M.A.D.

I’m trying to sign up for twitter and its proving to be a challenge, seeing as how I don’t get it, at all.  You’re probably wondering why a technophobe such as myself would be interested in getting on that bus, more so since it left the station ages ago no?  Its simple, I want to stalk someone.  Yes, I’m a stalker and I’m proud of it, only I call it research.  Who am I stalking?  Three people.  No 1: A client who owes me money, foolish punk says he’s broke then I stumble upon pictures of said man in Malindi, with many small girls, the following day.  Nkt!  No 2: Shaka Ssali, that man excites me in ways that are not right, I shall say no more.  No 3: An almost stalker who’s taken to calling me at 11.00 pm every other night, ‘just to say hi’, I figure fight fire with fire. 

Back to twitter though, there I am trying to figure out the Russian that is the sign up page (no really, it was in Russian, I have no idea why) and what do I see under find friends?  The profile of a slightly very dysfunctional man that I once tried to date, tried and failed.  This man…  I had to pause for a minute to shudder…  This man is certifiable, off his rocker, few eggs short of a dozen, MAD! 

I’m itching to tell this story, but to tell it I have to ji-expose.  Ah screw it!  It’s not like I killed someone is it?  This is too good to keep to myself, kama mbaya mbaya! 

I met this fellow on the internet, internet dating to be precise.  Don’t look so horrified, it’s perfectly respectable.  Or not.  It should be called internet sex-ing, that’s all most of those bastards are looking for, a chips/sausage funga, online style!  That you are so lazy you can’t even be bothered to leave your house/office to go look for sex is troubling.  But that’s a story for another day, moving on swiftly…  One fine morning I get a message from a random guy, he says he’s read my profile and, ‘Out of all the ones I’ve seen, yours is the most intelligent.  I’m impressed,’ he says with not an ounce of levity, ‘when can we chat?’ he asks presumptuously.  Eh?  My first instinct was to block his punk ass and move on (you can do that online, just click ignore and a person vanishes, it’s lovely!), but I didn’t ignore the man, instead I decided to check him out first.  Sweet Jesus! 

For those of you who’ve never delved into the world of internet dating, let me give you a brief description, the lay of the land as it were.  Simply put, you create a profile.  You describe yourself in as much or as little detail as you want, you describe who or what you’re looking for, put up a picture if you feel so led.  There’s a brief section on bio data that you do have to fill in, age, star sign (eh?), height, weight, etc, but apart from that you pretty much have a blank page to play with.  Now most men don’t say too much on their profiles, they’ll put up a picture of themselves, real or imagined, usually in or next to a car or at their desks in the office, and then they’ll give a generic description like ‘Am a humble, god-fearing man lookin for a god-fearing woman ready to settle and build a home.’  Or the always reliable ‘Am married with 2 kids, lookin for a lady to have fun times with.’  Or my favourite ‘Am a good lookin, sexy, lovin, prince charmin.  Am lookin to share my love with a african princess.’  Please note that the grammar is theirs, not mine, apparently when you are ‘lookin’ for a partner online, the word ‘I’ and the letter ‘g’ are optional, as is spell check.  Apparently. 

Given that this is what I’d been dealing with on a daily basis for a couple of months, Mr Impressed’s profile was a complete shock.  This genius had not only filled in every bloody section there was to be filled, he’d posted several pictures of himself.  What!  Where do I start?  So the profile picture: he’s sitting on a sofa, one arm stretched across the back, leaning forward with what can only be described as a ‘come closer little red riding hood so you can see my teeth’ leering grin on his face and the most scary ‘crazy eyes’ glare I had ever seen.  Folks, I jumped back in fear, it looked like he was about to leap out of the screen and bite me.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything about how hot (or not) he was, its just that picture was creepy.  His profile?  It was very long and not particularly useful.  First, he went out of his way to mention his very very wealthy family/lifestyle, repeatedly, all the while saying he’s not interested in gold-diggers.  Say it with me… Eh?  Then, the man talks about how he drinks at Palacina, sijui Mercury, holidays in Europe, blah blah blah, because us non-gold-digger women really care about that shit don’t we?   But what got me was his interests, there was a section for favourite music (really) and you know me and my love for a good tune, that was usually the first one I’d read.  This man had listed every artist and band that has released a song in the last decade, that list was like a page long, and it was alphabetical.  What the fuck?

