Genre: Flash Fiction
This is Part Two of a flash fiction piece titled "Why I am Staying." Flash Fiction refers to the original publishing style. I crafted Part One shortly after moving to the West Coast and decided to publish each part in email form. Part One and the continuation below were sent in the body of an email to a fictitious friend and BCC'd (blind carbon copied) to several hundred unsuspecting friends, family, and readers on my mailing list. My intentions in employing this experimental form were to provide the reader with a voyeuristic and perhaps scandalous reading experience, providing that each recipient supposed they had received the story accidentally. Moreover, it created widespread and skewed understanding my chosen occupation and current location. Enjoy.
How are you? Things are going well in Altoro. My massage/talk therapy venture is really taking off. Also, I'm seeing someone, but before I tell you about him, I've got to come clean. I know I’ve told you several times that I’ve met many of the men I’ve dated at Space Bar. Well, I need to tell you something. Space Bar isn’t a really bar. It’s not even a place. I know you’ve tried to find it. I remember when you called me. You said you were in front of a Garage that had Hello Kitty graffiti on it. Well, I’m sorry. I felt very bad when I got your voicemail. And then we never really talked about it. But Space Bar doesn’t exist. So, there you have it. I lied. I’m a liar. There you have it.
And while you have it, you might as well know that the reason I was always telling you that I met those guys at Space Bar, it was always code for… okay, here it is. Online dating. I date online. I do, I date online and all those times I said I met those men at Space Bar, I really met them online. Ugh, I feel so much better. I feel like I’ve been carrying the weight of a desktop computer on my shoulders.
I don’t know why I kept it hidden from you. I guess it’s because I always made fun of you that time that you dated that guy from online. I felt like a hypocrite. I’m sorry for that. I’m really sorry. It’s just that those were different times. That was 2000 back when online dating was still creepy and stigmatized and you might have been murdered and I just found that so funny. I couldn’t help but make fun of you. I’m sorry.
But now it’s 2009 and things are very different and we can be open about it. I date online. I’m not ashamed of it. My roommate does it to. We kept it a secret from each other at first too. But then we just… well, god who cares! Now we sort of look at it just like if we were to have met someone on the subway or at a bar.
I can understand if you’re still somewhat resistant to the idea. It can be difficult to believe that meeting a perfect stranger who may or may not have seen naked photos of you online is safe. But it’s safe now! It really is. I like to think that online dating is actually our generation’s reward for having made it through the 1980’s when kidnapping was so popular. It’s like we can finally taste the forbidden candy being offered by strangers! You know? It’s liberating, right? It feels good, right? I mean think about how rarely you hear about people getting killed by psychopaths they meet on the internet. Hardly ever anymore, right? It’s very rare. True, psychopaths are probably still online, but they’re online looking for love!
Listen, I’m sure you have some questions and you’re probably still very disappointed that Space Bar doesn’t exist. But I’m happy to offer the internet to you as a replacement. I mean, just look at the several dozen men I’ve been with in the last few years. True, those weren’t lasting relationships, but those are memories that I will hold dear, truly. That guy that I met in California on business and then lived with in his van – he was from online. But that was MySpace. That was before I was really comfortable with the idea. Myspace seemed a sort of lighter version of the real online dating sites. Before that it was Friendster, and now take your pick! Manhunt, OK Cupid, Lovelab! I’ve got six profiles running right now.
That hitchhiker I met in Colorado on my way to that wedding in Portland. He was online, and he wasn’t a hitchhiker. I met him on a proper online dating website and he wasn’t a hitchhiker, he was just unemployed. So when we hit it off I offered to take him as my date to the wedding. I know I told you that I met him at a coffee shop and that I had innocently asked him if there was a campground nearby… well it’s not entirely untrue because I was on my laptop at a coffee shop when I met him online. I was really just looking for campsites online and it was taking forever so while I was searching I logged into my OK Cupid account there he was!
But you should know that I’m very safe. You’ve got to be safe. I’m always safe and I always meet them in a brightly lit place. And if I meet them in my apartment, I make sure that all the lights are on. But anyway, you know me, I’m very good at reading people. I almost never meet psychos. Though, this guy that I met recently said that it wouldn’t matter if he were a psycho anyhow because psychopathic characteristics wouldn’t show upon first glance.
The real reason that I’m bringing this all up is because I wanted to tell you about who I’m dating. His name is Bill and he’s excellent. He really is. But now that I’m in Altoro I can’t very well tell you that I met him at Space Bar. There are no bars in Altoro so I decided to come clean. I am glad that I got my crash course in online dating in New York City where there are real psychos out there. I’m very confident I can handle any computer programmer I meet here.
So Bill. He actually contacted me first. I’d seen his profile here and there and I could tell he was fun, but I was playing coy so I didn’t send a message right away. He asked me only after the first couple messages if I was interested in partying with him. I knew that this didn’t mean playing beer pong so I said, “What kind of partying did you have in mind?”
He replied, “What sort of mind-altering substances do you like (esp. ones which augment libido and extend sexual performance)? I'm friendly.”
At least he was honest. I replied, “I mean, pot is cool. I've been thinking about trying to get some shrooms recently, but haven't found any, which is surprising because I thought they might just grow outside my cottage since it’s California and I thought that shrooms were all the rage. Ha.”
