Others people's online dates that connect to my offline dating lesbian stories

I decided to write this story as this week was the 4th year anniversary of it...  I don't usually remember dates or years but on this occasion, I will never forget... It all begins at a bus stop with someone else online date...

As I wrote in the previous post, in September of 2008 I was very close to a very handsome Spanish gay man named Pedro. He was THE MASTER of online dating, he had met most of his long-term boyfriends in the cyberspace...

At the time, he had a long-distance boyfriend but kept his profile active as he was also 'new in town' and wanted to meet gay people to go out... He contacted this guy who slightly reminded me of a young Michael Jackson (before he turned white) due to his fantastic hair and face shape.

He and Pedro were supposed to meet that week for coffee but they recognized each other at the 25 bus stop at Sainsbury's on Lewes Road and introduced themselves on the spot. The situation was a bit uncomfortable for them, meeting a future online date sooner than expected, and for me as well, as I was there too...

Because Pedro had a boyfriend, Chris and him became friends and so we started to hang out... For about 2 years Chris was part of our lives...

The three of us used to go out to Revenge, went for long walks in the countryside, or just bumped into each other on campus and spend the evening together in Falmer bar playing Jenga.... we used to have long conversations about homosexuality, coming out, love and life in general...

Chris and I were both in the 'accepting our sexuality' phase and, in a way, we understood and supported each other... He told me a couple of times about a lesbian friend of his that I needed to meet because we would probably like each other.... but unfortunately, he never introduced me to her.....

One summery day on June 2010, he decided to terminate his life and hanged himself in the woods at the back of Sussex University Campus...

Two days before he did it, we bumped into each other on the 25 bus. It was Friday and I was going to Falmer Bar to work a long shift, so I told him that I will call him that Saturday or Sunday so we could hang out before leaving Brighton...

When we said goodbye I had a very strange and powerful feeling, and the words: "this is the last time I'm going to see him" crossed my mind... I thought that I was not going to see him again because I was moving out of Brighton in a few weeks' time and he was going to Swaziland for the summer the following week...

We both had uncertain futures so I thought that crossing paths again was going to be difficult... 

When he got off the bus, I took a "mental picture" of him while he was waving me goodbye..... he was at the same bus stop where we met 2 years ago, looking at me with his big sad eyes.... and I unconsciously perceived that there was something wrong...

That Sunday night, I woke up in the middle of the night and thought that I needed to call Chris... I was feeling bad because I said to him that I was going to call him to hang out, but I didn't in the end as I was very busy with my dissertation and work...

I was taking a lot of shifts at the bar at the time because I needed the money for the summer... so I forgot to call him... The morning after it was already too late to make that call...

When I got the news, I was shocked, in a way, I always thought that Chris and I were very much alike... we both were struggling with our sexuality and coming out but, we both believed in finding someone, probably as a consequence of watching too many Hollywood films. We were also both gay and single and didn't have that much luck in finding love in the past... So, in a way, I related to Chris's state of mind...

I didn't know what to think... He had given up in life... just like this... I didn't know how to react... In 2010, I have to confess that I was also having a tough time myself.... without noticing, I started to slowly isolate my self from the world and that's probably why I didn't notice Chris' depression at the time,

I was in an odd place, I was feeling very lonely and vulnerable... I wasn't happy with my life at the time, but I never considered giving up...  his defeat was a big hit for me.....

After his funeral, we went out to Revenge as it was what he would have liked us to do... His whole family was there, his mum, his brothers and sister, his friends and I finally met the 'lesbian' girl that he wanted me to meet... We didn't talk, she approached me on the dance floor... I was covered in tears... she grabbed me and we started kissing...., we didn't talk.... just kissed...

I was drunk as Chris' brother kept buying Tequila shots for everyone... We kept on kissing for a while and I ended up at her place... we talked for hours about life and death and the darkness that we all have inside while sharing a spliff and more booze.... we cuddle for a bit and then went upstairs to her bed and..... (you know I never give details....) Finally, I fell asleep in her bed after several days of insomnia due to Chris' death.......

The morning after, we exchanged phone numbers. We met up that week for an afternoon coffee that turned into a night out at Revenge.... but then she moved back home for the summer and I left Brighton a few weeks after.... so it faded away after that very intense connection that night, probably because of the circumstances...

Nothing good can ever start from a drunk night after a funeral... I know through Facebook that she is now engaged to a guy... I guess that she was one of those "college lesbians" who hung her lumberjack flannels shirts and Dr Martens boots after Uni and paired up with a guy from her hometown to live happily ever after...

I don't really know if this story has any moral... I guess some experiences in life are difficult to understand and I'm still trying to make sense of Chris' death..... But what is clear is that the pressure that society puts on minorities to become who they are hasn't had a big role in Chris' death...

He was a mix-race gay boy living in Swaziland where he was not white enough for the white upper-class parties but not black enough to hang out with the other half... He was also an extremely sensitive gay man trying to find love in the superficial gay men's world in which muscles and one-night stands are the currency...

I know that suicide among the young lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender community is higher than among the general population and Chris was just a victim. I myself briefly thought about ending my life when I realized I was gay, the thought of not following the rules of society, not living up to society's standards and the idea of living isolated because I was following my heart, put that thought into my mind, but fortunately, I never considered it seriously as an option as after all, coming out was more challenging in my mind that what it actually was at the end.....

I can tell you for a fact that: "It gets better" and only with little changes we can aspire to create a society in which minorities of any kind will feel safe to express themselves and to love freely who they want without being judged...

I would like to dedicate this post and picture to Chris as he would have enjoyed crossing the street in this new rainbow that they have painted in Brighton :)!

My offline dating lesbians stories - My first "one night stand" story

I decided to write today an offline story... not that I've run out of online dating stories yet... but I feel that the ones untold yet are either too long or too boring for a Sunday afternoon.... + this story follows in time "My 'I'm new in town' story"... so in a way, it makes sense to fit it here in the blog...

One Halloween night in 2008, just after moving into Brighton and meeting the PhD student lesbian student, I went out with my new Spanish gay man's kick...

I have a tendency to always have a gay man as a best friend in my life, and in 2008 it was Pedro, a very handsome Spanish guy that was always super positive about life and completely open about his sexuality and me, that I was still struggling a bit with mine, his company and guidelines through the accepting process was very appreciated...

 We used to go out to Revenge every weekend, sometimes it was just the two of us... but some other sometimes we dragged some other people along with us........  anyway, back to my story...

One Halloween "Girls on Top" Thursday at Revenge, I went out with my Spanish gay friend to dance... Since I was young and working in a bar, my tolerance for alcohol was slightly higher than these days... so I think that at least I double the number of recommended units...

I lost my friends and I ended up dancing with this gorgeous-looking blonde girl dressed up as a feminine version of Tom Cruise in 'Top Gun' with a pair of RayBan aviator sunglasses and baggie military-looking pair of dungarees...

We danced and kissed and.... the next thing I remember....  we were on the bus to my place...  It was a fun night with a stranger whose name I quickly forgot the morning after... We exchanged numbers but we didn't contact each other again...

I bumped into her again a few months later at Revenge. She told me that a few days after we met a friend of hers threw her phone on the Thames River... so, she lost my phone number...

