Here we are…Bachelor Number 5.

Sorta.

If January was an embarrassment of no-shows, February was mostly a cluster fuck of bad timing.  Ultimately, Bachelor Number 5 had a lot more qualities about him that worked against our compatibility than just bad timing, though.

That bad timing was mostly a product of my being sick for a week, struggling to get fully recovered for another and then dealing with some pretty hostile BS at work for a third week.

The free spaces in the shortest month of the year outside of those three weeklong timeframes didn’t really leave much for me to work with.

Sidebar:  the only man on my early morning MAX to work this morning happens to be a cute, lil twink nerd.  He’s mostly sleeping a couple rows up from me, but just woke up long enough to stick his finger in his nose and then bite his nail.

I’m screaming inside.

Ok, so…Bachelor Number 5.

In a moment of questionable optimism – and probable inebriation – I created an OKStupid dating profile.

While it’s not overtly a hook up site/app, it still qualifies as asocial media in my book because of its swipe culture:  left to reject, right to express interest.  These swipes are encouraged based mostly on the picture, you don’t really get a lot of data about the person until you open their profile.  Really, we’re dismissing people based on looks here, aka:  fuckability.  But it’s got an addictive quality to it, this swiping.

Once you actually click on someone’s profile, you can see what they have to say for themselves.  What they like, how they spend their time.  People are encouraged to answer questions ranging anywhere from values to politics to dating to sex in order to help the algorithm determine compatibility with the most important person in the world:  you.

Still sounds fun, but it gets a little tedious.  Questions aren’t filtered based on the basics you provide in your profile, so I get questions like, “I think I would enjoy experimenting sexually with someone who is the same gender”

Definitely me.  ✔️

But in the case of Bachelor Number 5, I could also discover that we are both tops, so that was helpful…if not poorly timed since I swiped first and found this out later.

We had only traded a few messages beyond the initial “Hey, how are ya”.  It wasn’t something he was making a priority, a minimum of a day passing between my messages and his responses.

I tend to read that as a sign, part of my E.O.G. charm as The Silver Fox and Little Buddy have pointed out.  In this experiment, I was keeping that impatience in check.

Over the course of the week we traded messages, he went to visit Shittatle for the weekend.  I tried engaging him about what neighborhood, whether he goes up often, how I lived there for a decade, etc.  He still just gave me…not much to go with.  So, by the time he messaged me back on Tuesday after his trip, I’d learned he was a top and not really looking for friends.  At least not putting any efforts into creating friendship with me.  That partnered with his geographic undesirability – Beaverton, if you can believerton that – it was pretty easy for me to check him off of my list of potential mates.

Swipe.

But, February wasn’t a total bust.  I did finally get a chance to connect with one of my January Bachelors early in the month.

He’s a cute kid.  Twenty seven, now, not really a kid…but he hasn’t really come into his own yet.  I feel his struggle.  But I’m not engaging with it, as is my usual reflex.

So, y’know…coming out of last year without that habit was good for me.

Remember, this particular bachelor is someone I tried to meet unsuccessfully three years ago.  To his credit, this time around he was dealing with my grumpy old man-ness with jovial alacrity.

Or not really paying attention.

Speaking of geographic undesirability, he lives about 30 minutes away in Vantucky.  With me not driving, that puts a lot on him, effortwise, if we’re gonna see one another.  Which is another solid plus for him since I don’t even have a parking space to offer a guest.

When we finally got together, it was just a shared bottle of wine at my place.  He took about a half a glass to warm up and then it was off to the races.

Talking, you depraved perverts.

Unfortunately, he was kind of just barfing out his life story, not conversing.  But we finished the bottle and I learned some stuff about him.  I didn’t get a lot of talking in, so he probably only learned that I could listen and decided I was cute…which is always nice to hear.

We decided to do it again the following week, so naturally, I had to get the plague that was going around.

Whaddyagunnado?

We texted throughout the week and he was gracious about my frailty, but over the next ten days or so…pffft.

His responses started getting further spaced.  And shorter.  There’s not much I can do with “Hey” greetings or “Yea” responses.  So…I don’t.

Maybe we’re just meant to be acquaintances.  Which is fine…but he is just so darned tasty looking – a feast for these old, lascivious eyes, if you will – that it is a little disappointing.  But ultimately, I want to nourish more than my libido.

Alas, poor Whorick.