INTERNET DATES FROM HELL Page 10

  16

  Pay Attention to Red Flags

  December 2000

  Only a few weeks later, the week of Christmas, I ironically received an interesting e-mail from Jamie, a thirty-five-year-old attorney from Stamford, Connecticut. I say ironically because during the week of Christmas, Internet dating reaches its nadir. By that time of the year, most people have either found someone to share the holiday spirit with, or are preoccupied with their family responsibilities. Jamie, however, persisted throughout the week. After four e-mails and attachments, I finally wrote back. He had mentioned his recent separation in the previous e-mail and I became a bit gun-shy. Another steadfast rule of mine was to not date married men under any circumstances, separated or otherwise. That was only one of the four red flags that appeared regarding Jamie. But feeling festive, I agreed to meet him for a quick cup of coffee at a nearby coffee shop. That week’s calendar was filled with obligations, so coffee was the best I could offer. He surprisingly agreed.

  What’s the worst that could happen? A new friend? I didn’t realize at that point that my dance card was so full. Only when I was standing in Lord & Taylor did I realize that my list of friends to buy presents for was the length of my forearm. It may sound cruel, but I had no time for more acquaintances. Nevertheless, our coffee date went well (all fifty-three minutes of it), and we decided to keep in touch. He said it was just as well, since he hadn’t begun his shopping yet. He would take advantage of being in the middle of the city, and, with any luck, he would conquer his shopping list. We bid farewell, and I went about planning my annual Christmas party for my friends. Only two days left. I thought he wouldn’t call until after the holidays were over, but, much to my surprise, he called the next day. I thought it might be an attempt on his part to thank me and wish me happy holidays, but no, he wanted to get together the following evening. I told him that I couldn’t make it, that I was having my annual gathering. His response was pushy. “Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone. Maybe you can invite me to your party and I can help you with the serving.” It was then that I found out he had worked at a catering company to put himself through law school. Good naturedly, I agreed.

  This turned out to be one of my greatest mistakes. Even as a child I brought home stray cats all too often. It just so happened that Jamie was involved in a major litigation that would, with any luck, end by December 23rd. The trial was taking place in New York City, and he would be free a few days before Christmas Eve. I was in the middle of baking cookies for a holiday party when my tree stand broke, scattering the tree and its decorations in the middle of my studio apartment. I tried desperately to upright the tree, but to no avail. Just then my cell phone rang. It was Jamie wanting to know what he could bring to the party. I told him a tree stand would be nice, as I nearly cried into the phone.

  “You’re joking,” Jamie replied.

  Choking back the tears, I exclaimed, “No, I’m not. It’s late, and I have no time to get another one.”

  “Relax, I will take care of everything,” he replied.

  And that’s just what he did. He showed up with two bottles of champagne, a box of cannoli, and the tree stand. He was adorably dressed in a red and green holiday sweater. He was a lifesaver. Not only did he fix the tree and help me serve throughout, he had everyone in tears of laughter with his dry sense of humor. Even my best friend, Anne, who is normally very depressed about being single during the holiday season, was in the best of spirits. Other than his high-pitched feminine-sounding voice and nervous twitch tugging on his right earlobe, I found him quite charming.

  The following day Anne called me to thank me for the great evening at my party. I was about to use this as an opportunity to ask her what she thought about Jamie. No sooner did I get the words out of my mouth, than Anne told me that her initial impression was extremely positive. She thought that Jamie could be a prime example of the new “metrosexual”—a straight man who is in touch with his feminine side. She expressed that during the evening she had spent a fair bit of time talking with him. As Anne spoke about her work in the fashion industry, Jamie shared his knowledge regarding a variety of fabrics and an in-depth knowledge of design.

  “What man knows what taffeta is?” Anne blurted.

  “I know Jamie was married before, so perhaps his wife wore taffeta all the time,” I joked.

  “Oh, that’s right. Come to think of it, Jamie mentioned that his soon-to-be-ex-wife owns a small boutique in Greenwich,” Anne retorted.

  “That explains his great attention to detail. It’s a nice change to find a straight guy with fashion sense,” I added.

  “Do you think this could be serious?” Anne questioned.

  “He’s not only handsome, stylish, and funny, but intelligent as well,” I giddily exclaimed.

  Noticing my fondness for Jamie, Anne’s last words rang over and over in my mind: “Although he appears wonderful on the surface, you know that you’re a romantic, Trish. Don’t let the magic of Christmas cloud your judgment.”

  During the following week, Jamie and I talked for several hours on the phone. He wanted to return the favor and did, so I found myself agreeing to his invitation to a New Year’s Eve party being held at his home in Stamford. He shared this house with his brother and mother. This was another red flag. I was definitely out of my environment. Although the house looked old and somewhat stately from the road, it was overgrown with what appeared to be ancient trees, bushes, and ivy. Even the driveway looked decrepit and unkempt. What soothed my anxiety were the many cars in the long driveway leading to the house.