Really...? flying phones that end up in the Thames is a common thing that can happen and I should believe her....(?) Well, I was 23 so I did have faith in humanity and I believed her...

We exchange phone numbers again and we meet up the day after for drinks... My friend the zombie M&M from Canada was visiting me that weekend so she decided to invite another gay guy for a double date...

They were both very good-looking, he was a model in London and she was a very attractive photography student at Brighton University.... But we didn't have much to talk about, unfortunately...

My friend the zombie M&M's described the date as Ernest Hemingway meeting with a Bimbo Blonde on his side and I felt a bit the same way... they were not even able to situate Spain in a map and their favourite movie was "The Goonies"... They were not very intellectual material but they were beautiful...

The gay incredibly handsome guy ended up vomiting in the toilet and the pretty blonde had to walked him home as the doorman at the "Pav Tav" kicked him out... and that was the end...

She send me few messages after that night.... but, I was secretly in love with a colleague at work that of course was not gay and showed no interest in me whatsoever... but well... I always seem to choose the wrong person to have a crush on...

Do we choose who we love?

My "I'm new in town" story

This is the story of my second online date....

At the end of August 2008, I moved to Brighton for the first time. I have moved to Brighton twice now... I guess that I can't stay too far for too long from this city...

When I first arrived, I got a room for few days on Sussex campus, but soon I moved into a room that an Italian guy was subletting for the summer on the top of the pub Thomas Kemp in Kemptown...

The flat had three rooms, I was in the biggest one, another very quiet guy was subletting another one and a half- British half- Israeli guy was in last room next to mine.

For a brief period of time, the half-Brit-half-Israeli guy was the only person that I knew in Brighton.... I didn't know anyone here before I moved in so, soon I found myself hanging out with a 24 years-old, frustrated saxophonist, that fitted perfectly the stereotype of an early-twenties stoner: baggie clothes from his teens days as a skater, a general scruffy appearance from someone who has recently moved out of his parents house and still struggling to keep up with laundry duties and cleaning chores.

He had an incredible messy room that looked as if a hurricane had passed and had thrown all his belongings on the  floor. He was really funny, one day, I saw him staring at a painting from the Italian guy that was on the wall for about half an hour because he was super stoned...

Another day, he made an attempt to cook me an uneatable English baked potato with beans while he was high as hell as a payment from all of the food that he was stealing from my fridge on his regular night munchies... He was very funny and nice, but after hanging out with him for a couple of days, I realized that I needed to meet some new people...

I went back to my account on GaydarGirls that I hadn't opened since my first online dating story. I was determined to expand my social circle in Brighton that at that moment consisted only on a very stoned guy that enjoyed to play the saxophone at 4am in the morning since he had no concept of time whatsoever due to the fact that he was constantly stoned.....

I send a couple of messages to few girls that seem nice and approachable on the site. All of the messages started with something like: "I'm new in town and I would like to meet some new people ...". We all have send or received a message from someone that is new in town... it is a nice strategy to approach people on an online site, in stead of just sending a message because you are miserably lonely and want to get laid.... which sounds desperate, you now have an excuse.... you are "new"... and as a newbie, you have an excuse to approach strangers on the Internet without being judged....

Unfortunately, the excuse only lasts for the first few months that you are new in a city....

Since I barely use GaydarGirls and, I haven't edited my profile's headline in the past 6 years, I think that I am still using the tactic of "I'm new in town" as the headline on my profile... Oh well..., considering that I have moved a couple of times in the past 6 years... Is not that I've been lying all the time.... (mental note: change your status in the 'old' lesbian online site of Gaydargirls..., just in case.... New phone online dating applications not always deliver quality dates, at least this old site had provided me with some fun dates on the past.... )

Back to my story...., so I send few messages and one girl answered me saying that she was also new in town and that she would love to meet up for a drink. It all went very quickly... We meet up that Thursday for a quick drink but we ended up spending almost the whole weekend together.....

We both had a lot of time on our hands and too little contacts in Brighton... She had just moved down from Edinburgh to start a PhD in Sociology at Sussex in September. She was using the last few days of the summer to settle down into her new place and getting around in the city.

She was 27-years-old, very tall and slim, Scottish (without the accent....) with big blue eyes. Her conversation was very intellectual... she talked as the aspiring academic she wanted to become and I, at the time 23... found very attractive the idea of hanging out with a doctoral student. I've always been a bit of a sapiophile... 

I didn't know at the time that I will ended up becoming an academic myself, so in a way, it was like looking at me in the future... She was who I wanted to be when I "grew up"....

We had few night dates and few day ones..., I remember one afternoon that we were hanging out in my room and we were about to watch a movie when my stoner housemate came in his underwear and sat in the middle of the sofa with a spliff ready to watch the movie with us...

No one invited him, but I didn't want to kick him out since he himself did not have many contacts in Brighton either and he was probably as lonely as the two new lesbians in town... So I let him staying and watch the movie with us....

When the movie finished, he left to his room... The day after he confessed that he was hopping to have a threesome with us....  Of course a very typical straight male thiking, they meet two "non butchy" looking lesbian and instantly they think that they are in a porn movie and that we are going to act accordingly.... of course the threesome never happen... but I don't blame him for trying.... you need to act on your fantasies... but sometimes your fantasies are not others people's fantasies.... Anyway, he was a funny character.... I wonder if he still around Brighton...

The new lesbian in town and I had a brief thing for about a week or more, but soon after September came, we had to wake up, Greenday style.... the summer was over and the academic year began....

I started my courses and also, I started to work at the Student Union bars at freshers week. My routine went from having all of the time in the world to not having a minute to myself.... I spend the first week of term working everyday serving "snake bites" and "Jagger bombs" to a thousands of new University party hunter students. It was fun.... I met a lot of new people, new people from the new house I moved to, new people from the bars where I was working, and new people from my courses....

I went from having only a couple of numbers on my phone to have a pretty busy social life.... the bright Phd student was not my only "normal" contact in Brighton anymore...... and also, probably for her, my role in her life shifted to the background too... after the term started, it was not easy to meet up anymore.... we both had different social commitments and after trying for a while to arrange a next date without any success, she ended up telling me on the phone that perhaps we should take sometime off... which considering that we spend a lot of time together too fast, it was a very sensible thing to do...

We are still friends on Facebook and I have seen her around Sussex campus from time to time... She proof read few of my essays that term.... (she offered to do it....) but we didn't properly meet up again or kept in touch apart from the occasional 2 to 3 minutes conversation on campus every once in a while... I knew from the begging that she was not going to be the love of my life, but I was new in town and I wanted to expand my social circle.... and perhaps, I was trying to find a new adventure while waiting for the academic year and "reality" to start...

I enjoyed the time we spend together but, I knew that we both were in very different places in our lives and that we were not going to work once the academic year began... but it was a nice "I'm new in town" + "end of the summer" story.... Is it true that we are more likely to fall in love and have more stories when we first move to a place?

According to research we are more likely to fall in love during holidays and during times of change in your life since we have apparently a more open mindset..... Should I move to a new town again just so I can pull off again my excuse for contacting people online without the desperate lonely smell that an dating website message always has hoping that perhaps, this time I will find the love of my life....????

