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Have A Little Faith I was cruising along, piqued by no one, till I came across a guy from a very small, rather conservative coastal community in North Carolina. I was stunned; because I could envision about three people in his entire county who’d even know about this site, much less use it. “Poor guy,” I thought. So I checked him out. Cute. And I dropped him a line.
And of course we ended up hitting it off. Emailing and calling and instant messaging for a couple of weeks until, as Fate would have it, I as going to be in North Carolina. He was excited. I was skeptical. He was optimistic. I was skeptical. He was confident. I was, well, don’t make me say it.
It wasn’t because he didn’t seem totally fabulous. As he put it, we had enough in common to do stuff we loved together, and enough different that we could learn from each other. We clicked nicely on the phone and both found each other visually appealing. Our conversations were more like friends than the faky, flirty banter you usually get online. But I just couldn’t get hopeful, much as I wanted to.
Christ, the number of times I’ve met a seemingly great guy online only to have zero, zip, nothing in real life. No chemistry. No sparky fuego. Sure, the tangibles were there, but there was no intangible je ne sais quois that gives your tummy a little nudge or makes your heart race, etc.
I’d written a story about it, and even went so far as to send it to him, billed as “a cautionary tale”. He thanked me and laughed, but didn’t seem to be buying it.
You’ll excuse for practicing expectations management with this guy. Although quite early on I figured we could at least really, honestly, be friends if nothing else. I just hoped he wasn’t expecting to be struck by lightning or knocked on his ass when he met me.
Not that I’m not worth that kind of response, mind you, but let’s face it. Lightning strikes kill people and start fires and generally lead to bad things. I didn’t want that. I wanted something nice. Enough sparky fuego to start a good campfire, but nothing more that could easily blow up into a big fire and leave only scorched earth and ashes in its wake.
In fact, what I really wanted, was what Nick Hornby described as that “mystery of human chemistry – I don’t understand it. But some people, as far as your senses are concerned, just feel like home.”
Yeah. That.
So I go meet the guy. And you know what? There was something there. Not lightning, but a sparky excitement that felt right and good and comfortable. Home? Who know? But he certainly had all the comforts!
We hung out for the rest of the night and ended up making out in his truck in the bank parking lot of my little hometown with people driving by and honking or giving us two thumbs up. Hilarious. We talked some, too, and ended up staying up all night together. It was good. Really, really good.
At the end of the evening when I finally had to leave to catch my flight, he looked at me and said, with some satisfaction, “I guess you’re going to have to re-write that story.”
“Yeah,” I replied, smiling. “Or maybe start a whole new one.”
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