Kaonashi Ga Suki

I was never really the dating type.

In high school I was very shy and didn’t date. Even if I wanted to, my parents wouldn’t have let me. They were really strict about that sort of thing (they still are, as my teenage sister will attest). I had my first boyfriend in college, and when he graduated he moved to Japan so we broke up (don’t worry, we got back together and he’s my current bf).

I mentioned in a previous post that one of the things I did to try and get over the breakup was to meet people in Internet chat rooms. What I didn’t mention was that I actually met a couple of internet people in real life.

The first internet guy I met was someone from ICQ. He was really nice and funny, and he really liked me. But I wasn’t attracted to him. I’d seen his picture, and he just wasn’t my type. This is going to sound bad, but he was Vietnamese and Asian guys are not really my type- though my tastes have broadened since college. I remember feeling weird when I turned him down since I had never been in such a position. I remember telling a friend of mine in high school that I liked him and he responded with the dreaded, “Oh, but I think of you as a friend.”. Ouch.

Nevertheless, I agreed to meet with him, but emphasized that I was meeting him as a friend. I met up with him during the day. To be honest, I don’t recall what we did, but I presume it was lunch. Afterward, I was nervous that he might try to kiss me regardless of the boundaries I’d and pretty much bolted out of his car when he dropped me off. We remained internet friends after that though, and every now and then he’d even talk about some other girl he was dating.

I think I met the second guy from IRC. He was an artist. For my birthday he sketched my face using a ballpoint pen. I had it laminated and hung it on my wall. I think it was one of the coolest presents I’ve ever received from anyone because it was so unique. I still have that picture somewhere. I wasn’t attracted to him because he was Chinese. He gave me a hard time about it in the beginning (the notion that I only like White guys and such), but eventually we became friends. We hung out quite a few times, at places like Dresdens.

Then suddenly he disappeared for a long time. Months went by without hearing from him. I tried to email and call him, but he didn’t answer. After a while I finally got an email from him. He explained that he was manic depressive and that he had one of his depressive episodes, in which he basically shut himself off from the outside world. He apologized for not being straight with me about his condition and explained that he just couldn’t deal with other people for the moment. I never heard from him again after that. It was a real shame to lose touch with him because I found him to be such an interesting person.

The third guy I met was from IRC. Ah, he was a smooth talker- namely because he was a budding actor or something. He was pretty cute, but I still wasn’t really that interested in him. The funny thing was that when he met my roommates, he was actually more interested in one of them! Admittedly though, we were on our way to being more than just friends when he seemed to vanish off the earth. It was really odd since I’d only met up with him about twice. A month later I found him online, and when I asked him why he never called me back, and he claimed that his computer died and he lost all his data- including my phone number. I don’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but at that point it didn’t matter since I had acquired a new boyfriend- the cartoonist…

To be continued…