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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I really, REALLY need to remember that every single time I post on Craigslist, I need to include the sentences, “please write to me in proper English,” and, “do not send me pictures of your cock.” Otherwise I get cock pictures accompanied by e-mails that say, “m an astrology lover, surely cant match u in love belief but m close.”

I don’t even know what that MEANS.  Except that he will not be getting an e-mail back.

Although, one of my friends is doing a great Craigslist experiment and is actually responding to the people who write her. This prospect kind of terrifies me, but she has some really spectacular exchanges. I’m not sure I have the patience for it. I’d just kill someone. And I’d probably kill someone I actually like, since I’m not likely to go out and meet obnoxious CL boys just so I can kill them. Though it is entirely possible I would be doing the world a favor.

Two, I got pneumonia. That sucked, in many ways. When you think you’re dying (and let’s face it — I’m prone to melodrama), it tends to realign your priorities. Even if you only think you’re dying for a few hours. So I hid from the pile of boys and occasional girl who were e-mailing me and… I’m not sure. I wrote, and I hung out with my friends, and I mooned over The Ex, which seems to be the default thing I do these days. I was dying, and I only wanted him, and he didn’t even call to see how I was. So now I bake a lot of cookies and have been very purposefully NOT logging on to any dating sites.

But I decided that was kind of lame, so I went back on a few of them tonight. And — curses! I keep forgetting that alt.com deletes all your messages if you don’t log in regularly. So my inboxes are all cleaned out. Except that there was someone online e-mailing all of my personalities as I was logging in and out. Seriously, she e-mailed ALL OF THEM. Her responses go like this: “I’m trans, but one of the good ones.” What does that even mean? Like, she’s got outstanding morals? She had an excellent surgery? She’s lawful good? I don’t know. She assured a different persona that she does know how to use a spellchecker, and that I should “email her bcak.”

Sigh.

I also logged into okcupid, but there’s not much to report. A few messages from a chick I’d been kind of thinking about going out with (she’s a massage therapist. I would be stupid to turn her down! And maybe that makes me a bad person, but I am currently sitting on a goddamn tennis ball because I was told it would relieve the pressure on my sciatic nerve. I am twenty-seven. I am too young to sleep with heating pads and sit on tennis balls. Therefore, I should date massage therapists. I’m sure that makes sense.) who I should probably write and tell her I got pneumonia and don’t hate her. A few messages from a guy I was sort of thinking about maybe going out with. He’s the one I found kind of refreshing, who just wrote to say he liked my profile and found me attractive and wanted to take me out sometime. But he’s also unemployed and a total slacker, and see above re: my being 27. I’m past the point where I’m okay dating unemployed slackers. I do not require my dates to own their own house or anything, but I don’t think a job is too much to ask. A plan? A degree? I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting snobby in my old age. Not that I wasn’t just as much of a snot ten years ago.

In other news, The Ex tells me he thinks Epancimation Man has a woman. Apparently a tired-looking Easten European woman has been spotted walking the pug in the mornings. Sometimes she is walking the pug with Epancimation Man himself. EM did write to me mere days before I got this information, though, so perhaps Tired Chick is not really the woman of his dreams. Maybe she’s just a pugsitter!

And, yeah, okay, maybe that entire paragraph was just an excuse to say “pugsitter.” Clearly it’s far too late for me to be up. Bed now.

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?

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?

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.