It Ended Badly…

When I was a teenager in the early nineties, I dated a guy who had his own dingy basement apartment, but not a phone. He won me over by walking a mile and calling me from a gas station payphone every night. We’d talk 25 cents worth: a half an hour. Through all kinds of weather. No one had cellphones back then. He was the last of a now extinct breed: the chivalrous Quarter Caller.

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…used his real, full, given birthname on match.com.

I replied to his email and asked why he’d release personal information (full name!) into seedy cyberworld. He replied, “I HATE SECRETS.”

On our first date, he presented a book I’d mentioned wanting to read. He looked nothing like his pictures. But he was confident and smart. He brought me chocolate when he saw me after that. By the end of week two, we’d hid our match.com profiles and were officially only wooing each other.

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