That's online dating sometimes...
But, I digress.
Right, so the funny thing about online dating is how incestuous and circular it is. It really does seem like everyone is fucking everyone else, the same people are on the same sites, all the time. Myself included (minus the fucking).
A little background:
I've been doing the dating circuit now for about three years. And in those three years, I've jumped on and off all the major online dating sites, except J-Date (because I'm not Jewish), and the story is usually always the same; I'll go back on a site, go on dates, meet some men, meet some very nice men who I never hear from again, but I want to, and also meet some total fucking whackjobs who won't leave me alone. Then I become disappointed, frustrated, demoralized and take loooooong breaks from dating until I muster up the courage (or stupidity, it's a toss up) to try again. Rinse and repeat. I fully understand that this isn't the most emotionally healthy way to manage my pathetic love life, but hey, love in 2014 is kind of pathetic.
And, I hear they have doctors for this kind of thing. And not the kind that involve batteries.
But I digress.
So, online dating is circular. By which I mean, that I can be off a site for six months, or even a year sometimes, jump back on and the SAME DAMN MEN are still sitting there.
So, today's tale, children, is the story of one of my more crazy and memorable dating encounters, and a recent ghostly man who popped up in my Plenty of Fish inbox. I swear this is all true, and boy it's a doozy...
The Tale of Crazy Paco
Crazy Paco didn't seem crazy on the surface. Okay, not in a "I like you, so I'm going to send you dead squirrels in the mail as a token of my love, WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME??" kind of crazy. He was a store manager for a local Q'doba Mexican restaurant, but he claimed to have been a Physics professor in a former life at a college in a nearby state. He had a compelling if not "HOLY FUCK! HERE'S SOME RED FLAGS" back story; he had been married for a ton of years, I can't remember, so let's say 18, and he had pretty much cheated on his wife the entire time they were married. Cuz I dunno - penis? Moving on. And she knew for much of it. I'm not judging, and I can't imagine. Anyhoo, they had a couple kids, who live out of state with their mom, Crazy Paco and his wife finally divorced, yadda yadda.
Ho ho - you WISH it ended there. Suckas.
No. Crazy Paco was something like 45 or 46 when he pinged me on OKCupid or whatever stupid site I was on at the time. And get this, he told me that after his divorce he got together with a girl half his age. Hey, more power to ya dude, but you have to understand, Crazy Paco wasn't this guy:
He was more like this guy:
Not to say that Crazy Paco was ugly, just not a Greek God. He was a normal guy with a certain nerdy appeal that a girl like me would find endearing.So, the fact that he could bag a 20 year old chick is impressive on any scale. In hindsight, I can't really believe this bullshit story about this ex, or anything else Crazy Paco said, cuz...well...read on...
And Karma? Well now, she's a big ole' bitch sometimes when called upon to bring balance back into the world.
Apparently this 20 year old girl was not only mean to him the entire time they lived together, but cheated on Crazy Paco and ended up leaving him for one of men she cheated on him with.
Boom.
So, Crazy Paco was getting over the broken-hearted rejection of being dumped by a hot millennial, was probably going through a mid-life crisis, but he clearly couldn't afford to buy the Corvette and in hindsight was screaming for therapy and with a strong chaser of Effexor.
Still, we seemed to connect. He was geeky like me. Funny, self-effacing, smart. We both liked Invader Zim and The Big Bang Theory. We had long phone and text conversations, interesting in person conversations during our dates, he was a good kisser and good in the sack. Hell, I saw Crazy Paco more in the three weeks we dated than I had some of the men I'd gone out with for two months. In hindsight, that should have been another flag.
If I cannot be a role model people, let me be a warning.
Which brings me to what I now refer to the "Crazy Paco Atlantis Weekend of 2012", which really sounds like a Vegas review involving a lot of sequins and floppy penises, but in reality wasn't nearly as stimulating.
Here's how it shook down. Crazy Paco had told me that he had to go to a convention that weekend in the next state over for work. Okay, cool.
Over the weekend, we texted occasionally; cutesy stuff; "I miss you," "Can't wait til' you get back", "You're the best",etc.
Then Monday?
Radio silence. Nothing, Nada. Zilch.
Phone number disconnected.
Crazy Paco's dating profile was deleted, his Facebook page was deleted; it was as if he had disappeared off the face of the planet, sunk into the ocean like Atlantis. Without a single word or explanation. My first thought was that he had been in some horrible accident, since the weather had been bad. But that didn't explain all the deleted accounts. Then the second thought was the fucker was married. That I had unknowingly been the other woman.
I mean, who does THAT? Well, besides Crazy Paco. Who just disappears after three weeks of intense dating with someone? No...anything?
To say I was pissed off and hurt would be an understatement of the damn Century. But me being me, I trudged through the process of figuring out my feelings, finding some type of closure in that colossal cluster and moved on. And I felt really, really stupid and really ashamed that I had been duped so badly and so easily.
But get this.
A month or so later I was in a store with a friend and my son waiting in line, when up pops a text from a number I didn't recognize. It long. Rambling. Apologetic.
It was Crazy Paco.
Turns out that the weekend of the "Crazy Paco Atlantis Weekend of 2012" he had MOVED TO A DIFFERENT STATE. Yep. The move had been in the works since long before he had even met me, the crazy, sociopathic, lunatic. And all of it had to do with his millennial ex-girlfriend. He just couldn't get over her, and he had found himself obsessing over her, sometimes driving by her apartment, and he just couldn't get over the heart-break of her cheating on him. So he had to move to another state to get away from the temptation and break the spell, all the while lying about the entire thing to me (and I assume anyone else he had been seeing).
The poor little baby. Here:
Fixed that for you.
Look. It would have been one thing if Crazy Paco had been honest with me and told me where he was in his life in the beginning. I'm not twelve...at least not all the time. If I'd known he was a complete fucking mental case, I would have had a choice about whether I wanted to get involved with him, or let my feelings feel anything. I could have had my considerable guard, more up. But, I guess when you are a sociopathic cheater, lying is what you do best.
MOVED. TO. ANOTHER. STATE. Dude.
And here's how online dating is circular. Last night, Crazy Paco sent me an email to my PlentyofFish inbox. It took me a minute to place the face, but then whoosh, all the lunacy of him came rushing back, like a bad acid trip where you woke up on some strangers front lawn with no pants on, covered in sticky glitter.
But hey, I was proud of myself. I'd gotten over any indignation about Crazy Paco years ago, so I returned a couple "I hope you're doing well, but I really don't give a shit what's going on in your life" kind of emails and shut that mutha down.
One thing about Doozy, I do learn from my mistakes.
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