not looking for a new england

I might as well start documenting my bad dates. The chances of one of those people stumbling on this blog and believing that I possibly have bad things to say about them seem slim. The good dates I may acknowledge, but probably I won’t go into detail.

So, here we go. About a month ago, I responded to a m4w ad on Craigslist. He was a college writing professor in his 30s. We e-mailed for probably two weeks, during which time it became apparent that he was realllly pretentious. Like, he wanted me to call him Henry so he could call me Anais. Okay!

Eventually, despite the pretentious, I agreed to meet him for dinner. And… man. This guy. He’s one of those people who is only interested in how utterly awesome he is. And he is awesome at everything! Here are just a few of the things he can rock:

• Writing. This was my favorite part of the evening. He’s apparently written a literary psychological thriller, which he “deliberately wrote to be better than anything else out there.” And yet he cannot sell it to an agent! Despite the fact that he made it awesome!
• Fighting. He used to be an underground no-holds-barred fighter, and he has never, ever lost a fight. Now all the guys who he used to beat up are world champions in various fighting arenas. Boxing, the UFC, etc. But he could totally beat them up! He can beat everyone up! He has been fighting since he was three (his father was a world champion boxer) and is master of all fighting styles!
• Journalism. For his college internship, he was totally the managing editor of a magazine, and he used to throw parties with the bestest DJs in the whole world! Now he cannot go to parties or clubs because of the sub-par DJs. He is a DJ snob.
• Tasting things. He went on and on and ON about how refined and awesome his palate is, and how that makes him spectacular at eating chocolate, drinking tea and wine, and cooking.

Anyway. We had dinner at a Thai restaurant. He brought his own chopsticks. Two pairs of them, and he used one pair in each hand because obviously he is 100 percent ambidextrous. (He was using neither pair particularly well.) He babbled about his palate and how much he likes spicy Thai food, but I think he ate three pieces of his squid salad because it was too hot for him.

He paid for dinner, but only because we discussed writing and therefore it was a tax writeoff for him. It seriously took me that long to get sick of his shit. But at that point — what the fuck? Who does that? I mean, even if you ARE going to use your dates as tax writeoffs, why tell them? As if spending the entire dinner discussing your awesomeness weren’t tacky enough.

And to think — someone married this guy. Oh, did I forget to mention he was married?

the game is up!

Well, maybe not. But a few of you have asked what, exactly, I’m doing. Yes, I’m mocking. Obviously. But is there a point to this beyond the mocking? I like to think so.

Here’s the part that isn’t particularly funny. I’m fairly recently out of a long (~5 year) relationship. We broke up, and then we were kind of trying again, but he really wasn’t. It was about a year of him being really quite awful to me. (I, of course, was a perfect angel.) I’m not over it. He was horrid, but I love him, and that’s my own special hell. Anyway, he’s uninterested in even thinking about trying again, which leaves me stuck with the moving-on bag. I’m told the way to move on is to pretend to move on, and then the emotions will follow.

Hence my looking for a date. Some of these profiles are fake because I’m curious about the sorts of people who will respond — for example, I was wondering if some guys send the same message to everyone. They do. Mission accomplished. But some of the profiles are legitimate, and some of the ads are legitimate, and I’m hoping to find someone who moves me in some way.

Have I? I’m not sure. I’ve been on a few dates. Some of them have gone well and led to other dates. Some of them have been downright ridiculous. There are more in the works. I’m still not sure if I’m going to document them, though. Maybe just the bad ones. They’re funnier, but I’d hate to give anyone the impression that my life is one horrid awkward date after another. I’d also hate for one of these people to recognize themselves in this blog one day; I’m not out to hurt anyone, mocking evidence to the contrary.

So. Thoughts from the peanut gallery?

more from craigslist

My latest Craigslist experiment (no, it’s really nothing like the other one) was… well, I’m not sure what it was designed to do. I’m not to the point of carrying out well-planned or remotely scientific experiments. I’m just posting different kinds of ads and seeing what happens.

The most recent one was two sentences and has received around 75 replies in the last 14 hours. Many of them are dickpix (which is my new favorite word), but of the faces I could see… wow. Most of these guys look like serial killers. Seriously. Anyway, I’m not about to post any of them, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

But here are some highlights. These are from the first and second ads; the most recent ad has inspired nothing blog-worthy. Everything has been “SWM here. Hit me back.” Anyway.

