Something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while is how I met The Boyfriend™, which is also a landmark blog. It’s the first two-parter I’ve written. Look at me, delving into more apparent story arcs.

I met The Boyfriend™ through Match.com. Chemistry.com served me well, but I wanted to try something new, and Match’s been around for a long time. Surely something with such longevity is also of high quality, right? You think, in all my years dealing with the Internet, I would have learned something. Apparently, I still hadn’t learned shit.

It sucked. And I was direct, too. I didn’t want to dance around and make myself all cute and pretty and say, “Oh, I want a knight in shining armor and someone who completes me. I’m looking for my true love, someone who makes my heart flutter.” I feel nauseous just mocking that. No, I was very direct: “Don’t jerk me around, be straight with me, be honest and you’ll get the same from me. I like brunettes with big noses, and often these turn out to be Jewish men. But brunettes are good. Don’t really care about your height. As for weight, I’m 5’2” and itty bitty; just don’t crush me in the missionary position and it’s cool, yo. This is reality: I have cellulite, I snort when I laugh, I’m probably better at video games than you are, and I drool a lot when I sleep. Deal.”

Okay, maybe I wasn’t that caustic. I was probably a little less offensive than an over-used port-o-potty, but I was really just tired of not. being. me. I really wanted a man that I could be irreverent with and not feel judged or awkward. All I seemed to find were uptight motherfuckers who worked for the PC Police. Where were all the Kevin Smith fans? Hell, where were guys that could take a joke? Because if I have to censor myself, then I’m hiding who I really am, and that’s no way to build a relationship. Go find your Tipper Gore somewhere else, buddy.

So two months into this online dating thing and I was pretty disenchanted with all the peacockery going on. The plumage was massive. Some guy even showed me his Prada label on the collar of his shirt. And Match.com. Match.com was like a virtual bar. I got “pick-up” e-mails from men who hadn’t even read my profile and just cut and paste some bullshit: “from your prince charming: you sound like my cinderella.” Apparently this douche can’t read at all, because I posted in my profile, “I teach college English.” Did his college writing instructor let him write papers without any capitalization? Or even ones completely off topic? This is all about selling yourself, and you aren’t even trying. What makes me think that you’ll ever try in a relationship with me?

But here was the real kicker. In my profile, I said something like, “If you’re the right guy, you might just get me to utter Meg Ryan’s famous line from Top Gun.” Now this is 100% true and I have witnesses to this: some guy actually wrote me an e-mail titled “Meg Ryan wasn’t in Top Gun.” You’re trying to date me and you open with “You’re wrong”? Not to mention the complete lack of utilizing the tools in front of you. This great and marvelous thing called a “computer” sits before you, obviously connected to the Interwebz. Vast amounts of information can pour through it at your command! And this lazy asshole couldn’t even bother to Google it, let alone utilize other good resources such as imdb.com. Another loser said, “I haven’t ever seen Top Gun and I’m surprised that you as a woman have.” Did you, fair reader, know that women aren’t allowed to see movies from 1986? Someone didn’t tell me that, because Peggy Sue Got Married was my favorite movie for, like, five years after I saw it…in nineteen eighty-fucking-six. Not to mention Pretty in Pink, Short Circuit, um, Aliens… Do I need to pull out Crocadile Dundee and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, males? Don’t make me beat you with 1986 movies, because I will.

This also made me question an entire generation of men. How could a straight male in his early 30s not have watched Top Gun as a kid? Fighter pilots! Action sequences! Naughty, naughty women that you know your parents don’t want you to see! I mean, I even know gay men who watched that movie religiously. It was the highest grossing film for 1986! Frankly, if you lived in another country during that time, I might cut you some slack. Maybe. But American men, you have no excuse (okay, fine, except Branch Davidians).

My three best friends read through these e-mails:

Lisa: “I think I married the last real man on the planet.”

Holly: “Are you sure you’re straight? Because I know some lesbians in the Dallas Gayborhood that can recite every line from Top Gun. You’re totally their type.”

Jessica: “My father was shocked when I told him this. He fears for your dating life.”

I was in complete and utter despair. I’d sunk deep down through each and every single circle of Dante’s Inferno (clarification: the epic poem, not the video game). This was when I realized that I had two choices:

1. Be single and straight the rest of my life.

2. Turn gay and help maintain the cultural relevance of Top Gun.

I gave myself one more week on Match.com and Chemistry.com before I started trolling WeHo for my life partner. Or joined a convent. Except now that I look back, I realize this foreshadowed the whole Mr. Bigglesworth thing, because I was thinking, “I don’t know if I could eat pussy that wasn’t waxed. Does that mean I’ll have to wax too? And can you do this while saying your rosary and will Mother Superior pay for my waxing?”

The next day I forced myself to log into Match.com, knowing I’d see subject lines that read, “I’ll Treat You Like a Pirncess” and “your funny and hot.” Instead, I see an e-mail titled, “Take me to bed or lose me forever.” I think I fell out of the chair in my office.

“Jessica…” I whispered.

She was at her desk reading something in Russian.

“Jess,” I said a bit louder as I copied, pasted and forwarded the e-mail to Holly and Lisa.

She looked up from The Joy of Cyrillic. “What? Another moron?”

“No, no. C’mere. You need to read this.”

So she sighed, got up and read the following:

pretty sure that's the Meg Ryan quote most guys want to hear. "God, he loved flying with you, Maverick" would just sound weird.... :)

I saw your profile and wanted to say hi. I have dark hair but I feel its a pretty normal size nose :) Did you grow up in SoCal or out here for school? Check out my profile and have a great weekend, look forward to talking to you soon

~The (Future) Boyfriend™

Okay, so he didn’t write “The (Future) Boyfriend™.” And I’m pretty sure I wasn’t thinking that far ahead, but boy, did I read over every letter of his profile––repeatedly. And I made the Gal Trio log in and check him out too. Thumbs up all around because, um, wow. I’ll restrain myself and simply say that he had promise. Lots of promise. Bushels of promise. I could write an epic poem about the promise he showed.

After a couple days of nice, normal e-mails, he ever-so-smoothly asked me out to dinner. Yes, I said dinner. By this time I’d lost count of all the dates I’d been on. Not one ever asked me to dinner. It was always “coffee” or “drinks”––but “drinks” was always with the real high rollers who seemed to want bimbo arm candy, and I could never figure out why they wanted to meet me. Did college instructors give out “desperate, restrained and will put out on the first date” vibes? But dinner… That was a whole different ballgame. If you’ve ever done any online dating, no one ever asks you out to dinner. It’s a first meeting, and time is precious. So is money. So is not being humiliated in public by a stranger. You don’t want to risk sitting at a table for an hour, and dropping sixty bucks on someone who turns up to dinner with nicotine-stained teeth, acid washed jeans and their rabid Papillion, only to ask the waiter for a high chair and children’s menu.

Wow. I so wish I’d done that to some of those douche bags.

Anyway, he seemed smart, funny, normal––all the things you want in a first date. He was even employed, though in the film industry, which was usually an immediate nixing. Whenever I’d gone out with industry people, all we ever talked about, because I was a writer, were their scripts. But there was no mention of, “I’m working on a script” in his profile, and he had this goooooorgeous curly hair, and this cute smile, and he played World of WarCraft. Hell, if it didn’t work out romantically, we could at least talk raid strats and spec builds.

I very happily said yes to dinner. On Tuesday I had another date from Match.com, but The (Future) Boyfriend™ and I agreed on Wednesday evening.

Then, on Tuesday night, I came down with a fever.