See, the great thing about dating online is that you can really test your boundaries. I didn’t really have any intention of meeting up with him. I usually limit myself to people within a 20 minute drive and he lived about 30 minutes outside of Altoro. It just seems silly to set yourself up for such a long commute for casual dating, you know? And anyhow, it’s true, I was thinking about finding shrooms. I just think it might be a fun way to fully experience what remnants there might be here from the Summer of Love. And even if he and I weren’t a match there was the chance that he’d have a connection to some shrooms.
He replied, “There's cooler drugs in California than shrooms, I would hazard to say. Anyhow, mushrooms make me nauseous, unfortunately. I prefer K for hallucinogenic experiences... also dig GHB and ecstasy. But I have a really strong sense that it'd be fun to get into some mutual molestation with you. Are you working tomorrow? We could do this tonight.”
Well, this would usually be the point that I immediately eliminate someone from my contact list. If someone thinks that I am interested in virtually shaking hands and nothing more before I dive into an actual bed with them, they aren’t getting any real sense of me at all. But something told me an on-going correspondence would be entertaining at the very least. I replied,
“Hmm, I don't do K for sure, maybe E, but I had to Google what GHB even was. And what made you ask? I'm only entertaining the idea because I haven't tripped in ages, but truthfully, meeting up with a stranger and popping some hard drugs and maybe getting murdered sounds less than appealing to me at this point in my life, let alone tonight.”
His response, “Puhlease.... I put the wood chipper away last month, I'll have you know... and why would I want to waste some perfectly nice recreational drugs on a corpse-to-be? I asked because you look like someone who enjoys recreational drugs from time to time in tandem w/ having great sex, and I'm in that sorta mood tonight.”
See, I told you. Hilarious. And to be honest, I was sort of aroused by him making jokes about killing me. Or rather, not killing me. Anyway, I told him that I might consider meeting him for a beer. I didn’t hear anything back for a few days. I was all like what happened to him? What was he doing?
There is something about online dating that truly mystifies your understanding of others. It’s somewhat easy to imagine someone sitting at their computer, their face lit by glow of the screen, smiling as they toss around witty banter. But in the time that goes between messages, one is left to fictionalize the life of their hypothetical other. Where do they live? What side of the bed do they sleep on? Where do they work? Perhaps you’ll even bump into them as you go about your day.
Well, as it turns out, Bill was unemployed. Eventually he wrote back sternly, “What's your insistence on meeting out for a beer? It's quaint but it kind of bores me.... it implies either that you fear you'll be in some danger in paying me a visit (long after I've stowed away the wood chipper for the season). This itself displays some naiveté about the nature of nefarious people (the worst of them don't exhibit their sociopathy right away, but tend to wait till many months later, after they've intertwined their finances, insurances, lease, etc. with yours).... or that you worry I won't be able to handle your rejection, should it come to that, and the crowded conditions of a bar will be what prevents me from lapsing into hysteria or something. Anyway, I'm really not a drinker anymore, and don't really frequent bars these days.... think you can brave it and come hang sometime in the near future?”
Do you see? Do you see my attraction building? His intellect was apparent. I’m not interested in playing games. But this was different and I was ready. I knew that my response must be sharp and distant. I mustn’t allude to any interest in meeting him at all.
I wrote back confidently, “Well, as it goes, I like to function at some level of comfort. Please, don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to discomfort, I just moved from New York, I'll remind you. And being that I'm twenty-five, I feel quite comfortable at a bar stool. I don't feel that same comfort knocking on the door of a stranger and trying hard to seem as though I'm maintaining said comfort when I am indeed not comfortable at all. Add that with a Dixie cup sitting on the coffee table, and well... I’ll be honest, I'm a bit of a yes man, especially when offered free drugs, which has proved both rewarding and damaging in the past. My fear, if you can even call it that, is that before I know it, I'll be high as a kite and watching a stranger roll around on the floor trapped in K hole and that, well, I'll just leave and thusly leave you to die alone in your apartment. Or worse, the roles reversed. And so, albeit a grandiose forecasting, a bar stool is a simpler alternative, a calming one. And, also, you're a little creepy. But, maybe.”
He responded within an hour, “I can work with maybe... How's this evening?.... I got a new Monster Mash album I can play in the background when you get here... BTW, there's no need to knock; the front door creaks open on its own to admit you when you arrive I'm also out of Dixie cups... if you could bring some that would be much appreciated. You got a # my people can reach your people on?”
I wrote back at my own leisure, “I do have a phone number. Would you like it? While I wait for your response I'll mull over our hypothetical meeting and drug doing more. See, you haven't exactly decreased your creepiness with anything you've said. Also, your last message completely ignored my request to meet at a bar and now has us hypothetically back at your place. Which now sort of makes you seem pushy. Either pushy or dim-witted. Also, I suspect your place smells bad. Something about your single profile photo screams of smelly apartment. I mean, I don't mean to be offensive or presumptuous, but I don't want to be murdered or die in a K hole in some creepy guy’s smelly apartment.”
His response was perfect. It was when I knew he might be the one. “I’d rather you die alone than in my smelly apartment. That will be all.” It’s been six months. Bill and I are still laughing about how we met.