• OMG YOU ROCK. Picture of Lego man in turban attached.
• if u respond it will be very gratefull. Picture of guy in bubble bath attached.
• i cook better than most woman. Is he missing a comma, or did he misspell the word? I probably shouldn’t be so hard on people for typos, but this one amused me.
• Its refreshing to see someone else who recognizes that people need to be grammatically compatible. So he knows about commas, but not apostrophes? Well done. (Oh — the ad mentioned that my ideal person has an opinion on the Oxford comma. That’s why I’m snarking about commas here, and why he mentioned grammar.)
  

The second post included something like this: “Please know the following: how to put a sentence together, the names of your senators.”

• i have a dog. That was all the e-mail said. Dogs did not figure into my post at all, so I don’t know what this guy’s deal is.
• Any interest?????????? Attached a picture of him posing in front of a shiny new minivan. That was the entire response. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take from that — perhaps he’s a car salesman, since there are several other shiny cars in the photo. Or he’s already got our kids named and hopes to drive them around in this van. Either way, I feel the gazillion responses I’ve gotten allow me to be a little discriminating and ignore this guy entirely.
• Another one-liner that consists of physical stats and a picture. Dude looks like Gene Hackman. A slightly younger Gene Hackman, but still. No, thanks. Even his list of physical stats was grammatically horrid. It’s called a space bar. Learn it and love it.
• I am a grammer guru who knows when it is ‘its’ and when its ‘it’s’. Clearly.
  
• I kant spel. I kant reed. And, I kant cum to terms with the psykoligist in the mirror. What about u??? Wumen wid kats are usually 2 piky. Is dis u??? I think he was trying to be funny. He failed.

Also, I want to know why half the doms who respond feel the need to go allcaps on my ass. “I am very DOM.” They never spell it out when they are capping it. It’s just DOM.

And then there is the guy who is offering me the position of empress. He owns Arabian horses and a glass house on the sand dunes. I don’t think my city even HAS sand dunes. Anyway, this guy’s jolly pirate nickname is, apparently, GLOBALPOWR. Not quite as good as “MetalGod5000,” but close. Though, if he really is building an empire, can I afford to turn him down? I’m biting my nails about this one, folks.

EDIT: Hilariously (to me), many people seem to have come across this post by googling GLOBALPOWR. I didn’t realize until recently that there was a flame war going on in the comments. Just as an FYI, all comments from people saying they support, know, or can vouch for this Ian guy actually ARE from this Ian guy. They all carry the same IP address, which matches the one Ian uses to post as himself. Nice try, Ian! Go away.

EDIT: I’m done. Disabling comments.

my cup runneth over

I have posted two Craigslist ads in the past week. They are not at all similar, but they are both accurate. Both are in, um, w4m. The first one, which I felt was marginally clever, got me around 25 responses. The second, which is not at all clever, has so far got me something like 40. The responses are still trickling in.

So far, there has only been one guy who responded to both ads. He wrote the exact same thing.

There have been several really lame responses — one-liners asking for my phone number or somesuch. Or, “Hey. Hit me back.” With what?

My marginally clever ad got some not-very-clever responses. Even the put-downs were lame! One guy informed me that I need to get out more. Which really is kind of the point, isn’t it? Another guy told me that my post “was so Hot,” but felt the need to point out that his entire e-mail had been sarcastic. I clearly cannot be trusted to understand such things.

And I still haven’t got around to posting the completely insane response I got the first time around. I need to figure out my blogging software first, but in the meantime, a teaser in the form of the first sentence of his e-mail:

He wrote, at the above stated time, the following verbiage sitting in his in-home office, listening to Hooverphonic or wait, maybe it was KEANE… interesting how most cannot begin to conceive what is about to happen to their own life, let alone entertain the thought that maybe putting an age limit on how old this “new” guy has to be might be sharing a bit too much on what little you truly understand about your soul-mates swimming around out there between our tiny little islands.

Maybe it’s spam. I don’t know. He hasn’t sent any similar crazy in response to my second ad. I can’t decide if it’s more or less terrifying to think that it was an actual person responding to my post.

this person can’t be real.

The w4m ad I posted on Craigslist last night has netted me a pretty good response — I think something like 20 people have written to me. And none of them sent me pictures of their cocks! Thumbs-up to them.

