Firsts

Hopeful 7   Hopeless 2

I have officially survived my first week on Plenty of Fish.  There have been ups and downs, but I have not gotten eaten by any large fish.  There are more ups and downs yet to come, I'm sure, but for now I'm sticking with it.

It's occurred to me that there have been a few firsts over the past couple of days besides its being my first week on the project.  I don't usually like to put the negative part first, but I am trying to stay in chronological order.  Last Friday, I got a message from one of the guys who had messaged me.  I never got his real name, so we shall call him Freedom based on his user name.  I had explained to him as I had to many other people that I was not answering my messages very quickly because I was feeling very overwhelmed by how many I was getting.  He had been one of the impatient people and that continued despite my message meant to pacify him and get him off my case.  Freedom made some comment about how if I only would stop wasting my time with the guys who just wanted to sleep with me, I would have more time for him.  I had sensed his arrogance from the very first message and had had misgivings.  I wanted to give him a fair chance like everyone else, though.  Here, though, he had clearly blown it.  So I told people, "I've met my first jerk."  I rather expected I would've encountered one a lot earlier, but there we have it.  When I had received other strange or silly messages, I had simply ignored and deleted them.  This one was different, though; I felt he really needed someone to tell him that he needed an attitude adjustment.  I wanted to knock him off his golden pedestal a bit.  So I sent a one line reply that was not too sharp (I had vented earlier on paper and checked with Mom to make sure I wasn't going to send him something rather nasty or descend to his level) basically saying that it was rather writing him that was a waste of my time.  I held my breath and hoped there would be no reply.  There was.  I was right.  He is a jerk.  Freedom wrote to say: Ah oui, puis en passant, va dont de faire foutre salle conne :).  I was in shock because everyone else I had encountered on Plenty of Fish had been polite, even when rejected.  I couldn't believe it; this was the first time in my life anyone had told me to f off.  I told my friend Stella and she got right and indignant on my behalf: "What, is he five?" she exclaimed.  Thanks, Stella, you made me feel a lot better for getting angry for me.  This goes to show that you should always trust instincts, because I knew there was something not quite right from the very first message.

This next first I thought was going to be awhile in coming.  I thought I was not going to reveal to anyone that I have health issues for some time, but I ended up telling Alex this past Saturday (Alex is the History student I mentioned who is also a guitarist and a writer).  I told him first because of the question he asked me about how active I am.  It turns out that he has more of a tendency to being quiet like me, rather than high-energy "get up and go" as I had thought when I saw his question.  I explained to him that to maintain my health, I needed to have a fair amount of physical activity, but that paradoxically my condition often prevents me from being active.  Then he asked more specifically what I have, so on Sunday I wrote to give him a short description without being too dramatic I hope!  I know my health will be a deal breaker for some people, but Alex says he's okay with it.

Another first which I was also surprised at myself for was giving out my e-mail address.  I wanted to hold on to my address with an iron fist, even though it is only my pseudonym e-mail.  I made an exception for Amin, though.  I mentioned that he made a good first impression; evidently this was mutual.  He sent me a message on Saturday to re-relay a message he'd already sent "in case it got lost".  I could tell that he was beginning to worry that I was not writing him back.  I sent him a message reassuring him that I was not losing interest and gave him my e-mail address so that I could reply more readily.  When I told him that he was the only one I'd transferred to e-mails, that also made him feel special (which he is; he is a very nice guy :).

Sooner or later, I knew that the first date would come.  I had thought it would arrive a lot sooner, actually, but it was certainly soon enough for me!  I was being lulled into a false sense of security since all of these guys were making pretty conversation online.  I would forget sometimes that at some point there would be the business of meeting in real life.  Though I had thought more than once about not going out with any of them, I said yes to Siavash.  Although his user name is BlueGuy, he is very positive and I get good vibes from him.  He may not be my first date after all, but he is the first to ask me (that is, in a direct way, not in a nebulous non-committal "perhaps we could meet up" sort of way).

The first I was most definitely not expecting was the first rose!  Yet there it was on Monday morning in my Plenty of Fish inbox.  The site enables you apparently to send two roses every thirty days.  So you do have to be choosy about who you send it to.  I did not intend to use this feature, but it seems that Huiqi did (he is the History student who was very enthusiastic).  This was slightly uncomfortable, because I don't know Huiqi all that well and here he is sending me a red rose, ultimate symbol of romance (albeit electronic, but still a rose).  He apologized for the "cheesy online rose", so that made me wonder what exactly that was all about.  I never do this, but I felt like messing with him just a little bit.  I asked him why he should send a rose and then apologize for it.  I asked if he really did mean to send it.  He answered my test well, by saying that a pretty girl like me deserves a rose and that he was simply apologizing because it was not a real one and that perhaps one day he would have occasion to give me a real one.  Nicely done, Huiqi.

This rose really reminded me of the whole Bachelorette phenomenon.  Anyone who has ever watched either the Bachelor or Bachelorette on ABC knows that it is absolutely crazy for one person to date 25 other people.  And what greater torture is there than a rose ceremony, where people are singled out like that?  I had been thinking about how Plenty of Fish gives you way too many people to date very much like the television show and receiving the rose from Huiqi was just a fresh reminder.  I felt I really needed to put a stop to it before I ended up like the Bachelorette!

This is what the Plenty of Fish rose looks like!