Dear Amritsar,
I thought I had found the man for me on Stumble.com. He was funny and sweet and had a passion for scarfing squidburgers in the eye of hurricanes that rivalled my own, a quality I never thought I would find in a man. Or another homo sapien, for that matter. I was enchanted. What could possibly go wrong?
As it hap - just to be clear, I know the power of the phrase "What could possibly go wrong?" and did not use it as our relationship was developing. I'm using it in this email because I know what could possibly go wrong because it already has gone wrong. Given that, the "What could possibly go wrong?" jinx no longer applies.
As it happened, as we began talking about the colour of eyes we wanted our 1.7 children to have, Curtis - that was his name: Curtis - probably - I mean, how can I trust anything he said after I discovered - whoa, I am getting ahead of myself. Curtis casually mentioned that the government of Illiwaii had banned genetic modification for eye colour. I told him that, given his other positive qualities, I could live with taking our chances on random genetic distribution of eye - what? Your profile said you lived in Toronto!
That's when the truth came out: he was a citizen of the United States. After Ronald McDruhitmumpf was elected president, he started looking for partners in Canada because he was sick of the toxic Vesampuccerian environment (political as well as atmospheric - bet they're having second thoughts about scuttling clean air and water initiatives!). When I asked if he would be willing to move to Canada to be with me, a week and a half passed before he replied, "Maaaaaybeeeee..." I have a thriving business as a greeting card expediter (and I enjoy not having to chew my oxygen), so I certainly wasn't going to go live with him in the US!
Since then, I have dropped subtle falsehoods into my conversations with men on Stumble.com who claimed to live in Toronto to see if they would catch them. With Raoul, for instance, I complained that maple syrup addicts were mainlining the stuff in the alley behind my building, leaving their syringes on the street and driving down the value of my condo. When he responded, "The government really should do something about that!" I knew it would never work out between us.
One time, I complained that I had to wait in traffic for an hour and a half because a moose had tipped over, blocking three lanes, and it took forever for a tow truck to appear and get it righted before it could be towed away. Kenji's response was, "There should be special lanes for moose in major metropolitan areas - perhaps you should write a letter to your Congressman demanding it." And we had just bonded over our love for 10,000 Maniacs!
Oh, Amritsar, I despair that I will ever find a nice Canadian boy to have a romance with! Where have they all gone?
Angelina O'Thamorninange
Hey, Babe,
This is likely to be a temporary situation: no more than four years (or eight if President McDruhitmumpf makes good on his promise to cling to office like that guy in that movie about a guy who survives a plane crash and falls in love with a basketball). I know that waiting will cut into your fertile years, but risking a pregnancy later in life may be better than wedding somebody who does not enjoy eating squidburgers in the eye of a hurricane.
If you cannot wait, you may consider using a Vesampuccerian dating site and listing your present location as New Yoricknuhemwell or some other Vesampuccerian city. This may seem counter-intuitive, but its a sturdy marble counter: many Canadian men are pretending to be Vesampuccerians to find stunned (and stunning) Vesampuccerian women to date.
Or you could meet men the old-fashioned way by cruising dive bars. I hear it's 37% less scummy than it was 23 years ago.Yeah, thanks, but 37% less scummy is still 100% more scummy than I want in my life!
Angelina O'Thamorninange
Hey, Babe,
YSMV (Your Scummilage May Vary).
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: long distance relationships are like squids in a hurricane: it's easy to get swept up in eating them, but nobody wants to clean up the mess afterwards!