Many are very unremarkable. A few are interesting and legitimate. But two stand out. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to communicate the sheer crazy of the first, but in the meantime, there was this:

Wowe,
You sound hot!
Want to make out to bon jovi records in my 82 ford
escort.
You’ll just have to ignore the rust and smell, cuz
with out that the car is toattly bitchin!
Pleas like quitriot, quennsrich, manowar, and krokus,
bring beer, a friend and snacks,
A rocken and moralie casual attitude is a pluss
Stick to this and like we can see where it goes from
there……
You better be hot

Yours for the night
Metal God5000

Maybe I have too much faith in humanity, but… can that guy be real? Can there BE people that stupid in the world? I like to think not.

I can’t decide what my favorite part of the ad is. Possibly the signature, but the mangling of the names of his supposedly favorite bands is right up there, too. I think I got all of them except “krokus.” Who are they supposed to be?

I can’t even think of anything snarky to say about this. The stupidity has stunned me into silence.

small worlds

I posted two ads on Craigslist last night, one in w4m and one in w4w. I figure that since the only people who seem to respond to w4w ads are men anyway, I might as well post in the other section and see what happens. (Also, I’m pretty indifferent to what’s under anyone’s skirt. I have reasons for being more interested in women right now, but that’s neither here nor there. And it’s not panning out very well anyway.)

Hilariously, the one response I’ve received to my w4w ad is from a guy who’s also responded to my alt.com ad. He pretty much said the same thing, too — that he’s got 30 years in the lifestyle and he has a female slave who wants someone to play with. He even has a website all about how awesome he is. I’m beginning to get the feeling that there are maybe 30 Internet-savvy men in this city who are into BDSM, and they all just send the same message to anyone calling themselves a female submissive.

Work now. More later.

memories, part one

Somewhere, in a blog far away, I wrote about the responses I got to my first alt.com ad. In the name of sharing the love, here are a few of them.

First, a limerick!

Older man – libertine, not permissive -
Seeks a promising novice submissive.
As he trains her to serve
With passion and verve
He’ll be stern but seldom dismissive.

Another good one (less the response and more the ensuing hijinks) was from a 42 year-old college professor. The subject line was, “I CAN SPELL EMANCIPATION.” Perhaps he wanted a cookie. I’m not sure. Though, to be fair, I had mentioned in my profile that anyone who wrote to me really ought to be able to spell.

Anyway, he went on to tell me a little bit about himself, including the intersection he lives near, and that he has a pug. That intersection happens to be the one nearest my ex, who for the purposes of this post, will be called M. So one morning, around 8.30, I was standing outside M’s apartment smoking a cigarette, and what do I see? A man in his early 40s who matched this guy’s description, walking a pug.

Now, M and I work in the same office, so we used to walk to work together pretty regularly. And we started to see this guy all the time — turns out he lives right next door. One morning he was walking on the other side of the street, and M and I started arguing pretty loudly about the proper way to spell “emancipation.” I didn’t see the guy’s reaction, but M tells me it was pretty priceless.

We’ve been calling this guy Epantsimation Man, and I’ve been dreading the day that I need to use the word “emancipation” in casual conversation and instead I say “epantsimation.”

Anyway, Epantsimation Man has responded to my most recent ad as well, but he hasn’t discussed his spelling ability, or where he lives (though he did mention the pug). I’m not sure if he cottoned on the last time around, but I suppose it does seem likely. His response was otherwise unremarkable, although he didn’t spell anything wrong and was fairly polite and courteous. Still, though, I don’t know why he insists on writing to women who are looking for other women.

But moving on! Another guy sent me this: “hello, i just wanted to point out to You that for someone who wants a good speller, they too should be able to spell (or at least use the correct word), under Your ideal person, You used the word discreet, when infact i assume You should have used discrete… 2 different meanings for those words.”

I wrote back to tell him that “discrete” means “consisting of unconnected distinct parts” and is therefore exactly the opposite of what I might be trying to accomplish by placing an ad on what is essentially a sex site.

And needless to say, I got loads of porn, but I think I’ll write about that in a different post.

the world may be ending

To recap, because I get a little confused myself, I have four profiles on alt.com. Two of them are substantially similar. One of those is quite old; it’s the one I posted over a year ago, that started this whole thing. The other is more recent. Both are barebones profiles — three sentences, no picture — stating that I’m looking for a dominant woman.

The first one had been inactive for a long time, but I reactivated it shortly after beginning this experiment. So far, a few people have sent the exact same message to both personas. Notably, the guy who wrote the bad softcore porn about how much he likes to kiss me deeply. Also, remember how I was briefly excited about having got a real response? From the guy who was respectful and polite and didn’t order me to buy new clothes and just wanted to meet for wine and see if we click? He sends that message to everyone, too. Ah well.

