By the time I wrote that first dating profile, the internet had given me a lot, including the first chance at having a crew since my choir experience made me attach myself to the tail end of the theater crowd in high school. Part of me wondered if I could date one of them, feeling as if my features, as well as my quips, had rearranged in a new, more attractive dimension, but nobody was single at the same time, especially not with ties to my maligned desert metropolis.
And of course, though I hated to notice how different it made my life(especially approaching someone I hadn’t met) I had to prepare for Wheelchair Drama: Questions and all: What went wrong? Could it get better?(and my question—knowing the answer to the other ones, what was I gonna do about not letting my life pass by out my window while I was online taking quizzes?
Wishing it was this easy to take the struggle out of my real life, I wrote my profile as if I didn’t have a body. Which means I could still write about books and movies and stuff as long as it didn’t bother me to picture the head I stuffed all that info into…kind of floating in space. Although the temptation was almost insurmountable(and “Catfish” hadn’t come out yet to label that specific hoax) I didn’t make myself a rock climber or a cyclist. I told myself it was all a test to see if I had that most persistent of all dating cliches: a good personality. If it was copy, or research, I guess I could ask unaskable questions, and, yes, I think my personality is fine, although I suppose I scrubbed off the moody or obsessive bits—as well as the parts that were even ever-so-slightly bi, so it was a few very ordinary young men who ran the not-so-flattering gamut from disgust to “Funny story…” when my full self was revealed. I told myself it was as expected, given a pretty major omission, but it took me a long time to face up to the girlish, optimistic, sitcom-nurtured part of me that hoped somebody wouldn’t have given a damn.
Still wonder about the guy who told me “I could never have dated someone with a disability” and wonder if his life stayed as perfect as he wanted it to, and if I want it to.
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