Naahhh.... I love Brighton too much to move out....

I want to believe...

This story started after my disaster with Lilly... My new year's resolution was to meet new people, 2014 was going to be the year of love... well, there is still time for this to happen, the year is not over yet...

When I got back from Christmas, I was reading 'The Rosie project' and I decided to copy the protagonist's scientific approach to love and message my highest match on OkCupid.

Of course, I should have read the end of the book to understand that there are no perfect scientific matches when it comes to love and that love finds you by chance...

If you want to read the book, this is not a spoiler, you know from the title that he is going to end up with Rosie... They should have named it 'The Wife Project', it would have maintained the suspense until the end... anyway it is still the best book I've read this year and it is definitely worth reading it...

Back to my story, I found my highest match on OkCupid in Brighton, 89% match but... she was not my type...

She seems a bit cold and distant from the pictures. In one of her pictures, she reminded me of someone I know that has a facial expression of constantly smelling a fart (The use of 'fart-smelling' to label some a bit snooty comes from my friend the zombie M&M).

However, I firmly believe in science and psychological tests (after all, are what I do for a living.... ) and pictures might not always reflect reality, so I send her a message. I was still not too convinced about meeting her, but it turned out that she was living with ... let's call him Mike, a quirky nice guy that went to class with me in my first year at Sussex.

If she was a friend of Mike, she should be a cool person, so I agreed to meet her at the White Rabbit.

When the day came, I wanted to cancel... I was looking for an excuse, anything to not go and pretend that online dating is a natural way to meet people, anything to avoid the awkward experience of meeting a stranger in that uncomfortable situation that I've been in several times with bad outcomes...

I was not feeling like making an effort but finally, I pushed myself to go...We were meeting at the White Rabbit but ended up in the same coffee place where I met Lilly and the American runaway married girl (for a change)..... The waitresses might think that I am some kind of serial dater lesbian or something... judging from this blog, it might actually be the truth...


She arrived late, I supposed that arriving late was part of her persona as she looked and acted like a star diva from a black & white film noir... When I saw her, I thought that she was possibly the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen.... it was classical beauty, there is a difference between attraction and beauty. Tinderella was attractive, but not particularly beautiful...

When I saw her, I realized that I'd seen her before in town, after all, there are not that many tall ginger girls in Brighton that dress in 50's vintage clothes, Brighton is a small town... I remember seeing her passing by on North Street and I thought that she checked me out...... but that must have been a year a go or so as I don't catch the bus on North Street anymore...

Back to the date... It was possibly the best and worst first date that I had in a very long time.... the worst because she was making all of the questions and comments that you are not supposed to make on a first date.

She asked me if I had any illegal addiction (what kind of question is that on a first date?). She also told me about her sob story and hospital experiences and about her special connection with her mother.... which is also something that you shouldn't tell on a first date to a stranger as it sounds a bit like Norman Bates on Psycho..... Don't get me wrong, I have a good relationship with my mother, but I think that bringing that up as a topic of a conversation on a first date with a stranger sounds weird...

The worst thing was when she called me a 'small person'.... well, I am not a tall person either but I won't say that I am a 'small' one. Does 6'3 (160 cm) for women qualify for being called a small person? Her comment made me feel as if I was some kind of a dwarf or something... I guess it was not her intention, I justified all of these wrong questions and comments due to the fact that she said that she spend a very long time in a hospital and perhaps, her social skills and interactions with people maybe were a bit....  undeveloped or... just different from the average person...

AH! I just remember that she also said that she was going to have babies within the next 5 years!!! Brilliant comment to make on a first date, your fertility agenda for your near future.....  although for some reason I suppose that it is a very lesbian topic of conversation...

ALSO! She said at some point something like: "people YOUR  age". She clearly called me old....!!! She was only 3 years younger... OK, I am 28, but I think that I am still young..... It is true that maybe I have a bit of a Peter Pan complex as I still live in a student house with 5 other people, but well,... this is the price I pay for having changed my career from marketing manager to doctoral student...

All of the 'worst' balanced out with the 'best' of the date. Despite not being my type and all of her inappropriate comments, I thought that in a way, we connected.

We both knew what it is to be stuck in a bad health situation. That kind of experience impacts your life and, I guess that finding someone that shares that with you, enhances your kinship with them and gives you a strange feeling of connection.

It was also the best date I had in a while because she was a 'believer'. She believed in love truthfully and during the date, she was narrating stories about people that found love... She was a good storyteller and a 'believer' and that compensated all of the rest.

I think that believing truthfully in something is what makes you being able to find it. Only people who believe in love find love... 'Skepticals' will be always waiting for something else, but 'believers' will create their own story...

Was I ready to believe and create my own story with another believer? I felt that I was stuck in the motto from the famous X-Files Mulder's office poster that said: 'I want to believe', I was feeling more like an 'in-betweener', someone who really wants to believe in love, but not feeling love stops you from believing in love and not believing in love stops you from finding love..... so I was feeling stuck in a circle and perhaps, it was time to break the pattern, Could a 'believer' be the key to break the circle.... ???

The first date had its 'good' and 'bads' that I thought that I would have time to balance them carefully and decide if she was worth a second date. However, when we were leaving, I said something about her ride home and she misunderstood me and thought that I was asking her out for a second date... so I didn't argue and went with the flow...(She had hearing aids in both ears....).

There was a second date, and she took me to a posh restaurant.

The funny thing is that during the whole date, I was trying to remember from were did I know the lesbian-looking waitresses... she clearly recognized me and we had an awkward moment of 'hey! I know you....!' but I didn't say anything as I was with my date... Where did I know her from? She was clearly a lesbian, and in Brighton, I know a lot...

Do I know her from an internet site?... I think that I would have remembered that... Where did I know her from....?

Finally, two days later it hit me.... she was working in the same building as me when I was working in marketing about two years ago now. She was the mail girl... it's funny how you take someone out of their context and your mind is unable to recognize the person...

Back to the date.... during the second date, despite being distracted trying to remember where did I know the waitress from, we had time to talk a bit more. She was telling me about her work and career projects and I was trying to find the connection that I thought we had on the first date.... but somehow it was not there...

There was something about her that whenever our eyes would meet she would look away... Was it shyness or did she simply didn't like me?

The second date left me with mixed feelings... After that, we didn't have much 'alone' time. Our third date was 'cinema with friends.... and our fourth date was her Birthday party, so she was surrounded by people all the time... at that party, whenever I was trying to talk to her and join her group of conversation, she would somehow find an excuse to go somewhere else and walk away.

I came to the conclusion that she didn't like me at all... not even like a friend as she avoided me all night.... but then... why did she invite me to her Birthday in the first place?

After her Birthday we kept in touch so I asked her to come by my house for a 'game night' with my housemates and some other friends.

We do game nights every now and then and I thought that it was a good opportunity to spend more time with her and see if there was something or if we were going to be just friends...

One hour after she arrived with Mike, she said that she was tired and needed to go home.... leaving her housemate Mike at the 'game night'...

OK, right! now it all makes sense, it was obvious that her friend Mike liked my beloved gay housemate from the night we went to the cinema and therefore, she invited me to her Birthday to get them together.... too bad that my gay friend was out of town that night.... now everything started to make sense.... but then.... why did she ask me to go out for dinner again by message? I was confused...

