If you follow the news, you might remember a little story back in June about how I started an online dating account while living in Prague. (Actually, if you follow the news, you’re probably trying to be a respectable human being, who has well-informed opinions on important world events, and, consequently, you dun give a fook about my forays into virtual mate-baiting. Kindly go back to analyzing the recent Dow figures, you adult bastard.) I wanted to make friends while spending a month in the city, especially ones who would pay for my beer.
I came back from Europe a couple months ago, but, wouldn’t you know it, the Interweb in the U.S. is the same one they got over there (guess the Space Race isn’t over), and my sexy Net persona followed me home. As I was back in Boston without many romantic prospects, I toyed with the idea of using my account in my home country, in my own city, even, which can be a problem because it means you can easily run into people you met on the site IRL.
Or, the opposite can occur, and you can run into someone on OKCupid who you already know in “reality,” without knowing it’s them. Which is what happened to me last week.
I got an email saying someone had “chosen” me, much like God chose the Jews to be His people (see: entourage/Entourage). Before opening the email, I told myself that, unless it was someone interesting or wildly attractive, I would delete my account, because I was sick of knowing who rated me as a human on a five-star scale. I clicked on the email and examined my admirer’s thumbnail.
He looked eerily familiar. I went to his profile–late 20s. Works as an English as a Second Language teacher. Has tattoos on his lower right arm.
Lives across the hall from me.
Yes, my fucking roommate gave me a high rating. Which kinda makes me think he didn’t know what I, his roommate, look like. I had moved into the apartment just a week or two before, and the only times I’d seen this guy had been when we were watching T.V. with our other roommates in a dark living room. I’m fairly certain he had never looked me in the eyes.
“Maybe he knows and wants to bang you,” Orion, another roommate, said. “It would make hooking up super convenient.”
“Dude, I think he knows,” Jason, my best friend, said. “Maybe this is just his way of telling you he thinks you’re cute.”
“He’s stalking you,” said Eddie, our cab driver.
“How can he stalk me if I live with him?” I asked.
“Well, that just makes it easier!”
Thanks, Cabbie.
I toyed with the idea of messaging him and asking him out on a date. I would ask him to meet me at my house, and then give him our address and see if he freaked out. But humiliating someone you live with is usually a bad idea for the same reasons dating them is–namely, because you fucking live together–so I decided to poke fun at him in private. (And then write about it on this blog. Whatever, it was the nicer thing to do, just trust me on this.) I sent him an “award” on OKCupid (side note: fuck you, OKCupid). It’s a picture of a stuffed bear, titled, “Smarter Than the Average Bear.”
I wrote a note that was something like, “Yeah, hey, I live across the hall from you. Well done. Thanks for giving me a high rating, I AM pretty awesome.”
So that message, to me, sounds bitchy, but also overly cocky, so he would know that I wanted to call him out, but don’t actually care that he “chose” me. I wanted both of us to be able to laugh at the fact that he didn’t know what I look like. Immediately after sending him this “award,” I disabled my account.
That was about a week ago. He hasn’t brought it up, and neither have I. Instead, he’s invited me to watch a movie with him and looked me in the eyes about three times.
“He probably took that as a sign,” Jason said.
“Yeah, he thinks you want to bang him,” Aaron agreed. “Guys take anything as a sign. ‘Oh, she’s standing next to me? She wants me. She’s not looking at me or talking to me, but she’s standing right there–she totally wants me.'”
Well, fuck.
sanfranciscostreetfighter 