Pete, 33

A Chapter by Brian Aguiar

Chapter 3, Pete, 33

Pete, 33

I’m still trying to make sense of whatever could have been said to… uhh… Lauren, and I’m met with the unfortunately reality that I may never know… but now, as I overindulge in steak and wine by myself, but with an audience, and I scroll through my matches and a list of new potential candidates, I can’t help but think about how much dating has changed in the seven years since I was last single.

Online dating was around back then, but it seemed like there was a stigma attached to it. In my mind it was for the lowest of the low, the most desperate and pitiful people who couldn’t find a date in “real life”. Even as things with Elaine torpedoed south, and for about three years I idly awaited the final impending dissolution of our “relationship”, never in a million years did I see myself turning to online dating. I was devout against it, vowed with the conviction of a blood oath that no matter what happened I would never stoop so low. I’d met people before without it, and figured that once I was ready to look for someone, it would take me a few months to eventually go out, find her, and start dating again.

Piece of cake, right?

I’ve been single for almost eight months now, and I remember the exact moment I realized I had no choice but to turn online for answers. It was day three of this glorious summer and I was at the bookstore, because there’s something strange that happens as a teacher. For all the complaining from the kids about how much they hate to read, how they claim to loathe it with a passion, how they tell me they resent it’s very existence… well, usually it’s more like “reading sucks” or “f**k reading” -

But for all that complaining, as a teacher, a lot of your books go missing. A part of me wants to believe it’s because my students secretly love reading (because it’s awesome) but that they’re too embarrassed to let their unforgivable secret be known to the masses, so they resort to taking my books �" but mostly, it’s just because anything you bring to school has a small likelihood of being there at the end of the year. Lost, stolen, broken, eaten, in the trash, grew legs and walked out on its own �" things just disappear in the classroom, especially books. I could fill a small library with all of my novels that have vanished into thin air over the years.

Anyway, my favorite novel, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, a copy with personal and sentimental value well beyond its immeasurable wealth as literature mysteriously vanished at some point through the year after one of my students begged me to borrow it. When I asked him about it, he swore on his mother’s life that he returned it to my desk. Despite my suspicions, and being absolutely pissed for about a week, then just mildly pissed about it from that point onward, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Since summer just started and I had nothing but time on my hands, I went to the bookstore to get a copy �" even though that one could never truly be replaced.

This might be blasphemous for an English teacher to say, but I’m going to say it. I hate the bookstore. It’s like a fricken maze in there with no rhyme or reason to its arrangement, and I was winded just looking for the right section. Finally, after having to break midway through my search for both a coffee and a water (on two separate trips around that endless labyrinth) I stumbled upon the right place.

When I turned the corner, there was this beautiful woman standing in the aisle. I’m not talking everyday, garden-variety beautiful. This woman was staggering, breathtaking even.

I acted casual and pretended I was browsing as I inched my way down the aisle, but I was looking at her out of the corner of my eye, and dear god, she was drop-dead gorgeous. She noticed me, glanced my way and smiled for a moment. I guessed she was in her mid-thirties, with strawberry blonde hair, light blue eyes, and she had these adorable dimples that even though I only saw for a half second they made my legs feel like melted candle wax.

She took a book from the shelf and read the back cover closely (and what I presumed to be critically, a major turn on for me), and then she set the book back in its place. Good idea, I thought. Not his best work.

Then she picked up Treasure Island, held it in her hands, and looked mystified as she read the back and in an instant I transported to a different world as I was standing there. It was like a dream, but it felt so real, and in it I just walked right up to her, and in my most convincing pirate voice said, “Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest...“

… and in an instant, I knew she was the one. We joked around for a few minutes, laughed about our nerdy-cute meet, then moved into some casual flirting before I mustered the courage to ask her out, and we absolutely hit it off on our first date… then we fell in love, and I swear as I stood there... I heard wedding bells… and all in the span of eighteen seconds in a bookstore, I experienced this magical, beautiful scene of marriage and kids, an entire life - with this woman I’d never met.

