You Chose A Monster: A Look at Online Dating (With Bonus Review: The Merits of Keeping a Journal!)

I feel like we’ve already established that I suffer from depression, and I use the word suffer purposely because I got to tell you, it’s downright heroic the way I show up at work everyday, even though sometimes my job bores me and I’d rather be in my yard. Courageous also comes to mind.  Quick background so that I can draw a parallel:  I was halfheartedly raised Jewish. When my parents moved from Boston to Seattle they curiously started to lose interest in Judaism. This moral bankruptcy happened to coincide with my birth, thus my fondest memories of synagogue involve getting dinner at McDonald’s beforehand, because by the time I reached an age when services might have meant something to me, we were no longer going. The point of the Jew-background? Well, I don’t think of myself as Jewish until it’s relevant, and the same is true of depression– I don’t really think about it until it comes up. So why is it over represented in my blog? Because I keep journals, which are excellent fodder for a blog, but since I mostly journal when depressed, well, I’m just setting myself up to self-disclose way too much.

And the thing is, this is not uncommon, to journal when depressed. As a teen, I was a mess, going to therapists and social workers and psychiatrists, and invariably they would at some point suggest that instead of trying to kill myself I should “take a hot bath” (always a hot bath) or “have a cup of tea” (tea- temperature never defined).  And also, “maybe you should journal.”  Oddly, journaling was not as big of a go-to for therapists as the take-a-hot-bath advice, which is too bad because it’s actually helpful, at least for me. And in fact, the better I’m feeling, the less I’m journaling, and yes, there are a few obligatory entries of “Got married. Am happy. More later” but of course there never is more later [I heartily recommend that you not read someone’s journal because it is 90% hyperbole driven by drama and misunderstandings (basically, like an episode of Three’s Company–”But Jack, You’re GAY!”) and you’ll walk away with a totally skewed picture of the person (that you just violated by reading their most intimate thoughts, YOU BASTARD!!), so just don’t do it, okay?].

Are you now asking yourself— so, what’s the upside of journaling? What drives you to cart around all those old mildewy notebooks from apartment to house to grave? Because of moments like THIS:

Let’s back up just a little bit, to spring 2013.  I had more or less just moved into “Fuck City,” the massive apartment complex that traded exclusively in single men with weekend visitation rights (thus filling the swimming pool with unmonitored kids every Saturday), and women hiding out from abusive ex-husbands, and me, a recent divorcee (the name “Fuck City,” by the way, is only funny if you watched (and memorized) Arrested Development, specifically when GOB was hired by Sitwell and has to name the new apartment complex, and the more amped he got, the more outrageous his naming suggestions were (“Check your lease because you are in Fuck City!”)).  There’s nothing like being surrounded by sad and lonely people to motivate you, another sad and lonely person, to start dating post-divorce.  

Now, I don’t mean “meet, move in, get married,” but just–date.  I feel like I never really dated, not how it was described to me in Archie Comics. You know how growing up your best friends just happened to be your neighbors, but maybe in retrospect it had less to do with “what are the odds that we’d find such a good friend who lives so close!”? Well, that’s what dating was for me: proximity + duration = relationship. And since I met my first husband online–Match.com, I think–I thought I’d try that again (I don’t know why people balk at online dating; it’s like posting a job: not every applicant will work out, but at least you have some resumes to look at before deciding who to interview).

Of course, when imagining the many, many dates I would go on, all of the men would be of the highest caliber, and I would be as pleasant as a peach (i.e., not peppering the conversation with “motherfuckers”), whereas in reality, it was really fucking hard to be expected to finish my thoughts when talking to someone new after having spent thirteen years with the same person and being able to fallback on shorthand and shared experiences that don’t require a lot of background info. PLUS, these guys were also not aware of “the rules” that were never explicitly defined with my ex, but had become an expectation: if I do this, then you do that. Except these fools never DID do that which was totally discombobulating, leaving me unsure of what to do next (like Jack on 30 Rock, unsure of what to do with his hands when on camera, which he resolves by holding a coffee cup in each).  But rather than exploring these revelations and “working on myself,” I just got really fucking inpatient with anything/anyone that that was remotely close to bullshit, thus there were very few second dates. And what qualifies as bullshit? Glad you asked:

  1. Sailing: I kind of think this is the guy’s version of the “Archie Comics” dating, because this came up several times. One guy wanted to take me sailing– at night.   “If only we could figure out where to rent a sailboat.” I was fairly certain he was planning on murdering me, but at the very least, face manslaughter charges after my accidental drowning because he didn’t actually know how to sail.
  2. J-Date set me up with someone mentally ill. No, seriously, he was diagnosable. Unless the FBI really did come to his house and hold a gun to the head of his infant son, and then boy would my face be red, because as soon as he stopped talking (which took close to an hour, during which my eyes got bigger and I stopped drinking my drink, and started taking catalog of what all I had brought in with me/what would I have to grab when I ran, and I never really liked that coat anyway), I bolted. Up and out (there was also some stuff about his ex-wife; she may or may not have been missing (probably a sailing incident).
  3. A writer who lived with his parents and borrowed his mom’s car to meet me.
  4. One guy got a second date, even though he talked about Burning Man during date one (clearly I was lowering my standards). We met at a local park along Puget Sound, where, after eyeing the water patterns, he proclaimed that “in five seconds, we will feel a blast of wind.” He was right. As a sailor, he could “read” the water;
  5. And the worst: I actually liked someone who liked me, but then disclosed that he was still living with his girlfriend.It was pretty common to meet men who were in open relationships, although I really doubted that the girlfriends were aware of this status.  