A couple of weeks later we finally met up again, only the two of us, it was a good opportunity to see if her only interest in meeting me was due to my handsome French gay housemate.

We went to the beach for coffee the two of us and it was nice... but again, after about one hour she had to leave.... and then, it took us a while to get back in touch... I hate to leave things unfinished so possibly under the bad influence of a gay man, I asked her through WhatsApp about what was happening...

I wanted to talk to her in person, but it seem impossible to find a suitable time for both to meet up and in the meantime several weeks had passed since our first date... I send her a cute 'make-it-or break-it' message, with a movie reference included, asking her if she thought of me as something else or just friends...

I know that this is the kind of message that you should not send to someone that you met online but well,... I wanted to know if she was interested... I think that in a way, I knew the answer already.... she was not interested in me....  but I wanted to believe, I think that I was more interested in her because she was a 'believer' and a good storyteller than anything else...

I wanted her to convince me that love exists with her stories, and perhaps create the perfect plot for a book or movie: "The highest scientific match turns into love...." but my attempt to trust science to find me love ended with a WhatsApp message with the words 'but let's be friends....' which of course it is just what people always say but never actually happen...

Now I know, after finishing 'The Rosie Project' and my own experience with online dating that your highest match on a website might not be your other half...

Perhaps, I need to do like the protagonist in the book and ask out the first girl that walks through my door, that might be the way to find my Rosie.... but again... 'The Rosie Project' is a fiction book and stories like that don't happen in real life....  Or is it that not believing that those stories could happen in real life makes you not have those kinds of stories in your life?

My Tinderella story...

This story begins with a new phone application called Tinder. I thought at first that the app was very "straight" oriented when my housemates showed it to me but, I still opened an account to try it. I believe that you always need to be open to exploring new ways of finding love but, I didn't really enjoy the way of swiping profiles right and left. Choosing a love partner should not be based on a first look impression so, after a few right and left swaps and got bored and disenchanted.

A few days later, while I was struggling with a complicated statistical analysis for work, I got a notification from the app on my phone that I had received a message from a girl called Natasha. Sexy name I thought so, I opened her message:

- Hello Beautiful...

I like receiving compliments from an online strangers, but I replied with my "ready-made" usual online dating answer that aims to move the conversation to the offline face-to-face territory:

- Do you live in Brighton? Do you want to go for coffee sometime?

She answered that she did live in Brighton and that she rather skip the coffee and invited me to her house straight away...

I was a bit shocked but turned on at the same time.... to much intellectual work that morning and I needed a break...  But... Going into a stranger house in the middle of the day? It was only 12 and I probably should be thinking about getting some lunch.

She insisted:

- I've got an hour to kill, I think that you should stop questioning yourself and come and have an adventure. It will make a hell of a story... (exact message... but with some punctuation and grammar corrected)

WOW!!!.... That was direct! Is she a psycho....??? I should close the app, delete her conversation and block her right now... But... if I started writing this post is because I didn't...

She sends me a third message:

- We are young. We will die one day. I want to have interesting stories in mine...

Hell yeah! She is right. I was actually having an existentialist crisis that week (or maybe that month.... or maybe I been having it this whole year.....???) and I was feeling adventurous so, I accepted her invitation.

Google maps indicated that her house was only 12 minutes away. I got ready and made my way.

But... What I am doing??? I am going crazy???? Going into a stranger's house in the middle of the day when I have a complicated statistical analysis to finish.... and I also have to do my groceries... and do my laundry... and..... when I realized, I was ringing her doorbell.

She opened a sateen rope and she was already in her underwear. She was holding two glasses of a sparkling alcoholic beverage... Oh WOW!!! I was not expecting that when I woke up this morning...

Well, I have to be honest here and say that despite the exciting situation, the environment was not as exotic and luxurious as you might be imagining right now... The rope was likely to be from H&M. The glasses were plastic cheap glasses from a £1 shop and, the sparkling thing did not even qualified to be called wine...  But... What the hell... She was a very sexy stranger in her underwear... and she was inviting me in...

I took the glass and downed it pretty fast and then.... well, there was not much talking after that... (I leave the following hour open to your imagination...)

The pillow talk started with her telling me that she was waiting for a friend to come with a van to help her move to another house on the other side of town. She said that she had a pretty busy day ahead of packing and moving. I suddenly realized that the entire house was packed in boxes and only the bed seem to have been left untouched by the moving operation.

Well, I had my statistical analysis waiting for me at home, and my food shopping.... and, my laundry... and, my house chores... So, I cut short the pillow talk and made the first move to dress again.

For whatever strange reason, when I was at her place the thought of asking her if she was going to the gym kept prompting into my head. However, I never made the question as I didn't want to sound like a stalker trying to find out her weekly routines.

Before I left, she told me that she studied at the same university and department that I am currently working... and that she liked my Chemical Romance which was playing on the radio.... (as opposed to the Music-Nazi girl that declared her deepest hate for them on our first and only date).

We exchanged phone numbers, but we didn't contact each other again. However, how small is Brighton that I bumped into her that following Tuesday. Of course, she was at my usual body balance Tuesday class. I guess that my unconscious mind recognized her from the gym and kept prompting the question of whether she was going to the gym into my mind as a conversational cue or some sort of strange mind connection.

Now, I bump into her from time to time at the gym but we barely talk. For all I know she might have a boyfriend (since it says is bi in her Tinder profile....) or a girlfriend.... or she just wanted to experiment... or she might just invite strangers into an empty house every week... All I know is that at least I collected a very interesting experience... However, it would never have happened without the influence of another online date that I met before her (a story that I had actually not been able to write yet... but it will come soon).

Fuck Tinder, I'm single.

This was the story of my Tinderella... I had it once so, I don't think that I will ever go to a stranger's house again in the middle of the day. I've been there, I've done that and, I don't need a T-shirt to remember the experience!


Overall, it was an exciting experience, but the learning was that it is easy to find sex from a dating application where you swipe right and left based on looks but finding romance is a bit more difficult... and I want romance... Can Tinder deliver romance?

My coming out story...

In my last post, I took a stroll down memory lane and recalled my first online date. In this post, I would like to share my very long coming out story... 

I usually like to hear other people's coming out stories. They tend to have the ingredients of self-empowerment and pride that make a good story. However, not everyone has one, some people grew up in an environment in where they didn't need to come out as gays or lesbians... Hopefully, in the future, coming out will be a curious anecdote mentioned in sociology and history books, but for now, the society has not fully accepted same-sex love. Some coming out stories are really painful, but they all found the happy ending that standing up with courage and willingness to live truthfully to yourself and being who you already are brings.

Picture taken in an Art Gallery in L.A. September 2014.

My coming out story has two parts.... first I had to accept who I was and then, I had to lose the fear of what other people would think of me for being who I was. Both parts were a struggle with my own self and both parts of the story are closely connected.

The first part of my coming out story, discovering who I was, happened between age of 16 to about 21. When I look back, everything makes sense now, I was gay but I didn't know what gay was: "The dots only connect looking backwards, not looking forward..." (Steve Jobs, 'How to live before I die')... 

