synergy and idiots

Today I took down all my CL posts, for reasons unrelated to any of the rest of this post. I was trying to fill the empty spaces, but it wasn’t working. Why bother?

Anyway. At some point over the weekend, I answered some guy’s ad. We’ve been exchanging e-mails. Today, he answered one of my ads. CL is actually a pretty small world. Hang out there enough, and you start to know people. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I’ve met some okay people, but. Dude. Mostly I want to poke myself in the eye. Hence the mass deletion.

I also tend to freak out. I have a gazillion IM accounts, because I’ll give an IM name to some guy, chat with him until he bores me, and then — instead of doing something remotely reasonable like telling him I’m not interested — I never sign on to that account again. So I have to make a new one every time some guy asks me what my screenname is. I am awesome in all ways. Or something. The point is, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, and so it is painfully obvious that I need to stop doing it.

But moving on! Yesterday, I e-mailed a few times with a guy who’d answered one of the weekend posts. The e-mails were going well. He was interesting and smart and funny and we were getting along. We made arrangements to meet later this week for dinner. (I almost certainly would have freaked out and stood him up, but that is totally not the point.) Then he asked what sort of guy I usually go for.

I answered truthfully: I don’t really have a type. I haven’t been with all that many men. I like tall guys, but have been with short ones. I like height/weight proportionate guys, but have been with overweight ones. I like men, but have been with women. Whatever.

The guy writes back, and is suddenly Mr. Passive Aggressive: “It’s too bad. Intellectual connections are so hard to find. Good luck on your search.”

… Alan Rickman is hot!

Today he responded to one of my *other* ads to make snarky comments: “Too bad you’re hung up on looks,” and, “I’m shaking my head at you.” I finally wrote back and told him to get the fuck over himself, because it’s pretty clear that he’s the one hung up on looks. Then I made a filter to delete any further e-mails he sends me.

The filter didn’t work, though, and he wrote to say he likes me a lot and is confused because he can’t tell if I care about looks. I am not writing back, because he is an asshole. I am taking a firm stand against assholes. I am tired of assholes. I fixed the filter.

like nails on a chalkboard

Today I have been e-mailing with random CL guys. Some of them are more promising than others, but that’s not saying much. This is why I’ve been reluctant to talk to them. We have exchanges like this one:

Him: I live at X corner.
Me: Oh, the Corner of Sketch. I know where that is.
Him: What does “Corner of Sketch” mean?
Me: *headdesk*

Note that he probably comes off smarter in that exchange than he does over e-mail because I am paraphrasing and thus using punctuation. But, I mean, is “corner of sketch” really that difficult a phrase?

Talking to these guys also subjects me to high crimes against English, like this: “I’m nicely hung too I guess I should mentiuon but I guess knowing how to move thetool is also very important don’t you think and I’ve been told I have good hands by the massages i’ve given to past girlfriends and also my cousin said your everything a woman wants.”

Ow. Ow! Seriously, it hurts my brain. I’m reasonably sure that calls for a, “but what are your thoughts on yaoi?” I may be the only person in the world who thinks that’s funny, but much of the point of this is to amuse myself. I thought I was legitimately searching for something beyond a laugh, but now I’m not so sure.

Anyway. Then there is the guy who must think I have nothing to do but e-mail him all day. He just sent me a note to let me know that he is going to be away from his desk for an hour, in case I write and don’t hear back instantly. It’s strange, really, that I’ve had so much frustration in the past with people who don’t show enough interest, and yet the second someone does show interest, I feel the urge to back away slowly. Although I suppose it’s more a matter of interest vs. desperation. Panting after someone after exchanging all of two e-mails? Is a little on the desperate side, folks.

I’m also torn about the guys who respond to every single one of my ads. I never post the same thing. Half the time I don’t even say I’m from the same place. Some of these guys send a relevant note each time; some just send the same thing. My favorite of those is the guy who is somehow always coming in from a refreshing walk through the neighboring forest preserve, and he is always very happy and excited to have seen a coyote. Coincidence? Or LIES? I know where I’d put my money.

