Taunting Craigslist Missed Connections

I am no stranger to Craigslist. I have successfully negotiated the purchase of electronic equipment — not stolen — and did not die in the process. I have also found two roommates in this manner and neither killed me in my sleep (though one roommate's cousin did, I believe, want to partake in some late-night funny business with my handsome sleeping cherubic self).

Craigslist is also where I go to not find work. The job boards are criminally depressing, time-and-self-worth suckholes that bog me down in mire and shame and depression. Eyes glaze over, sexual appetite wilts, brain liquefies, body becoming a gelatinous goo of worthlessness, I am a Madam Toussaud's wax figure of myself under a McDonald's heatlamp, and if only I had a little more fry-o-lator experience, I could get that job at McDonald's.

There is one place on Craigslist, however, that does not disappoint: Missed Connections. Eyes search for daddy issues and latent low self-esteem with pinpoint accuracy, sexual appetite becomes voracious (easy prey, I'm perverted, etc.), brain is sharp, body feels muscular as everyone else seems so weak, I am AWESOME. (By comparison.) I could be president! And what a tyrant I would be!

I never respond to these posts, primarily because the sad/shy/chubby girl in question is never talking about me. And then I cry. Also, because, would you respond? Do you really want to meet up with somebody who was too scared/lame to talk to you the first time around, but now armed with their stairway wit they go on to Missed Connections to reach you? And, on top of that, not only are YOU so lame that you're reading Missed Connections, but you stumble across one and have so little in the way of social obligations that you'll respond, maybe even go on a date based on an email sent to an anonymous reply-to e-mail address?

Who cares. Check out what I found the other day:

In case you are blind and reading this on your braille computer (or it's reading it for you, I guess is probably more likely) here is the text:

when i saw you behind the mcdonalds counter on broadway..... my heart dipped into what seemed like a melting sundae. your hair color reminded me of the hot fudge as i was letting the spoon graze my sun soaked lips. everytime i see a mcdonalds commercial, i envision me sitting on your face as you yell im loving it. i wanna say it was the hot weather that made me so wet but then id be lying. as i watched you stack the cups into size order, i pictured you licking the sweat from the pores of my body. i hope you don't have your sexual education certificate because i'm about to certify the shit out of you. 

For the first time ever, I felt compelled to respond. No, I HAD to respond. First of all, who was this hussie not only swimming in my infinite pool of personal sadness (that helps me cope with the "success" of working about 8 days a month), but also peeing in it, degrading the true missed connections with the blatant mockery? Second of all, this is pretty funny, and one good turn deserves another. So I signed in to Gmail with my Tuesdays With Maury e-mail address and banged out the following letter from my phone, since my computer has been down for days: *Ahem*

I knew it was going to be a scorcher today, that's why I set my company issued visor at a lusty tilt. You've got Golden Arches, girl, and I ain't talkin' bout dat ass, though it's a stunna: Naw, I'm a foot man. And even though your tight tourist figure came struttin' up to the counter wearing some crusty Rainbow flip flops, I knew dem feet was the apple pie to my value meal. You know how they invented that spoon that also makes the McFlurry? The same magic put me on this earth to caress those toes of yours. I'm gonna dip em in all the sauces, even mixtures you haven't even fathomed. You're the one who's gonna get an education.

You saw me stack those cups, huh? You see how gentle I was with the supersize? Yeah, you gotta finesse the big ones in.

Also, just looked at the e-mail to get the text of the letter. Realized that I must have registered that "anonymous" Maury account under my real name.

I stand by my words.

Sadly, however, it is I that missed the connection. I haven't heard back from my lusty wench of both McDonald's and cyberspace. Here I thought I was gonna have this like Sleepless in Seattle (or You've Got Mail? I didn't see either) Tom Hanks–Meg Ryan fake internet romance based on the most important factors in any relationship: Humor, Sarcasm, Sex and Junk Food.

And I still kinda need a job.

First post: Strangers in the Night

... or, how I was nearly sleep-raped by a drunk girl from Kansas.

Let's get intimate right now, Internet. That's what I'm supposed to be doing here, so let's get down to it. I have resisted the idea of a personal blog since personal blogs became what everyone was supposed to do. I likened it to revealing your personal oddities to the world (kind of like pooping with the door open, get it?). Plus I was a professional writer in the making with training and experience in journalism; I was getting paid to write at my job, so I saw no reason why I should put my writing out there on the Web for free. Well, after seeing countless bloggers get book deals (F U Penguin, Can I Has Cheezburger, Sh*t My Dad Says — which was only a Twitter feed, not even a blog for godssakes, although when I saw the book I discovered that guy is pretty sharp as a writer — and more), having countless mental breakdowns, and the fact that even though I say I'm a writer I never share my published clips with anybody because once I finish writing them I get bored-of-slash-hate them, I am starting this blog and trying to be a bit more open-minded about this whole thing that the cool kids have been doing since 2003. I'm also starting out with a lot of run-on sentences, and there will be more where that came from (due to lack of talent).

