Tales from the Vault

As a man, I generally have control over the horrendousness of my dating. Which is not to say that women don’t have control, but they are at a distinct disadvantage when they are primarily being asked out and not doing the asking. I don’t ask out girls when I have reason to believe we’d have a horrible date. But some girls feel obligated to say yes when asked out, and consequently, horrendousness may ensue.

So my repertoire of dating horror stories is less robust than I’d like it to be. But after a decade in the meat market, I’ve accrued a fair number or interesting tales. Sadly, I’m too good of a guy to immediately blog about a bad date, providing real time awkwardness to the world. But I’m not too good of a guy to relate a story that happened some time in the last ten years.

The Picture

At various times and places I’ve ventured into online dating. I have my reasons. My failure at offline dating primarily. But I feel like it’s a good medium for me as I’m far wittier with a time delay between interactions. And so long as online dating doesn’t replace my efforts in regular-type dating, I see no problem with having it as a hobby or series of social experiments.

I’m a horrible commuter, and terrible long distance friend, so I never bother to contact anyone outside of my state. And I’m doing this mostly as a hobby or Hail Mary pass, so I’m not going to actually spend money to be on a legitimate dating site. So my pool of local people on free Mormon dating sites that I don’t already know is generally pretty small.

In that pool was Becky. Her name wasn’t Becky, or at least I don’t think it was, as I don’t actually remember it. She was cute enough and local enough and so I contacted her. If I remembered what we small talked about I would tell you, but since I can’t remember it was probably quite dull. Turns out that Becky didn’t live close by me currently, as she was at college, which was at another location. But our small talk was successful enough that she wanted to exchange numbers, and we left off saying one of us would call the other one sometime, maybe, if we got bored enough.

A couple months later I got a text message with a picture attached. The picture was of Becky modeling a thong.

Now I hadn’t actually entered Becky into my phone, so it took me a while to figure out who this girl was that was sending me pictures of her in her unders. She hadn’t included this photo, nor any photo of her at this angle, in her online free Mormon dating profile. But with the grainy photo and my wit I figured out who this was from. There was no message, only the picture. A mystery.

I don’t know what your first reaction would be, but mine was to immediately go to my roommate’s room and show him the picture. It helped that it was the night before a test and thus we were both keenly excited to do approximately anything other than study. And looking at innocently obtained pictures of girls in lingerie and debating their meaning fit the bill.

Not long after showing him the picture and earning his jealousy, a flood of texts came in. To paraphrase: Oh my gosh! I didn’t mean to send that to you! So so sorry! Don’t hate me!

I’ve often wondered if this was actually an accident, or a ploy to gain my attention. If it was an accident, who was the intended recipient for such a text message of her bared buttocks? What’s the point of modeling a thong? You might as well be modeling a bookmark. So many questions, which never were answered.

To further complicate this complicated situation, I didn’t text. Up until the last year I adamantly refused to text. So here I was with an inflammatory text, a whole series of apologetic texts, and I was going to be forced to call someone I’ve never talked to before to discuss the issue of her bared behind. But my alternative was to do nothing and leave her dangling in the wind, so to speak.

So I called her and she apologized again. She didn’t want to talk about the picture, which to a large extent invalidated the apology in my eyes. Turns out that she was in town for the week, so we again left off that maybe one of us would call the other and we’d get together. I said I needed to get back to studying, which, in fact, I did.

A few minutes later I got a text: Take a walk with me? This concept of studying didn’t sink in with her. Also the fact that it was 1 AM and taking a walk with someone without other tasks to accomplish is still an odd activity. I wish that I’d blown off studying for a couple hours and had let this train wreck occur, but sadly I was responsible. I had images of her throwing me against a tree and again inappropriately displaying her various items of clothing. She was a hockey player, which somehow made this a more likely scenario in my mind. But no, studying would be my fate that night.

I still have the picture on my old phone, as a memento. We did get together later that week, but she didn’t throw me against a tree or show me anything scandalous. She did turn out to be an odd rabid Obama supporting, Jack Mormon kind of girl with limited social skills and no driving skills. But the lackluster quality of that date pales in comparison to the bizarre first text. To this day, every time I get a text with a picture attached, I wonder to myself, is Becky back? Or more importantly, is her backside back?