damn eight ball I felt victorious, not for winning, but for the fact that the only thing that now stood between us and sex was the walk back to my apartment. Which is a much better form of winning.

Now for all of you guys who feel inadequate in comparison with muscled men, please read the next two sentences in their entirety. Having sex with a completely ripped, waxed man was hot. Once.

By our second date I had pretty much seen his repertoire, and without great conversation or any other kind of connection, the romance died a quick death.

But it was all worth it, if for this story alone: he needed to drop off something of mine, but was headed out of town for a gig and had to drop it off outside my abode when I wasn’t going to be there. While on the phone with him he paced around his place saying, “I need to put this in some sort of box so that people won’t mess with it, like it’s just some piece of mail for – OH! Of course! I have some UPS boxes that I bought to go with my UPS stripper costume!”

Of course you did.

SpamMan

From SpamMan:

    Hello there! I am kinda new to this site and I am not sure what the trends are in here.. But I am pretty sure there are a lot of jerks in here with half naked photos :-) Hey I am not a jerk like them, I am just a nice guy who would like to hang out with a nice girl ;-) Let me enlighten you more about who I am.. I'm an intelligent person, genuine, and respectful. I am 5'11, dark hair/dark eyes, close-to-fit, single, never married, college educated and 27. Also, I am a fun person to hang out with.. What else do you need? :-). I am living on the west side of Madison, close to west town mall. I have a pretty good job and I am currently happy with my life in general..

    I would like to know more about you, if you do not mind messaging me back.. I really love movies. How about you? Which part of the town are you living in? What do you like to do for fun? How was your week? :-)

My reply:

    This appears to be an email that you prepared separately to cut and paste into an email to send to women you find interesting on this site. Am I correct? 

    If so you may want to change your first line that you are "...kinda new to this site" since your join date was four months ago.

SpamMan’s retort:

    You are correct, but four months is not a long time; so that statement should be fine. You sound like sending the same message to "initiate a conversation" to different women is a bad thing, but I do not agree with that. The conversation happens to be a lot different with every women after they "reply". So why should it be a problem to "initiate" the contact the same way?

I never “wrote him back” because why “argue” and give him another chance to “totally overuse quotation marks.” And all I really wanted to get out of him was an admission of spamming. Win.

But I will say this: you can be a sniper or you can be scatter-shot. One will likely land you your target and the other might get you a duck. Or, if you’re Dick Cheney, a lawyer. So perhaps this is a good method if you're trying to land a lawyer.

Also: if you’re going to spam me, of the various adjectives you use to describe yourself, don’t include genuine.

Concentration

Thoughts that went through my head today when I should have been focusing on my meeting:

At least three people have told me I should try a dating website for environmentalists. I should probably do that. Could I just use my same profile or is that cheating? Would it be any less fresh? Wait, what the hell am I that I need rebranding?

Is he single?

Ugh. This haircut does make me look like a lesbian. Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I was getting hit on by more women.

So if I was the one who emailed him first, and after he emailed me back I sent him a message when I saw he was online, and he signed off by saying that he had to go to bed, was that a “Please stop contacting me” or could I get away with initiating contact one more time? And really, what am I worried about? Pride?

I need a good makeout session. Maybe I could just daydream about one with…uh, how about the guy who…no. Well, who have I been attracted to lately? (…) Okay, so we’re going with Ed Norton again? Maybe I’ll just pay attention to my meeting.

It seems like coed sports are a great way to meet people. But is it totally counterproductive if I am terrible at said sport?

I wonder how many people at this meeting are happy in their marriages.

God, she’s so smart. And she’s single and my age. This does not bode well for me. What the hell is the matter with this town?

So…Ed Norton?

Dead Baby Jokes

I came across an interesting profile of a lad, and I used his self-professed love of grotesque humor as a way to start a conversation.

In honor of grotesque humor, here is the most grotesque joke I have ever heard:

(Imagine it being told by a man) What's the difference between a dead baby and a ritz cracker? I don't cum on a ritz cracker before I eat it.  

Also, have you seen The Aristocrats?

After a day or so of not hearing from him, I went back and read what I wrote him. Really, I wrote him that? "Hi! I'm thinking perhaps we should get to know each other. Here's a dead baby joke. Oh, and have you seen this movie?"