I've been working really hard of late on a seemingly endless string of projects that I want to create. I have a lot of scattered interests that, to describe them, would probably depict me as a person with every neurosis possible topped off with sprinkle of OCD. But I had spent the entire day, basically from around 9am until nearly midnight, working hard on these projects in addition to the copy-editing work that pays my bills. Around midnight, I flipped the laptop shut and decided to have a small glass vat of bourbon and water and stare at the TV until my brain went numb enough to fall asleep. This did not take long. I was in bed well before 1am.

Then I come to. I have horrendous vision (thanks dad) and waking up, to me, is an unnerving thing that happens every single day at least once. I usually don't know where I am or how I got there, regardless of sobriety level, and it usually takes me at least a second to figure out if the blurriness around me is the blurriness of comfort and home or bathtubs of ice and missing kidneys. I want Lasik so bad it hurts. I would definitely be fitter, happier, more productive (blatant Radiohead theft) if I could wake up in the morning and see the clock without straining. But so I come to and my bedroom door is wide open, the bluish light from those energy-saving fluorescent bulbs I've got out in the hallway is streaming in, and a darkened, listing silhouette is holding a beverage in one hand and talking at me. The silhouette is mid-sentence when the audio kicks in.

"... so I know we met the other night but I thought that we needed to meet again. I'm Jessi."

A hand is presented almost in front of my face. Instinctively, my hand sneaks out from under my fortress of down blankets and sheepishly shakes the sorority ghost's hand.

"I'm Chris."

"Yeah, so did you do anything tonight? We just got back from this place in the West Village..."

I cut her off. "Yeah, it's just that I'm trying to sleep right now."

"Oh, okay. Well, really I just wanted to tell you that you are cute, so I thought we should meet again and I could tell you that."

It was then that I had a choice to make. I really didn't realize the gravity of the situation nor the adolescent fantasy that was being presented to me until the next morning. As an early teen (ten-year-old... hell, maybe 7-year-old), due to the fact that my bedroom window was very close to the roof of the screened in porch, and, due to the fact that I read a lot of adult mass-market fiction where people were having sex at every juncture in their lives that wasn't fraught with peril/danger (Christopher Pike — who was like that guy who wrote those Goosebumps books but with more humping — Michael Crichton, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, etc.), and, thanks to my achievement of having seen every episode of Saved By The Bell and John Hughes movie, thereby knowing that coming in through the window is how youngsters outwit parents who might be guarding against late-night trysts, I used to imagine that one night a hot girl from the grade ahead of me might sneak over to my house, climb the back steps, shimmy up the rain spout or something (stop judging, this is MY fantasy) get up onto the roof and awaken me so we could make out and pet heavy. It never happened.

But it was kinda happening now, and I realize that the reality is way creepier than the fantasy. (Plus in my fantasies it was always some girl that I liked and who secretly liked me and, since she was shy and coy but still kind of a freak, that would be the way she would show her true feelings for me. And since I, too, was kind of shy and coy and a freak, it would be perfect because we would totally get each other's insecurities and then make out and pet heavy and then I would kick her out of the bed before the sun came up because that's what James Bond or Jason Bourne would have done.)

"Okay, well thanks," I said. "Let's talk in the morning, huh?"

Then I heard my roommate and her other cousin yelling at the Midnight Rider to get out of my room, so she turned and left and closed the door (loudly) behind her.

The next morning I went to brunch and told a few of my friends about how I was almost consensually raped the night before, and how I had been one "let's snuggle" from a free lay (or vomit in my bed), and how my 13-year-old virginal self would probably be disappointed with me. I told my other roommate about it, and asked her to picture the situation if it were reversed; she admitted that it would be very creepy, and downright scary, if she woke up and some guy (perhaps one of my weird friends) was drunkenly swooning over her, telling her she was pretty in her sleep in the middle of the night.

Fast-forward to the next morning. I briefly left the apartment to get a Vita Coco Tangerine coconut water (the greatest beverage in the universe) and saw the Intruder standing in my living room, using a mirror to apply mascara, but only sorta said hello. When I got back, she was still there, and apparently she was ready to apologize. Her words:

"Hey, really sorry about waking you up the other night. Total Raper Style."

I gotta hand it to the girl, she has a way with apologies.

Epilogue:

So there it is: Real life, real writing, for all the world (maybe 1 person in 6 months) to see. It wasn't that hard. Just like in real life, maybe I'll soon get as comfortable with you, Internet, you black hole of my free time, as I am with the people who might turn the wrong corner in the house one day and see me pooping. And, most likely, talking to my brother on the phone, which is what I do during 80-percent of my bowel movements.