“Is This The Morgue?” (Or don’t be creepy)
A half-Asian woman who grew up in the UK e-mails me on Match.com. Very cute, but a strange and dense profile — it was like reading a really hard book — a little pretentious, very wordy.
I e-mail her back and get her number at some point. I ring her, but caught her on the way to class — she taught at UCLA and she asked if she could call me back in 90 minutes? Sure, of course.
Almost exactly ninety minutes later, she rings back.
“Hey,” I say.
Then she says, “Is this the morgue?”
I look at the caller ID — it’s definitely the girl I just called. I’m waiting for her to go, “Just kidding, it’s Kate,” but she doesn’t. Not even in the very small window where you would say that. She just stays silent.
“No…” she forces me to say.
Now she really has to break. She must. She doesn’t.
“Are you sure?” She says teasingly. “I’ve got a dead body here.”
At this point, I’m totally stumped. And creeped out. Who greets an absolute stranger like this? On the phone? I really have no words.
“David? It’s me, Kate!”
“I thought so…”
“Didn’t you think that was funny? That was really funny.”
“Hmmmm….I don’t know.”
“C’mon, that was really funny.”
“Um, I used to be a stand-up comic and if what you say makes the other’s person’s stomach feel weird, it’s not really landing.”
“I still think it was really, really funny.”
She proceeded to FINALLY get off the topic of insisting it was funny and then we tried to have a normal conversation, but it was just misery — awkward silences, stilted small talk — it felt like that scene in a horror movie when the serial killer wants you to ‘play house’ with them and wants to have a nice normal conversation with them over dinner, but doesn’t understand why you can’t stop shivering and sobbing even though he’s cooking your mom’s head on the stove.
Finally after an excruciating seven and half minute phone call — I remember just looking at the phone’s clock — she goes, “Well, I’m sure you’re probably busy…”
“Yeah, I should get back.”
Lesson learned: Jesus, whatever you do, ladies, don’t be creepy.
May 31st, 2012 at 6:08 pm
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