I'm not sure how long you should know someone before you should introduce dead baby jokes into the conversation, but upon reflection it probably shouldn't be the first contact. But there are exceptions. After a couple of days he emailed me back.

Wow. That's pretty gross. Nice. A female friend of my has some of the best perverted dead-baby jokes, but I hadn't heard that one.My previous favorite:How long does it take to microwave a dead baby?No, I'm asking you. I was too busy masturbating last time.

Hey! I didn't scare him off by introducing myself with a dead baby joke! My moment of self-congratulations didn't last too long, however, because I was now presented with a new problem: where do you go from dead baby jokes? I scoured his profile for something else to converse about, but there wasn't anything that I could transition to from dead baby jokes, and no new topic that wouldn't seem like a huge step back. "Nice dead baby joke! So you're athletic, huh?"

So I finally just emailed him that I had no idea where to take the conversation from dead baby jokes, so how about coffee? I'm sure we would find something to talk about in person. Or I could hear the rest of his grotesque humor repertoire and be simultaneously amused and horrified. Really, I'd be happy with either outcome.

But alas, my offer of coffee has gone unanswered. Perhaps I learned a valuable lesson about dead baby jokes: use them to stop a conversation, not start them. Bad date you want to end? Dead baby joke. And now I know two. Sweet.

Profile Tips

After reading a couple hundred internet dating profiles (at least…I don't really want to think how many), I feel like I am in some sort of authoritative position to provide some advice, or at least common profile pitfalls to avoid.

1.) A rose by any other name…might smell like desperation. What's in a name? A whole freakin' lot. Put some thought into your username, since in the online dating world it is your first impression. Avoid using words like "lonely" and "desperate," since you will appear (shockingly) lonely and desperate. Also, please avoid ending your username in "4u." You are not doing this for me. I don't know if you know how this works, but you came on here to look for someone because you wanted to, not because you're altruistic and felt that you simply could not keep the wonder that is you from the world any longer. Actually, if you do believe that, please do end your username in "4u." It will make you easier to avoid.

2.) Show, don't tell. No, this one isn't about photos. I really don't care about photos. This is about the common pitfall of just listing attributes. "I'm caring, fun to be around, sincere, thoughtful, obliging, blah blah blah." First of all, I don't believe you. Second of all, even if I did believe you that doesn't help me get a sense of you. Tell me a story. You're caring? Tell me about the time you got a cat down from a tree. You're fun to be around? Tell me about standing on your head at a party. You're sincere? Tell me…uh…about when you said something and really meant it. You get the picture.

3.) A list of cool things does not cool you make. Oh, the lists upon lists out there of favorite movies, favorite bands, and favorite video games. (I am truly surprised by the number of people who list their favorite video games. And I have not once seen Tetris!) I've got some bad news for all of you list-happy internet daters: liking Shawshank Redemption does not make you cool or unique. It just means you have the cognitive capacity to watch an amazing movie and then walk out of the theater and say, "Hey! That was a good movie!" No one is going to say, "This person likes Shawshank Redemption! I think I will send nude photos forthwith!" I'm at your profile. You have my attention. There has got to be something that you would rather be telling me than your favorite movies.

4.) Ignore the red squiggly line at your peril. Spellcheck. Proofread. Go to the effort of using capital letters. You by no means have to be flawless, but it is to your advantage to appear that you understand how this whole written language thing works and that you spent more than five minutes writing your profile. You don't look cool by pretending that you don't care. You just look like you don't care.

Hmmm…have I read too many profiles? Possibly…

This entry is about porn – part 2

After being annoyed with my slow computer enough to complain loudly about it but not enough to fork over the money to buy a new one, my parents decided to get me a new computer as a birthday present. While I probably should have been mortified that after a decade since graduating high school my parents are still helping me with major purchases thereby calling into question this whole "financial independence" thing, I had something bigger to be mortified at.

Did they know I was going to be using this computer to watch porn?

Now, I am not an internet porn queen. I don't think I would even qualify as "aficionado." I hadn't even watched any recently as my old computer couldn't stream video, and while my work computer could I steered clear of one helluva awkward conversation with my boss.

My old computer did everything else just fine. So my primary reason for wanting a new computer? To watch porn. And my parents just enabled me to do that. Ew.