But Then, There Was Frankenstein’s Monster. Mel Brook’s Frankenstein’s Monster (MB’sF’sM), specifically (no, let’s just go with FM). Have you ever taken one of those implicit bias tests to see how racist or homophobic you really are? Okay, try it out, then come back.

Did you come back? I’d understand if you didn’t, because once you take one test, it’s hard to not rabbit-hole your way into a 4-hour testing session, even though you should be in bed asleep because it’s now 3am but you are still on the couch, watching faces and bodies flash-flash-flash in front of your face. But anyway, those tests are pretty much what OKCupid does, just flashes photos of people, and you go through dozens of pictures, rating all these people solely on looks but maybe also username (and pretty much do some long-term damage to a sad and lonely individual who is only looking for love. Or anonymous sex). Turns out, FM gave my picture a positive rating, so then OKCupid let me know that, hey, check this out, FM thinks you’re cute; do you think FM is cute? And I look at the picture, and I do indeed like Mel Brooks, and it seems like this monster was just looking for someone who could control fire or didn’t have a scar on their forehead or a lightening bolt of gray hair or some such thing, and I thought yeah, I do like what I see, which OKCupid then told FM–OMG, OMG, she thinks you’re cute TOO!!! And then I wait, and then I get an email. It said:

  • FM: You chose a monster. I find your admittance to being a homebody refreshing and intriguing. Is it because this is Seattle that everyone is a rock climber, or are rock climbers just not capable of maintaining relationships?”

Ooh, the monster is funny!

  • Lee: Rock climbers and knitters are alike–we are both unable to maintain relationships, probably because of our need for danger.

And then, because I need to find out what is douchey about him so I can cut him loose and spend the rest of my evening feeling shitty and alone (but there’s always popcorn and I do like popcorn and being alone means I don’t have to share it), I ask:

  • Lee: So…Why the fake profile? Are you hideously ugly? Unemployed? Unemployable? Married? Addicted to tanning?
  • FM: let me answer your questions first as this profile and then as me: Yes. Yes. Yes. The doctor is working on that. No.  Now as me: No (well… not that I’ve been told). No. No. No. No.I have another profile, a serious profile, it has pictures

I follow the link, and presumably I read the profile, but most definitely I checked out the pictures: bearded dude camping; bearded dude in a ball cap outside of a symphony hall; blurry “art school dropout” type picture of John Lennon lookalike, taken at night and judging by the lights, also in an amusement park; bearded dude camping AGAIN.

But that one blurry picture of John Lennon.

  • Lee: Did you ever live in Portland? You look like someone I made out with about 15 years ago. He was from Portland. I’m trying to think of all the things that may be wrong with you because there are an unbelievable amount of douche-bags on these sites. How often do you talk about sailing?
  • FM: Huh. I did live in Portland…15 years ago no less. I don’t think we made out then. Wow. That would be embarrassing. I had a fairly steady girlfriend when I was living there though that was also around the time we broke up. You aren’t a bus driver are you? OMG, Nuh uh. No way.

AND HERE’S WHERE IT’S SO FUCKING AWESOME THAT I CARTED THESE JOURNALS AROUND FOR YEARS: I go to the closet, pull out the box of journals–goddamnit, why didn’t I label these?–searching, searching,find it, and….    Your name is Michael, you used to live in Portland, Oregon and you were thinking about moving to Seattle. In town for a job interview, and we went out.

How could we not go out again?  Sure, he blew me off 15 years ago: we had dinner at Mama’s in Belltown, then drinks at the NiteLite Lounge, and then, yes, I went back to his shitty hotel room at the King’s Inn, underneath the Monorail tracks on 5th Ave. We spooned and talked until about 5am when I had to leave and go to work. There was probably kissing, but that’s it. When we meet again in 2013, he tells me things, and I think– I remember that about your sister; I remember that about your ex, I remember talking about all of this stuff with you.  

I think it’s for the best that Michael was still mooning over that ex back in 1999, and despite my emails to him, we never had a second date. I have a good friend in Chad, and we grew up together (and ultimately apart) in our marriage, but what I learned with him has changed me for the better. Had Michael and I gone out again way back when, I’m certain it would have been a train wreck (Michael disagrees; or at least he says that we don’t really know, and maybe it would have worked).

Anyway, our lives seemed to parallel each other: we both got married in Vegas to pretty much the next people we dated, in the same month (different years, maybe?). We both lived in neighborhood at the same time, and on the same street (him east of Greenwood Ave and me west of Greenwood Ave, with Seattle’s then-mayor living smack in between us). Neither of us would have been recognizable to each other, though: I had forgotten this, but when we first met, my hair was pixie-short and bleached, so a red-head with a bob might look familiar and that’s it. And him in his beard? It totally masked the John-Lennon-like features that I remembered so well, and in fact with his beard Michael looks a lot like an old supervisor who is a moron, so if I had seen Michael at the grocery store, I’d never have recognized him.

Alright. Let’s tie this up by going back to the spooning. Spooning is good for like 10 minutes, then I feel claustrophobic and get your fucking arms off of me and I SURE AS HELL CAN’T SLEEP WITH YOU BREATHING ON ME…JUST MOVE. But spooning with Michael? It’s perfect. We both sleep easily and comfortably in the spoon, and it’s not uncommon for me, while on the bus heading to work and feeling blargh to think about how in 1999 we spooned for hours and it was nice, and that’s such a wonderful thought to start my day.

  • FM: what are your feelings on fate?