Craigslist New Year's Eve, Part 2 - On the Road #30

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay 

Alicia was exactly what you would expect from a woman who had built her social life around the Internet and who was not a total psycho-freak.  

She was a kind, warm, sweet woman, and so shy it hurt. I could easily see her being petrified in any social occasion where she would have to step forth and put herself out there.

"I got hooked on chat rooms back when you had to pay for them," she said. "My credit card bill was at least 300 bucks a month because of it."

And that was when Alicia met her best friend, David - the guy who wouldn’t stop messaging her until she met him for a drink.

David was the only good-looking man in the room, not that handsomeness did him any good. On paper, he seemed all right. He was an artist and a carpenter.

But anger emanated off of him in waves. I was uncomfortable being in the same room as David, and if others hadn’t been there, I would have made my excuses and left. 

In short, his story was such that David had been married twice and begat three kids upon his wives by the age of thirty-six. He was in the throes of an ugly divorce from his second wife.

“David was stupid with that one,” Alicia piped up. “They had problems from the first week on.”

And here’s the kicker. He met her through Match.com.

I never met someone who actually married somebody they met on a dating site.

(Remember this was New Year’s Eve, calling in 2006. Online dating was fast becoming the norm, but it wasn’t yet.)

So why did David marry the Nightmare on Match.com?

He had no problem answering my question. 

"She had perfect tits," he said. "And cute freckles."

He said that with a straight face and his bestie, Alicia, backed him up.

"She fit his pre-conceived idea of what he thought he wanted," said Alicia. 

So why did Freckles & Tits marry David?

"Biological clock," said David.    

David suspected that his soon-to-be-second-ex-wife was about to become a lesbian.  

"She had a friend who looked like a lesbian and Freckles & Tits swore she wasn't," he continued. "But now she's hanging out with another who also looks like a lesbian.

David paused.

“After New Year's I'm not drinking and I'm not having sex anymore."

In this room of motley strangers, everybody looked at David like he was nuts. I thought it was the first sane thing he’d said all night.

"I need to heal from all this," said David. "This month I decided that Jesus really is my lord and savior and to let him into my heart.”

Oh hell. Never mind.

"You won't heal if you don't have sex," said Alicia to David, the voice of reason that David lacked.

To the rest of us, she explained further.

"The problem with David is that he can't find girls who can separate sex and love, especially with him. They take one look at him and peg him as the boyfriend type."

I wonder if David would have fallen for Alicia if she hadn’t been so motherly. On the other hand, Alicia was pretty matronly. Since perfect tits and cute freckles were enough of an incentive to ignore problems coming out of the gate and actually GET MARRIED, I doubt David had the sense to be attracted to depth and character.

And then there was the man of the hour...our host, Mike.  

When I later told this story to a friend, she asked me if Mike had been attractive.

"No.”

No, Mike was anything but attractive. He had a vague resemblance to Mitch McConnell.

To be more exact, Mike had no chin, a prissy mouth that he pursed throughout the night, a doughy face, and the soft formless body of a man who took no advantage of the outdoors that Colorado was famous for.

But his lack of good looks paled in comparison to Mike’s personality. Bitter, rude, unpleasant, pompous – I could go on and on. But the truly sad part was that Mike had no idea how disagreeable he was.

In the original Craigslist post, Mike had said several friends were coming over. And there were no friends there because…drum roll…he didn’t have any. I’m pretty sure the date that had fallen through was also a fiction.

After a couple of hours, I could understand why. I knew I never wanted to be around Mike again long before we called in the New Year 2006.  

According to Mike, he had no friends after 5 1/2 years in Denver due to the manipulations of his evil ex-wife. 

A woman he had been married to for only nine months, she'd tried to kill him twice – according to Mike - and had used him as part of an immigration fraud scam she had going on with her family.

I don’t know how this happened, but I ended up telling a story to this group – the first chapter of Ella Bandita.

Mike extrapolated from that.

"You want inspiration?" he sneered. "Generations of dysfunction and evil run in my ex-wife's family."

That was a good moment to smile and nod.

Mike also claimed more horrible first dates than everyone in the room combined. He was also an aficionado of which internet sources were good, and which ones were awful.  

It was a shock to my system being in a room full of people whose main source of social interaction was through a computer. 

David and Mike exchanged horror stories of shrewish con-women, heifers, bitches, dykes, and other undesirable and highly suspect females they had met while looking for love online. 

Mike really wanted to talk about his psycho marriage and his ugly divorce all night, and he interrupted conversations that were enjoyable to do so.  

He also had this beagle, Dakota, that was so hungry for affectionate attention, it was pitiful.

"Love me," the dog’s eyes pleaded as Dakota humped people's feet. "Please..."

"Dakota!"  Mike would shout.  "Dakota!"

“He has a foot fetish,” Mike would explain to his guests, two of whom were allergic to dogs.

The courtesy of putting the dog away didn’t occur to Mike. And Dakota wouldn’t listen in his relentless search for someone at that party to take him away.

Because I’m pretty sure that’s what that dog wanted.

Eventually, midnight happened. We called in the New Year, and all of us hot-hoofed it out of that house by quarter past twelve.

By the time I got back to my hotel, it was around 1am – that had been a long, sober drive back. The bars were pouring out and people were cheering, hooting, and hollering Happy New Year in giddy, drunken joy.

