This isn’t me and my boyfriend but you can totally pretend it is, I’m fine with that.
Google+ is great for posting stuff that you’re too embarrassed to post on twitter and facebook, since no one uses it. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Google+. Where do good statuses go to die? Google+. Where’s the best place to hide a dead body? Google+. And so forth.
So who would have ever thought that Google+ would help me find my boyfriend? Most people don’t even know what Google+ is. I explain that it’s like Facebook if no one used Facebook. You connect with people, post statuses, and you would use it to procrastinate if it weren’t so horribly boring.
But that’s not important right now.
My friend posted a status of a ridiculous iphone cover that looked like real sushi. I wrote about it on Hello Giggles, but that’s not what this story is about. And now I’m hungry. Why does everything bad happen to me? Anyway. He posted this photo of this sushi phone and I commented on how awesome it was and then found other awesome things on that website and posted those on his Google…circle…wall…whatever, as well.
Then a message from someone else popped up. Because Google+ is as dead as any graveyard, the bones of interactions past still remain. Here is exactly what I saw:
“Is this the Almie that went to Emerson for a little while back in ’03? I think I may know you.”
Rather than say something like, “No you must be thinking of another Almie who went to Emerson in ’03” I decided not to be a sarcastic jerk for once and responded that yes, it is the same Almie:
“You’l [sic] have to forgive me, my time at Emerson is a blur. Did we have the same classes or something?
Fucking suave, Uncle Almie.
I want to add that my time at Emerson was very brief and very blurry. I was going through a serious depression at the time. We’re talking Kirsten Dunst, can’t bathe for herself, “It tastes like ashes” Melancholia depressed. I was there for one semester. I did manage to be pretty involved in the community. I auditioned for and got one of the two newscaster roles for the SNL Weekend Update type show EVVY Update to be aired on the Emerson school channel. We would report on what students were doing for the EVVYs which was some kind of student run award show for students and I don’t remember what EVVYs stand for or what we actually did but I do remember that Chloe’s dad was kind enough to film a “Congrats to the EVVY winners!” clip for the show, that I’m wondering if they ever used, and Chloe’s dad has a secret bathroom in his office, where the bathroom door looks like a wall and you don’t know it’s a door until he presses it in and then you’re like, “Holy shit, Chloe’s dad is Batman.”
But that’s not important right now.
I also managed to get on the writing staff of the comedy magazine. It was here that I met my friend Dave Horwitz — but I don’t remember us being friends at all. Years later we connected back in LA (via MySpace, MY LIFE IS THE INTERNET) and he told me, “Don’t you remember me? We were on the comedy magazine together.”
I blinked.
“…We sat next to each other every week.”
Blink.
“I saw you doodling pigs wearing top hats.”
“Oh yeah!! I remember those!”
My point is, I sat next to this guy every week for months and I didn’t remember him at all. This is important to the story. The story of how I met my boyfriend on Google+ not how I met Dave Horwitz on MySpace. That’s a good story too, but I kind of just told it. Oops.
So. My future boyfriend just told me that he remembered me from Emerson and I told him, basically, “Who the fuck are you?” [“Did we have classes together?”] He said:
“I don’t think so, actually. I think it was even vaguer than that. Like we were both commuter students and met at a commuter event or something maybe…”
I wasn’t a commuter student. Like, not even close. I decided it was time to kick this shit into full gear. It was time to take this to Facebook.
I contacted him on facebook and we exchanged flirty messages back and forth, the kind where I would be giddy to see that little “1” in my inbox and I would ask my friend Katie, “How should I respond??” and she would say something and I would ignore it and then do whatever I wanted.
So we arranged to meet. We met at a trendy wine bar on the border of Los Feliz/Silver Lake/Narnia where the bartenders had old timey barbershop quartet mustaches and the patrons were loud and recorded themselves having fun on their iphones. We had a wonderful first date, and I will tell this story at some point, if anyone cares.
A few dates later, he confessed that we had indeed met before. We’ve since determined that it was likely outside a showing of “Lost In Translation” near my dorm. Apparently, we stopped to chat and we even exchanged numbers. And I don’t remember this. By the time he called me, I had already dropped out and moved back to LA, which I told him on a message I left him. And again, I don’t remember any of this. But through the magic of the internet, we found each other again.
Aw you guys, right??
So without Google+ I never would have (re?) met this great guy. Thus, I can never leave Google+. I will go down with this ship.
How did you meet your sig other? Do you believe in fate?
Boom.
You know that awkward moment when the line you gave someone else is now the line that’s being given to you? Ouch, that smarts! Maybe it’s not an exact line, but a routine. That thing you do where instead of saying that you really want to say, you say something far, far more neutral. And you’ve done it, so you know what it looks like, and thus when someone does it to you, it’s a special sort of mindfuck.
