INTERNET DATES FROM HELL (15 page)

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 remoteness 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 imagined. 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.

He said he had chosen his favorite restaurant in midtown for dinner. Great! I thought I was on my way to some greasy spoon diner with incessant Elvis playing in the background. Before we knew it, we were standing in front of Chico’s—a Harley Davidson Café—wannabe in the high 40s and Tenth Avenue. Sure, there was no Elvis playing. AC/DC and Motley Crue were blaring out on the street. To believe I would have to stand in a line to get into a place like this was unimaginable (not to mention that the degrees never rose, nor did I feel warmer after a twelve-block jaunt). Out of nowhere, an enormous tattooed man in a tank top motioned for us to come forward off the line. “No waitin’ fa you, my brotha. Go right in.” Matt never explained his relationship with this man, nor did I want to know.

Once seated, I realized what it might be like to sit in “Biker Heaven” (my Hell!). Everywhere I looked there were motorcycle parts, guitars, and music memorabilia hanging askew. Wonderful, I thought to myself, while staring at a Steppenwolf poster where John Kay and his group gave the finger in unison to the viewer. My mind raced. How do I get myself out of this one? Do I use a toothache, a headache, a backache, or perhaps menstrual cramps (which no man can ever understand)? What made things worse was overhearing a couple seated behind us talking about the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission calling a strike earlier that evening.

“How do you like this place?” Matt interrupted.

“Interesting, if you’re into all this,” I responded.

“How can ya not be?” He yelled, “Waitress, two double J.D.’s straight up.”

I didn’t know what a J.D. was, nor did I want one at the time, let alone a double to boot. This guy had some nerve. He was ordering me what he was drinking, which was probably some awful whiskey. But with the clientele around me, I decided not to cause a stir. If J.D. was whatever he reeked of, what was the Godawful fish smell I had detected in the lobby? I decided to ask him there and then. He laughed at first and proceeded to explain. He was part owner of a fish market on South Street. He continued to describe the family-owned business, begun in the late 1800s, he being the fourth generation. At a breakneck pace, he ranted about fish, motorcycles, and his favorite movie, Easy Rider. I found myself nodding like a demented workhorse stranded in a pasture.