I was in denial of my sexuality because I thought that being gay was being a fat short-hair butchy woman. The society told me that gay was being an outlier runaway and I didn't see myself reflected in that stereotype.

I didn't know many gay people... the only lesbian that I knew was a walking stereotype. This is like the chicken and the egg.... Do lesbians create the stereotype or is the stereotype who creates them?. 

Slowly, I started to understand that a lesbian perhaps was not defined by her clothes and hair style, but by her love for another woman. Then, I started to allow myself to contemplate the possibility that I was maybe experiencing feelings for some women.... However, I tended to block those thoughts in my mind.... I was not supposed to be gay, I was supposed to be normal. 

Now looking back, I can see how I might have had some feelings for women in the past, but didn't really put them into context.... I blocked them and I didn't allow them to grow....

My final Aha-moment happened in my year abroad. I met a girl for whom I was starting to developed those feelings..... It was one of those strange connections that I was not able to label before, but this time it was more intense. Perhaps because I was far from home, or perhaps because I was also slightly older than before and ready to acknowledge my feelings... 

One day, after a trip to the supermarket, I saw her in an intimate situation with a guy, he was whispering in her ear in the corridor of our student accommodation and I was walking by....  Suddenly, I started to feel very bad and I rushed into my room, I closed the door and collapsed on the floor by the intensity of the emotion with all of the bags from the supermarket in my hands... that was my aha-moment. 

It was not just that I was jealous, that I was, it was more about the confirmation that I was gay and had romantic feelings for another woman... (by the way it tuned out that she was not interested in that guy at all....). This was a confirmation more than a revelation, I was in love and it was a girl.... I was gay!.... and now what?

The second part, telling other people, was actually harder. I was afraid of  being disconnected, of being rejected and being labelled as the media stereotype of a lesbian woman... 

I saw my sexuality as a weakness, as something to be a shame of and I was not ready to tell the world. When I saw Brené Brown TedTalk on 'the power of vulnerability', I identified myself with it. She defined shame as "the fear of disconnection... it is something about me, that if other people see I won't be worthy of connection." I could see how for me, being gay was something shameful, something to be afraid of... I was a shame of a part of myself and scared of being rejected.... 

Also, since I labelled myself as gay but I was still in the closet, I started to notice that my friendships were not growing and my connection with my family was getting weaker. This was because, as Brené explains, "In other for connection to happen, we need to allow ourselves to be seen". By not disclosing my sexuality to other people, I was not able to make real connections. By omitting myself, I was creating meaningless moments and that was hurting me and undermining my self-esteem. 

That feeling of isolation is reflected in what my friend calls the 'sad eyes' of closeted people. My friend said that if you look at pictures from before he came out, he was always looking small, fearful, shy and unsecured, he had 'sad eyes'. 

I needed to start slowly to come out to my friends, but it seemed that it was never the right time.... Facing death is how I finally overcame my fear of rejection and I stopped caring about what other people might think of me.

In my year abroad in Canada, I had a moment when all turned white, I was suddenly embracing a peaceful feeling and there was only one thought in my mind: 

"This is it...".

I was hit by a car in a rainy day in the corner of Nicholas Street and MacKenzie King Bridge in Ottawa... Luckily, it wasn't it.... but I had a head concussion and was taken in an ambulance to the nearest Hospital. 

When I was release from the emergency room, in where they kept me lying down with my full back and neck immobilised by the stretcher for hours, I was given a leaflet that it said something like: "You have had a severe head concussion, please don't fall sleep and be monitored as in the next 24h you can die.... "

I had a whole day to process that I could faint and die due to the head concussion or perhaps I might not wake up the next morning..... 

I thought about my life, how I was living it and what it was missing... in this case, love, real connections and honesty were missing in my life. That day, I understood that only YOU live YOUR life, and what others might think, at the end it doesn't matter. You need to collect moments of happiness without worrying about other people's judgements... 

The next morning when I woke up, I thought that I was given a second chance and so I decided to start living my life differently. The first thing to do was coming out of the closet. Luckily, I was 4,000 miles away from home, away from my friends and family, from all of the ties with the society where I grew up. I was in a country where no one knew me... and where being judge didn't matter. 

Picture taken from my room in Ottawa (2006-2007)

One night, after I recovered from my head concussion, my dizziness and some sleepless nights after my accident, I went to a Halloween Party and I met a Spanish guy. He was dressed as a zombie M&M with an adapted costume that he bought at the dollar shop at the Rideau Shopping Center and had decorated it with some fake blood. 

He was funny, I thought that he was gay and that perhaps, I could talked to him about my sexuality. Few days after, I bumped into him in the hall of the Student Residence, he was smoking a cigarette outside and I invited him up for lunch. We talked about the experience of being away, my accident and we made plans to go to a house party together later that week. 

When we met up for buying beer at the liquor store that following night, I decided that carrying 24 bottles of Molson Canadian was the right time to come out. I needed to talk to someone about my feelings and since it seem to never be the right time, I just jumped into it, so I asked him:

"You are gay, right?" I attributed the condition of being gay to my companion first. Classic psychological mechanism of dissociation with the condition until the other party confirms on its part for the fear of displaying their own sexuality first and being perhaps socially rejected.

He smiled at me and nodded

"I think that I'm gay too...." I said. That was the first time that I used the word gay referring to myself out loud.

He smiled again and said:

"You think but, you don't know?"

He had a point. I had not kiss a girl in my life and, of course, I had no previous experience of any kind of intimate contact with the female gender.... It was then when I realised that I needed not just to acknowledge my label in front of other people, I needed to act on it... I needed to explore my sexuality. Being in a foreign country was going to help... 

That night, I also told to a group of people that were friends with the zombie M&M that I was gay. It turned out that one of them was also gay, and another one was bisexual. They were completely OK with me being gay, and for the first time in a while I was connecting with people, I was being myself and it felt good.

The learning from my conversation with the gay zombie M&M was that I need to explore my sexuality.... and in a pool full of international open-minded students in their early twenties, there were a lot of opportunities... 

House parties, sports events and lots of gatherings organized by the University..... However, the girl that I had feelings for was gone... She only stayed for a semester in Canada. I send her an email saying that I liked her after accepting her Facebook friendship request and finding out that she was also interested in women.

She answered back saying that she also liked me but that it was too late.... she has back in Europe and carrying on with her life... fair enough.... you need to take the opportunities when they come along.... and now it was too late.... I was a bit heart broken, but it was my fault, so I accepted my part and moved on....  

One night a lesbian looking girl approached me in a party.  She was actually a friend of the girl I liked before, but she was not my type.....She was short and very intimidating, you could smell that she was gay a mile away due to her tough way of walking around campus and her masculine body language. However, she had an intense deep purple-violet-blue eyes that could easily catch someone eye..... 

She kept on approaching me in parties and one night, I was drunk and I decided that well..., she was not going to be the love of my life, but she was nice and funny and.... available..... So on a drunken night out she became my first girl experiment. 

It wasn't bad, but I just didn't have feelings for her...  This experience confused me more than bringing any clarity about my sexuality.... It was not the intense experience that I was waiting for.... It was more like the experiences that I had in the past with guys....