Lesson learned.

If I’m ever in an unfamiliar city for New Year’s where I don’t know anybody, I’m going to bite the bullet, down 2 or 3 shots of tequila and party down.

Because that was the weirdest New Year’s Eve of my life.

Peace,
Montgomery

To read Part 1 of Craigslist New Year’s Eve, click HERE.

Craigslist New Year's Eve, Part 1 - On the Road #30

Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay

This post is from my booktour/roadtrip I did in 2005-2006. This New Year’s Eve called in 2006, and stands in my memory as the weirdest New Year’s of my life. It made me miss the Craigslist of its glory days because this kind of thing isn’t even possible anymore.

Enjoy!

Hey y'all,

Happy New Year!

And I must say, this New Year's Eve was... different...interesting...I learned a lot.

And I walked away grateful for all kinds of reasons.

I took a break from the road trip to fly back to Florida from Denver and spend X-mas with la familia. Then, I came back to Colorado and did some snowboarding and waited for my college friend's kid brother to fix the Beast. 

I should have driven on. 

The kid brother's garage was closed on the 31st - it being a party holiday and all - and my friend already had plans. 

I should have driven to Albuquerque anyway and joined Jason for the "Crazy Sexy" Spankfest he went to. 

Y'all from GGC, you remember Jason, don't you?  Well, he's been a naughty boy...

Instead, I was in Denver with nothing to do.

Since I've become addicted to Craigslist - you can find everything from a ride to a place to live to a job to used furniture to a date to a one-night stand to...

I looked under "Strictly Platonic" for something to do on New Year's Eve.  

One post sounded promising... 

"Singles New Year's Eve Party!"

According to the post, the guy throwing the party said his date fell through at the last minute.

He also claimed that several friends were coming over.

After a screening process - because "after all, I’m inviting strangers to my house" - this guy was generous to include all of us in the greater Denver area without plans for New Year's to come ring it in with him.

Well, that definitely applied to me and it didn’t sound too complicated.

I was to BYOB, along with a snack. And of course, “Dress to Impress. No Jeans.”

It sounded all right. So after a brief and simple screening, I was officially invited. My host’s name was Mike. 

Obviously, the party was safe. I am I'm writing this email after the fact, and I can't do that from the bottom of a ditch. 

But…ahem…

When I walked into his house, the “several friends” and anybody else from the greater Denver area with no plans added up to 6 people.3 men and 3 women, including me.

Nobody wore jeans.

Nobody knew each other either. 

Except for the two best friends who came together - David and Alicia - everybody in that room was a stranger to each other.

And we had all connected through Craigslist. 

Even the best friends had met through the Internet years before in the days of Instant Messaging.

"I kept sending her instant messages because I thought she sounded like somebody I wanted to know," said David about Alicia.

"I got tired of ignoring him," said Alicia about David. "So finally I answered. That night we met for drinks and we've been best friends ever since."

"We also became pot buddies," said David. "Now neither of us smokes pot, but we like each other anyway."

So this was how my evening started. I don’t remember when exactly I thought to myself: “Oh shit!”

Disclaimer: Everybody except my host (more on him later) were decent people. Extremely lonely, but decent.   

Rick was a divorced construction worker.

He was a classic good ole boy with two daughters, and the kind of guy who would struggle to build his own social circle.

As is often the case with men like him, his ex-wife probably had taken care of the social stuff, and he was left to fend for himself without the social skills after the divorce. According to Rick, his plans had fallen through and he simply wanted something to do.  

Rick was a sweet guy and I think he was sweet on Ginger.

Ginger was a looker.

Slender, with died black hair that she wore quite well with her fair skin and blue eyes, Ginger was the only one in that room dressed to impress. She wore a slinky black cocktail dress and sexy, strappy, stiletto-heeled sandals, with rhinestone thing-ma-jigs that may have doubled as clasps.

On top of everything else, she had a southern accent. I think she was from South Carolina. She was a pretty southern belle who, I suspect, made all her decisions based on men.

And I’m pretty sure she lied about her age.

Oh, and Ginger wasn’t shy. I think she made all the men blush when we talked about our youthful years.

"When I was sixteen, I was into my church and into my boyfriend," she said. "I fucked him silly!"

Then she laughed boisterously.

Ginger had been divorced a year and a half. I think she made it all right in the divorce, at least where practicality was concerned. She had two daughters, a big house, and generous alimony.

And apparently, Ginger had no group of friends. She drove an hour and a half down to Denver from Fort Collins just to attend this little soiree.

I was grateful for Ginger’s presence there. She was the only lively personality in that room. And without her, the night would have been rough.

She was also very open.

Her divorce must have been emotionally bitter. Because Ginger shared that she decided older men were the way to go after being married to someone her age.

"I start at 40 and go up from there," said Ginger. "I'm twenty eight."

Like I said, I’m pretty sure she lied about her age. I’d put her around 35.

She had a boyfriend, but he was a long-distance beau who lived in my state – Anchorage to be precise.

Where do y’all think she met him?

On Craigslist. Where else?

I think Ginger will be okay. She had the rare talent of laughing out loud with lots of gusto at jokes that aren’t funny. She probably makes a great date, no matter how dull her man may be.

(Craigslist New Year’s Eve will be continued on Monday, October 5th)

Peace,

Montgomery