Today is 14th February: Valentine’s Day, for those who are busy with less trivial things. I am on my way to the blood test unit. A kind lady who is coming out of the lift greets me with ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’. I am at my local hospital, sitting in the waiting room for a routine check up I’ve put off for months, and writing this post while I wait for number 147 to be called out.
As it goes, I couldn’t have chosen a better analogy for the most romantic day of the year, because I have been sucked dry by a charming and convincing vampire. So convincing that I was almost ready to offer my neck, on a red velvet pillow, to the cruel bite of his teeth. The vampire is called D. and is a “dating app guy”, one of the many faces on a long page full of men trying to show their best assets: smiles, bikes, boats, and so on.
I haven’t bothered much with Valentine’s days lately, and all its fake choreography of red pulsating hearts and chocolate; but this year it was going to be different, and Valentine’s Day was the prelude to a much-awaited date, on Saturday, with the vampire.
But let’s rewind the story to the beginning. About a month ago, while I was happily twitting away, an ad for a free dating app came up. It said, easy to use, bla bla bla…and I downloaded it, simply out of curiosity, reminding myself to have a look later on. I had never joined a dating site before.
A few days later, I opened the Fuxxxrs App (I can’t name it for legal reason), and I was presently surprised to see how easy it was to use, as promised in the ad. It took me 5 minutes to write my profile, download a few photos, and off I went.
After a few days I got my first messages. I read them but I didn’t reply. It was a bit like a new game that I didn’t know how to play. I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I answer all the messages out of politeness or only the ones I was interested in? But because I wasn’t really interested in anybody I made my own rules. After all I didn’t really want to date strangers, I was just checking out this new app. Right? My rules were simple: I will not reply to any of them except for the really flattering ones: I felt I had to answer those, out of politeness, and say thank you to the sender even if I didn’t like the guy. Bad move! I pissed a few people off because I didn’t want to talk over the phone with them, and one guy, whose job was making ballet shoes (so he said), told me to stop wasting his time. Wasting his time? I was merely being polite, that’s the only reason why he got a reply from me.
Then one day, out of the blue, I got a message from D., he was understanding, thoughtful, polite, and didn’t put pressure on me. I replied, and for a month we chatted along for hours. We became friends, if you can call friendship two strangers exchanging their version of reality.
Now I know better. I don’t think the word ‘friendship’ should ever be used in relation to any social media exchange. At the end of that line or network there could be anybody, even a carbonized mummy who has come back to life at the British Museum.
My version of reality was my life; his version of reality was someone else’s life. But I didn’t know that yet, so I chatted away almost every night, and I became very fond of him, of his charm, his sense of humour, our personal jokes, and later on his voice: I agreed to talk to him over the phone. I was very impressed with him being so understanding of my slow pace. I used to say to him that I was a ‘chicken’ but he never lost his patience, and waited for me to feel comfortable. We also flirted our socks off (especially him); I was much more restrained in that field. So time passed, and the day of our date was finally agreed on.
Lovely, you might think, and so did I. But not all good stories end up well.
He rang me last Wednesday, but I missed his call. I send him a message the day after, and all I heard was complete silence on his part. I waited for a few days, and I sent him another message asking if our date was still on. No reply. I started to worry, this silence was odd, and was no coincidence, something must have happened. I even blamed myself for not answering the phone when I should have. Last night I went to sleep Sad and Blue.
This morning I woke up and the first thing I did was looking at my mobile hoping to find a message that would put an end to my misery and confusion, but instead I found a surprise. D’s account had been deleted; he had disappeared from the face of the earth: that was my Valentine’s present. I felt a pang in the pit of my stomach. A month of fun, and hope, had come abruptly to an end. After a few hours of that unbearable pain that only relationships can give you, I started asking myself: who was this guy?
I took all the information that he had so generously provided: workplace, social media, emails, phone numbers, and I went on an FBI mission. I’ve worked in information & research long enough to know how to do it. And it didn’t take me long to find out that nothing of what he said was true. This guy was complete fiction in the purest sense of the word. I had had a lucky escape, said a friend who was whatsapping me. I’m no longer upset now, just a little bit worried for getting on so well with an alleged psychopath.
The nurse calls out number 147. It’s my turn. Let’s hope that she is going to find some blood left in my veins.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY
And if you, like me, are a fainthearted person, I have the right remedy for you. Enjoy your tea…and sweet dreams.
Scribacchine in Fuga 