I resolved to not watch porn on my new computer for a little bit, at least until after the stage where my parents ask, "How is your new computer working? It's so shiny! Can I see it?" With my luck they'd go to open up microsoft word and clippy would pop up and say, "I see that you like porn. Would you like some tips for writing a letter about porn?"

Yeah. That resolve to not watch porn for awhile? Lasted two days.

I had to see what I was missing! Apparently what I was missing was looking at my parents the next day and thinking, "They know. Somehow, they just know."

Here's the bizarre thing: they have met previous significant others of mine. I have brought some of these significant others home. They never questioned why we went to bed early, and with this unspoken policy I have felt completely comfortable. Why do I feel guilty with porn?

Whatever it is, I better get over it, because…dammit, I'm single, I have an internet connection, and a fancy new computer. Porn happens.

Messages I Didn’t Reply To

When I’ve been contacted by someone within the wonderful world of online dating, I make an effort to reply even if it’s not someone I would have sought out. But sometimes I'm not interested in the profile AND the message makes me cringe.

I love jumping in leave piles, snowball fights, wrestling(carefully), and star gazzing. Get back to me.

I’m sorry, but what is “star gazzing”? Because it sounds like something I would have to clean up afterward.

Hello,    I have this idea to have a party at a local, hip joint, that serves beer, wine, and food of a kind or another. I would invite everyone that is an 80% match or higher with myself within 25 miles of Madison. Then they would invite ANY TWO people each that are 80% or higher matches for them. So in theory there could be about 100-140 people that should be relatively well matched for at least friendship. If you are interested in this idea please vote on the following three issues: Location, Date, and Time    Also please let me know your thoughts on attending yourself.

No. Hell no. Chain letters died out for a reason. Also, it might be possible to come up with a more uncomfortable party than this, but it would have to involve a corpse.

    I noticed your profile says ypu don't drink at all. Well, neither do I. I haven't had a drink in over five months and boy is life alot smoother. Anyway, I like your views, your friends seem to think highly of you, so I fingure you are worth getting to know. drop me a line if you like.

No. Just no. And not because of the drinking thing. It was the trifecta of misspellings, missed capitalization, and making “a lot” one word. Is anyone proofreading their messages? Because this person wrote me, “…so I fingure you...” Yeah. No thanks.

you a hottie

And I am swooning for your impeccable conversation skills. Wait, no. No I'm not.

Where the Single Men Are

With more single men than single women in Dane County, I had been wondering where all of these single men were hiding. I think I found them: they’re all farming.

Do I want to date a dairy farmer with no time and doesn't take vacations? Unlikely. But a cute, young, vegetable grower slash baker who sells at the farmers market? Yes please!

I took this past weekend to go on a camping trip with some friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends, including a farmer who just happens to fit the description above. And Mr. Farmer and I hit it off.

We talked until the early morning around the campfire, all the others having fallen asleep hours before. Finally, while admiring the stars, I slid an arm around him. He responded by putting his arm around me and holding me tightly. Yay!

After adding a couple more logs to the fire, he resumed his place next to me, said, “You’re wonderful,” and gave me a shoulder bump. I responded in kind. Then…nothing.

Really. We just stood there for awhile.

Okay. Something had to be done. I was definitely coming on stronger than he was, but I had enough positive feedback to know not to say, “Goodnight! I’m going to go to sleep in my one-person tent now. See you in the morning!”

In the most playful way I could muster, I asked, “So…do you just not know how to put the moves on me?”

He laughed. Then he explained that he’s “working hard” to be single right now, which fits with what he was telling me earlier. To get his farm and business off the ground, he’s sequestered himself on his farm for the past few years, just realizing now what he’s been missing out on and striving for more balance. Makes sense that he doesn’t want to add dating to the picture just yet.

He made sure to express that he thought I was great and that he looked forward to getting to know me more, we cuddled around the fire a bit longer, and then went to our separate tents after one last lingering hug.

The next afternoon, after much fun and a significant amount of flirting between me and Mr. Farmer, I took the opportunity of being alone with him to say, “So…I really like you. Can I ask for clarification on you ‘working hard’ on being single? Because that could mean that you need a couple weeks or a few years.”

First off, he said that I took him by surprise the night before since he assumed that I wasn’t single. I found myself extremely complimented. I’m glad he was surprised I was single, because frankly it surprises me, too! He also said that he’s looking to get married and doesn’t want to rush into anything, reiterating that he wants to get to know me better.