I don’t know if that’s romantic or pathetic, but either way it’s a complete farce on every front. It reminds me of a joke I heard once about this guy who prays to god every night asking to win the lottery. Finally, after years of his prayers going unanswered, the man gets down on his knees, looks to the heavens and demands to know why he hasn’t won yet. Because you never bought a ticket, god tells him.

Point being, as I stood there, I didn’t buy my ticket. I could have hit the jackpot, but I didn’t say a word to her. I couldn’t, even as she flashed me a second curious glance with an inviting smile �" maybe even a third as she decided that book was the one. I was frozen stiff, almost paralyzed, and all I could do was watch as she left with the only copy of Treasure Island they had in the entire store and forced me to once again order something Amazon. They’ve got me by the balls.

You know what happened after the dream ended, other than my obvious choke? I started thinking about what I could even say to her without knowing anything at all about her. Sure, she picked my favorite book, but that doesn’t mean anything. What if it was a gift for someone? What if she was married? What if she was a psychotic person? A serial killer? A pyromaniac? A devil in disguise? Someone who couldn’t be trusted, like a weirdo who doesn’t like dogs or music? A creep who thinks she’s a real-life vampire?

You just don’t know. You literally know nothing about the people you come across. And let’s be real, this idea of having to go out to places like bookstores or bars or farmer’s markets, wherever the hell people meet each other these days sounds brutal and tedious.

So maybe I choked, and she’d gotten away, bookstore girl - and maybe I sometimes still think about her and the secret lifetime the two us and our kids shared in those magical eighteen seconds �" and even though she took the only copy of the book in the store, I sincerely hope she got out of it everything I did in the many times I’ve read it.

The entire experience showed me something. After once again feeding Amazon (not just for the book, but for a bunch of other things I needed that day… and some other stuff I probably didn’t need…) I had an epiphany, one of the many I had this summer. I realized it’s just plain… easier. For as much as I want to resist, the digital world comes with its conveniences. Sure, I can walk around a bookstore for hours looking for one particular book they may or may not have - or I can go online where everything is always in stock, spend less money, and get in a couple days.

And I was struck with the realization that the same general principle can be applied to women. Sure, I can stumble around aimlessly hoping I bump into someone and take my chances that I don’t go completely mute and stiff - cross my fingers and hope she’s single, or I can go online where so much of that work is already done for me. I wasn’t proud of it, but that’s when I knew that I simply had to bite the bullet.

Online dating has been a roller-coaster of a ride.. I was with my ex-girlfriend Elaine just short of seven years, and couldn’t have imagined the kind of world I was stepping into. There are countless sites out there, many of them with their own little shticks that only they offer. In the two plus months my profile has been out there for all to see, I’ve tried so many different ones �" conventional dating, free and paid, sites where the women have to message first, I even unwittingly ventured into one known almost exclusively for hookups, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of the underbelly.

Writing my profile was a process to say the least. How could I encompass my entire self in just a few short paragraphs? While I love writing and have been honing my craft over many years, I haven’t always excelled at brevity, and there was so much I wanted to say. The first time I sat down to write it I must’ve been in front of my computer editing and revising, considering my word choice, and turning to my trusty thesaurus for about six hours before I produced something worthy of putting out there.

Alright, I couldn’t help myself. I printed out a copy and got my red pen out and edited my own work again. I really dove into my word choice and tone that second time around. I even left myself warm and cold feedback - and then it… it was ready. But I wasn’t...

