Seriously?! (Interrobang)

I thought I had seen or heard of most everything, but this one is truly special. I am incredulous at the stupidity of the situation. Utterly speechless. Almost. So, in my teaser of a day or two ago I let you know that I had another story to tell. Well, it got more interesting and ridiculous tonight. I'll start at the beginning.

My friend, who I consider to be among the best daters I've ever met (she's easy to talk to, genuinely interested in people, and eternally optimistic even when she's sad) suggested I try this dating website she was on, because it was free, and there are a large variety of people on it. Now, I've had enough of online dating not to pay for it again (yes, I have done that), but I hadn't been meeting anyone and figured what the hell. Little to nothing had come of it until about two weeks ago, when I got a message from a guy who sounded like he had actually read my profile, and was actually interested in getting to know me. He was straightforward, and within a short time asked if I was free to meet for drinks. We ended up at a place in Tribeca during that crazy sun-dershower last week, got along really well, and closed the night with a kiss and plans to meet again a few days from then at a tapas place he was excited to show me. Great. Fantastic. I go home and start thinking maybe I won't have to go speed-dating, and coyly tell you the same. Just as in the great tragedies of Sophocles however, hubris felled the hero (or anti-hero).

First, the guy texts me the night before we're supposed to meet up and tells me there was a fire in his building, his apartment is filled with smoke and thus he has to postpone our second date. I, being the slightly jaded New-Yorker I am, thought to myself "elaborate ruse or legitimate excuse?" I ended up giving him the benefit of the doubt, even though Google could find no report of the alleged fire. (Yes, I googled it, what?) A day or two later I get another text from him wanting to reschedule for Friday. I was free, so after a mental pat on the back for not having gone pscyho-accusatory about the "fire", I texted him back and agreed. Now, I changed jobs two years ago, but still really love the people I used to work with. They were having their start-of-summer party the same day, which I was informed of via facebook wall post by one of said former coworkers. In a wall-to-wall reply, I mentioned that I might not be able to go, because my current coworkers might want to go out, and then I had plans at 8. The next part of my comment is where things started to be set in motion. I then said, sarcastically and flippantly, as that is my wont, "but if they suck maybe I can meet you out after". I really meant no offense to the new guy, and forgot that we were even facebook friends and that he might see this on my profile, as I don't do the news feed thing (or maybe I do and don't realize and that's how he saw it). I honestly did not think I would be meeting them out late, as I was excited for date #2 with the new guy. I also only realized on my way out that new guy may have read the post and that I would be embarrassed if he misconstrued it. But then I thought, well he must realize I was being facetious (I don't really take myself too seriously, am sarcastic, and thought that those qualities are easily noticed after spending say, an evening alone in my company), and who really cares about facebook anyway? Apparently, new guy does. I got to our appointed meeting place a few minutes early, looked for him, and then proceeded to wait. After 20 minutes I texted. 20 minutes after that with no response I figured I had been stood up. So I did end up with the former coworkers at their post-dinner bar. By the by, if you are a girl and haven't had the raspberry UFO you should definitely try it!

The former coworkers commented on how stupid this guy must be to leave me hanging (thanks guys!), and I wondered out loud if facebook could have had anything to do with it. We made it a pretty early night, as you can see from the timing of this post, and I got home and checked my email to see if there was any note from the guy, thinking maybe there had been some sort of emergency, still unwilling to believe I could've gotten stood up for no good reason by a guy who had previously been so interested. There was nothing, so I decided to check facebook to see if there had been any chatter there. Except apparently, we are no longer friends. Not only that, but I couldn't even find him in a general search, so I'm pretty sure he blocked me. Am I the only person who thinks this reaction is a little out of proportion? I mean, if you're upset about the comment okay, but to not even cancel the date? To not give me the benefit of the doubt when you don't know me very well and thus could not possibly know what, if anything was meant by a comment made to somebody else, who doesn't know you, on facebook? To then block me, because I am such a horrible and evil person you never want to have contact with me again? Too bad I have your cell phone number jerk, or maybe he changed that too. Seriously? He's 33. And despite my tendency to speak before I think, I'm awesome. Are we really not mature enough to ask what that stupid fucking comment was about? Fine, then I guess he wasn't the man I was looking for anyway.

Oh, and the interrobang is a really fantastically named punctuation mark brought to my attention by Annie, which consists of an exclamation point superimposed on a question mark (or vice-versa, it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma there), which as far as I know cannot be accurately reproduced on blogger but which I have tried to represent in the title in spirit if not in actuality.