  I decided to park my car at the bottom of the driveway, with the nose of the car facing the street. What I saw when I walked through the door reminded me of the ancient house from the old sitcom The Munsters. Instead of a fire-breathing dragon coming out of the staircase, the staircase was covered with cats. I could hear voices coming from the back of the house. I decided to join the party with Jamie. There were a few close family friends in an enormous great room that jutted out into the woods behind the house. He introduced me to his brother, Larry, who appeared somber and unmoved. It was only then that I realized my third mistake (red flag). During our initial conversation, Larry insisted on discussing his present infantile fetish involving diapers, pacifiers, and teething toys. It was apparent to me that Larry had severe emotional issues. At first I thought he was joking, but I turned to Jamie when Larry was in the bathroom and asked, “Is he for real?” Jamie said that he took after his mother, who is a paranoid schizophrenic restricted to her room upstairs on the third floor of the house. You would think this would be another red flag for me, but it actually intrigued me. I felt sorry for Jamie for having had such an unstable childhood. The house was the embodiment of a past turbulent life. I inquired whether his father was in the picture and what he was doing. Jamie explained that his dad, a psychiatrist, had left his mother and family for another woman and was living with her and her children in Costa Rica.

  I laid it out on the table with more than a little sarcasm: “Online dating has given me the fortunate opportunity to meet myriad potential partners, such as: a foot fetish fellow, a sadistic psychiatrist, a religious fiend into bestiality, and a guy who frequents prostitutes that he orders online like you would order CDs, to name a few. Do me a huge favor: If you have anything that you are, or were, into, like these guys, please don’t call me again.” Jamie then looked me right in the eye and said, “I’ve never even looked at a Playboy magazine. My wife and I finally just fell out of love, and she abandoned me. I subsequently moved back into my childhood home to take care of my brother and mother.” I felt sorry for him, just a lonely lost soul searching for love. I told him I felt the roads might ice up due to the cold temperatures, so he walked me to my car at the bottom of the driveway. The entire ride home was nothing short of disturbing. I don’t know if it was the house, the brother, the mysterious mother upstairs (like the woman in ]ane Eyre) or just the re
moteness of everything. Nonetheless, I got home safely and slept like a baby (pun intended).

  At this point, I was highly doubtful that Jamie and I would have a future together, but I was willing to leave the lines of communication open. Never did I think those lines of communication would cross so quickly. It was 10:00 AM New Year’s Day, and I decided to take the tree down. No sooner did I package one box of ornaments, than the phone rang. Jamie was on his way down from Stamford to Manhattan. I had, in my haste to leave, inadvertently left my sweater behind and hadn’t even realized it. Within a few minutes, the doorman buzzed to alert me that Jamie was in the lobby.

  I said, “Send him right up, Ralph. Happy New Year to you and yours.”

  “Happy New Year to you, Trish, and thank you for your thoughtful gift.”

  I held the door waiting for Jamie as he exited the elevator with a giant smile on his face. With a peck on his cheek, I looked down and noticed he was wearing my sweater! Why in the hell would he be wearing my sweater? “He’s so goofy,” I thought.

  “I think that color suits you,” I chuckled.

  “You really think so?” Jamie retorted.

  “You were right about the snow; we lost power up in Connecticut. Is there any way that I can borrow your computer for a few minutes? I need to check on the progress of the trial with the firm.”

  “Of course, but I promised Greg that I would stop by for cappuccino at 11:00 AM. Can you manage it on your own?”

  “Where does Greg live?” Jamie asked.

  “Two doors down,” I responded.

  “Two buildings down?” he asked.

  “No, two apartments down,” I replied.

  After I returned from Greg’s apartment, as Jamie was using the bathroom, I checked my e-mail. As I was reading my e-mails, a slew of porn pop-ups took over my monitor. I then proceeded to check the history to see why this was happening. As it turned out, Jamie had not been working on his trial. He was viewing transsexual pornography! I became irate. I interrogated him, and he became angrier and angrier. I even went so far as asking, “Do you want to be a woman?” He said, “No,” and then called me a few choice words and left abruptly.

  It wasn’t until five months later that I got a call from Jamie again. My first instinct was to hang up. But since we had unfinished business, I decided to hear him out and listen to what he had to say. He expressed that I had been the only person who had the potential to truly understand him. After an hour of a heart-wrenching conversation, I found out that over the past five months he had embarked on pursuing a gender change. He had begun hormone therapy as well as facial plastic surgery. He confided that, although he really wanted to be a woman, the reason he had answered my profile is that he admired the type of woman I was, and that he wanted to emulate me. I also found out that over the previous year, he had answered personal ads of transsexuals and transvestites, had cross-dressed in private, had gone to gay bars dressed as a woman complete with wig, makeup, padded girdle, high heels, fake nails, etc. He shared with me that he was going to therapy for gender dysphoria. At first I was pissed because he had misrepresented himself in a major way, but that passed, and I felt that I might want to help him.