Therefore, I thought that perhaps, I was not gay after all... I wanted to not to be gay so much.... I could see now how my mind was already trying to justifying my experience: You tried with a girl and didn't really feel anything different that with guys.... therefore, I'm not gay after all.... so maybe I should go back to guys and my life will be easier..... 

A week later from that first girl-experiment night, I was in a party again. I had a few cocktails and got a bit drunk..... My temporal alcoholism probably was due to the fact that I was having a bad month: the girl that I liked said that she liked me too, but she it was too late now.... I was feeling like an idiot for not acting on my feelings at the right time.... then, I tried to explore my sexuality with a girl but didn't go as expected.... so, I was very confused and anxious about my sexuality and love life in general.... 

I started dancing with this French boy. He was cute and tall, with lovely hair and nerdy glasses, a bit like the French version of a mix between Clark Kent and Harry Potter..... 

The night ended up in my room, I needed to see if I wasn't gay after all.... But what were the odds that it turned out that the French guy was in the completely same situation. He was also gay and was trying to see if he definitely didn't like women at all.... as you can imagine the night was not very promising... 

After he left my room, I decided that ending up with a gay guy was perhaps a confirmation sign that I was gay... from all of the available boys at the party, I chose the closeted gay... also, having feelings for a girl before was definitely a sign that I shouldn't ignore.... just because my experiment with a girl didn't work out, it didn't mean that I was not going to develop feelings for another girl in the future.... 

At the end of the day the 'feeling it or not' it is a matter of having feelings for the person, and I have to confess that I did not have feelings for my first girl experiment... I guess we all made mistakes... The moral of the story this time was that I needed to experiment with a girl that I had actual feelings for and stop messing around....

For a while, I was doing my thing without getting involved with anyone.... I started to go swimming.... and then, when I was doing my thing... without any plan I met a French girl.... 

We bummed into each other at house parties and at the poll quite a lot... She was very nice and had a nice conversation. We always ended up the swimming session chatting at the sauna.... or we were in a house party we would talked for a very long time.... she had the gay vibe and few of my friends confirmed it too.... 
I wanted to make a move.... Once I tried to shift the conversation to the gay zone, but she brought up her boyfriend... So, finally, I decided that perhaps, she was not gay and she was just friendly and that I was not going to make a move and ruin a nice friendship....

However, in my last night in Canada, she knocked on my door at about 4 am, I was still packing.... she had been wandering around my building since we said goodbye at the bar around midnight. She looked at me and hug me.... it was her way of telling me that she also had feelings for me.... 

At that moment.... I understood how the girl from the first semester felt when I send her the email telling her that I loved her.... it was too late... It was too late to see where this could have gone.... we were both coming back to Europe and we both had lives back home... 

We said goodbye and pretended to keep in touch for a while.... Thanks to Facebook, I know that she is now married..... to a GIRL!!!! I am very happy that she finally came out of the closet and left her boyfriend....

The lesson from this event was that we always regret what it didn't happen, and one more time, once the opportunity is gone.... it is gone...!!!

My year abroad was over and coming back home was going to be another story.... I had to face the people that I grew up with and tell them that I was now gay....  Well, I was gay before, but I was now ready to BE gay. This was going to be tough, so I started slowly with my school friends... Most of them were very understanding, however, they asked me the typical questions that we all get when we come out.... 

I remember that one of my friends said to me: 

"How can you be gay if you are way more feminine that I am?"  

To what I answered:

"Sexuality is not a matter of femininity or masculinity... gender identity and the conformity with the traditional gender roles in society is different from being gay or straight".

After given few speeches similar to the one quoted above among my friends, I told a few of my university friends too... But I don't think I told all of them. Sexual orientation among early-twenties university students tend to be often a topic of conversation so, I knew that any gay gossip would spread quickly. With some people I just acted as if it was assumed that I was gay and didn't do an official statement. 

Since then, I've been telling people when I meet them only if the occasion comes up, but I usually try not to make a big deal out of it... Brighton is actually a great place to live, most people is gay or gay friendly and no one judges you...

Regarding my family, I didn't tell my parents straight away. I was waiting to have a stable relationship to introduce it as something normal, but unfortunately, I didn't have too much luck in love during my first years of being gay. So, decided to put myself a deadline to come up to my parents: My 25th birthday!

Every Sunday before my deadline, when I was driving to my parents' house for lunch, I found myself going through my coming out plan in my head.... thinking that "today is the day, I'm going to finally tell them"... But whenever I opened the door and started to chat with them parents, it never seem to be the right time, it was never the right conversation nor the right moment...

One Sunday afternoon, when I was about to leave, I told my mum. 

She was sitting in front of her computer and I said that I was gay as if I was telling her that I was planing to have pasta for dinner.... without making any kind of speech or changing my voice.... as it was something very normal and did not deserve a special moment.... 

She lifted her gaze and said:

"Does this mean that you are not going to have children?"

She was worried more about not having grandsons than my actual partner.... I replied that one thing didn't mean the other and left...

I gave her a whole week to process and the Sunday after we had a lovely conversation over tea. I ended up crying but she was very supportive. I didn't tell my dad directly, but I know that my mum did that for me. 

My parents tell each other this kind of stuff, and he seems supportive. We watch movies whenever I go to visit and he lately keep insisting on watching gay theme movies. I guess that it is his way of saying that it is OK. 

At the end of the day, love for children is unconditional and if they love you, they will love you no matter what.

Finally, after my year in  Canada, and due to the fact the I didn't know that many gay people in my home town, I turned to the online dating world... so, here we go back to my previous post: "My first online date". 

I have had some off-line dating experiences too and I have being out on the scene, usually with the zombie M&M that I met in Canada.... and sometimes with other gay men too.... it wasn't until recently that I started to have lesbians friends... so the online world has been a big part of my dating life, possibly due to my insecurities in approaching girls out of a gay context... Maybe when I run out of online dating stories I will start with my off-line ones... but for the moment, I still have a bunch of stories on my pocket yet to be told... and the ones that are happening now...

Apologize for the long post...  but coming out was a long process for me...

My first online date...

First are always special... first words... first day at school.... first love.... first kiss..... first time...... first broken heart... first... online profile.... and first online date....  So this is the story of my first date with someone from the cyber-space....

I was so scared.... meeting someone online.... what kind of pervert uses internet to meet people? That was January 2008,... yes, I opened my profile as a part of my new years resolution of 'finding love'.... so precisely, on the 2nd of January 2008, I created an account on GaydarGirls... In 2008 I was 22 and I was so naive....

I thought that it was going to be the year of love.... How wouldn't I believe in love when No One from Alicia Keys was on the top charts? (one of the best songs about love ever written).... I started to chat with few girls, and soon discovered that the website was highly uncomfortable to chat: limited number of messages that you can send and, limited number of profiles that you can visit... Thank God that mobile applications have solved that out.... but well, it was 2008 and there was not such a thing as a smart phone yet....

She was definitely not my type: blond and blue eyes. I tend to like Mediterranean looking people and even though she was from the South, she was looking very Germanic.... I only accepted to meet her because we seem to had a friend in common, more of an acquaintance for me.... and actually for her too as this friend in common was the new girlfriend of her ex-girlfriend... anyway.... I was 22, highly inexperience in dating girls and recently out of the dark closet.... I still had some issues accepting my sexuality and I needed to explore a bit more the field....

