You didn’t come to Europe to eat at McDonald’s

[Mama, Papa, I know you're going to read this. And then you're going to wish you hadn't. Up to you]

Good news! I have another dating disaster story to add to my already colorful and highly amusing repertoire of drama and intrigue – the retellings of which frequently derailed attempts at productivity of many a study group. Take for example one uber-kinky John I asked out on a date by taking a picture of my stuffed panda holding a note inviting him to see Rach4 at the Symphony. It was the world’s most adorable start to a relationship that would end when he finally decided to tell me that he was married. I was shocked briefly, but soon found a third half-Asian named Jon (to replace the half-Asian that John was replacing), and was relieved not to listen to his condescending soliloquies on post-modernism any longer. There was many a JDate disaster story: a guy with a pronounced limp who insisted on playing a rather comical game of tennis as a first date (as if to prove that, like Pinnocchio, he was a real boy), a guy who took me to see Dar Williams in concert the week after his mother died, and another whose mother killed herself a few months prior. There was Difficult Dan who was an amazing gourmet cook, and a talented pianist and cellist, and completely OCD and unbearable. There was also Gosha who got dumped for obnoxiously peeking into my fridge the first time he came to my house. And Caleb who failed to get a third date when he took a 5 minute phone call between the entree and the plat. And many a story too vulgar to tell. And then there’s the story of Jon the Pervert that’s a party favorite, but casts me in a rather psychotic light.

Jon the Pervert (not half-Asian for variety) was a classmate in grad school. I had a suspicion that Jon was a complete asshole, as evidenced by the fact that his “friends” didn’t seem to like him very much, and the fact that all of my friends couldn’t stand him. But he was very good looking, and our parents happened to live two towns over. So I talked myself into falling for him. As I probably mentioned previously, Jon the Pervert spent about 6 months destroying my self-esteem in a particularly manipulative, awful way, and then dumped me two weeks before graduation.

He then promptly got back together with an ex-girlfriend who was a Russki me-lookalike named Sasha and much more in touch with her lesbian side. The reason I know this is because I hacked Jon’s yahoo account.

Six months later, and a while after I stopped speaking to Jon and stopped reading his e-mail, I was bored and decided to check in. Just to make sure that he was still unhappy, I suppose. What I found in his inbox, among love letters to his girlfriend, was a response to an online ad to a girl who promised to ‘Fuck the smartest man on Craigslist’. Jon decided to throw his hat into the game, writing her from another account called craigslistcas@yahoo.com and cc’ing his regular account for whatever strange reason. Craigslist Casanova’s account happened to have the exact same lame password as his other account, and what I found was a treasure trove of years’ worth of e-mails to that tune.

Eventually I beat Jon at his own twisted game, inflicting a wealth of highly-satisfying emotional damage along the way. Last time I ran into Jon, 3 years hence, he was a shell of his former self. Actually, he was fine and getting married to a girl that one of my friends described as “not particularly bright, but very nice”.

In comparison, the latest turn of events is kind of plain vanilla: low on both drama and amusement, and highly unmemorable. What sucks is that I didn’t expect to be treated this way by someone I considered a friend – someone I was there for when he needed me. Perhaps I should choose my friends more carefully.

In the comforting words of my absentee talent manager, “Princesa, you did not come to Europe to eat McNuggets.”

Perhaps I’ll try something a little more gourmet next.

The good news is that my friends are always eager to help. Here, for example, is a chat excerpt from my upstairs neighbor:

“What style do you like next?
an East Coast intellectual?
a French alcoholic?
a constipated Swiss?
a sloppy Brit?
an Aussie with an indecipherable accent?
something of the Asian persuasion again?
Tomorrow at Le Shaker, we can hold auditions.”