Haven't had a 5-entry day in a while. Probably won't for a while, either. So relish this while you can. Relish, particularly, the entry before the one before this. It was better.

Anyway, while continuing in my sleepless boredom, I remembered that I had promised to tell the tale of the Non-Dates with Albino Midget Diabetic and Creepy Forty-Five Year Old Married Guy. Which has got to be a better entry to leave up while I am asleep than that last piece of crap. Although the plea to Pomona over there still stands.

So, the background. This one definitely requires background or I look like the single most pathetic loser in the history of the world, as opposed to just a plain old pathetic loser.

The Background. I, after an enormous fight with my poor beat-up parents, after staying with my friend in her dorm (yikes! not recommended) and then my boyfriend (briefly) in his mother's house (yikes! again), I finally started speaking to my father again. He flew me down to Orlando where he was working so I could help out in building the Golf Store in the Airport. Which also led to this little anecdote. In retrospect, Orlando was hi-larious. At the time, it was horrible.

Now, first a mini-anecdote. The airport. At the time, I wore a chain locked around my neck (have I mentioned my punkrockhood?). A friend (no, she didn't warrant an entry) wore a matched chain. We had thrown our keys out the window of her car on one of our many drives, on the border between Vermont and Massachessets. You know what's in airports? Metal detectors. Every single day, twice a day or more, I had to explain (yet again), that no I did not have the key, and no I couldn't take the thing off, and that's why their thingy is beeping. LADY SCAN! Every day. I love that phrase, though. LADY SCAN! Much later my dad would cut the thing off with bolt cutters.

Onto the proper story. My idiot ex flew down two weeks after I had arrived ostensibly to spend Thanksgiving with me (he arrived at least 2 or 3 days before Thanksgiving), but, in fact, to *dump me* ON Thanksgiving. Good riddance as far as I'm concerned now, but at the time...you can imagine. I was eighteen, and suddenly alone with my newly ex-boyfriend in a horrible, hideous, awful place that people who smoke an awful lot of crack call the "happiest place on Earth". Or is that DisneyLAND? I forget. Either way. Miserable hellhole is what Orlando is outside the walls of Walt's hallucination.

I made him buy me a bottle of terrible bourbon (I wasn't old enough) and proceeded to get myself extremely sick.

He flew back home. Three of my friends very sweetly drove down to visit me for the weekend (oddly bringing my cat, but whatever) which I even thought was sweet after one of them picked up my recent ex two weeks later, especially since that was terribly predictable given that she *always* picked up our exes. Far as I know she's with him still. Dumb of her, that. But all that's beside the point.

What I'm trying to get to here is that I was suddenly very, very lonely in a horrid pit of a place and recently dumped, living with, of all people, my father. And working bulding a freaking golf store in an AIRPORT.

Those of you reading this might have a clue where I attempted to find solace. Yes, that would be the Internet. Well. Actually it was sort of before the web really took off, properly speaking. But I had AOL, and I had BBSes.

It is worth mentioning that I informed all who would listen of my recently dumped status, and the fact that I was not interested in dating. However, I was perfectly happy to hang out with other human beings. Which is what I tried to do.

I had struck up conversation somehow with a guy on a local BBS. He seemed smart and okay, and he wanted to have coffee sometime. That was okay with me.

So, we're going to have coffee. Now, I'm tall to begin with -- almost 5'10". That night I chose to wear black jeans and my very tall Docs which made me practically amazonian. I open the door to this guy and I swear to christ I did one of those cartoon "who's at my door, oh wait it's a MIDGET" sweeps of the head looking for the person.

I must be frank: he was not technically a midget. No, he was all of 4'9". More than a FOOT shorter than me. I do not have a problem with guys shorter than myself, my Boy is an inch or so shorter. I do, on the other hand, have problems with a boy more than a fucking foot shorter.

Not to mention. He looked thirteen. Honestly, thirteen. If I was a cop and I pulled him over? No way I would've thought he was legal. He was actually 21. I would have put money down on him being maximum 13 if I didn't know better. Also albino. Bleached. Completely.

We went to Denny's. The waitress thought he was my little brother. I'm thinking, okay, whatever, I'm just here to have a cup of coffee. We'll talk, it'll be fine, and I'll have a new albino midget pal to call my own.

Right. Too bad my friends couldn't leave the cat with me. He made better conversation than this guy did. Like, by FAR. We had two, count 'em, two subjects: computers, and his diabetes. For three hours. Whee! Now there's a guy who knows how to show a gal a good time! (Albino Midget, if you ever read this, sorry...but somebody had to say something)

After recovering from my evening with the circus freak, I was back online (though not on that BBS, he might find me again, which I dreaded the thought of) -- this time on AOL. There was a local group of folks that were planning a get-together. I thought this could be fun, since the only person I ever saw (other than albino midget, but that was only once) was my father. Not including the guys who also worked at the store none of which really spoke english and even if they did I don't think I would've wanted to hear what they were saying. Basically, after more than a month of living there, I was very, very lonely. And depressed. So. I find a ride to AOL Orlando Gathering Thinger.

Two major problems present themselves that night. First, there is the fact that 37-year-old Ride Man is actually 45-year-old Married Man. Second, there is the fact that, unbeknownst to me, the AOL gathering is 21+. So we (Married Man and I) decide to go shoot pool. All that was well and good until he started in on how he was going to take me for the weekend to a bed and breakfast and how his wife didn't satisfy him (certainly not like an 18-year-old could) and he didn't love her anymore but of course he loved ME...

Right. Luckily this happened on the way home, otherwise I'd've had to execute some of my famed kung-fu maneuvers. I do recall trying to figure out if I would actually get killed or not if I bailed out of the car at 60 mph on the highway. Got home. Never, obviously, called or picked up the phone for 45-year-old Married Man again. DID (I still regret this) suffer through icky, icky kiss from Married Man while trying to extricate myself from the situation as safely as possible. Got new (free) AOL user account from freaky russian hacker who also had a crush on me but was physically IN Russia so could do me no harm or even surprise me by showing up at my door a hunchback three-legged mongoloid lesbian wearing a pony suit, the only logical next step in my social life.

And the moral of this story is (da-da-da-dum): Don't date assholes who will dump you on Thanksgiving while you are far, far from friends or any people at all for that matter who have some semblance of normalcy.

onehanded

PS - If you hadn't figured this out by now, yes I do like to say the phrase "Albino Midget".