The Canucker Fucker

During my dating career (I use the word career because it felt like an eternity and it was really hard work) I had come to label certain characteristics of men in order to slot them into categories; I’m sure we’ve all done this, both men and women.

Jocks. Metalheads. Burnouts. D&D Dorks. Skids... and I could go on for quite some time, but I’ll restrain myself. The one that came to piss me off the most is what I’d like to think is an original term of my devise:

The Canucker Fucker

The Canucker Fucker has 3 very particular traits that, although not overly annoying on their own, putting them together made me dry heave.

1. Excessively listens to The Tragically Hip (If you don’t know who they are, they are like Canadian music rock royalty... and I hate them.)

2. Loves the Toronto Maple Leafs

3. Wears car logo hats.

Perhaps it was because this pretty much described half of the guys from my high school, but no matter, I tried my damnedest to steer clear of any guy that shared this lethally annoying combination.

On the third date with a particular fellow, I felt it was about that time I put out; he had failed to disappoint me up to that point, so that was a good sign! After the initial make out session on his couch, he led me to his bedroom. When he opened up the door, this is what I saw:

1. Giant (24x36in) framed gig poster of The Tragically Hip hanging over his bed

2. Toronto Maple Leafs pillowcase & duvet cover

3. VW baseball cap hanging on the bed post.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I tried not to be horrifically disappointed and I powered though the sex...
and then a while later, I married him.

Apparently, he truly was a Canucker Fucker and I just so happened to be the Canuck.
Does that mean the joke’s on me?

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Originally posted on Finding One's Way.

Don't Drown in the Shallow End

The one huge fall back from online dating is the whole notion of meeting someone AFTER you've already made some kind of emotional connection. The odds of them living up to all that you have orchestrated in your imagination is slim to none. At least with blind dates, you'd have no preconceived ideas upon what to expect.

One of my potential suitors was an absolute fire cracker online. His personality really shone through on Messenger and he was awesome at distracting me from work with hilarious stories and dirty jokes. I didn't mind; I hated that job anyway.

I had at least 10 photos of myself on my online profile, from all angles and all stages of intoxication. TEN. I wasn't hiding anything. I never understood why one would even want to falsely advertise themselves. Dumb.

The time had come for Mister Cool Guy to pick me up for our first "date". OK, so he was a bit of a red neck and he picked me up in his equally red pick-up truck AND was taking me to a motor-cross event, but at least he was a slightly educated red neck with a good job... and he smelled great.

Actually, he was pretty damn hot...
except for the look of disappointment on his face when I opened the door. It was pretty obvious; I tried to pretend I didn't see, but I did.

What I SHOULD have done was scrape up my self esteem off the front porch and tell him a swift "Adiós" but I didn't. Did he not closely inspect my vast array of photos to which the end result would be avoiding this very situation?

The entire way to the event, we were just like we were online - our banter back and forth was so fantastic! We were both having a great time, or so I thought. Once we got to the event, he pretty much dropped me like a fucking bad habit and took off with his buddies.

The part that pissed me off the most was that we obviously had great chemistry. I'm not saying he could have been "the one" because he surely wasn't THAT great, but at the least we could have had some really good times together and most likely some wicked sex. He had one of those nicely tanned muscular torsos that I just wanted to run my fingernails up and down. It's too bad he was so horribly disgusted with my ghastly physical appearance (that's heavy sarcasm by the way; I think I'm awesome) that his shallowness caused him to miss out on getting to know a really cool girl – me!

...aaaand I never heard from that guy again.

The Whittaker Effect

So, my first experience with the lovely 69 position was a bit of an ‘awkward situation’ and although there had been brief acrobatic occurrences of it throughout the next couple years, there was one more, umm, notable night that I feel is worthy to be regurgitated into the written word. It might possibly shed some more light on to why I have such personal animosity towards it as well.

I was well into the swing of the online dating scene; I had been out with at least half a dozen guys by this point. I had noticed that a common symptom of these ‘online suitors’ were that many were incredible on web chat, but not so great in person, and Mr. Whittaker definitely fell into that category. We had a fabulous back-and-forth online banter going on with jokes and sexual innuendoes and I managed to waste many paid work hours on MSN chat with him. After about a week, we agreed that we simply had to meet – and so we did...

BLAH! Conversation was flat and boring. I had really got my hopes up with this guy. He was tall, good-looking and artistic… and like Lurch in person. Yawn. I powered through the evening as quickly as possible and pleasantly said goodbye. I was afraid to logon to MSN the next morning as I wanted to avoid him, but not be a total bitch and block him – not just yet anyway.

Nothing. Phew!

Then a few weeks went by, which then turned into a couple months. He was almost a distant memory in online dating terms by then, but then suddenly, he sent me a wink. Weird, but OK; I wanted to see where this was going to go. He wrote that he wanted to see me again, and finished with a double “wink – wink” so I hesitantly agreed. I had pretty much gathered that this was going to be more of a booty call than anything else, which was perfectly fine with me...

I was never one to turn down a booty call!

I had made the necessary preparations and grooming for the big night – and I must say that I was particularly proud of my lady bits that evening, as I had ZERO blemishes in that surrounding area at the time. I had my trusty hand-held mirror to which its sole reason for purchase was so I could check under the hood more effectively. I was lookin’ fine under there and I couldn’t wait to put her to work.

