Match Dot Com No. 2: Angry White Guy

There’ve been others. Another engineer who stared out the window talking about how he didn’t need anybody but his motorcycle. There are lots of engineers on this site, but this one picked up the check so paid for my time. Men want something different from women even when it comes to company. Someone to listen while they talk about not needing anyone.

So as I approached the pub and saw the guy in the baseball cap, with the face and a gut that if it wasn’t so wobbly would be nine months gone, it doesn’t help any. These guys don’t always look like their pictures. Is that him?

No. As I cross the entryway beginning the weave through a sea of trendies clutching pints of beer, mine's sitting at the bar. He looks just like his picture as he folds the New York Times and puts it aside. But he’s not a liberal, he assures me. He’s got guns. Did I see the picture in his profile of him with a gun? One woman had the gall to email him, tell him he was a cute guy but what was with the gun? People are so fucking stupid. A gun is just a gun and he likes to shoot. I glance down, ratio of legs to floor factoring in the barstool. He said he was 5'7".

I say I’m glad he wasn’t the guy outside. He tells me about women misrepresenting themselves on the Internet too, so it’s not only guys. I shouldn't get the idea that it's just guys fixed in my head.

“You have a nice smile.” I want to get the thing going in a positive direction. Maybe he’s nervous. I get the feeling that if I took his pulse it would be racing but not from me. With pink blotchy cheeks, red neck, he’s one of those people probably lives his whole life like a shook up soda pop.

“Thanks. I take care of my teeth. I don’t know what some of these people are thinking. Don’t they ever look in the mirror?”

Hair’s coiffed, chest broad, no discernible fat. No hair on his forearms sticking out of the tasteful dress shirt. Does he shave them? He doesn’t look tall enough to be a swimmer.

Body hair has become a strange thing lately. Women shave their pudenda, guys shave their chests. Look at Anthony Weiner: completely hairless. You can’t help but look at Anthony Weiner these days though I guess within a week or two everyone will have a hard time remembering who he is. A politician with a wiener. Weiner by name and by nature.

Spitzer wasn’t an expectorator as far as I know. Just another wiener. By nature.

Kids. That’s what I’ll talk about. Maybe that will chill him out. Most people like to talk about their kids.

“I don’t see them much. My ex undermines me at every turn. I set rules and she doesn’t enforce them. Why would they want to come to my house? Well, not my house, 2200 square foot rental. Too big for me. All the laws, they’re on the landlords side. But I own my own business. That’s got to count for something.”

The bar is noisy. I have trouble hearing, started noticing it a few years ago in one of those restaurants with the high ducty tin ceilings. Nineties post fern garden chic. Beyond a particular noise level I have trouble discerning the conversation I am in from the background noise. I tell him I'd like to eat somewhere else.

“No,” he says. I’m gonna eat here. They have good burgers.” I order a fish taco inundated with over-seasoned corn relish that tastes of chipotle.

The burger doesn’t help his mood any. He hates this fucking city he’s been in for thirty-four years, or something. Worst drivers anywhere and he’s moving to Idaho.

Mark Fuhrman moved to Idaho. Aggreived men like it there.

He doesn't ask anything about me and when the check comes he stares at it like someone has just put a writhing sea slug in front of him. I pick it up, hand over a credit card. He gives me cash. His half undertipped. He has to go and pack for Idaho.

There’s a lot going on in the bar. Playoff game on TV. No Lakers for once, praise Jaysus. I just might stay and have another beer, wash him away but when he hops off the bar stool I’m admonished. “You coming?”

He’s 5’5” if he’s an inch. I’m 5’7” only the doctor tells me I’ve shrunk a half inch. I tower over him.

The breeze at the door sends his scent my way. He smells of drugstore aftershave and naked arms.

Match Dot Com #1

He flutters his tongue in my mouth like a drowning butterfly. Not a real French kiss, more like something he learned in a sex book only you're supposed to do it at a vagina. He will not open his mouth to me.

But I don't think much about that kind of thing until much later. He's just a good looking guy coming through the gate. The others were dumpy, or freaky. Sloped shouldered, bad toothed, teethed. This one's got steely green eyes and no lines on his face. Yeah, so he takes two steps for every one of mine, bobbing on the balls of his tiny feet like his underpants might be too tight. He has girl feet. Maybe that's part of it.

But I only heard a deep, sexy voice. The kind that rattles your innards a little. Whole Midwest drawl going on, lazy farm boy kind of thing.

He thinks he's a rocket scientist but he isn't. Only an engineer. He just figures out how to put the things together. He doesn't invent anything.

Him and me, for example. He figures how to put us together. Few dates, nice dinners, the right bottles of wine. He doesn't push for sex too soon, but when he decides it's on, it's on. He invites me for a day hike.

Insisting I bring a change of clothes in case I want to shower at his house afterwards, before we have the barbecue. He warns me he's a balls out hiker, that I'm going to need a change of clothes, but it doesn't amount to much. Tromping around in the snow a little, heading down trails that don't go anywhere. His dog rides in a crate in the back of the truck and is supposed to do things when he says words like "deck." She listens even though he sounds angry. I wouldn't. I'd run away.

Back at the pad there's no need for a shower. I've sweated harder trying to swat a mosquito with a newspaper in the middle of the night. He keeps insisting, or failing that, enjoy the big bathtub. Yeah, I want him but not yet. Don't' want to be naked in his house. He leans into the chair, facing me, hands on either arm. "I think you'd feel so much better if you took a bath." He turns away, a pot's boiling. I sniff my pits. Seem okay. Why's he harping on it?

"I don't want to take a bath. We didn't hike that far."

But that's as far as my holding out goes. I'm a grown woman, after all and it's only a matter of days.

Three months. The dates wane while the sex ramps up. He skis on his days off or fucks around with his boat. Sometimes he plays hockey-- why he's so busted up that he walks that way, I guess. He doesn't want to do stuff with me.

Then one day it happens. He's too insistent. I give it up to shut him up, fake an orgasm so we can just go out, have dinner and relax. Afterwards, standing in the kitchen thinking grilled fish, a nice bottle of wine. He says we can go to one of the pho places in White Center. He'll pay if I drive.

When I tell him a few days later I'm starting to have feelings for him, he looks at me like I've just told him I have a raging case of incurable tuberculosis, recounts the damage he took from his ex wife. Twenty minutes recounting.

On Match Dot Com when I get home. He's still on, profile highlighted in green. Skisail1997564. I guess the other 1997563 spots were taken.

He will not take my phone calls or text me back. When I go to his house to confront him he hides inside, texts me and says he's on a ski vacation. He sends me an email, says if I come again he will call the police.

Have I mentioned he didn't know how to kiss? Just sort of fluttered his tongue in my mouth like a drowning butterfly. Sort of like something he must have learned in a sex movie, only he's got hold of the wrong end of things.

He takes two steps for every one of mine. He does not invent the rockets. He just sticks them together.