I Love this Beast

We are asleep when it starts.
At first I think she’s just dreaming.
I soon realize it’s something else.
She loses control and falls to the floor.
She’s moving-shaking-and her eyes are vacant.
Her tongue is out, she’s foaming.
And this is when it hits me hard:
I love this beast.
But there’s nothing I can do.
I watch, wait.
I want to hold her, to let her know I’m there
But she is not there.
It seems to last forever and I am helpless.
Finally her spastic movements gradually slow.
Her eyes go from completely blank to distant staring.
They are full of fear.
“Hi,” I say softly as I reach out for her.
She recoils in fear.
She does not see me.
She has no idea where she is, who I am, who she is.
I watch, wait.
And then. Then she looks at me.
She’s still afraid but she’s back and she’s looking right at me.
Her body relaxes and she has some control.
She lets me hold her.
She licks my hand. One tiny lick.
As we sit there on the floor our fear fades and we just feel love.
I hold her tight.
She wags her tail.
Eventually she stands up.
She is confused and needs to smell it all.
She sniffs the bed, the floor, herself and me, trying to understand.
She’s thirsty too; she drinks and drinks.
Finally, investigations complete, thirst sated, she joins me again on the floor.
I’ve been watching, waiting.
She curls up by my leg and I skritch her head.
She is back. All is well.
I love this beast.

Adventures in On-Line Dating, Part Two

The very first guy to contact me was Rob and he was decent looking, quite a bit younger than me and cocky as hell. But he was also funny and a bit of a flirt so I emailed with him a little bit. It was fun. But he was demanding in an uncomfortable way. He wanted me to text with him, not email. He wanted to use “real” email, not the match email. Now. Being new to the game I was like, Um, ok, and gave him my “real” email address and my cell number. We texted, we emailed, we even talked on the phone a couple of times. I’d met guys like Rob before and knew that what I was looking for and what he was looking for were two different things. I was looking for someone to grow old with, he was looking to get laid. He talked a lot about all the cool places he’d been, cool things he’d done and cool toys he owned but never took a breath long enough to consider that I was person too, with my own stories and not just a someone to impress. And I wasn’t all that impressed, but God bless him, he never even knew that.

What I learned from Rob was that you can't give out your real email or your phone number until you know a guy pretty well. Because once he sends you pictures of his dick in the email, you will always worry if he can find you or not. Not that I thought he'd want to necessarily, because when I said, "Dude. You sent me pictures of your dick." He replied, "No." and that was the end of that. I changed my voice mail message anyway so that my last name was no longer in it, just in case. And I set up a fake email account to use in the future.

A lot of men looked at my profile, a few men winked at me, but very few actually contacted me. Some men sent me emails just saying “You have the most interesting profile.” Honestly, how does one respond to that? Do you just say thanks, do you ignore it, do you wonder if they are actually interested? I haven’t solved that one yet as I've never really been interested enough in the guys who've said that to pursue them.

Another guy who contacted me was Ken and he seemed nice enough and had a sense of humor too! As we started to email each other I quickly learned that although he had listed his status as "Divorced," he really wasn't. I mean, sure, he was done being married and completely over her but technically he was "Separated." But, he told me, he didn't FEEL married anymore so he couldn't put that as his status. Against my better judgment, I cut him some slack and agreed to meet. And in person I soon learned that he was not, in fact, the same height as me but actually 2 inches shorter.

What I learned from Ken was that if a guy has two lies in his profile, it will probably take a long time before you really actually trust him. I dated Ken, for a time. And he is a nice guy. Communication is big with him and we even talked about the size difference between him and me. "You really are an Amazon," he said to me and really I should have just broken it off right then. I didn’t.

I also learned, again, something I already knew: People who are dating too soon after a serious relationship ends aren’t over it, no matter how much they insist or think that they are. Ken was full of anger at his soon-to-be-ex and pursuing his divorce while we were dating. I got tired of hearing about what a bitch she was and what shenanigans she had pulled now, and I eventually told him that it wasn’t fair and he had signed up for match before he was really ready. I was looking for someone who was already not just done with all that but so over it that it was just an old and not that interesting story to tell. But he was pretty fun to do stuff with so I gave him a chance, and another and another.

And that, my friends, is my special gift in this world: Giving men more chances than they deserve just to ensure that when it’s over, I have no regrets, no if-only-I’d-tried-this. When it’s over, I’m done and don’t look back. Being like this serves its purpose but sometimes seems a bit ridiculous when looking in from the outside. My hope, of course, is that someday I'll meet a guy who is enough of a match that I don't feel like I'm compromising my wishes and who I can just be with, without feeling the exasperation of, "Ok, I'll give this guy ONE more chance..."

Eventually, it fizzled and Ken’s break up line with me is now famous, nay infamous: “We have a lot in common,” he said to me, “but we also have a lot not in common. Like,” he continued, “I believe in God and you don’t.” Well then. I never held that against him, did I? No. And he knew that from day one—my profile says I'm spiritual but not religious and we’d talked about God and religion several times. AND it’s not really even accurate because I’m not really an atheist. Not every day anyway. And yet, I was relieved when he ended it. I fell into a trap with him of liking to just have someone around as opposed to really looking for a deeper love.

And Match it UP, Men continued to add sage advice to its brochure:
Don’t Lie in your profile.
She will eventually see how tall you are.
Separated and working to get divorced is not the same as divorced no matter how you slice it.