Shortly after he arrived, we had made our way to my room. The small talk and pleasantries were abbreviated, to put it gently. It wasn’t animalistic lust or anything like that, but we definitely got down to business straight away. He had made a gesture that he was going to go down on me, but being as proud as I was of my sparkling vagina, I pushed him to lay down on the bed and I straddled his face. He seemed into it and I was enjoying myself. After a couple minutes, I turned around to assume the top spot of the 69 position. I had since learned that being on the bottom meant trying to enjoy giving an upside-down and backwards blow job – which is annoying as hell.

We were in full swing of the yin-yang and I must admit that it since I was more confident about myself this time around, I was enjoying myself… and then he stopped… abruptly.

“I’m sorry. I just can’t do this.”
“Do what? 69? We can do something else, if you don’t like that!”
“No. Sorry.”

And he grabbed his clothes like the house was on fire and he left. I didn’t even have time to see him to the door.

What the fuck just happened?

I was in a state of bewilderment and still sitting on my bed, naked. I double checked under the hood while I was sitting there – nope – still good! O well… I was already half way there, so I never even got up to chase after him; I just got out Mr. Purple and finished myself off.

Needless to say, I never heard from that guy again either.

My Man Catalogue (Part 2)

It had been just over a year that I had been using my ‘Man Catalogue’ as I grew to call it and I had had some good experiences and some bad ones. I had some short-term relationships that lasted a few dates, or even a couple months, and I had also managed to get some rompin’ one-night-stands from it as well; it was all good. I was finding myself logging on less and less and I came to the conclusion that it had served its purpose for a while, but it was close to the end of its natural course, and I had gotten out of it as much as I could. Since the website functioned a lot like real-life chivalry and it was usually the men that paid to contact the women, I hadn’t spent more than 15 bucks the entire year – pretty good, I’d say. I had about 5 credits left and I thought I would do one last ‘advanced search’ based on the criteria that I looked for in a guy and would spend it on 1 last contact request – after that, I would probably cancel my account.

I came across this one particular guy that fit my basic requirements: He didn’t live with his parents? Check. Has his own car? Check. Steady job? Check. OK... then for the physical part – he was like a teddy bear – which is the kind of guy that I have always liked. I hated when my boyfriends were wee men, so if it was cool out and I didn’t have a jacket, I couldn’t wear theirs. It’s a small thing, but it meant a lot to me. He also had a photo of himself in the UK – so he liked to travel; that was a big ‘Check’ on my list as well. Lastly, one of his photos that he posted was himself with his grandmother – awe, cute. So, he appeared to be a family man, which was another big ‘Check’.

We hit it off online and had some great back-and-forth emails, revealing more and more positive attributes about himself. After a few weeks, I agreed to meet up with him. Our emails took place over the time period that included my birthday, so when we met up a couple weeks later, the first thing he did (after our initial introductions) was he went to the counter of the café and as a belated birthday gesture, he bought me a giant cookie. It was adorable and right then, I knew he was a keeper. I did end up cancelling my account shortly after that day... and we got married 4 years later.

My Man Catalogue (Part 1)

Adventures in Online Dating

The wild and strange world of online dating was a daunting and intimidating thought at first. I toyed with the idea for a few weeks before I decided to take the cyber plunge. I realize that many girls can become self critical of themselves with this method of meeting guys, especially when it really can be superficial – at least to begin with. The services can all ‘claim’ to connect people on various levels of compatibility, blah, blah, blah... but at the end of the day it’s the photo that is the deal maker or breaker. It would be naive to think that it’s not – and if someone told me that it wasn’t important, I would guess they were lying – to me or to themselves.

I think we have all heard the horror stories of online dating when people basically pretend to be someone they are not and then when they meet for the first time, it’s a big shocking letdown. Because I am who I am, I wanted to insure that this wouldn’t happen with me and when I finally posted my profile, I was as honest as possible about who I was, and what I looked like. I posted about 6 photos – from all unflattering angles and candid party shots. There was even a drop-down selection for body-type and I had selected the “Queen Sized” option; I didn’t want to create any false representations whatsoever.

What I found the most frustrating, which was something I totally didn’t expect, was that I would constantly get contact proposals from guys that I knew wouldn’t like me. I would check out their profile and under their preferences they would have written “Skinny girls only”. I didn’t think less of them for that – you like what you like and that’s fine – but then don’t be sending someone like me invitations. When I would ignore their emails, some weirdoes would even get upset and email a second or third time asking why I wasn’t replying. Hello?! Have you seen all my photos? I’m not your type – and I just wanted to save both of us some time and effort.

After I had surpassed this odd twist and had made some good initial connections online, but even then some in-person meetings went well and some others I could tell they were disappointed with the ‘live’ version of me. It threw me the first time and my self esteem took a bit of a hit – but I surprisingly got over it after a couple more times. After the first dozen meetings, my new attitude was: Screw it! It’s not like I would see them ever again anyway. It was pretty fun and slightly addictive – like what social networking is like today – that’s what this site was like back then. I would log on at least 5 times a day to check out the latest ‘talent’. There was one guy I contacted that was my ultimate bad-boy dream; he was the lead singer in a punk band... Yum! Although we had a fabulous time together, once again, I knew early on that he didn’t have romantic feelings towards me after his initial 'once-over' and I wasn’t the least surprised when he never asked me out again. O well... everything happens for a reason.

To be continued...