We decided to meet up in town, I was so nervous, thinking that I was not going to recognize her from the pictures, or that it was going to be a fake profile...... but she arrived.... She was very pretty.... we went for a drink in a very cheap gay bar and had few Heinekens there...

I think that we did go to few more places after that... but my memory is a bit blurred.... the only moment that I remember after that is when we took the night bus.... we went to the back of the bus and started to make out.....

OMG! what I was doing??? Making out with a girl in a public transport??? What if someone saw me???...... I was still on that phase of coming out... anyway, the alcohol helped me to..... not give a f*** about the rest of the world and enjoyed my date....

She was a brilliant kisser and had a very interesting conversation. She was an art student, passionate about art and humanities.... and I was 22 and looking for an adventure....

The date ended up in a bus stop as I had to catch another night bus home.... I don't remember the details, but we agreed to meet up again... and so we did.... we went to an art exhibition, and for ethnic food, and we also went for drinks a few times... and we had sex with 'The origin of love' from Hedwig and the Angry Inch on the background... (my very best favorite movie of all times....) I was still too scared to fully enjoyed it but she made it easy and guided me a bit in the art... although, I had needed few more like her to gain confidence in my moves.... I owned her a great deal of self-esteem in my fully out lesbian persona....

As you might guess... it didn't work out.... I received a Scholarship to study at the University of Sussex in Brighton and left.... and well... it was too new to even consider anything further.... so it died.... but I still remember it with a smile... we are still friends on Facebook, although we don't interact much, I still like to think that we are friends....

I wish her the best... I think that she got a full time girlfriend and is working well and I'm very happy for her as she deserves to find love! As for me.... well.... I'm still in the search on the cyber-space....

As everyone that I've met, she taught me something... and I don't think that I would be fully out and happy with my sexuality without her help while I was going through my 'teen' lesbian days.... so for all of this,

 THANK YOU!!! You were my first online date and as you can see from this blog.... not the last!!!

Love is not about finding someone to fix you....

This story, as all of the others, starts with an online message on OkCupid. I have to say that since they had the block on Firefox, and therefore, they were on the news and all over Facebook, I've noticed an increase in the number of profiles on the site.

I guess that the free publicity that they got has also been good for my online quest on finding love, as just that week I got several messages from newbies on the site.

One of the girls that messaged me was Kat: a 28 years-old bisexual that, as everyone else in the online world, was looking for love. Initially, I thought that she was not my type, but I'm open to give a chance to everyone since love is unpredictable and unexpected...

It took us a while to actually meet up. I been having a very busy month and she also had exams, but we finally agree on meeting up for coffee on the North Lanes.

We went to a coffee place near Komedia, she offered to go to the bar and order for both of us and so I asked her to bring me a herbal tea. It took her a good long 20 minutes to come back from the bar, but she finally sat down and the date started. She was tall, not too tall, but taller than me, dye bleach blonde, blue eyes and plain dressing style.

She was wearing a two decades old purple snickers that reminded me to those I had when I was 8 (how cute...). She seem not to be counting calories these days as she ordered a tall ice-latte with cream on top, actually, probably she has not been counting calories over the last decade... but I don't mind love-handles....

 We talked about sports, I recently bought a new bike and I've been cycling across Sussex, so I was telling her about my latest cycling trip. She seem to be very interested, she told me that when she first moved to Brighton she was a member of a gym and she wanted to go back to exercise again.

She also told me that she played music before, and she wanted to play music again. She also told me that she was a smoker, but she wanted to quit..... I could see that she was talking too much about her ideal self, the person she wanted to become... and too little of her actual self, the person she actually was....

According to Ayala Malach, "Why we choose the lovers we choose", we fall in love with someone who can see us for who we want to be, who can see the best version of ourselves... however, I think that trying to find someone who can fix us is not the objective....

How many times have my housemate told me that she will quit smoking once she gets a boyfriend?..... well.... you should quit smoking for yourself, exercise for yourself and explore your creative side for yourself....

 Love is not about finding someone to fix you.... You might fall in love with someone that sees you under a nice light, but you need to become who you want to be for yourself, don't expect that a magic prince/princess is going to come and solve everything that is wrong in your life....

The date ended up at the beach with very little conversation. I decided to leave, make an excuse, we were not really feeling it and I didn't wanted to force it, so I said that I had to go somewhere else.... she told me that she will call me.... but again we both knew that it was not going to happen.... oh... well.... one more OkCupid disaster I guess....

Other's people success stories - Monika & Jo

After all my failures, I feel that I needed to talk about other people's success stories to keep my faith up on the online dating world. So, here we go...


In the early summer of 2011, I received a message from a girl who was new in town. She wanted to meet people and send a very generic message. I answered as I liked the idea of meeting several girls at once, you double your chances....

She invited me to a lesbian dinner in a Mexican restaurant with other lesbians that she had met online. I arrived early and saw a lesbian at the bar. How did I know that it was a lesbian? Well, her short boyish hair was given away her sexual tendencies, and her clothes too....

I introduced my self and waited for the rest of the group. We were finally about 6, all lesbians, all internationals (it was almost the UN there... a girl from Switzerland, a girl from Colombia, an a couple of girls from the UK...)

One of the British girls, Jo was the one that invited me. She seemed to know everyone and acted a bit like the host of the night... She was pretty and very enthusiastic. We had dinner and then went for a drink after. Everyone was very nice, but unfortunately no one was my type.

We decided to meet up again. In our next meeting, the Colombian girl, Monika, and Jo, started to make out, I did not see that coming.... Monika was around 38-39 and Jo was 10 years younger and had definitely not the same dressing style... but well... whatever floats your boat, right?

We kept in touch for a little while and I saw the relationship growing.... they went from dating to moving in together, to start up a business together and to.... marriage! They got married this week and I am very happy for them.... their success make me think about the limitations that we put in ourselves when it comes to choose our ideal partner....

I tend to look for girls my age, or 5 years up or down... I call it my 'born on the 80's rule', as I was born in 1985, therefore everyone born within my decade is potentially datable and on my online profiles I limit the age to that....

Should I open my search limitations? What is the limit in age difference? is there even such a thing as a limit in age difference when it comes to love?

The Music-Nazi girl with the French name

This story begins as many others with a message on OkCupid. We exchange a couple of messages and she asked me for my Facebook.

I usually don't like to give my FB to random people on the Internet. It's not a privacy issue, it's just that I don't like to have people on my Facebook that I don't know or that I met only once because then I feel bad when I delete them on my annual FB spring-cleaning (I actually never have done this, but I like the joke ....).

I guess that Facebook these days has become the place to do a bit of research and background checks to make sure that the person we are talking to is real and is not a serial killer.

According to my Chinese housemate, there is a word in Chinese that describes the online background search and the translation is something similar to "Human MEAT search". Let's be honest..., we all have snooped on someone's profile before, either to check their relationship status, their sexual preference or their pictures.

When I added her on Facebook, I saw that my ex-housemate was among her friends. Could you guess how did they meet?... Through OkCupid, of course... Brighton is a small place... and the dating pool is limited.