Anyway, one of the profiles is the femdom, and the last of them is legitimate. It has a picture, and it says something like this: “Yes, I am interested in kinky sex. However, I am not interested in kinky one-night-stands with married men. I want an actual relationship, and it would make me happy if kinky sex were a part of said relationship.” Except it uses more words.

Unsurprisingly, that profile has not elicited many e-mails. But today, when I logged on, I had TWO RESPONSES. From actual people! Who meet my criteria! And who did not write me porn! I think my heart may have stopped.

In other news, the okCupid binge I went on the other day — where I responded to everyone who’d written to me — has yielded no results whatsoever, so it was clearly not the disaster I was expecting. That’s a plus.

My profile on Salon.com continues to be ignored, grrl2grrl continues to annoy the bejeezus out of me, and meetic continues to be full of suck. I’ve signed up on Match and one other site with a name I can’t remember, but they both continue to insist on setting me up with my ex. It’d be nice if there were an Amazon-like rating system, where you could indicate that you have already purchased that product and to please exclude it from your recommendations. I think my next stop is Nerve.

I haven’t played much on Craigslist, because it’s so high-maintenance. I’ll probably start up again after the holidays, when I have a little more time.

the other side of the coin

I haven’t been doing much with this blog for the past week or so, due to work and family and just general holiday insanity. So that’s the bad news. But the good news is that it’s provided me with a backlog of crazy.

Well, sort of. Femdomme!me has received a total of 23 responses. Three of them don’t count — two people sent me the exact same message twice, a few days apart, and Do Not Disappoint Me Man wrote to say that he’s sent several messages and does not understand why he hasn’t heard from me. His membership is expiring in a few days, and he’s anxious to hear from me because he would very much like to serve all my needs, and please e-mail him. Pushy motherfucker, even in submissive form.

Anyway. Femdomme!me is looking for a male, a female, or someone of ambiguous gender. My only other requirements, I believe, are age (+/- five years of however old the persona is) and distance (within 50 miles). Of the 21 people who’ve written, one has been a transperson, and the rest have been men. Twelve fail to meet the age/distance requirements (including Do Not Disappoint Me Man).

I’m getting a few things out of this. One, I’m wondering if there are even any women on this site. Two, I’m wondering if anyone pays a goddamn bit of attention to what they’re doing. Signs point to no on both counts.

But more than that, I think that responses to my femdomme ad are just not as interesting. True, they’re full of the same atrocious grammar and spelling that plague the rest of the Internet, and people do occasionally say some ridiculous shit — “do u wish me to becum fatter, uglier, or a sissy slut?” (why the fuck would I want that?) — but for the most part, these ads are from painfully earnest sub boys who’ve sent a picture and their phone number and a list of ways they would very much like to make my life easier. Bad spelling aside, that’s hard to mock. And it makes a little sad, because my dominant tendencies are completely nonexistent. Alas.

I really was not planning to turn this blog into some kind of personal soapbox about D/s relationships, but at this point, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to hold back. People are idiots.

I think my next experiment is to vary the locations of my alter-egos. Will a submissive woman in New York get the same crazy-ass responses as one in Atlanta? Los Angeles? Cleveland? Who knows! I think I’m going to need to start keeping spreadsheets and databases. Excellent.

the plot thickens!!

Okay, so last night I made yet another profile on alt.com. This one is a femdom, a little older, and she doesn’t look like me. I had a minor crisis of conscience when the replies started coming in — it’s one thing to make a legitimate profile and realize that the responses are so completely absurd as to warrant mockery, but it’s another to make up fake profiles with the sole purpose of mocking the responses.

But I am so over that. Because! Because Do Not Disappoint Me Man wrote to my femdom persona. He used almost the exact same language as he did before — “my profile says I’m a switch, but I have since realized that my true calling is to be a sub.” Which is funny, because two days ago he was saying that his true calling is to be dominate. (He’s another one who’s confused by dominate vs. dominant.)

It becomes clear from reading this response, though, that he doesn’t have nearly as much experience as he was telling submissive me that he had. He told dominant me that he’d only had a little bit, but that he thinks about it a lot. He was polite and respectful and asked some pertinent questions, and also wants permission to tell me about some of his “fitishes.” I don’t know what those are, but I don’t think I want to know. But it pisses me off on many levels that he feels only those calling themselves doms are deserving of courtesy.

I’m thinking I should write back and tell him to get off his lazy ass and buy a leather miniskirt.