One thing I was certain of when I burst onto the online dating scene was that my appearance wasn’t going to do me any favors. I’m nothing special physically, and I’m not saying that out of humility. Calling me a regular-looking guy may be a generous stretch. I’m thirty-three, even though many of my students guess closer to forty, and I look like a stereotypical Portuguese man, a Portagee, as my dad calls us. I’m 5’9”, generally tan year round, stocky and still about fifteen pounds heavier than I’d like to be even with my recent weight loss. I wear glasses (sometimes), have brown eyes, and a dark salt-and-pepper beard that’s becoming increasingly salty and generally ranges from scruffy to “riding the rails hobo” - and I look absolutely ghastly without a beard. I’m bald, so I shave my head, but I’m hairy everywhere else on my body. I’m definitely no Ryan Reynolds, and to make matters worse, I’m not what one would consider photogenic.

Choosing profile pictures was a complete nightmare. I had two old pictures of myself and I looked weird in each, not creepy weird, not dangerous or violent, but more like someone who was just maybe a little off his rocker �" like the kind of guy whose picture you’d see on the six o’clock news who’s wanted for some bizarre crime that doesn’t make sense and can’t have a rational motive. I can see it now....

Needless to say, those photos were out, and it didn’t pain me to delete them. The rest of the pictures I had were of Elaine and I together as a couple, and even though I was (mostly) over her by then, scrolling through all those moments preserved in time of us together stirred memories within me that at times were a tad emotional �" and maybe I did partake a reminiscence for a little longer than I’d care to admit, and maybe I felt a wet and salty sensation in the eyes and a single tear might have trickled down my cheek…

Before I snapped out of it and remembered how terrible we were for each other, how we would fight all the time over absolutely nothing, and how miserable we both were over those last few years together. We were the two least compatible people to ever live, and for years we tried to make it work - before we both just stopped, because we knew it never could, but we stayed together.

As I stared at myself in those photos, I realized it didn’t even look like me anymore, because it wasn’t me. It was me five years and thirty pounds or so ago. I barely remembered being in those pictures, couldn’t recall when or where any of them had been taken, but I could tell that the burly, robust, bald and bearded man in them wasn’t happy.

Even knowing that, it was hard to delete them. That chapter was over, but it was still a part of my story �" but, as I believe George Bernard Shaw once said, “Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.” Hard as it was, it had to be done, so I deleted them - well, most of them. I kept a few, just in case I decide the book of my life needs photographic evidence.

I needed some new pictures, because even before I met Anne-Marie, I knew I could never become an Anne-Marie… and so like an idiot I was strolling around with my phone out in various day to day situations, snapping pictures every sixteen seconds like my students do with no regard for the world around them.

It took two days of blinding flashes, awkward exchanges, visits to places I hadn’t been in ten years (and would gladly go another ten years without seeing), a jam-packed memory card, and two different presentations of the results to two different parties. Mom gave me some useful input, and I lost time filtering through the useless parts of my dad’s advice to make sense of anything useful, but after two days I looked… marginally presentable, a stark improvement from a man who looked like he could be wanted in a recent string of robberies of old window frames and glass from scrap piles and dumpsters.

So maybe I won’t be winning $10 for second place in a beauty contest any time soon, but I can honestly say I’m happier with how I look now than I have been for about fifteen years. I weighed 244 pounds in November when I left Elaine, and I’m down to just under 210 now just through a better diet and exercise.

And I have other things going for me as well. I have a career, one that will never make me a millionaire but it’s an honest, respectable and stable profession that others find interesting and appealing �" and there’s certainly never a shortage of conversation points around it, which is great because I love to talk, not just about my job or students, but about other things. I watch TV and movies, read books, appreciate art and music, love sports, history, and am always learning things. I’d love to talk about writing, but no one ever asks. My range of interests is wide and diverse, and I pride myself on my ability to hold a conversation on a variety of topics.

I have a car, too �" which I didn’t know months ago was a bit of a rare find amongst the males who are swimming in the same dating pool alongside me. Alright, maybe it’s more of a minivan than a car �" but it gets me from point A to point B (with exorbitant interior space and room for a family of six), and I love it.

