According to the U.S. Census data from last year, there are 313,914,040 people in the U.S., 38.04 million in California alone; 9.963 million in Los Angeles County with 4,936,599 of this figure in my county consisting of whites and a paltry 856,874 represents blacks. If breaking down these statistics even further, there are about 713,640 falling under my target category of black men between the ages of 35-44 years of age (Census Data http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html) . I realize the figures speak for themselves due to the limited options that may be available and mind you, this isn’t considering any other preferences such as a man being single, employed, educated etc… that may be in place.
Nevertheless, one would think that in the grand scheme of things, the world of online dating would seem to increase my chances of meeting someone new and perhaps less likely of being contacted by a former hangover or some random schmuck from the past, but sadly, this hasn’t been the case. If you’ve done this type of dating you know what we all do and that is hopping from site to site so it isn’t uncommon that the same man who was ignored, shot down or blocked on Black People Meet relocated to OkCupid then we all hope seems lost, we defected over to the next site such as Plenty of Fish or Match.com.
Since I’ve been on this latest site, there have been almost a dozen men who have reached out to me again in hopes (more like begging!) of getting a second shot at Carmen and there are two things that happening – they either recognize me and send something stupid and corny like “Hey there stranger, long time no speak” or they fail to recognize me by the latest photographs and message me normally using the same corny line from when we initially crossed paths.
Today alone, I’ve received several messages men I have previously encountered starting with this weirdo who actually lives on the same street as me, and each time he tried to make a connection in the past, I had to let him down easy. What’s so funny about “The Chef” is that we have crossed each other’s paths on the jogging trail several times, so I nearly choked when reading his profile as he described himself as an extremely good looking 30 year-old man with an average build. The truth is that he looks a little like Uncle Ben and is a good 50-60lbs overweight.
Okay, so the world isn’t so big and the possibility of the same person contacting you more than once online is being accepted BUT what about meeting a friend’s hangovers?
I don’t know if you remembered, but Out of Sight used to deal with a close friend of mine as I shared in this post and even though they had their freaky sessions over many years ago, that situation never really sat well with me.So now I’ve been speaking with the latest contender the last couple of days and he’s quite interesting, intelligent, entertaining and all of that good stuff but I’ll be damned if he isn’t the ex-boyfriend of another friend!!! Fortunately, the relationship between me and the woman he was engaged to over ten years ago is pretty casual and even the mutual friend we met through is no longer in my circle.Still, I have a bit of an advantage over this new guy because there are plenty of tantalizing details about what she was doing while they were together (cheating, of course) which likely explains why their relationship went to hell and there’s a part of me wondering how this will go over IF things get to a happy place and she finds out. I’m guessing a mobile upload to Facebook titled “Night out with my honey” may not go over too smoothly, eh?
Is this a good time to start thinking like a man and consider someone’s past as just that – the past instead of considering those cliche rules women set that says we shouldn’t take leftovers from another friend?
The vibes from this man seem pretty good and genuine because he’s such an easy-going person who knows exactly what he wants out of life and what or who he needs in his life. That alone is quite refreshing so for now, I’m throwing caution to the wind and will welcome this latest instance that proves how small the world of dating is.
Until there’s a cure for the dating hangovers…
Carmen Jones
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