  My brain must have been on vacation, because there were several major red flags on this journey with Jamie. But as you know, people ignore red flags, and some people have the need to help others in a crisis. I will always wish Jamie well and hope he will be happy when he becomes a she for good

  17

  Long Hair Doesn’t Always Equal a GAP Model

  February 2001

  Out of the pan and into the fire? Maybe I should have waited, but in hot pursuit I retreated hastily to the dreadful dating Web site. To this point, the clean-cut collegiate look had failed me. Although I prefer that look, I was due for a change. Growing up in a household with three brothers who had pushed the limits of acceptability during the seventies (my oldest brother had waist-length hair), I had seen enough of the subculture that that decade yielded! I had made a pact with myself: my hair must be longer than my date’s hair. However, short-haired “Internuts” had brought me nothing but confusion and aggravation for four years, so maybe it was time that I let my hair down.

  Little did I know, it would turn out that I wasn’t the one letting my hair down. Matt, a professional musician, had sent me a response. His picture showed a good-looking surfer type, with shoulder-length hair. Maybe this is just what I needed! A change of pace was in order! Since he appeared younger than I, I immediately went to the age box. Ironically, he had left it blank. “Good,” I said to myself. Maybe the suspected age difference was what the doctor ordered. Until that point, I had been dating men much older than I. It might benefit me, I thought, to be in some control, even if the controlling factor was the age difference. After a decade of living downtown, I had had my fill of looking at the bohemian type. Then again, the male supermodels for the GAP and Tommy Hilfiger have curiously long hair! It was time to get over my fear of flowing follicles.

  After a few e-mail exchanges, I realized that he was indeed younger than I. His taste in music and his obsession with motorcycles led me to believe he was at least four (maybe five) years my junior. That intrigued me. Let’s face it; every woman at one time or another in her life has fantasized about a younger man. Perhaps I was having my turn. “Go for it,” I thought to myself. So I made a date for the following Thursday for Matt to meet me in the lobby of my apartment building. I gave Ralph, my doorman, a leg up on the situation. After two or three sentences of fatherly advice, I assured Ralph that that kind of date was what I needed at that point in my life. With slight hesitancy, Ralph assented. He would buzz me the moment Matt showed up.

  “Want me to give him the third degree, Trish?”

  “Please, Ralph. The last thing I need now is a surrogate father. I could use a vigilant friend.”

  “As a father of two boys, I never had a daughter, and you’re the closest thing to it!”

  “You’re a sweet man, Ralph.”

  “We don’t want another one like Jamie,” Ralph responded as he walked back to his post.

  I felt the little three-pronged pitchfork sting my neck again. It had been a long time since that cartoonlike devil had warned me of an impending disaster. I waited for his counterpart, but the little angel never played a note of encouragement on her harp. “That’s odd,” I thought to myself. Nevertheless, I decided to go through with it. The sheer excitement alone attracted me.

  Ralph was true to his word. At precisely 7:45 the following evening, his kind-hearted voice followed the annoying buzz. “Your date’s here. Don’t rush,” he yelled emphatically.

  “What was that all about?” I said to myself. I grabbed my purse, coat, scarf, and hat, because it was twenty degrees (with a wind chill in the single digits) that night. “Don’t rush,” I thought to myself over and over. “What the hell did he mean by that?” Too late! The elevator light read “lobby.” I exited only to see what Ralph meant. There stood an exceedingly long-haired, much younger man. Immediately, Matt reminded me of the old David Lee Roth video “Just a Gigolo.” “In a bizarre way,” I thought to myself, “compared to what I am looking at, I would have preferred Louie Prima.” Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I remember my father instructing me, after countless times of playing that song in my room as a seventeen-year-old-kid, that it was Louie Prima who originally wrote that piece in the late forties. I’d never seen a picture of Louie Prima, but I think he would have been better than Matt.

  As I approached Matt, I quickly registered his apparel. From the unnecessarily long, stringy hair down to the gaudy snakeskin boots, I was utterly repulsed. Fabio, this guy was not. Upon closer inspection, his leather jacket was ancient, and fringed in all the wrong places! What set me reeling with disgust was the overly obnoxious, sophomoric chain attached to his back pocket, which was probably attached to an equally obnoxious motorcycle-logoed wallet, I ima
gined. What put me over the top were the cutoff leather gloves he wore as he reached out to shake my hand. I reticently shook his hand, only to detect the overwhelming stench of cheap whiskey and flounder (it could have been a fluke, but I could not discern). Now the pitchfork was firmly stuck in my neck. I could hear that little diablo laughing at me as we left the lobby. For some reason, I instinctively looked over my left shoulder, only to see Ralph laughing, as well as waving “ta-ta” in his good-natured way. If only I could crawl inside the empty soda can standing upright on the curb, I would be happier than to go through this date.

  Silence was never my forte, but tonight, that’s all I considered. Matt led the way conversationally. As a matter of fact, he wouldn’t shut up. The old adage silence is golden really made sense to me that night. How anybody could walk that fast and talk that quickly was beyond me. He had to have snorted something, because he never exhaled for the whole twelve blocks. Cabs were nonexistent that night, and the thought of boarding a bus with this guy brought back memories of the film One Flew over the Cuckoo s Nest, where Jack Nicholson’s character, along with the other patients and inmates, were stuck on a bus.