Over the River and Through the Hood

On Sunday night I am feeling particularly desperate and lonely. And the question of how far I will go for love is answered, literally.

Average Blonde Creepy found me on Manhunt a few weeks ago and had been aggressively courting me with the same message every few days for the past month. Always, "what sup," as the subject line and nothing in the main message. I was extremely concerned about why he placed the "s" where he did, when simply moving it to the other side of the space would make his subject line grammatically correct (assuming the use of an apostrophe). I also wondered if this man was really only capable of that one thought, "what sup," and if this was the true mark of a criminally insane man.

But Sundays are made for people like me to take their chances with the criminally insane. So when Average Blonde Creepy messaged, "what sup," I responded, "no tmuch."

Without wasting any time on the pretense that he cares about my personality, he asked if I wanted to "come over to his place." I responded by asking, "what would we do?" like there was any question. He said, "we can chill in my hot tub," and I said that was fine, "as long as I can get back in time for Desperate Housewives."

When I asked where he lived, he said, "_________." And though his location was annoyingly distant, I thought about how far Moses walked to get where he needed to go / I had nothing better to do. So I hopped onto the university shuttle to _______ ____ Station and took the _____ line to Chinatown where I switched onto the ______ line to ________ __ Station. In the process, crossing a river, entering another state, and finally arriving at what seemed like the set of The Wire.

So as I tried to position my backpack in a way that would shield me from stray bullets and judgmental eyes, I wandered around feeling shocked that I had agreed to do this, hopeful that this man would be decent looking/smelling/weighing, and confused as to which direction was north. But deep down, I had already regretted coming to this place at the end of the world and concluded that this must be the beginning of the end for me.

As soon as I got through the door of his house, this __ year old of a man immediately began showing me all of the things that make him important and relevant like the security piece that gets him into the White House and his autographed copy of "The Audacity of Hope Yadda Yadda Vom." He also talked about all the homework he had to do and how much he disliked math.

A rare glimmer of literacy emerged when he mentioned having to read a chapter from The Scarlet Letter. And though I had read the book my freshman year of high school, and though this guy was __ years old, I respected him for a brief, shining moment. That is, until he suddenly pushed me onto his bed and began furiously making out with me. And while I didn't stop him, I wondered deeply how we went from discussing the important themes of a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel to sucking face with my jeans around my ankles.

And as he continued to press his face against mine, I realized that no matter how far I traveled, I would still be starved for love. And pretty soon, starved for oxygen.