Full moon

I cancelled my Match.com subscription a few weeks ago because I'd rather just set fire to three $20 bills.  It yields the same results and would probably be more entertaining.  But never fear, free sites like Tinder and OKCupid have been fruitful of late.

A week or so ago I matched with a local 39-year old named Ramon (similar to his real name) who was an attractive, normal (based on his LinkedIn resume and endorsements...yes, I "researched" him), easy-to-chat-with local IT professional.  We had a nice conversation going for a few days until I had the gall to ask what happened with his 16-year marriage, because, uh, that's kind of a long time and obviously something went down.  I'm going to guess that communication was an issue since ours came to a screeching halt.  Oh well.  It was nice to know that I can still attract normal people, be them far and few between.

At the same time I was chatting with Ramon, I swiped right and matched with Alejandro (again, close, but not his real name), an engineer from Madrid who lives in LA...aaaand, based on that information alone, who was probably just looking for a hookup while working in my city recently.  But he's kinda hot so once again I was pleased that I am capable of attracting men who are not wearing antler panties.  We chatted for a few days and he gave me his cell number:

Hold up, I don't know what that is.  Nor that it's appropriate.  I don't have one, or that.   

(I looked it up...it's a free text/video chat app.)

So while I was Tindering with my potential Latin lovers, I was also chatting with a guy on OKCupid.  Another tick in the non-antler column.  He disappeared after a couple days, though, because he was messaging in the middle of the night and for some reason--probably because I was sound asleep, breathing happily, connected to my CPAP machine--I wasn't answering promptly enough.  Maybe not so normal after all.

Anyway, all of these swipes, matches and chats bring us to the full moon on May 21 when my week of seemingly-normal men completely went to shit.

Here's my first indication of something going awry:

After I recovered, I realized that I've actually written about this guy before.  I clicked on his profile to confirm, and there it was, the "metal" neck tattoo that was the topic of my May 26, 2015 post:

Then something cosmic happened at 9:29pm and I got these emails:

Let's read that first one:

Oooh, sorry, I don't exactly have or want a Christian Grey-style red room of pain.  My bedroom is actually carnation pink, and my wicker furniture could stand to be vacuumed and dusted, so if me commanding you to do that turns you on, maybe we can work something out.  But not really.  Because I'm not contacting you.  Nor am I contacting the other 9:29pm arrival:

Do you have money for me in Nigeria?  That kind of urgency is a little odd, and so is this from his profile:

Even though I smell fabulous, I have no idea what you're talking about with the climbing.  I even checked Urban Dictionary and they don't know either.  And may I point out that, while in this font, a consecutive "r" and "n" do look like an "m," an "m" they are not.

And so the full rnoon carne and went, and took all of these rnen out with the tide.  But really, a wornan with Viber shouldn't need any of thern anyway.

Naked truth

It's been a busy spring.  No, of course not with dating, just life.  I finally found time to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens and was pleased to see that a new generation of young men has been introduced to an attractive woman wearing a mask and tubing (see my post from February 8).  Sweet.

In recent weeks I've added a couple additional accoutrements to my bedtime ensemble.  In addition to my CPAP I now also wear a carpal tunnel wrist splint and sometimes my plantar fasciitis compression sock.  It's hot.  (Really.  My wrist gets really sweaty.  Couple that with my regular hormonal night sweats and it's a regular steambath of potential passion in there.)  While some men might find this a turn-off, you and I both know that there are probably freaks out there with a corrective medical appliance fetish.

Speaking of weird guys, I did "meet" someone on Tinder this spring.  He was 43, works in IT, plays in a band...no last name sharing but I looked up his band and got it.  Then looked him up on LinkedIn and confirmed his employment story, but also discovered that he was actually 53.  Sure, I'm a stalker, but he's a liar.  Nonetheless we chatted for a day or two on Tinder and then he gave me his cell so we could text.  We texted for a couple days more and then he spontaneously told me that he likes to clean his house in the nude.  And his buddies do, too.  (They talk about this?)  Please tell me you're using the manufacturer-supplied wand for the Swiffer duster.  And you don't clean en masse...  And yet I continued chatting with him because there's weirder stuff out there.    

Like this pig-man:

 And Barney:

And real-life Sid from Toy Story (note the firecrackers):

But soon Mr. Clean mysteriously disappeared like they all do, which is fine.  I probably wear too much to bed--or watching TV, or frying bacon, or, you know, normal stuff that people do with clothes on--anyway.