Monday, May 7, 2012

Serendipitous Encounters

"I believe in fairytales and
serendipitous encounters...
Leave your fear of love behind
let your dreaming be your guide
If you seek then you shall find..."

Somehow, really not sure exactly how, (I think I googled something like, “sperm donor who wants to get only one woman pregnant”) I found a website that helps connect women who want to get pregnant with men who want to help them get pregnant by donating their sperm for free. That in itself is strange, but stranger still to me is, I can’t for the life of me re-find the website. I’ve tried to google umpteen various words in the same vein as what I first googled to get back to the site and a million sites come up, none of which are the website that presently has become a fascinating part of my life. 
Since I had felt at a total stand still on trying to get pregnant, not knowing who to ask, or how to ask, I thought, as I looked over the website, what the hell? So, I posted a little “ad” on the site about me and the kind of guy I’m looking for and within a day I got a response, and within a couple of hours after that first response, several more men responded. 
I’ve had two internet “relationships” in my life in years gone by.
The first was with a guy that was from Australia and happened to cross my path one Friday night at a Happy Hour in my old town. He and his friend and me and my girlfriend ended up going bar-hopping with them for the rest of the night. The guy was a hunk-and-a-half and the whole night I was just wondering, “Is he into me enough to go back to my place and “hang out?” Australian guys - at least the working class kind - are tough to read: they’re like, “G-day, mate, ready for another beer?” and then give you a light punch to your upper arm, which I guess is the closest they can come to saying, “We’ll be having hot and heavy sex later tonight!” 
So, yeah, we had hot and heavy sex that night and then hung out again the next night and did the "delio" all over again. It was heaven. And then he and his mates left; on to the rest of their American adventures. But he and I ended up emailing for over a year and when you email, somehow you tend to build an intimacy that comes on much faster and stronger for two people who really don’t know each other. It’s a false sense of intimacy, but of course I didn’t understand that at the time. 
What I did after a year of getting to “know” my Australian guy and wondering if he could be “the one” is hop on a plane to Sydney to find out. I wasn’t getting any younger (I would soon turn 42) and I felt like, excuse the expression, “shit or get off the pot, L.” I needed to be able to say definitively that he was, or wasn’t, the right guy for me, plus I had always wanted to visit Australia! 
So, I found myself visiting him during the only period I would be able to take a few weeks off from my job - late September - their spring. It didn’t quite mesh with his schedule - he would be out of town (across the country for one of the weeks I was there) - but I didn’t really mind. I figured I’d see him for a few days, then while he was away I’d rent a car and cruise the coast of eastern Australia on my own and get back and have a few more days together.
Within a day or two of arriving and being with him I had my doubts about us being "meant" for each other, but didn’t dwell on it. I took off on my own Australian adventure and nearly forgot all about him! Side note: if you’re single (and at least a little bit young at heart) I recommend Byron Bay! What a fun, laid-back, beautiful, beach town.
Anyway, long story short, I flew, round-trip about 16,000 miles, spent a couple thousand dollars (had a pretty damn good time, even considering the failed relationship aspect of it!), all for the satisfaction of not having regrets. 
The second internet relationship I had was about me taking a chance. I saw a young, really cute newscaster on the local morning t.v. station that I watched as I got ready for work every morning and thought, “What the hell? I’m going to email him, tell him I think he’s hot and find out if he’s single.” Which I did. We emailed back and forth for a month, each email more intimate in nature, we shared photos (he didn’t seem to have a problem that I was older) and finally, a long week after I was ready to jump his bones, we met. It was completely awkward. We knew so much and yet so little about one another. Yep, another internet relationship disaster, but this one much less expensive and much less fun in its adventure. 
So, now here I am once again finding myself emailing back and forth with complete strangers. I should be so aware of the pitfalls; I AM aware of the pitfalls, and yet I’m plunging in the deep end: at least now I know I’m a more experienced swimmer. 

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