All perfectly reasonable, but it did seem a little ridiculous that we were interested in each other, had two conversations about it, and HADN’T EVEN KISSED YET. Perhaps a bit shallow, but come on! If I’m going to stay up all night talking, I expect a little snogging.

Later, as our camping party was breaking up, he slipped me his contact information, and soon my friend and I jumped in my car to head back to good ol’ MadTown. Not knowing any of this had transpired, my friend shared with me what she thought was a cute story: turns out Mr. Farmer had taken a phone call a couple hours prior and tried unsuccessfully to find some privacy on the campground to make plans for a booty call that night.

Okay.

Number one. Given where he’s at in his life, it makes perfect sense for him to have a booty call. Sounds like a good balance of meeting immediate needs while working towards what he ultimately wants.

Number two. What the hell?!! He’s arranging a booty call? I WAS RIGHT THERE. He didn’t have to look beyond that damn campsite he was in! So he’ll go have sex with someone but he won’t even kiss me? What the hell.

When filled in on the whole story, my friend wasted no time telling me that, irrespective of the booty call, this guy wasn’t good enough for me. Reflecting on it, I was probably more caught up in feeling chemistry with someone (something sadly lacking from my internet dates) then feeling true compatibility. And if I’m so taken by a bit of chemistry, I need to get out and feel more chemistry with more people to have some perspective.

Why do I keep coming back to the same conclusion that I need to date more? Fine. Look for me scouring the farmland of Dane County.

Why buy the wedding when you can get the ring for free?

I found myself at a going away party where the only person I knew was the person going away. Undaunted, I took up the challenge of befriending the girl I was seated next to. While diligently attending to this task, the general conversation at the table turned to swapping marriage proposal stories.

How the hell did I end up at this party?

To be fair, the first tale was cute, as they often are. By the third tale I was finding all of them sweet, but I little “I’ve had too much candy” sweet. And then the next one was bitter. Just as I was wondering if women ever stepped up and proposed, the girl beside me piped up that she’s been dropping hints to her boyfriend for four years, but still no ring.

Really? After four years you still haven’t brought up the subject with your boyfriend? What, do you want him to surprise you? Cuz I’ve got news: you’re expecting it. Kinda kills the surprise.

But I didn’t have much time to dwell on this as the march around the table had now come to me, and I had no plan how to get out of this one. I briefly considered saying that I had a homeless guy propose to me once, but while I was trying to think of how to make that story interesting a guy a few chairs down jumped in and saved me. He volunteered how he had found the engagement ring he was going to give to his girl, once he met her. Yes, he found the ring before he found the girl.

I had so many questions for this guy I felt a little sorry for him, but not sorry enough to stop asking them. Especially since his story began with, “So I was in Tiffany’s…”

I’m sorry, but you were in Tiffany’s? Just, you know, hanging out? Guys do that? Straight guys do that?

And then I remembered: “Wait…I’ve done that!” A couple years ago I enlisted the help of a friend for the express purpose of trying on wedding rings at Tiffiny’s. I don’t remember the elaborate plot that we made up, but it involved making up a name to make my future, imaginary fiance sound as rich as possible.

I have no idea what prompted me to want to try on wedding rings. I’m not the kind of girl who dreams about her wedding, and I don’t even like diamonds! But there I was, gawking at a beautiful ring shaped like a vine with some small, inset stones in the leaves. I wanted that ring.

Back at the party I asked the single guy what ring he had picked out, while asking myself if I would try to get him to propose to me if it turned out to be the same ring. Alas, no. He described some gaudy thing with multiple huge diamonds. I guess I was saved from trying to get a ring out of this guy, although the girl sitting beside me would have gladly used her four years of experience to give me some pointers.

I was still fascinated by him, however, and kept asking him questions. A man that found the ring before he found the girl, and admitted it? Rare indeed.

I was still questioning him as he got up to leave. My final question to him was, “So have you found the girl yet?”

“No,” he answered. “I figured the ring was the hard part.”

While in the past I might have taken this as trite, I now have a New Attitude. Falling madly in love is now a given. Resulting jewelry is now the unknown. Perhaps I had found someone else with my attitude!

…or perhaps he was just trite, which would explain why he’s got the ring and not the girl!