I have an apartment. It’s small, cozy and nothing special, but it’s mine, I keep it fairly clean, and most importantly, it serves as evidence that I’m capable of living on my own, which according to most of the women I’ve gone out with who’ve encountered many “mom’s basement dwellers”, that places me in the extreme minority of my fellow pool mates.

Those qualities combined, even with the detriment of my physical appearance, have led to dozens of dates this summer. It’s been a topsy turvy journey - but if nothing else I’ve learned this: There are women out there for me, women who want to go out and have a good time and see if sparks fly. I’ve realized that there’s a market for someone like me, and that all those times I had this irrational and debilitating fear that I was never going to find someone to spend my life with, that I was doomed to die alone… I was wrong.

And it isn’t just for the low of the low. There are beautiful, successful, kind, and sweet women out there - women that I would never, even in my most stupored state, have the confidence to talk to out in the world.

Despite my lack of immediate success in finding the next and final love of my life on the web, I must confess there’s so much to love about the process. It takes so much of the guesswork out of the dating equation. In half an hour, I can scroll through hundreds of images of women within miles of me; women that there’s zero chance I’d ever connect without in the “real world”. There’s something absolutely exhilarating every time your phone dings and you think you might have a match or a message �" and if you do have a match, you immediately know there’s at least some level of reciprocated interest.

It's empowering - the process of swiping left or right like I’m the god of judgment, but my only determination is whether I find someone’s physical appearance suitable for me.

I sometimes find myself reacting aloud at the sight of some of these women. I’ll gasp, sigh, sometimes laugh, or I’ll say things like, “Oh my god, you’re gorgeous” or “God damn, those eyes” almost like I’m expecting them to hear me. Other times it’s “Not a chance” if they have a cigarette in their mouth, or “What the hell?” when I see something downright unusual. You see all sorts of wild things out there. This one girl had what I can only assume was a drunken photograph of herself passed out, with a big dick drawn on her face �" and that was her main picture. She just put it out there for everyone to see, and of course after vocalizing a “What the hell?” I swiped right to let her know I liked her �" because if nothing else, I knew she’d be down to have a good time. She never got back to me, dick face girl, but I occasionally wonder what could have been.

But like I said, looks really aren’t everything. What I really love about online dating is that I can learn a few things about the women before I meet them. I read the profiles and find out what they do for work and the kind of things they enjoy, and I can feel my heart race, a warm tingle, butterflies in my stomach when I see that a girl is interested in many of the same things I am. I learn about their political affiliations, where they went to school, and can give them a disgusted swipe left if their grammar, spelling, punctuation or capitalization is atrocious, or I can put an instant kibosh on anyone who doesn’t like music or dogs because I could never fall in love with pure evil.

I can find out if they smoke, if they drink, if they have kids or want kids, and what they are looking for in a relationship - if they are seeking a soul mate, looking for a few dates but nothing serious, or just want a casual hookup.

I can chat with them, messaging through whatever dating site I met them on at first, then if things go well to start and we want to make the move forward, we can share numbers and start texting. From there, we can even have a phone call before we decide if we’d like to meet. I love talking to someone first because I can learn so much through hearing their voice and gauging their response times. I can get a sense of their wit and intellect, or listen for peculiar background noises, things like that. I can abort at any time. There’s built in escape hatches all along the way before I meet them in person.

And by the time I meet them, I have a fair sense who they are as a person. It’s not everything I need to know, and I’ve been met with more than a fair share of “Holy s**t, I did not see that coming!” moments, but it’s just enough to know whether there’s at least a sliver, an iota, a microscopic speck of a chance that they might be (signal that epic trumpet music once again) The One.

That’s what I’m looking for in all of this, the love of my life. Someone who will be my best friend, a person that I plain and simply like to be around and do things with. Someone who makes doing things that suck better, and good things even more amazing simply by being there with me. She’s someone who appreciates the little things in life �" great music, games, good food, friends, and family, books - the simplest pleasures.