Back to the story, we decided to meet at the White Rabbit. She send me a message saying that she was going to be a bit late and that I should order her a pint.

A pint? Should I get a pint too? I was feeling adventurous and I asked for a Krononnberg top... Let's see where the night takes us...

She arrived and of course, she didn't look like her pictures at all... but she was still nice. The conversation didn't flow much at the beginning. On top of the first date awkwardness, the couple in front of us were passionately making out creating a very uncomfortable atmosphere. Also, the music from the open mic was quite loud preventing us from speaking more than a few words in every communication attempt. The poor early-twenties singer with a guitar on the stage became the target of her music-with-instruments rage.

She told me that she was a Music-Nazi (her words, not mine) and then she asked me about my taste... after that statement it was difficult to confess that my totally gay camp playlists include Disney soundtracks and Broadway musicals so, I gave her a vague answer:

"I like everything really..." I said

"But... you must have a favourite type. What is your favourite band?" She asked.

I decided to show my rocky side, perhaps because she was wearing a leather jacket (was that a prime? excuse my psychological reference...) so, I answered:

"Well... I'm listening to My Chemical Romance a lot these days...."

Her face made a funny expression.

"My Chemical Romance is SHIT!!!! She said (exact words).

EXCUSE ME..... WHAT???? If you go on a date, the first rule is to be polite, and even if you don't like their music, don't tell them that is S***T in their face. I decided to take her comment as a dark humour joke and moved on.

She only liked electronic music and found it completely horrifying that any music with real instruments... The start of the date at that point turned from not very promising to a let's finish my drink soon and leave. But it got worst...

"How do you feel about drugs?" She asked me in these exact words.

What kind of person ask that on a first date?

Well... actually, once a girl asked me if I had any kind of illegal addiction on a first date so it might be an addiction routine check for some people...

Anyway, she was being very serious and I was a bit shocked. and didn't know how to answer that, so again I gave her a vague answer:

"Well... I don't know... I mean... I don't usually do drugs, but I don't judge people who do it..." These words gave her the excuse to rapidly add:

"Good, I DO drugs... My life is all about drugs" Well, these were not actually her exact words, but she said that she couldn't wait for the weekend to get absolutely fucked up.

At that point, she had finished her pint while mine was still almost untouched... She pointed that out and said that she was a fast drinker and she went to the bar to get another. I guess that she realised then that I was not the party buddy that she was looking for in the cyberspace. We both felt a lack of connection... So, I needed to finish my pint in order to end the date.

I finally manned up and drank my pint... Gosh! I was already a bit tipsy.... but not enough to prolong the uncomfortable talk. We decided to go and we walked in the same direction. When we got to the corner of my street she said:

"Well..., I'll call you!. I owe you a drink...."

I like when they take responsibility for the next call, or in that case for not making it.

Anyway, I guess that this was another failure in my quest for finding love in the online pool of Brighton... but I like to be positive and think that statistically speaking, I have one less date to go before finding the right date... However, I'm starting to feel that online dating might not be the way to find love...

 Should I concentrate on the offline world?

Picture taken in Vegas (2014) that reflects how I felt after my date with the Music-Nazi girl

Unnamed frog part IV - Too COOL for School

This is a story about an average first date followed by a very bad second date....

We contacted each other at the beginning of the summer. I think that we did it through OkCupid... but I'm not sure now....

We met at the Fortune of War a legendary pub in the Brighton seafront. I arrived earlier and sat outside, she arrived 2 minutes after and went straight to the bar. I saw her when she passed by, but as every time I'm meeting someone from the Internet, I wasn't sure that it was her....

She texted me from the bar, and I confirmed that I was outside, then she finally approached me. She ordered a Koppaberg, which for me is a drink that limit itself to one only drink, as the first drink is amazing if is chilled, but the second one becomes unbearable as you get fed up of its sweetness... anyway, I ordered one too, mirroring my date's drinking choice and accepting that the date will be limited to one drink then.

She was not the most pretty girl I have ever seen, but she was cheerful and nice. Tall, brown long hair, round hazelnut eyes, few tattoos on her arms, but nothing too butchy, and main stream clothing style with a hint of surfer and hip-hop from the 90's. We talked about trips and adventures, a very common topic on a first date....

She told me that she recently came back from spending some time in 'Cali' (apparently cool people call California 'Cali', but you won't be able to call it Cali if you haven't been there and got integrated with the cool kids...) She called California 'Cali' (no comments....). We had a good conversation about trips, university, self-development and Brighton... However, as expected, after the first Koppaberg, the date was over, so we decided to say goodbye and walked in different ways...

She texted me within the next 5 minutes to tell me that it was a pleasure to meet me and that she would like to see me again. I thought it was very cute to receive a message right after the date, and although I wasn't sure that we had a lot of stuff in common, I accepted the invitation to meet up again.

She invited me out on a Saturday night with her mates, we  were going to meet up in R-Bar. However, when I was living my house she texted me telling me that her mates were a bit drunk and that it will probably take her still 15 minutes to get there... Despite of her text, I decided to make my way to the bar anyway. After all, I was already ready to go out and waiting at home makes me sleepy and increases the chances of deciding to cancel and I was not too convince on the first place about her....

As I had time, I went to the cash point to get some cash (very optimistic from my side), I didn't know if we were going clubbing after and the night was young... By the time I arrived to the bar (15 minutes later than the projected time), I received another text from her. 

She was still at her mate's house but she was calling a taxi now, so it will be only 15 minutes more... I decided to grab a drink and wait at the bar, and then wait a bit more, and then wait a little bit more again.... when I was about to leave, she texted me again saying, sorry, sorry, sorry, we are on the cab, we will be there in 5 minutes.....

I am usually a time nazi,  I value my time a lot, a someone making me wait really annoys me, but I decided to be a bit more tolerant and wait, I understand that when people are drunk, it is difficult to moved them to a bar and it might not have been her fault...

She finally arrived, but in a state of drunkenness that did not corresponded with the time of the night... after all it was only 22 pm, but she wasn't able to talk properly already,... However, that did not stopped her from sniffing popper every 2 minutes and looking at me as if I was a party popper....

I do go out and have fun.... I do like to dance and enjoy the night, but if I'm meeting someone, I try to stay sober enough to be able to maintain a bit of conversation... on top of that, she ignored me for most of the time that I was on the bar, and I ended up talking with her friend, who had recently had a baby, but was free for the night looking to get shit face and party hard (everyone has different priorities in life I guess....)...

At some point, her friend split a drink on my coat and when I went to pick it up, she (unnamed frog nº4) said:

- Are you leaving? I would understand if you are....

I wasn't leaving, I was just picking my coat from where the drink was spilled.... after all she arrived only about 20 minutes ago.... but.... actually... she gave me an opportunity to scape and I took it....
- I said, well, yeah, I think that I'm going to leave now...

She did not put any resistance and let me leave.... she made an attempt to apologize by texting me the day after, but what starts with the wrong foot... its difficult to change... so that was the end....

The learning of this story.... ? I'm not really sure, I guess that it is just one more unnamed frog to the blog.... I feel that every time that I make the effort to meet someone and doesn't work I lose a bit of my faith in finding love, but without keep on trying, you won't find it... will you? Should I stop trying?