“Didn’t I tell you that I had a thing for serial killers?” I wrote to a fellow traveler after he suggested that we meet to make sure that neither of us were serial killers.
It sounded like a unique opening line.
We decided on an appointed time for coffee, a rendezvous at Peet’s on Fourth Street. It was an easy off ramp from the freeway.
I looked inside. No obvious suspects. But there was someone who’d just entered.
“Do the words serial killer mean anything to you?” I asked.
“No.” He looked at me strangely.
I quickly stepped back to the edges of the terracotta tile and listened to the hiss of espresso machines. TigerTail101 had described his body type as “thick.” I wasn’t sure how that differed from “a few extra pounds.”
“You writergrll?” a man asked. He spun me around and gave me a hug. “What’ll you have?”
TigerTailwas more genuine than self-conscious, something which I liked. However, he did seem a bit faded from his online picture by about five to 10 years, the hair more grey than sandy, the jaw more of a jowl, and he definitely looked thick, but it wasn’t in a heavy or a stocky way thick, more how a magnet collects metal filings around its middle because it hasn’t lost its charge. Overall, he didn’t look like a serial killer. I guess they never do…
We spent several hours emptying our cups.
“I don’t want to talk about my personal relationship,” he said.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
Well, he didn’t talk about his personal relationship; instead, he talked about himself , stopping only for sips of coffee. On and on he went about his apartment, the roommate who was a pizza maker from Brazil, his adopted child in Africa, his dying mother. I spare you the dialogue.
In a few days I received an email asking if I thought we had chemistry. Chemisty? How about something to say to each other?
Anyhow, what do people mean by chemistry? Is that a code word for, “Do you think you could go to bed with me?” Or are we talking about pherenomes here? For in this online world, unlike its more shadowy real-world sister, we have all boldly stated, “I am available.” Picture a huge bar, people milling around with a day-glow profile stuck to their foreheads. Thee next part is more difficult. It requires sorting through thousands of profiles and becoming clever with search criteria to arrive at a place where it’s possible to have chemistry, even with a pretend serial killer.
Am I dreaming?
Please don’t burst my bubble.
[wpshopcart_add_to_cart id=”1″ ]