Page 33 of Single-Minded
“You’re hilarious,” I say to him. “I never should have told you about Ferret Guy.” I wave goodbye to the three of them, both anxious and nauseated to see who’s contacting me online.
“Don’t forget,” yells Darcy from my driveway, loud enough for everyone in the neighborhood to hear, “Your user name is SEXY911 and your password is BOOTYCALL!”
I’m horrified. “Seriously?”
“Nah,” she laughs, “it’s SEXY941.”
22
There are 940 other SEXYs? I’m completely mortified and search frantically in the help section of the dating site to figure out a way to change my username before anyone sees it. Well, anyoneelse. I’ve already gotten five messages and another four “winks” and every few seconds a new window pops up on my screen with an instant message request.50_Shades_Of_Hay, InsuranceSellr, AmericanGladE8R,andSTDmuffinall want to IM. So doesBatman.So now I know what he does on his nights off.
Between all the ads for makeup and condoms, and the gazillion IM windows that keep popping up, covering my screen and now layered three deep, the online dating site feels like the digital version of Las Vegas. I’m completely inundated and icked out.
Seriously, there is no way I’m going out on a date with someone who’d send a wink to SEXY911. Or SEXY941, or whatever. Oh God, I don’t think I can do this.
I’ll be deleting them once I figure out how to change my username, but the site’s help window keeps getting covered up by more IM request windows.
Fifteen minutes later, I’ve learned that it’s practically impossible to change your username unless you open an entirely new account, and by now it’s way too late for that.
I change into a camisole and soft pajama pants, disable the IM feature so that my brain doesn’t explode from the onslaught, pour what is left of the bottle of wine into my glass for courage, and peruse the profiles of the men who’ve contacted me, looking for matches for my Naughty Nine checklist.
Apparently Darcy put no parameters whatsoever on what I’m supposedly looking for in a man in my dating profile. No age limits, height requirements, educational minimum—nothing. Basically she’s cast such a wide net that no one in possession of a penis could possibly fall through. I keep reminding myself that this is all necessary so that I can move on with my life, get over my gay ex, and meet my forever person. I’m not looking for Michael or someone to spend my life with here. I’m just looking to check some boxes. Hot foreign guy. Sensitive artist. Lead guitarist. I wonder if I can just type that into the little search box. Like shoe shopping. The answer turns out to be yes, yes, you can.
I’m not certain how well the search for “bad boy” will go, unless they all choose to self-identify right there in their profiles.
SWM, 34, bad boy, rides motorcycle and will try to screw your sister.
But I typefirefighterinto the little box, and suddenly my screen is filled with men in little squares. Jeez, are they all really firemen? It seems they are. With only one goal in mind, the process of elimination is much easier. I can choose on looks alone, which feels completely crass but sort of all-powerful and fun anyway. If I’m going to get myself over the hump, so to speak, all I need to do is find someone I might like to see naked.
No blondes, that’s too much like Michael. No one more than ten years older. I’m exhausted after twenty minutes, without having made any choices, other than eliminating a few guys because of blondness or middle age. There are too many options. Plus it feels too weird to reach out to some strange man. Instead, I exit out of that window and read through the profiles of the men who’ve contacted me while my inbox fills up with more responses. It’s immensely flattering and off-putting all at the same time. Maybe there’s a fireman or a lead guitarist in my inbox already. No such luck. It’s mostly MBAs and entrepreneurs.
Enough online dating for the night. I take a long bath and contemplate whether or not Project Naughty Nine is just a terrible idea or the worst idea ever. Damp from the tub with my hair wrapped up in a towel, I search out Morley in hopes he’s in the mood for a snuggle. I grab a spoonful of salted caramel ice cream out of the freezer just in case he isn’t. Morley, previously nowhere to be found, materializes on the bed when I yell the magic wordsice cream. The cat can be bought.
I hold him on my lap as he licks the ice cream off the spoon, and stroke his black and white fur. When he’s finished, he claws me with his hind legs, hisses, and settles in on Michael’s old pillow, delicately cleaning leftover ice cream off his face with his paws. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but close enough. There seems to be a lot of that in my life lately.
23
The next morning, I’m slightly hung over, exacerbated by the fact that the FedEx man is ringing my doorbell at precisely 6:30A.M.
From Darcy. Odd. I immediately rip open the packaging to find an economy-size box of condoms in an assortment of sizes, colors, and, ahem, textures.
The FedEx guy cracks up. “Somebody’s going to have a great week.” My face burns with humiliation.
“It’s for a client…,” I mumble. He gives me a formal salute and heads back to his truck, just as I realize that saying a monstrous box of condoms is for a client is about the most ill-conceived idea ever. Great, so now my FedEx man thinks I’m a sex worker or a porn star.
Trudging over to the kitchen, I toss the condom cornucopia on the counter, fire up the coffeemaker, toast myself a bagel, and slather it with cream cheese. Morley, a lover of cream cheese, finds his way to the dining room table and purrs against my leg just like a regular, mentally stable cat. I pull off a piece of the bagel and drop it in front of him, and he bats it across the tile floor like a hockey puck before pouncing on it and devouring it as though it were freshly caught prey. The adventures of an indoor cat.
I’m weirdly flattered that my dating profile has been getting some attention while Morley and I were sleeping. Online dating certainly is convenient. That profile has been working 24/7. I peruse the messages, one more depressing than the last.
Ugh, my brain hurts. I definitely should not have finished that second bottle of wine last night. I have a client meeting at nine-thirty, and feel like I really need a long, hot shower. Am I the only divorcée whose alcohol consumption quadrupled post-separation? Or is lush-dom just a part of the healing process?
My inbox is brimming with firefighters. Magically, they seem to know that I was checking out their profiles last night, and six of them have contacted me first thing this morning, with messages ranging from “hey” to one long, heartfelt e-mail about how hard it is to risk your life every day when you have no one at home to love you. It’s sad, really. Not that I’m interested in being that person. It’s just, I feel for any guy who sits down at three o’clock in the morning to pour his heart out. Two of the six firefighters are good-looking. One, especially so.
After showering, I sit down at the table to review the messages and winks on my profile. I’ve decided that the winks are just too mealy and surely must be the strategy of someone who is too lazy or timid to reach out, and just wants to cast as wide a net as possible. The irony of this is not lost on me, but I delete them anyway.
I review the rest of the daters who’ve sent messages, basing my eliminations on looks and the Naughty Nine checklist alone. When I’m finished with the elimination round, I have two possible candidates—the hot, dark-haired firefighter who is thirty-one and recently divorced like me, and a twenty-six-year-old surfer-slash-bartender who only qualifies to date me because he’s gorgeous and has the body of a sex god. I almost push the button to delete his message but then I reconsider. This is just about the checklist and sex and getting a few experiences under my belt (why do all these kinds of expressions suddenly sound dirty?), I’m not going to marry the guy. Why not sleep with a twenty-six-year-old bartender, with the sandy hair, rocking body, and chocolatey brown eyes? I check out his profile to see where he works, just in case it’s a place I like to go. I’m incredibly uncomfortable with the whole Naughty Nine thing. I’ll die if he turns out to be someone who works at one of my favorite restaurants. Luckily for me, upon further examination of his profile, it seems he works at one of the tourist bars on Siesta Beach, the Daiquiri Deck, a place I almost never go. His name is Billy, which strikes me as sort of juvenile for a grown man with a job, but I remember my mission and give the guy a break. I’m not going to marry him, I’m just going to go out on a date and possibly try to seduce him. Maybe.
24
