Stalking Is Just Another Way to Enjoy the Hunt

Among my friends, I’m the only single one – not necessarily a bad thing, but often I become the source of social entertainment.  This means saying yes to “interesting” date opportunities, chasing boys out of pure curiosity, and often performing my own little personal experiments, just to see what happens.

After my last relationship (which I promise to detail the life and times of at a later date) I went into a month long period when the selection criteria was low but the number of dates was high. I encourage all girls to do this. Saying yes can get you back out there, and if you say yes to lots of dates you’ll find you see the fun in both good and bad dates and stop focusing on the “this could be the man I’m going to marry” factor.

My first date like this started quite innocently – with some genuine interest and a tiny bit of stalking.

I met Brian on a ferry ride from the city to my home suburb.  I was standing out in the breeze enjoying the city lights, and he joined me by the rail with his slightly hipster charm.  We struck up conversation quite easily, and I was intrigued by this sweet respectable guy who chatted me up so easily.  When we got to our wharf, we both hopped off and started to leave, but before we parted Brian innocently turned to ask for my number.  I typed it into his iPhone figuring if he called it wouldn’t be so bad seeing him again, and headed back to my apartment, busting to tell my flatmate of my ferry romance.

When I got back I relayed the story and got to the part where I handed over my digits, I replayed the scene in my head and realized, without a doubt, that I had switched two digits in the middle of my number.  My flatmate just laughed at my anguish, and I sat dejected on the couch and watched my first date back in the single world slip away.

I continued my mourning the next day until my flatmate sparked my interest.  ”You know, everyone’s on facebook now, did you at least get a first and last name? I bet you could find him.”  I had, in fact, not gotten his last name – but the idea of stalking brought me to a new idea.  Names I’m bad with, but professions I remember.  Facebook and all social media really has basically allowed a certain level of acceptable stalking .  Why should it be limited to the internet?  This was clearly an opportunity to go old school.

Brian mentioned that he worked at a marketing company in the city, a marketing company that I had recently contacted for my career purposes.  A brief glance through my work notes told me that the receptionist there was quite nice and potentially a gay male – the perfect accessory to my quickly forming plan.

Because of my previous research, I was already aware that emails at this company were made up of lastname.firstname@company.com – all I needed was the missing last name to get in touch, but the only way to get it would be to call the company.

I debated this plan for a day or so – hashing it out with my flatmate and friends – and after weighing my options decided to go ahead with it. If I didn’t try it out, I’d never see the guy again.  If I did give it a go, one of two things would happen:

Either he’d find me completely insane, and I’d never see him again – leaving me no worse off than I already was.

OR

He might, maybe, find my stalking a bit funny and endearing – giving me just the boost of interest I’d need to get that first date.

The next day at work I discreetly snuck away during lunch and rang his office.  Turns out my notes were correct. The most likely gay male receptionist answered, and our conversation went something like this:

GMR: Good afternoon, Company Name, how can I help you?

ME: Hi, I’ve got sort of a weird story to tell you, but first, can you keep a secret?

GMR: Yeah sure, but this s a bit weird.  Who is this?

ME: We’ll get there.  Here’s the thing.  I met one of your employees on the ferry the other night, and we hit it off quite well.  Only, when he left, I accidentally gave him the wrong number.  So I want to send him an email, but I’d need an email to send it to – would you give it to me?

GMR: Yeah, I’m nor really supposed to give out emails  . . . who is it?

ME: Brian something or other – I don’t know his last name, otherwise I’d already have this email business sorted out.

GMR: Oh, Brian, yeah he is cute – too bad he’s not gay. . . (I knew he had to be gay!)

ME: So what do you think – can you help me?

GMR: Look, I’ll give you his last name, but you have to tell me who you are and copy me on the email.

(bit more option weighing)

ME: Yeah, alright.

GMR: Sweet – Scarsborough.

ME: Great – so that means scarsborough.brian@company.com is his email, right?

GMR:  Right.

ME:  Thanks you’re awesome.  I’ll copy you on the email.

So I sucked it up and wrote and entertaining little note summing up the confusion, sent it to Brian and copied reception.  Luckily Brian did find all this entertaining (so did reception) especially because it turned out I gave him the right number in the first place.  We went on one date, and I never saw him again.

I suspect he was probably a bit perplexed by the fact that I didn’t call  for a second date after I’d gone through so much for the first.

My only response is that after the chase, I just wasn’t that into it.

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