There is another guy who responds with something different and relevant and interesting every time, but I haven’t written back because he’s 22. I’m 27, and reluctant to get involved with someone so young. God knows I was an idiot at 22. (If we were both ten years older, I don’t think I’d care so much.) So I just ignore him and feel vaguely guilty.

On the other hand, there is something off-putting about getting e-mail from the same guy every time I post. It makes me wonder if he e-mails EVERYONE who posts (not attractive), or somehow has just honed in on my posts (strangely intriguing).

This is exhausting. Distracting, though, which is possibly what I need right now. Who knows. Not I, not I.

that’s a first

Friday night, I put up Post A on Craigslist. Saturday night, I put up Post B.

This morning, I woke up to find that someone had replied to Post B by lifting huge chunks of Post A and e-mailing them to me.

I mean, yeah, it makes me grind my teeth. But mostly, I find it really weird that Post A so clearly resonated with him, but he didn’t respond to it. People are strange.

craigslist + fandom wank = awesome!

Craigslist is a strange animal. I find myself making bizarre and somewhat soulful posts at night, e-mailing with random guys until the wee hours of the morning, and then starting over again the next day. These boys don’t interest me in the daylight. And maybe I don’t interest them. Who knows.

Today I got caught up on Fandom Wank, as I do sometimes, and now I find I am responding to unwanted e-mails with FW phrases. To the guy who wants to take me to wine and cheese at his church, where there are “many attractive singles,” I said, “but what are your thoughts on yaoi?” To the guys who send me links to their myspace or say, “u have pix?” or “lets chat sweety,” I say, “Alan Rickman is hot.” It’s working out pretty well so far. They get very confused. Poor woobies.

And yet this is all largely pointless. I know what I’m looking for. I know who I want. I can’t have it. I’m just treading water, and it’s wearing me out.

bizarro world

When I was in high school, I dated a boy who fancied himself An Artist. One day, I was in some random kitschy store, and saw a little plaque that said, “just because no one understands you, it doesn’t mean you’re an artist.” I bought it for him. We broke up shortly thereafter, though I like to think the reason were unrelated. (There was a different boy, and also a girl.)

ANYWAY. This concept of incoherency not necessarily equalling Great Artistic Vision? I think someone needs to explain it to the boys of Craigslist. The responses lately have just been downright weird. I mean, I like to think that I am smarter than your average bear, and I feel like I’ve been somehow transported to a bizarro planet where I am a moron and it’s perfectly okay to say things like, “proper grammer doesn’t believe in underwear and is all in on skirt.”

…bzuh?

Also, from the same boy: “Cause I have to be honest I sort of paired the puppy down, gneutered even, but def spade.”

There is the boy who asked me about pinochle: “Trump is spades. Your partner takes the trick. You’ve a ten, king, jack of spades, both jacks of diamonds and an ace of hearts. What do you send?”

Is this a trick to see if I actually know how to play pinochle? The absolute only way to answer that question correctly is a long rant on the rules of pinochle, or at the very least with about seven more questions (what led? who took the bid? what suit is the ten? wtf do you mean, what do I send? To whom? And why am I sending anything if we’re already taking tricks? WE ARE NOT PLAYING PINOCHLE, ARE WE?!).

Sorry. We take pinochle seriously in my family.

Moving on! To the boy who wrote to say that he likes every single sexual position. He also went out of his way to assure me that he has been with more than a few women and therefore knows what he’s about in the sack. However, he is far from being a man whore. I kind of want to tell him that I am actually a man whore.

There is the boy who wrote to say that he wants a relationship like the one Paul and Jaime had on Mad About You. Oh — one where they get divorced? Sign me up! (Although the more I think about it — maybe they got back together after a separation? I just remember them not being together in the series finale, but it’s possible there was a happily-ever-after epilogue sort of ending that I’m not quite remembering. Which sort of defeats the snark, but not entirely!)

I also like the boy who wrote and said that I could not ever introduce him to my parents because he is likely to feel up my mother and beat up my father. Also, he would like to “breed.”

On the plus side, none of these guys sent cock pictures. I can’t decide if that is good or bad, because I feel they probably would have been exceptionally strange cocks, and I’m always curious about that sort of thing. But I guess that’s why I read Warren Ellis.