Dear Alejandro

Three dates and I'm out.

Seriously. I leave town for a little bit, I come back, I move into a new domicile. We make plans for her to come over the evening after I move in and help me unpack. Seems like a great opportunity to (a) hang out, (b) demonstrate my openness to her by letting her rifle through my decades of collected crap, and (c) possibly smooch. She says she'll play it by ear, but generally she's looking forward to seeing me.

I hear nothing from her all day. I'm frustrated, but I also had bowel problems that day, so I thought maybe it's for the best. The next morning I email her, with the catchy subject title "What the hell?" I try to go back to sleep.

An hour or so later, she replies, admits to being a jerk, and then says "I'm not certain I can make this work." She says she "really really enjoys hanging out with me, but she has apparently just gotten out of a serious relationship and wasn't expecting something good to happen. She says again that I'm pretty awesome, that she "despises" herself for writing a cliched email, and then says she hopes the move went well.

Some thoughts:
(1) Maybe you shouldn't be on a dating site if you don't want to date.
(1b) Maybe you shouldn't have contacted me first if you don't want to date.
(2) Apologizing for the contrived and cliched tone of the email doesn't make it any less contrived and cliched.
(3) I am really goddamn awesome, and don't want to waste my time on girls who don't recognize that - or worse, girls who do recognize that and still decide that they don't have time for me.

So she's clearly out of the picture. It's interesting, I had forgotten what impotent rage felt like - that desire, that need, to just scream at someone and make them realize what a moron they're being - but now I remember.

As per Lola's and my rules, since this relationship had been going well, I wasn't really writing about it, and certainly hadn't nicknamed her. But now I have. Say goodnight, Houdini: you disappeared on me a couple times when things were good; now I hope you disappear entirely.