She doesn’t make a big deal about the little things that go wrong in life that are beyond anyone’s control, and still doesn’t make a big deal when honest f**k ups happen, regardless of whose fault it is. I want someone to laugh with, share inside jokes, grow old, and experience the highs and lows of life with. And I believe she’s out there, and that someday, someway �" I’ll find her, and despite my apprehensions, I know the internet is my best chance.

After my profile was out there, I kept my shameful secret to myself for about two weeks. My first date was with Megan, 30. She was pretty, we went out for a couple of drinks, had a nice enough time, and it was great to get back out there - but we just weren’t feeling it. Then there was Hannah, 25 - again, a normal night that ended without any sparks flying.

Things started getting a little weird on my third date when I met Jeanette, 26 for dinner. One of the first things she told me when we matched was that she didn’t drink, but when we went out to dinner and the waitress took our order, Jeanette asked for a glass of red wine.

“I thought you didn’t drink,” I said curiously.

“Oh, I don’t. I just like to smell it,” she giggled. I thought it was a little strange, but to each their own. Turns out, it was strange. Once the waitress set the glass in front of her she leaned over the table and stared into the glass like she was completely mesmerized. I’ve never seen anyone look so longingly and desperately as she looked at that wine. She leaned over the table, then she inhaled - sucked in the aroma through her nose with a“pfffffffffffffffffffft” that went on for about thirty seconds, then started waving her hands above the glass and wafting the scent into her nose.

I felt bad. I thought she was an alcoholic. Then she stared across the table at me with a possessed look in her eyes and asked, “Can I sniff your hands… Please?”

The question smashed me across the face like a right hook from Tyson. Countless thoughts and questions whirled through my head, bottle-necked in my throat, and the only one that would escape me was a snapping and stunned, “What?!”

“Sorry,” she said, “Please don’t judge me, but I’m addicted to smelling things.”

Things got progressively weirder as the night went on. In addition to obliging her primal need to sniff every object within a reasonable vicinity, including sneaking a whiff of the hair of the man and woman in the booth behind her, Jeanette also possessed several other peculiar quirks. She pounded her fist on the table every time she laughed. She told stories with no climax or ending. She tried completing all of my sentences with the accuracy of a drunk, blindfolded archer.

And all the while, she spoke to her food before she ate it. Everytime she lifted the for to her mouth she’d moan something in a sultry voice like those phone sex commercials that come on at 3:00 in the morning, things like “Mmm, I bet you’re tasty,” or “Come to momma” or my personal favorite “Oh baby. Get in my mouth”.

Based on some of the things I’ve seen since then, Jeanette doesn’t seem that unusual in hindsight… but after that, I could keep my dirty secret contained no longer. It was too funny to keep it to myself. In case I died overnight in some freak accident, people had to know.

I told my mom first, and listening to her reaction opened the floodgates, then Steven and Nelson. Steven’s been my best friend since middle school, and he owns the house I live in. Nelson’s his fiancee. Then I told my sisters, my dad, my friends - and once my secret was out there for the world to know, I didn’t care anymore who knew. I wasn’t embarrassed. They all laughed with me, told me they were glad I was giving it a shot and wished me luck on my search.

So I haven’t found anyone yet, but I’m okay with that. I won’t settle this time. I won’t rush in and make the same mistakes I have in the past. The next one, is the last one. But until she comes along, I’ll settle for having a few drinks, maybe dinner, and the chance of getting laid, which is something that’s happened a bit more frequently than I would have imagined.

I keep scrolling, swiping left and right, sending messages to some of the women I’ve matched with, guzzling down a bottle of red wine and eating a captain’s share of steak.

Hello beautiful. Right swipe. Eh, she’s alright. Left swipe. Ugh, smoker. Left swipe. She’s gorgeous. Right swipe. Not my type - but she has a dog… Right swipe.

prev chapter