At that point I stopped reading his profile, and typed out a reply to his (not so) charming message, ‘You have an interesting profile, but I don’t do chat, how about email?’ knowing full well men don’t do email so he wouldn’t reply.  Two minutes later, he replies, ‘Email is so last century, you need to get with the program.  So tell me about yourself, what’s your name?’  Now 2 things came to mind when I read that message.  One, ‘so last century’?  Are you a 16 year old white girl?  Two, is this idiot trying to seduce me or recruit me into his cult? 

I’m going to fast forward through this saga, give you the highlights and spare you the agony.  A couple of days later he finally got round to email, sort of, he found me on g-talk/chat/whatever the hell its called, and off we went, chatting, or trying to, he had a habit of wandering off mid sentence, very strange.  Because he had his full name on his email address, I did what any normal person does, I proceeded to google him (research my friends…) and what I found was troubling.  There was the Linkedin profile that had him running kendo 67 businesses, none of which I'd heard of or seemed to have any other employees, and he was CEO of all of them; the myspace page that had him frolicking with random white women discussing poetry and shit; some random sites for diaspora types in England; and all these profiles had the same creepy picture and almost identical info, down to the alphabetical lists.  I am not making this shit up!  This is the man who told me he has to ‘make love’ (his words, not mine) to a woman before he can date her, for bonding you see, it’s very important.  The same man, who when I asked if he’d really read Anna Karenina (it was on his list of books, at the top, alphabetical no?), he replied ‘Definitely, I have it on my kindle on the bedside table, maybe one of these days you’ll get to read it…’  Did you just cringe?  I did too.  Creepy no?  This is the man who asked me if I was going to kiss him on our first date, because ‘if you don’t then I’ll take it to mean that you’re not interested and I’ll move on.  So will you kiss me?’ he asks.  Eh?  Can you say delusional?

Long story short(er), I met the man one week later, had two drinks, and one was water, and that story died there.  My biggest problem was that he claimed to be mid 30’s, but he looked mid 20’s, and sounded like it too.  His vibe was all ‘me and my friends did this’ and ‘my daddy did that’ and on and on, and all the while he was staring at my bosom and licking his lips, not like LL Cool J, more like Heath Ledger‘s Joker.  Creepy!  That was the longest 2 hours of my life.  So why did I agree to meet him?  Curiosity mainly.  Hang on, I’m not being fair to the man, once I got past the initial bullshit, he seemed kind of interesting, in a ‘if I poke it here I wonder what will happen’ way.   To be completely honest, at that point I’d talked to enough of those crazy internet dudes to know that it’s better to just meet them as soon as possible and dismiss them forthwith, or be dismissed.  I went, I saw, then I dismissed, although in fairness I think he dismissed me too.  I may have made a crack that perhaps was not taken too kindly.  Perhaps.  That and the fact that I didn’t look quite as much like Halle Berry as I may have led him to believe. 

One week later, I’m back on the dating site, checking out the fresh meat, and I come across a profile that looks somewhat similar to Mr Impressed, only without the elaborate lists.  This guy had named himself ‘Fun Fuck Buddy’, which I thought was brilliant, finally someone coming out and saying what everyone else was trying not to no?  Now Mr FFB described himself as a recent divorcee looking for a freaky lady to get down with, no strings, no bullshit, must be clean (don’t think about that too hard...).  What tweaked my interest though was a line he used, something along the lines of ‘I have no time for gold diggers, but anything else I can live with’.  See Mr Impressed used exactly that line on his profile, and while chatting with me, repeatedly.  I did a quick search for Mr Impressed's profile but it was gone, so I assumed he creatively repackaged himself in an attempt to attract a more appropriate female.  ‘Crazy bugger!’ I thought, and moved on to other more sane idiots, or not unfortunately.

What does all this have to do with twitter?  Guess who was at the top of that recommended list of friends I should follow?  That’s right, none other than Mr Impressed.  Apparently the geniuses at twitter sync your account with your gmail, bila asking, but that’s a fight for another day.  Mr Impressed is now DJ Impressed, his profile picture has him in the DJ pose, arms crossed like so, complete with big ass headphones, but no decks.  One can only assume that his many companies and such like didn’t quite pan out the way he’d hoped.  Listen carefully, if you ever meet a fellow with crazy eyes, a leering grin and an ever changing career profile ranging from venture capitalist to DJ, run away.  No questions, just run.  That man is absofuckinglutely mad!

Now I realise I have exposed myself to all manner of insults and ridicule, but this is for the greater good, I must tell you my foolish tales of foolish men.  That’s why it’s called Mutually Assured Destruction.  M.A.D.