It’s currently midnight on a Sunday, and I’m watching “Supernatural” on the DVR, when I should be updating this blog while sleeping.  I have work at 9am, but I feel like if I don’t do this now, I will only set the stage for more slacking off in the future.  As much as I love sleep, I have come to realize that my commitment to the written (and/or typed) word will almost always trump sleep.  Hell, if I had sick days at this job, I would take one to work on some of my book, as well as the essay I’m writing about how Sonic Youth‘s video for “Dirty Boots” ruined my expectations for romantic love at the dawn of the Grunge Era.  I’d been wanting to write it for awhile, but with the recent Thurston Moore/Kim Gordon split, it seems timely.  Of course, by the time I actually finish it, it will be old hat.

So now it’s a little after 1am and I am trying to focus harder by listening to Reading, Writing and Arithmetic by The Sundays.  It takes me back to a simpler time, when I was about 16, blue, and I had a crush on some cute English singer in a band whom I would never meet; but that slim chance was equal to the lack of action I was experiencing with the girls in my high school as the 80s were fleeting into the rearview mirror and senior year was rapidly approaching, complete with the promise of getting the hell out of this one horse town (actually, our town had at least one stable, so we had more than just one horse in a literal sense, but, aside from a brief period of time in 1991-1992, we had zero record stores, but nobody ever says “I had to leave that none record store town”).

Back then, I had no idea that I was being primed for a life of seeing things differently than other people, that I was going to be on the fringes of groups of friends forever, like a talentless James Joyce – always observing and writing, but never quite belonging to a circle the way everyone else seems to, but yet never NOT belonging.  I guess that makes me kind of like an electron.  I bounce from group to group, and while, never rejected and even accepted, I just always feel like an outsider.  Most of the time, I don’t mind.  But once in a while, the need to feel a close and lasting bond to another human being not related to you gets strong.  And that’s where these letters come in.  While I know deep down that the odds of me finding lasting and true love from a free dating website are low, I’m just enough of a hopeless romantic to at least give it a try.  And then I write something like the letter below.

What I will say in my defense in regards to this particular letter, is that at least I pointed out to the young woman what parts were me being funny (on purpose), as opposed to the trainwreck conversation from a few months ago where the young lady had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.  I’m just kind of bummed that I didn’t get to post this before the profile was deleted.  I wish I could remember what she looked like, since I made the mistake of showing my cards and complimenting her looks, which as we all now know from the overlords of OK Cupid and their little OK Trends blog, is a turn-off.  I’m good at those.  Someone somewhere, I’m convinced, has a list of turn-offs that include my name.

I am going to tell the truth and say that when I read your three adjectives, my first thought was “I’d like to insert something witty, alright.”

But then I figured that was a bad idea, but if I have learned anything in this life, it’s that you should stick to your guns. Then again, my default photo is of me behind the stairs eating pizza.

Seriously, though, you like a lot of the same things I do, and you totally seem like the kind of woman I would like to get drinks with and talk about life and philosophy and get fondue with (I’ve never had fondue or ice-skated). Is it funny that the girl who grew up in Saudi Arabia has ice-skated but the guy who grew up 5 minutes from an ice rink has not? I played a lot of street hockey, but never on skates of either variety.

Oh and the first paragraph wasn’t me trying to be funny. the second paragraph, however, was. Also, allow me to close this letter by saying that you look absolutely radiant in your photos.

Look forward to chatting with you,