The Winner Parade: Entry 2

Hello and welcome to the much overdue second installment of the Winner Parade series (first entry here)! In this installment fate once again tries to teach our heroine (That’s me!) that the thin line between sexy geek and unstable freak may not actually exist. Perhaps one of these days she’ll get the message (but probably not after many more beatings with the thorny club of reality) and settle for one of the mainstream beer swilling types that occasionally hit on her and she’ll live tolerably ever after. It is probably more likely that she will continue to seek out the socially stable geek which is good news for this blog but remains bad news for her personal goals.

I met He who Flees the Country (HwFtC) (sorry to give away the punch line so early but there is no better way of classifying this boy) via craigslist, back when craigslist housed actual personal ads not just ads for no strings kinky sex (I once read an ad offering to a pay a girl to eat potato chips naked in bed while the guy who wrote the ad watched (and presumably masturbated because, as we all know, potato chips are HOT)). Back before I had this blog my main creative writing outlet was personal ads, and I excelled at this little genre. Sadly, most of the replies were more, “Here’s a picture of my Johnson!” than “I am an awesome, witty, intelligent, Jared Leto look-a-like and I want to make out with you.” But HwFtC was different, he wrote back a silly reply suitable studded with fawning compliments and expressions of general awe over my mere existence.

We quickly progressed from moon-y emails to flirty instant messages to an in person meeting in a coffee shop followed by some face-to-very-close-face make out time on my couch. HwFtC was working on his PHD in population genetics, which appealed to my ironically religious love for science. Before starting down the path to scientist god HwFtC was a “dancer” in the San Francisco Ballet (apparently there is no male equivalent to the word ballerina) which appealed to my shallow love for shapely calves and muscular arms. He also had 2 lesbian moms which I took as a sign that he would not turn into an evil boy because (I assumed) his moms would find out and kick his ass. Because I do not want to edit my stereotypical view of lesbian moms I have chosen to believe that HwFtC never told his moms about how he behaved while dating that adorable geeky blond girl with the hot rack (Me again! And, yes, I assume that if he were to tell his moms about us that he would smartly avoid references to my rack). Or perhaps he did tell them and has since suffered some serious facial contusions and possibly no longer has a penis.

HwFtC and I had been making googly eyes at one another for about a month when the trouble began. This was at a time in my life were I typically went on 3 dates with a boy before he either announced that I’d make an awesome friend (especially if I would also sleep with him) or just stopped calling so I considered 4 weeks of continuous mutual liking a great boon. It was 2004 and, like many programmers in the San Francisco Bay area, I was living off of a combination of occasional contact work, unemployment and my parent’s generosity so my afternoons were often free to lounge around with my favorite soon to be geneticist. One such afternoon I got all dolled up, prepared what I’m sure was a gourmet lunch spread and spent a good 90 minutes staring at the clock before jumping to the conclusion that HwFtC had died in a fiery wreck on the 101. We had yet to reach the relationship stage of meeting each other's friends so I had nowhere obvious to turn to confirm his mortality short of internet searches for deadly car crashes (which, I assure you, I ran at least once ever 5 minutes). In the meantime I had no choice but to leave increasingly more panicked and pathetic messages on his voice mail.

This embarrassing behavior continued for 2 days at which point I received a reply to the following purposefully amusing email sent near the beginning of being stood up (as opposed to the equally hilarious but less dignified emails sent many hours or days later).

So, here's the deal. In a few days if I still haven’t heard from you I’m going to email people in your lab group and ask if you're still alive. So if you are still alive you're going to look like a bit of a jerk with a stalker. To avoid this situation, you should act like an adult and email me and say "nope, not dead, just not talking to you." If you are, however, actually dead you can just do nothing (rest in peace as it were.).

HwFtC was not dead but had instead fled to the woods to get a little one on one time with nature in an effort to clear his head and figure out how he felt about me. Apparently I am *MUCH* more interesting than population genetics (no surprise here) and this had resulted in an overturning of the poor boy's priorities and subsequently resulted in some freaking out. Where a normal boy would think, “Hmmmm study genetics or continue fooling around with Brianna?” and then laugh out loud while making a grab for my ass the kind of boys I typically date go into a free fall that involves a Thoreau-like need to get back to nature and focus on the awesomeness of cells in a Petri dish over cells making up a set of 34Ds (at the time) that the owner is TOTALLY WILLING TO LET YOU TOUCH.

To be fair all was not completely rosy in the land of dreamy gazes -- there was one stressful thing looming in the future, in roughly one month he would be off on an internship in Germany that would require us to be physically apart for 2.5 months. My general feeling on this was “eh, there’s always email” but he was much more concerned (this is understandable considering how awesome I am to hang out with, the entire country of Germany can hardly compete).

Anyway, post Into The Woods there was much apologizing and promising to, in the future, talk to me rather than commune with nature. We made plans to have lunch the next day and I was back on the road to the early relationship honeymoon period. I really should have known better. As should surprise no one, HwFtC didn’t show. Again. There was a repeat performance of the, “where the hell are you?” emails (this time with much more cursing) but I never heard another word from HwFtC. Eventually I made good on my promise and emailed one of his friends. I know this is pathetic, more pathetic than most of you hopefully think that I am capable of but a girl needs closer.

Hi,

I *think* that you sort of know me (though it's possible that i have the wrong Steve), I briefly dated your friend [HwFtC]. anyway, about 3 weeks ago he sort of dropped off the face of the planet and while normally I'd just write him off as a jerk he never seemed like much of a jerk and now I'm a bit worried that something happened to him. I know he was going to Germany soon but I would have expect some sort of note letting me know that he was leaving the country. So, I know this is incredibly weird but I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know if:

1)He's still alive (and not you know, in jail, or abducted by aliens or something)

2)If I can potentially expect to hear from him again (presumably not from the beyond -- though that might also be kind of cool.)

Hopefully with a little more information I can step back on to the good side of the "crazy stalker-chick" line.

His friend at least had the decency to respond (and was even witty! I wonder if he's single...), which is WAY more than I would have done in a similar situation. Of course I try not to befriend people who leave the country without sending at least a memo to everyone that they are currently making out with on a regular basis.

Um yes, crazy-stalker chick, this is kinda weird but I will say that I've heard from him once since he went to Germany and he was alive at that time. I did not hear any of the characteristic beeps and strange languages in the background that one would expect if he had been abducted by aliens (although who's to say that alien languages might not sound German). Nor did he mention needing bail money wired or a sex-starved cell mate named Heinz.

Obviously, that was (finally) the end of things. Even more obviously I should have chucked his ass into the dumpster weeks before – I’d like to assure all readers that my self esteem is infinitely higher today and all boyfriends who attempts to leave the country without telling me will received Lorena Bobbit-like lesbian mom treatment (*snip*).

A year or so later I did see the name of HwFtC appear in the “Who Viewed Me?” section of Friendster (God bless Friendster and it’s attempts to appeal to my humongous ego – myspace, time to cowboy up) so I was able to gather enough information to wonder what the hell I was thinking mooning over such a dork. (For those of you not in the know geeky is one thing, dorky is another thing all together and I think it’s pretty clear how these states of social status should fall in the dating hierarchy.) He’s apparently in a relationship, something I sort of suspect he’s been in since well before I knew him. One has to wonder just who this girl is and how she could possible be better than me – the only conclusion that seems realistic is that she’s imaginary. He includes 3 pictures in his profile, in one he has a handkerchief tied around his head all Little House on the Prarie-ish. 'Nuff said.