Mr. Comment Courtship

Around this time last year, one of my readers took it upon himself to ask me out… in the comments section of my blog posts.  Since this strange courtship (fueled by other players like Wandering Menace and Zia Zitella) was conducted on a public forum, I have no qualms about reproducing it here in slightly abridged form for your viewing pleasure.  I will save my brief comments for the end of this post.  I’d like you, dear readers, to judge the situation for yourself.

In other words, I’d like you to agree with me that this approach is NOT the way to charm a lady of discerning taste via the internet.

16 March 2010

Charmerci

I’d ask you out but women don’t date guys without money!

Man-shopper

Not all us women are after the money tree, you should give us a shot!  I try to give every guy a chance to prove himself to be a cool dude… maybe that’s how I end up on dates with crazy people…

Charmerci

I didn’t say women were only after guys who had lots of money — I said women didn’t want guys who had no money.  Trust me, I’m an equal opportunity guy.  Anyway, it’s not only that but it is a major part of what women look for — and even if they won’t admit it — it does affect how they feel about a guy.  (Obviously, not ALL women — there are the RARE exceptions — I just haven’t met any of them!

Care to talk more about the subject over a drink?  (I’ll be nice — I wouldn’t want to have anything bad said about me on your blog.)

Wandering Menace

I am attending a function in which I will read my Bob/Robert post to a Parisian audience.  The function is hosted by the man who just asked you out.

I suggest-nay, request you come with me to the reading.

Man-shopper

I would love to have a drink with you.  Since I have agreed to go to the spoken word event on Monday with wanderingmenace, the only question at this point is whether I will have a drink with you before or after this Monday event.  If we grab a drink before Monday, that drink will determine whether or not we will be speaking during the spoken word event.  If you prefer to have the drink after Monday, that drink will, obviously, be contingent upon our interaction at the spoken word event.

And who says women can’t be rational?

17 March 2010

Charmerci

Whatever you want.  I suspect you would rather be safe and meet at SWIP.  See you there.

Met a gal on the internet

Rendezvous is now all set

Meeting will make us sweat

Nothing bad will happen I bet

Can leave at home her safety net

Man-shopper

See you Monday, poet man.  I’ll be the token Asian who rolls up with your favorite blonde booger blogger.

18 March 2010

Zia Zitella

So when is/was this date with the poet?  I need results!

Charmerci

I’m chillin’ — she’s taking her sweet time.

I’m afraid that you might be disappointed if you’re looking goofy/wild stories.  I’m pretty normal.  (Well, unless she’s nutty….)

Geez, women are sooo impatient.

Looking for wild stories that shall

Make her laugh as a grand mall

May be disappointed royal

So calm down and smoke a Doral.

Excuse me while I go and clean wax out of my auditory canal….

23 March 2010

Charmerci

Caught in a forever cycle of crazy men, rotating in an endless whirlpool of the big avoidance of anything approaching normality in the testosterone half of the human race, perpetually captured, living in a world of the feminine only.  Given a chance to touch a bit of the normal, it’s slipping between her fingers, falling to the ground to be left behind, continuing on her quest for the strange for people’s amusement.  Laughs shall continue to abound for her virtual audience.

[Since they did not show up, this is not a true reflection of our protagonist.  Oh yeah, I normally don't write this well.  If I did, I'd be famous and wouldn't' be trolling websites about women's dating experiences!]

28 March 2010

Charmerci

The month’s still not over.  See you tomorrow?

29 March 2010

Man-shopper

Not tonight, sorry.  My schedule is pretty messy these days…

Charmerci

Look at her response to me above.

That’s the third time I’ve made gentle requests and 3 times it’s been nothing.  I’m not aggressive/overly assertive so for me, that’s enough of a message for me.  I ain’t asking again.

I’m pretty sure that this comes from gals looking for the proverbial knight in shining armor (i.e. Armani-dressed in a white Ferrari) sweeping them off their feet.  (Thanks to Hollywood.)  Or that magical love-at-first sight thing.  It’s beginning to dawn on me that these overly aggressive guys are rewarded for their persistence — if only a little bit but that’s what they thrive on.  Maybe not individually, but as a collective whole I think that these women are at least, partially responsible — and it’s a shame because these a-holes make it so much harder for the nice guys.

30 March

Man-shopper

My schedule really is a disaster; I have a hard enough time scheduling in my good friends.  But that’s beside the point because I doubt that we will ever meet now.

And I’d have to disagree with you by saying that “these women” like me don’t reward the persistence of assholes.  Rather, we reward the effort of gentlemen who at least try to be charming and don’t ask us out on public forums where Wandering Menaces can publicly strong-arm us into saying yes.  Seriously, it’s like that dude who proposes on national television.  But at least that guy was already dating her and reasonably sure that she’d say yes.

31 March 2010

Charmerci

I did believe you when you said you were busy.  But in the past, I have always interpreted that as a “no” — whether that was wrong or right.

