I SENT YOU A ROOSTER! The Story of Ghost Nerd

I sent you a rooster, Nerd. Do you know what that means?! It means I carried a watermelon. I. CARRIED. A. WA-TER-MEL-ON. You asshat.

And now, a little context. I was seeing a nerd. His name is Charlie. Charlie, the nerd. If the opportunity presents itself, you have to date someone named Charlie. It’s too cute not to. That’s a fact. However, just because you find yourself unexpectedly dating a nerd does not mean you get a Hollywood ending. I did not.

When Charlie first reached out, he seemed sweet enough. He sent me a charm on Happn which, for those of you not in the know, 1, I hate you, and 2, it means we crossed paths and I didn’t click "like" his on his profile in a time he thought to be reasonable. Upon receipt of the charm, I checked out his profile and saw he is a consultant who looked nice, is very well educated, well traveled and well dressed. And again, his name is Charlie, which is undeniably adorable. I clicked the heart button. We chatted and he asked me out fairly quickly, for that same night of whatever day it was at the time.

As a rule, I tend to not accept last minute dates. I like to send the idea I’ve already got plans. Also, I generally already do have plans. For me, serious no-I-can’t-meet-you-tonight plans could mean anything from another date to friends to clients to SoulCycle to my DVR. Sorry, Charlie. I never actually said that to him – what a missed opportunity.

The best part of this story is honestly at the end, but I’m going to briefly take you through every date we went on because I think you need the legwork to fully appreciate turn the fifth and final date took.

We planned to meet the next week and he offered to come to Dumbo. Win. He told me his knowledge of Dumbo bars was limited to Pedro’s and Superfine. Pedro’s is GREAT if you’re barreling through Brooklyn on a bike on 5boro Sunday, proudly riding for the Life is Priceless Foundation. Otherwise, pass.  Superfine is… just fine. I suggested we go to Atrium, which kicked off him calling me fancy, in a way I don’t necessarily think was meant to be flattering, for the duration of us seeing one another. I’m 34 and I like adult drinks in adult places vs. bars that smell like bleach and barf. I don’t think that makes me fancy.

We had fun on the date and he seemed like the kind of person I could potentially hang out with. I say this because a large part of our conversation centered on his recent, that-escalated-quickly, Sunday Funday. Another large part centered on going to the dentist, which he interrupted and said, “Oh my god are we really talking about the dentist,” sending us both into a fit of laughter. He walked me home and we made out like teenagers in the back of a movie theater. I was on the fence, but I have a lot of friends in Dumbo, two of whom have a direct line of sight out of their living room to where this was going down, so when he asked if we could go get a night cap, I said yes, emphatically. It was Monday after all; it wasn’t a stretch that they’d be both home and up.

Date two was Friday of the same week at Dram in Williamsburg, which was cute. I was in a very real place of struggle from having been out every single night that week, in particular the aggressive night before at the NYAC with a complete lunatic who turned out to be a raging anti-semite, but that is a [great/unbelievable] story for my next post. Finally, around midnight, he looked at me and said, “You’re dying, aren’t you?” I told him I was, that media people rarely go out on Friday nights and we certainly don’t start our nights at 9:00pm. If we go out on a Friday, we do, as my friend Paul would say, “Golden Girl get after it,” allowing us to go to bed at the same time any given assisted living facility would encourage their residents to do the same.

The following Friday, I thought for sure date three would be our last. He asked me to come meet him at Post Office in Billyburg, but it was packed and we walked all the way to Roebling Tea Room. I was annoyed. I was in one really expensive shoe and my stupid walking cast. On every level, it hurt to walk that far. Make a damn reservation! Anyhow, our final destination turned out to be a good one. I had somewhere in the neighborhood of five to 43 French 75s, which is generally why I thought this date would be our last. At one point, I think I slipped into a brief coma and had a night terror because I came to mumbling something about a toddler. Out. Loud. Who does that? At the end of the night, I pulled the fake reaching for my wallet move and he actually allowed me to pay, which I didn’t love, but also he didn’t have eight bottles of gin and champers worth of French 75s. I got an uber home and he came with me, saying he’d take the subway back to the East Village from Dumbo. This makes no geographical sense from Williamsburg for a person who lives in Stuy Town. A gentleman suitor is more than welcome to share my cab, but I wasn’t born yesterday and you’re not coming up. I was proud of my blackout self.

