SEND US NEWS TIPS!
blog@nypress.com






NEW YORK STORIES

Playing Cat and Mouse

By Daniel Krieger

This spring, I’ve been feeling more mouse-like than usual. It may have something to do with repeatedly being rejected by girls and what led me on one particularly bleak evening, in a fit of despair, to descend to the lowest level of establishing contact with the females ricocheting around New York: I went to “Women Seeking Men” on Craigslist. Although half the ads are fake, it’s still possible to find a woman hewn from flesh and bone. I know it since I’ve actually dated several for a few hours, even months.

So here I was again, responding to ads. I quickly heard back from “Cat” who wanted to chat—my unassailably cool subject line, “I dig your tone,” having caught her eye. She seemed friendly, but deciphering people online is an inexact science. I’m often wondering who I’m really talking to: a lonely gay guy in Atlanta or a group of Budweiser-funneling frat boys in Schenectady? I’ve been duped before—once by a furious Turkish guy who, posing as a Chinese female, managed to get personal data from me so he could track me down and kill me because his girlfriend was also looking for enjoyment on the Internet and, well, that’s another story.

Anyway, Cat got my photo but didn’t send me one, so I wrote, “And your picture?” She responded, “You didn’t ask for my photo properly. I hate it when people are so indirect. It’s superficial.” That would have been the right moment to say goodbye, but I wanted to locate sympathetic company for a drink in this cold, indifferent city—and quick.
So, I asked for a pic again, this time in a complete sentence. But before sending it, she wanted to know my height and weight. I happily obliged and immediately an authentic and alluring-looking photo arrived of a petite figure in tight jeans and a black leotard sprawled out over an unmade bed; she was looking into the camera, beckoning me in a way that got my lower chakras tingling.

I asked questions. She answered them. I commented on her responses to keep it flowing. She asked one question and didn’t comment on my response. Can’t say we had electronic chemistry, but I was still curious to see what she’d be like in 3-D. After two hours, it was time to make a move, so I suggested meeting up for a drink. She wrote she was free the next day. But not so fast. She was only free hypothetically. There was a problem: Cat didn’t like that I said I was “curious” about her because it made her feel like a “specimen.” I apologized for my infelicitous word choice and checked Roget’s for something better, the password for getting the date: “Intrigued? Bewitched? Ensorcelled?” None was acceptable.

Then she backed further away, explaining she wanted to take things super slow because she’d had a traumatic experience meeting a guy on Match.com, along with the possibility of rainfall and a bad knee. I surrendered my last scintilla of dignity, saying I’d like to meet whenever she felt ready. But this sounded wrong to her, too, and she got unhinged, writing that we have nothing in common, she has no interest in me and finds me suspect because I’m a man—in other words, a sex fiend.

Specifically, I wasn’t up to snuff because: I was merely “curious;” I expressed too much interest in meeting; and (the deal breaker) I am a 37-year-old man with a MySpace profile. Inexcusable. “Don’t you think you’re too old to be on MySpace?” she asked, as if I’d been working the sorority circuit. “It’s for college students and musicians. I’m not some NYU girl.”

I was getting the impression she didn’t want to meet me. Maybe if I’d been in a less vulnerable state, I could’ve laughed it off. But primed for humiliation, I regressed to the age of 11 when I was getting pushed around in the schoolyard of I.S. 44. Her words and tone began to symbolize all of humanity’s disapproval of me, reducing me to yet a lower tier of mousehood.

While she was in mid-rant, I suddenly and beautifully deleted her—forever. My theory is she was either overtaken by a bout of “flaming,” the Internet equivalent of road rage, or was just playing a joke on me. Whatever it was, it convinced me to take a break from Craigslist and try my hand at the old-fashioned approach to the mating game: face-to-face introduction. What more could I lose?

  Do you have a New York story?  

  E-mail  nystories@nypress.com



del.icio.us digg NewsVine