When I said “these women” I was not talking about any of the women on this blog.  I’m sure that you’re all fine, beautiful, intelligent, sweet, hard-working people.

On the internet a little misunderstanding

Sometimes can make for a hard landing

I wish you all the best

On your man-shopping quest.

Bye!

So.

To recap:

1. His segue to asking me out was a somewhat bitter generalization about the shallow nature of women.
2. Two words: rhyming poetry.
3. He only has a tenuous grasp of what constitutes eloquence (e.g. “rotating in an endless whirlpool of the big avoidance of anything approaching normality in the testosterone half of the human race, perpetually captured, living in a world of the feminine only…”  I mean, WHAT?!)
4. Upon being “rejected,” he thought that this must have been due to an obsession with finding my Armani-clad knight in a white Ferrari.  Yes, because, clearly, he must know me intimately through our interaction in my blog comments.
5. On the bright side, at least he could spell.

I would also like to add that, according to my records, at no point did he send me an email telling me about himself or interact with me anywhere except in blog comments.

In conclusion, I present an homage to charmercis of the world:

Don’t be an ass-clown.

Quit wearing me down.

Don’t make me frown.

Get me out of this town.

Mr. Hostility

Every once in a while, some ballsy guy who comes across my blog will work up the nerve to ask me, whom some have called the Man-chopper, to go out with him.  At first, my policy could be summed up with: “Why the hell not?”  I figured, worst case scenario, I’ll have blog-worthy material, so this could be a fun exercise.

But ever since the big box of crazy that was Mr. Hostility, I’ve had to revise this approach.

It all started out harmlessly enough.  Mr. Hostility read my blog, emailed me to ask me out for a drink, and I agreed.  In retrospect, I should have found it odd that even though he wrote, “I just read a few of your blog entries,” he didn’t compliment my blog in any way, nor did he tell me that he found my blog hilarious.

Let’s face it.  I AM hilarious.  I am obviously vain.  And the least that any reader can do is acknowledge these facts of life and stroke my ego a bit before asking me out.

That definitely should have been a red flag, but I was so young and naïve then.

So I met him for a drink.

Mr. Hostility vs. standard No. 2 pencil

Strike 1

The guy looked like a stick insect.  Except skinnier.  I remember thinking that the width of his leg was disturbingly comparable to my arm.  The illustration to the right is an accurate, to-scale representation of  his skinniness vs. the thickness of an actual pencil.

Strike 2

The guy smoked what appeared to be a whole packet of cigarettes… in less than two hours.  It’s one thing if he had smoked a couple throughout the entirety of the date, but, as a non-smoker, this excessive smoking just didn’t sit well with me.

Strike 3

The guy was as dull as… Good god, he was so dull that I can’t even think of anything that could come close to being as dull as him.  He lacked a sense of humor, to the extent that he — brace yourself, folks — took my blog seriously.  Hand to God, the guy told me that he didn’t really enjoy my blog and criticized me about some its finer social points, to which he took great offense.  Basically, the Man-shopping train left the station, arrived on the other side of the continent, and left Mr. Hostility standing on the platform with his trousers around his ankles.

I tweeted an abbreviated version of these three strikes that evening when I got home.

The next day, during my lunchtime gym session, I received the following text from him while I was on the treadmill:

Sticky insect is your mother, you fat, repulsive Asian cow.

I laughed so hard that I nearly fell off the treadmill.  It was such a close call that I haven’t been on a treadmill since.

http://www.nataliedee.com

His reaction was so out of proportion to everything that I thought that it was a joke.  An hilarious joke.  But then I remembered that Mr. Hostility didn’t know how to joke.

So I realized, wow, this man may be a little unhinged.

I mean, come on.  He knew that he was asking out a blogger.  He knew that he was potential blog fodder.  He knew how merciless I can be.  Transparency was never an issue, as my dating life, personality and, dare I say, scathing wit, are here on the internet for all to see.

Yet he clearly thought that he was so spectacularly awesome that he would have been THE ONE with whom I would fall madly in love and abandon my man-chomping ways.

http://www.nataliedee.com

So Mr. Hostility clearly didn’t take it so well that, in less than 140 characters, I managed to sum up everything that displeased me about him.  Frankly, for those of you who witnessed that tweet, you can probably attest to the fact that it really was the nicest that I’ve ever been to any of my dates.  140 characters doesn’t give me much room to be truly bitchy.

What a big baby.

Oops.  I mean, what a skinny baby.

Skinny, hostile baby.

I said it then, and I’ll say it again…

… Next!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

P.S. Big shout-out to my buddy, Alex, who found a MacPaint program for me to play with.  We have Alex to thank for the rock-tastic drawing skills showcased in the above representation of Mr. Hostility.  If all goes well, I hope to be showing you more of my unparalleled artisitic talent in the future.