Plenty of Fish for One Night Stands

Stu calls it OKstupid. In a Los Angeles cafe I’m not the only sap sitting on a dating site, though for my age, having seven years of history and over seventy failed first dates, perhaps doubling down has its limitations.

It began at seventeen. An elder sister introduced me to my first poorly made example of vulnerability and desperation. Hot singles or Plenty of Fish, the purpose was only apparent after the first several failed dates, sex, hookups, and lonely singles without communicative capabilities. I’m intrigued.

He was always at least ten years difference, older of course. Sweaty hands, graduate, a doctor, bartender, soldier, always claimed to be adventurous, stable, and funny. He took me to Baltimore, him, his basement, that one the science museum, a cafe, subway, his car. Conversation was gradual. Baltimore, intelligent, subway, a creep, science museum hadn’t hit it in years, and slowly walked paces behind me for the view. His car was my first serious boyfriend, well only serious boyfriend. One year.

His car drove a Jimmy truck, light brown. Crooked teeth, the British look, a glow stick underneath the front seat should have been the first indication that he partied. Passionate dancer, a camp fire would crackle to a beat, glow sticks twisting in large circles as he dodged their velocity with legs and head. His car, I came to find, was Scotty.

We met at the church, a commune in the heart of St. Paul, my legs were bare in the frigid winter, commando beneath a mini, and a jacket hid a bare chest. It was my first date, at eighteen. Talk Sex with Sue Johnson had given me some tips to tease him. I wasn’t Catholic, but Jesus said Christians were modest, ankle length skirt and turtle neck. Jesus must have been on vacation.

Kermit, twenty-one, had a metal bar implanted into his left thigh. A motocross rider, he loved the speed of racing. That speed lifted him off the freeway the day he decided to attempt one twenty into the wind. A mangled tree on the boarder of the straight caught him, left leg shattered, he continued to speed race on freeways and championed his survival like a branded “bad boy”.

Gunner was sculpted like a Greek statue. It was fun to play jungle gym, climb and caress the rocky foundation. When he spoke of “the blacks”, a machine gun seated in the corner of his closet changed purpose. A trained marine, the thrill of learning to hit a target at 100 yards with a powerful military grade gun was drown in a fridge of beer, his remote location, and racist commentary, sitting shirtless.

College left me bench bound in Arlington, Virginia. A small craft coffee shop, Northside Social had become my home, each morning Jack snuck a scone and black tea across the bar to a boney girl barely wearing size two. It crossed my mind on occasion to ask, he had to know. “Can we go back to your place?” Months of contemplation brought me to several attempts to answer that, “The bush behind the garage?” “Sure, which bench,” pointing to the square near Clarendon metro. Perhaps using an Airbnb room for one night of romance, and insisting that each night after be a late night concert, U street bar hop, or movie night at his place.

Seated at a high top bar near the window, early morning, faces of men popped on and off the screen, an x to swipe right, and third grade star to ping, I like you. Okcupid. We had known each other through just before college. For four years it was my primary third wing, bringing lonely men for conversation. He wanted one night, that guy was dusty, this one too old to be this nervous, and him, fresh out of a divorce that left him emotionally unstable.

Suffering severe depression, the clammer of a table and redundancy of writing Italian pasta and wine preferences, outcast to society, Okcupid seemed like a best friend. An endless selection of possibility, Doug would be blind to my lifestyle, unless he asked to drive me home, as gentlemen do. “Can you drop me by the metro?” I insist. Of course it isn’t an issue, he insists to see me home, he has a car, he would prefer, it is the 21st Century after all. Have him drop me at a friends door? Act like an asshole to divert him from conversation so he insists at the metro, and we never speak again? Dan might start to suspect something if I show up outside several times a week after ten. He would laugh the first time I explained it was a date, no where else to go, he insisted. Months of the same would annoy him.