Date four came up unexpectedly for me, when he called me on Sunday and asked me to meet him and his friend out at Coyote Ugly. Yes, you read that correctly. We went to Coyote Ugly. It also came with him promising me the two of us would go somewhere I wouldn’t hate after a couple drinks with the group. I broke my last minute rule, but I was intrigued by the early friend intro. I dropped my shopping bags off at home, changed my clothes to something that would have still been considered loud on a Friday night out in Soho and met them at what can only be described as an atrocity of a bar no one would miss if they lost their lease. If I never go back, it will be too soon.

The friend turned out not to be the bromance I expected, but a close-talking chick, who was both drunk and clearly in love with Charlie. I ordered a Makers on the rocks while they drank PBR and cozied up to him as she explained to me no less than six separate times that she was from Indiana and John Cougar Mellencamp is a way of life there. Great, can we go yet or what? She bought my drink. It was weird. Charlie and I finally left and got a corner booth at a bar somewhere on 1^st or A that was quite charming. I think he was kind of drunk this time because he went into this long, drawn out story about how he got out of Colombia grad school at the height of the recession and it was a struggle for a while and he doesn’t work for one of the major companies like Bain or McKinsey. Umm, ok, I sell mobile ads. I’m not exactly matching the net worth of Zukerberg, bro. It was around the same time he mentioned I was the only person he was currently seeing, which made me feel markedly uncomfortable. I suggested we wrap it up. As the hour was nearing 11:00pm on a Sunday, that seemed reasonable enough. He thanked me profusely for coming out to meet him and continued to do so long after I’d hopped in a cab to go home. I was still on the fence.

Thanksgiving, a weekend in Atlanta for the SEC championship game and a trip home to Florida occupied the next three weekends, so there was a decent gap in seeing each other before date five. He once again suggested a place in Dumbo, which is fine by me, but he got over there sooner than expected and I’d just poured a delicious glass of wine I wanted to drink. I said come up, have a drink with me and we’ll go out after that. We never went back out. We had a really fun night in my apartment, talking and laughing our faces off with the aid of way too much red wine. I thought, I could maybe like this guy.

We both fell asleep on my shitty couch. I woke up somewhere around 1:45am and moved us to my bed. This may cross a line of TMI, but it’s worth noting that I have not had the sex since August of 2014 (AUGUST OF THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND AND FOURTEEN,) when I was seeing a certain Israeli gentleman. I assumed this was finally about to change, but we sort of just made out and went back to sleep. Rather, he went back to sleep and started snoring something fierce. I tried to wake him up a few times and get him to sleep on his side or stomach, but no dice. Being on his side only meant that he had his arm around me, sawing trees directly into my ear. I slipped out of bed, closed the door to my room and slept on the couch, where he retrieved me the next morning.

This is the part where we end my dry spell, right? It’s got to be. Welllllll, not exactly. Did we fool around a little? Sure. Did it end with sex? Nope! It sure didn’t! I gave him an opening, too. You know what it did culminate in? Charlie. Dry. Humping. Me. Who does that?! Given the position we were in, what warm blooded male doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity at hand?! I was lying there with my conscious floating above my own body. Seriously?! Is this real life? A year and a half and this sweet guy, who seems to like me, with whom I’ve been out five times, is just going to lie here in my bed and dry hump me?! What alternate universe have I entered? And whyyyyyyyyy????

Charlie left the next morning to go back home to Buffalo for xmas, followed immediately by a New Years ski trip to the Swiss Alps. I was set to depart a few days later for a 12-day Florida bender between Jacksonville, Key West and Miami. The point is we weren’t going to see each other for a while, but even with the great dry humping incident of 2015, there really wasn’t anything that led me to believe it was the last time I’d see him. I thought for sure, next time he’d go in for the real thing… because ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby. Or so I’ve been told. It’s been so long at this point, I’ve sort of forgotten. We chit chatted intermittently and the last thing he said to me before leaving for Switzerland, in reference to me going to Key West was, “Say hi to the roosters for me.” This was December 27^th. I didn’t answer him.

On January 5^th, after looking him up on Happn and seeing he was back in town and active on the app (he hadn’t been previously,) I was flabbergasted. The nerd had turned into Ghost Nerd. You can ghost me. You can dry hump me (if you must.) You cannot do both. With a little encouragement from one of my favorite coconspirators, I decided to respond to his last text with a picture of a Key West rooster and a note saying, “This one says hi back.” Nothing.  I sent him a rooster and not a goddamn thing. Fucking ghost nerd.

I passed along this update to a few of my friends who knew about Charlie. As is typical of great friends, their reaction was mostly the same: “fuck that nerd,” they said. I told them all I would have, but he only wanted to dry hump me.