the sap

The trouble with love is...
It can tear you up inside
Make your heart believe a lie
It's stronger than your pride

Yes, i'm quoting the Kelly Clarkson theme song to LOVE ACTUALLY. Get over it.
To me, being a fool is what life is all about. Being unafraid to throw yourself into any situation, without caring how you'll look, whether the world might laugh, or lash out...for a hopeless cause, for love, for a friend...
That's the me i like, when i'm at my best.
So i'm not embarrassed by most of the million and three things that bother regular folk. And when i do get embarrassed, i can't wait to tell you about it.
This time, however, i almost kept a stupid embarrassment to myself. But here i am.
I fell for a fake personal ad.
And not in a small way.
Oh, i didn't walk into a fake rendezvous, to be stripped of my wallet and boxer briefs by Fagin's gang...but in my spirit, oh my did i fall.
I recently returned to the world of online personals. One year ago, i started seeing someone, and it took me six months after the breakup to be able to even look at a personal ad. The only romance site i can imagine using is craigslist, a free site where you can create your own ad or look at others', and come and go as you like. Paying for a romance service invokes a level of neediness that's not me. The right CL attitude? Don't take it too seriously. Early on, i learned another lesson: don't get emotionally involved before you meet. Understand, a part of me wants to believe that humans can connect on an unseen level, even when they're far apart, or have never met. But in a romance ad correspondence, it just seems that you're begging for disaster if you get emotionally invested before meeting. Even if you do end up having an amazing spiritual connection, there are far too many compatibility factors which can trip up the best potential in the world. So i try to have an attitude of easygoing fun, and if i meet someone, cool. CL is, i might add, a phantasmagoria of fraud. A sea of spam. A morass of moronities subtle and glaring. I consider myself an operator with a high level of discernment. It's probably fair to call it a conceit, that i fancied i could never be taken in by a fake.
Ahem.
See that supine bowling pin with my face on it?
It's not just that i fell, but it's the extent to which i did, even before i'd finished writing my response. My heartrate went into overdrive. As i awaited a reply in the hours after, i felt a stronger feeling than i have felt for any real woman in years. Frankly, i can't swear that i didn't feel a stronger feeling than i've felt for a woman ever. I suddenly knew that when the reply appeared, my life would change, probably forever.
And then it arrived. Ready to know the first personal thoughts of a woman i had dreamt of all my life, i opened it.
And the enthusiastic note asked me to come talk to her on a paid dating site.
Her enthusiasm would have been more affecting, if there were one single thing in the note to indicate that she was a living human who had, y'know, actually read my letter.
It took me less than a minute to chuckle at myself.
But wow.
Any other conceits you'd care to cultivate, smart guy?
A part of me wishes i had the text of the ad to share with you, and a part of me is relieved i don't. It just seemed so sincere and off-beat...a paragraph or three of a woman talking about how this materialistic society is such a put-off, and then pushing more of my buttons, for good measure. And with it, a pic of a perky pixie dressed the way i'd imagine my love dressing. That the visual element was a factor in my response, i cannot for a second deny.
I guess the part that's most distressing (though looked at from another way, it could be encouraging) is the thought that i'm generic enough to fall for a fake, even a fake aimed at non-generic sorts. I guess i considered myself at least two levels of generic removed from the norm.
Conceit number two, come on down!
But it's about more than conceit, it's about how even though i rail against our society's attitudes on romance (unnatural views on monogamy, unhealthy stress on defining our lives by romantic status), i'm such a profound semi-closeted romantic. It's idiotic beyond belief, but there's a part of me waiting to embark on one of the greatest love stories of all time, or some such nonsense. This week my "heart" believed a lie, in a most profound way...and all it took was a bogus ad. I've always wanted to throw blunt objects at anyone reading a Harlequin novel, yet i cry within moments of seeing LOVE ACTUALLY, a movie in which many of the people get absolutely creamed by love, yet the movie plays like a romantic comedy, and you love and cheer those who do find "the dream". The idiotic, numnut dream.
I'm not kidding, either. The dream is idiotic.
And that strong feeling i felt? Just Narcissus staring at his reflection. Do you know what the difference is between that and the "real thing"? If most people knew the answer to that question, we'd have a social revolution the likes of which the world has never known.
The woman i broke up with this year let me into her most sacred places, and dared to dream a dream with me as the hero. I walked away, though she was as wonderful as any of us. I walked away, because the difference between "wonderful" and "wonderful for me" proved to be too big a chasm.
WROB: Stop waiting for a dream, wrob.
wrob: No WROB, i don't think i will.
WROB: Idiot.
wrob: Yeah, sure. Would it make you feel better if i said i just like sex, and this kind of idiocy is the only way to get the really fan-fuckin'-tastic kind?
WROB: Are you trying to bullshit me or yourself, wrob?
wrob: Complex question, WROB.