That Time I Was a Missed Connection

I occasionally throw a fake Craigslist post onto the internets. I’ve even posted one or two or even three and their responses on this here blahg. But on December 23, 2012, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a long time: check the Women for Men (or “w4m”) section of Missed Connections. 

I’ve spoken about the Missed Connection section before, but considering this is a blahg and you can’t hear me speak, I’ll convert  said speak into written format: Missed Connections are my easily favorite CL posts because they come off as incredibly pathetic. It’s simple: you had your chance to make a move on someone, you watched it go by, and this is your last ditch effort to connect with that person again. Whether it was a man who asked you to be quiet in a movie theater or a woman you made eye contact with for approximately 0.12 seconds, the Missed Connections section allows you one more shot to connect with that person who may have been feeling what you were feeling in that 0.12 seconds (that seemed like at least 1 second). It’s also a place for people to vent vitriol to someone who will probably never hear it. 

Secretly, (well not so secret anymore, no thanks to you, Fingers!) I’ve always wanted to be someone’s Missed Connection. How could you not want that, what with headlines like “Hotty in line at Safeway” or “u have a grate butt”? I can say with 12% confidence that I have a grate butt, but a lifetime-ban from Safeway for following women around and flexing said butt doesn’t help my cause. So imagine my surprise when, after a 5 month disconnection from Missed Connections,  I saw my Match.com username as a headline.

“Holy shit,” I say to my brand new erection. 
“That’s your screen name!” he spews.

I click.

“So for some reason this evening I was bored looking on match.com. I am not a member, but I saw your profile and just thought you sounded awesome. You mentioned that you post fake ads on CL sometimes, and thought maybe I would try to connect with you this (sic). Seems kind of lame now that I’m actually writing it, but what the hell. You never know unless you try.”

This is it, my shot, to go down in friend history, to be the color added to any conversation that starts or ends with Craigslist. 

“My friend Brad actually had a Missed Connection written about him.” 

“Really?! Wait, who's Brad? The dead guy?”

I pull up an email from one of my more anonymous accounts, casting aside any notion that this person does murder, because hey, this is going to be a great story, even if he/she does murders on me.

“Oh shit that’s right! Brad is dead. He got murdered by his Missed Connection.” 
“Yeah, we know. And we’re sick of hearing that story.”

I craft the short and sweet email – an I-am-he-who-you-seek-and-this-is-fucking-neat – and fire it away. A couple days pass, in which time I've become more and more depressed that she/he hasn’t emailed me back. 

Did I miss my Missed Connection, my once in a lifetime opportunity to achieve a life goal? Would I have to write a Missed Connection for the person who had missed a connection with me?  

I ponder it, wait another day, and when there was still nothing from herm in my Inbox, I send a second email conveying my dismay:

“So here I am, right now, wishing that you would have emailed back, not necessarily because that would've been super cool - that's part of it - but mostly because I ran out of journal space to cathartically purge my sadness… It would be pretty sweet if you wrote me back, we met for coffee or drinks, you didn't murder me, and then we'd both have this great story about a Missed Connection and maybe a new friend or maybe a new more-than friend.”

To my delight, shehe responds. Herm name is Beth, or so shehe says. But for the sake of me running out of clever ambiguous handles, I will call her Beth. My first email went to her spam box and she had completely forgotten that the ad was still even up. You see, Beth was a little high and drunk when she posted the ad, so she was taken off guard when she saw an email from me. Sounds like someone I’ll probably get along with nicely.

We line up a time to meet. She asks me if I want to know what she looks likes, if I’ve been able to stalk her on Facebook. I haven’t. I tried. But I want this to be another first: a true blind date.

“I don’t care if she’s 400lbs,” I keep telling people. “It’ll still make for a great story.”

We meet up for a drink at a hip bar. She arrives a bit late, which seems a little ridiculous because it’s not like she doesn’t know where the place is. It’s her spot and she’s actually gone camping with the owners. But whateves. I chose not to give her my phone number so she couldn't text me to tell me she was going to be late. Plus, it's not like I've never been late to a date. 

She is not 400lbs, but she’s not the white-hot sexy babe Jesus promised me. She’s decent looking, but not my cup of tea, so I know immediately how this date will end: with the script.

