A few weeks ago I asked the question, “What’s the dumbest reason anyone ever stopped talking to you?” That particular blog was prompted by an experience I’d had with a certain gentleman online who, after several pleasant conversations and an expressed interest on both our parts to meet, suddenly stopped talking to me without any real explanation. The only thing I could think to attribute it to was an exchange we’d had where he had deleted me from his MySpace friend’s list and I dared to question it. I didn’t hear a word from him for the better part of 3 weeks.
When he IM’d me out of the blue 2 weeks ago, I gave him a little bit of a hard time about having disappeared for so long, but his only explanation was, “I wasn’t *not* talking to you…I guess I just wasn’t talking.” Hardly an explanation. The whole “MySpace” thing was never mentioned, so I quietly deleted the blog entry (I’m still not sure if he ever read it or not) and we resumed our pleasant conversations.
As an aside, did any of you ever see the episode of Sex and the City where “Mr. Big” has fallen in love with a famous movie star and complains that she always knows how to get a hold of him, while he can never reach her? Well, I sort of liken my ‘relationship’ with my friend to that. I am almost always online on Yahoo messenger in the evenings and sometimes during the day. My friend is always invisible. I never know if he is online or not unless he sends me an instant message. So…
Once contact was re-established, we quickly reiterated our desire to meet in real life. I told him that my daughter would be visiting her father the weekend of January 27th and 28th (yes, this weekend!), and that would be my next opportunity to go out. We decided that Saturday the 27th would be the day, but at the time that date was still nearly 2 weeks away, so we did not discuss specific plans. After his earlier disappearing act, I figured it would be prudent to wait and see if he kept up contact in the interim.
He did very well up until the Tuesday before the “big day”. We chatted several times, sometimes even twice in the same day! Even if he was not able to stay online long, there were several occasions where he made a point of just saying hello. I thought maybe this time we’d actually gotten it together. When I didn’t hear from him the Wednesday before our date, I didn’t worry. Thursday came and went, and I started to wonder, but still wasn’t panicking. When I didn’t hear anything on Friday, I had a sneaking suspicion that we wouldn’t be going out. I sent him an email through Yahoo 360 – since he’s always invisible, so who knows if he’s online, remember? – on Friday night saying, “You’re not going to flake on me, are you? :-D” I did not get a reply.
Saturday morning comes and I still have not heard from him. Around 11:30 am, I notice that he is “online” on MySpace. I waited for a little while to see if I got a reply to my message of the night before, but eventually I could wait no longer. I sent him a message on MySpace, and here is how the “conversation” went:
To: Mr. Invisible
Time: 11:11am
Let me know if you’ve changed your mind about getting together today…If we’re not going out, I’m not going to bother going lingerie shopping after all…. 😉
Just a little good-natured reminder to get the conversation started, right? And here’s what I got in reply:
To: Me
Time: 11:15am
I might be still up for getting together today…..I wasnt sure if we were still doing that only because we hadn’t really talked about it in a few days. Were you really going lingerie shopping? 🙂
Well, duh, the reason we hadn’t talked about it is because YOU WEREN’T ONLINE and you never bothered to ask for my telephone number. Come to think of it, you’ve never once asked me what I do for a living either.
To: Mr. Invisible
Time: 11:25am
Well, I haven’t heard from you in a few days – since you IM’d and said you had 2 stories to write and the Wizards game to cover…So I didn’t know what the plan was or if there still was a plan, or if not being online for the few days prior to the “date” was your way of getting out of the plan. lol…(hey, it’s happened before, a girl’s gotta wonder!)
And I was going shopping yes, not specifically for lingerie, but hey…you never know when something’s going to catch your eye…
To: Me
Time: 11:.37am
Well what would you be up for this evening? Besides the incredibly incredible sex and of course, our warm nude bodies rubbing all over each other….which of course will lead to sex:)
I am supposed to watch the Caps game and write a piece on it tonight, but I could be convinced to skip it;)
Would you rather go out for a drink or should I maybe buy a bottle of wine and we can stay in on a frigidly cold night? wink wink…….I could think of some ways to warm ya up…..muahahahahahahaha
Now, up to this point he has assured me that despite his dirty sense of humor alluding to the contrary, he is not looking to just get laid. Still giving him the benefit of the doubt, I think it’s sweet that he’d be willing to skip the Capital’s game to meet me. I do start to wonder, though, why he agreed to meet that day if he already knew he had to work…
To: Mr. Invisible
Time: 11:51am
Hmmm…now why would someone who doesn’t drink buy a bottle of wine??? You wouldn’t be trying to get me drunk, would you??
I dunno…if we’d talked about this a day or two ago, I would’ve had time to clean my house, but now…I just don’t have time, so I guess we’d have to go out somewhere…. 😀 Besides, I’m a good girl, I don’t wanna be tempted to do bad things on a first date, so better to be out in public somewhere.
How about this…443-555-5555 (the real number was supplied in the email!)…call me, and let’s figure out what we want to do, because we could trade messages back and forth all day. lol…
So you’d think right about now my telephone would be ringing, right? Ha….
To: Me
Time: 11:.56am
Well, let me think about it now, because I am supposed to write up the Caps game tonight and since I dont drink, a bar would be weird…..and yes, I was thinking about getting you drunk:)
What???? Am I getting this right? When you thought you might get lucky, you could be “talked into” skipping the hockey game, but as soon as you hear that I want to meet in public, you have better things to do? Talk about a slap in the face…
To: Mr. Invisible
Time: 12:01pm
If it’s that big a deal, don’t worry about it. I just thought we both wanted to meet and had decided that we would do it today. You never said when we picked today that you had to cover a game…
To: Me
Time: 12:57pm
I thought that we originally picked last night only because thats when your daughter was going to Grandma’s……so when we didnt talk about it I just assumed we were meeting some other time.
You know what they say about people who assume…If you weren’t sure what the plan was, why not try ASKING?
To: Mr. Invisible
Time: 2:27pm
Noooooooo, we were waiting until this weekend because that’s when my daughter was going to her dad’s. We talked about Friday or Saturday and I had said I’d rather Saturday because I get up at 5:45am during the week and didn’t want to meet you on Friday night with bags under my eyes, but that if you weren’t available Saturday we could do Friday. You said Saturday was good. (Is any of this coming back to you? lol)
Anyway, no sense arguing about it at this point. Enjoy the game.
So obviously, all the times previously when he claimed he was looking forward to just hanging out and seeing what happened from there were a crock. The minute sex was “taken off the table”, he was no longer interested in meeting or even picking up the phone and discussing it with me. How interested could you be if you can’t even be bothered to remember what day we planned to meet?
I’m so disgusted with dating right now, and all of the mixed messages and passive/aggressive hot one minute/cold the next behavior I keep running in to, I could scream. Are there any men out there who aren’t just trying to score?