little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

“How I Met My Man” or “Why 1989 Sucks”

“So self,” you ask yourself. “I wonder how Ernie met his DJ guy that he’s exclusively dating right now.” And I would say something like, “it’s a really interesting story, but to make a long story short, we met on the Internet.”

To which you would say, “uhm, you guys met on the Internet? That’s pretty, uhm, not interesting.”

And then I’d say, “let me tell the whole story, buckeroo.”

A couple of months ago, I respond to a personal ad online. I e-mail him, and we trade the typical introductory e-mails back and forth. So far, so good. “Do you have any photographs of yourself,” he asks? Sure I do, and I send a photo as an attachment. Now when I send a photograph to some I meet on a personal ad, I usually get one of the following responses:

1. “Oh, you’re Asian. Sorry, not interested.”
2. “Oh, I’m attracted to Asians, but you’re too fat. Sorry, not interested.”
3. “I’M REALLY INTO ASIANS THEY ARE SO SMOOTH CAN YOU PLEASE COME OVER MY WIFE WILL BE BACK IN 2 HRS!!!!!”

I imagined this guy would be no different. So imagine my shock when the guy responds with this:

“Hey, you look familiar. You didn’t graduate from El Cerrito High School in 1994, did you?”

Random tangent time, for all you video gamers out there: Does anyone out there play Metal Gear Solid? You know that moment where Solid Snake tries to sneak up on a guard, but if he fucks up and makes a sudden noise, a giant exclamation point pops up over the guards head, with that sound of sudden alarm?

That was me. I was exclamation point guy.

Anyway, back to the story. We trade pictures and we figure out that yep, we went to the same high school, although we didn’t talk to each other much. And hell no, we didn’t know the other person was gay. This, however, made for the world’s best first date conversation:

Mike: You know we went to the same junior high, right?
Ernie: Sure.
M: You wrote in my yearbook too. Shattered my dreams of becoming a baseball player.
E: Bullshit!
M: Nope, I’m serious! You signed my yearbook in junior high. Take a look.

(Mike, out of nowhere, pulls out our JUNIOR HIGH YEARBOOK, from 1989. 1989, for the love of god! Paula Abdul was gushing her love to an animated cat instead of wannabe male popstars half her age.)

M: (reading out of yearbook, in mocking tone) “Dear Mike! You actually think you’ll be playing for the Oakland A’s?! GET REAL!!!”
E: …
M: Yep. And you drew a computer right next to your name. See?
E: Foreshadowing. Fan-fucking-tastic.

So yeah. I scoured the internet for a possible boyfriend and he ends up living ten minutes away from me. Life is weird like that.

That’s the weirdest thing ever. Oh, and Opposites Attract was a great song.

wow. small freaking world, man. great story though. stay together so you can tell the grandkiddies about it. i always wonder what to tell people if I were to meet someone online. hmph.