The script is a mostly-honest way of dealing with how frequently a love connection doesn’t occur, and its use has been praised by women and men alike. I refuse to let things drag on because I feel it’s pointless to tell a date, “I’ll call you,” when I have no intentions of doing so. That being typed, I’ve used it many times and am still single after going on dates with at least 25 different women over 2 years of online dating, which is starting to raise questions about my standards. “Do you think maybe you’re too picky?” Some days, yes. But overall? No. 

The script reads something along the lines of, “I have to be honest with you, unfortunately I’m not feeling it between you and me. Like I said in my profile, I’m looking for a specific kind of connection and I'm not getting that. You’re really cool and very pretty and I wish you the best of luck in finding your match.”

For some women I’m sure it’s a relief, as they don’t have to deliver the lie I've heard a few times: “I had a good time too and sure let’s hang out again. Call me.” But for a lot of women it stings. I can see it in their eyes, hurt mixed with confusion. "Did I do something wrong," I've been asked. No. You are who you are and who you are just doesn't jive with who I am and what I'm looking for. I hope the script goes further in the long run than texting once or twice before falling off the face of the earth or promising a call that will never come. 

“How crazy is this," I ask Beth. "You posting on Missed Connections. Me seeing it. And now here we are.” I try to pull my face together, fearing my insanely silly grin will give her hope for a second date.  “You’re meeting your missed connection.”

She agrees. This is crazy.

My phone rings.

“Why the hell is my roommate calling?” I have a feeling it’s an emergency, but swipe the call silent anyway. “He knows I’m on a date. Why is he calling?”

We carry on our forced conversation. She did this job. Then that one. Quit one job like a total badass. My phone vibrates. Continuing on the hunch that Roommate desperately needs more Icy Hot, I say, “I’m sorry, I have to check this to make sure my he's is not dying.”

The text reads: Brad, if you’re reading this, you already know. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. You locked me out of the house.

“Are you fucking kidding me? He says I locked him out of the house. If you leave the house, you usually take your keys, right?”

She agrees with a smile.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be right back. I have to call him.”

I step away, jingle his mobile, and he gives me the skinny. A couple weeks ago I took him to the airport in his car and when he wanted to use said car, he couldn’t find his keys I had placed in a kitchen drawer.

“Totally my fault,” he says. “I should’ve asked you where my keys were or told you not to lock the house.”

“Can you give me 45 minutes?”

“Yeah, sure. Sorry man.”

“No, this’ll work out great, actually. I’m not really feeling it with her and this’ll speed up the process.”

I tell her the business, that we’ll have to whittle the date to 30 minutes because my roommate’s an idiot and I have to let him into our house. She seems alright with that. I set a mental timer and 20 minutes later I give her the "I'm not feeling it" part of the script, leaving out a few key points. She seems a little shocked and hurt.  I say, “So let me pay my tab and I'll be right back,” implying I’ll be back to walk her out. I pay the tab and look behind me to see that she’s gone. Did she go to the bathroom, I ask myself. I pay my tab, considering the possibility she actually left. And it all makes sense. The phone call. The txt. The 2^nd phone call. The cutting the date way short. She thinks I gave her the slip, that I have the ability to plot and execute such an extravagant plan, just to get myself out of a date. I remember that she’s not an online dater, that she's "not ready for that," so she hasn’t built up a thick skin from rejection.

I start to feel bad and it begins eating away at me like these things do.

I go home and email her, apologizing for the abrupt ending to the date and telling her the whole roommate thing wasn’t a clever ruse. “You’re really cool and pretty and I wish things would’ve ended differently. And I can totally understand if you were thinking, “What the fuck just happened? Who does this guy think he is?” And then you said, “Fuck it. I’m out.” I wish her the best of luck.

She replies saying she felt really foolish and had to bounce. She wishes me luck as well.

I’m glad she replied to my apology because it’s a safe bet if she hadn’t, I would’ve eaten myself alive with regret, remorse, and foolishness, a rush of bad feelings flooding back every time I checked Craigslist for anything. And it saved me the massive amount of time I would’ve spent scouring the Missed Connections section for a follow-up post from her.

“Hey asshole who ended our date 30 minutes in because of some crapass excuse: you’re an asshole, asshole, and if I would’ve had the guts to stick around and tell you this to your face, I wouldn’t have to post this pathetically passive aggressive response in a place you’ll probably never see. Fuck you, asshole!”