Rumble in the Bumble pt 10: 500TH POST SPECTACULAR!!!!

Yes, believe it or not that blog title’s true and, no, I’m not doing one of my ‘bits’. As will later become evident, this is going to become far too serious a post to do ‘bits’. Apart from all those ‘bits’ that I’ll inevitably do. They don’t count. This is actually the 500th piece of aggressively partisan and dangerously unedited nonsense that I’ve reached down into my spleen to messily smear the blood and puss across my computer screen, since I first started uploading my albums of the year to this poorly designed WordPress blog that nobody reads in December 2014. I’ve written this piece of shit for almost exactly five and a half years!! That’s roughly 2000 days, so I’ve written on average a post every four days, which would sound like this was a regularly updated blog, wouldn’t it? But, no, you usually get a whole year’s worth of posts in December, and you’re happy. Much like your Mum, this blog comes very loaded towards the back.

But this calls for a celebration, no?? I, of course, planned ahead, and purchased a rather snazzy hat:

And, most importantly, a traditional feather boa, the blue colour of which signifies ‘Yes, 29 again’ in my culture

Let’s have a party!!!

Sigh… You know why I started crying at my own party, even if previous motions have made it clear that such a choice is entirely of my own discretion? Well, yes, because I am, along with almost every human, a pent up and tragic coil of regrets and shame, and that underneath any veneer and posture I wish to portray at that moment is a raging acid reflex of tragedy and pain that I spend all of my life and all of my time struggling to contain*. But other than that, do you know why I started crying? I started thinking about Meghan**.

(*that’s a joke!! Unless you understand that it really isn’t. In which case, hit me up, yo? Unless you disagree. I which case it’s a joke)

(**not her real name. Duh. She just really hated Meghan Markle. But, no, not for any of the horrible reasons you’re immediately assuming, as I hope will become clear. Unless you really like that name, in which case it is… does it work like this as well…?)

Meghan is the reason I lost all desire and motivation to continue this silly series documenting my hilarious failures on Bumble and the wider world of Gig Economy Dating. I actually enjoyed writing it with the cockeyed and whimsical assumption that I would never find anyone I liked on it. I would never find anyone I had any sort of connection with. I would never find anyone who I found legitimately interesting. I would never find anyone who liked the perverted underground Anime that was me. Any longtime readers* will already know that I’m ‘a bit weird’, a tend to only like things that are ‘a bit weird’, and the people who like me tend to be ‘a bit weird; themselves. But I don’t want to date a weirdo!! You can see the bind I’m in.

(*Hi Beryl! I’ve no fucking idea who Beryl is, but she reads every post, and often emails me afterwards to tell me how Jesus is commanding her to insert me headfirst into her vagina- to have me wear her ‘like a scuba diving suit’- in order to expel the devil from her lower intestines. I don’t fully agree with everything she believes, but she is my only long term reader, so I am actually editing all my posts in order to cater to her)

So, yes, there actually was a fair amount of cruelness inherent in this series, as- although I was always careful to obscure people’s identifying features and didn’t show any photos- I was generally using the series to point and laugh at people’s ridiculous profiles. These people didn’t mean anything to me, they were simply crazy people whom I would never meet or even interact with in any way. These bizarre profiles were also proof of how ill suited I was to the barbarous and ruthless world of Zero Hour Dating. It was alright though, I was writing a blog, I wasn’t taking this seriously.

Until I was.

I had a blog post all planned out about my initial conversation with Meghan. You know how most people stress how important they place a ‘good sense of humour/GSOH/GSOGHB‘? That’s just a thing you have to say, isn’t it? People write their profiles saying that they’re looking for someone with tight abdomens and flapping bum cheeks and eyes that suggest a hidden sexual trauma that they’re still trying to deal with through promiscuity, but then they realise that they really should say something about the personality less they sound a little shallow. So, yeah, put that they’re looking for someone with a ‘good sense of humour’. It’s meaningless, right?

Well, then I encountered Meghan…

Meghan’s profile wasn’t ridiculous or dumb or easily mocked, she would have never otherwise ended up on this blog. I would have swiped right on her because I found her very attractive, which, yeah, you’d understand if you saw her. Her profile did not state that she was looking for someone with a ‘good sense of humour’. I maybe should have noted that. She did, however, mention that she’d been to 74 different countries, so I thought I’d lead with that:

A bit of humour there. However, Meghan had already made it clear that she puts no importance in someone’s funnies, which might have explained why she didn’t reply for maybe half an hour. I toned down the hilarity and translated myself for the normies:

Still nothing. I attempted one last shot at engagement with another question:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… nothing. Fine, it happens, ghosting is part of the lifestyle, I’ve noticed, so this was obviously the end of the Meghan and my brief relationship. The next day, I simply offered a kiss off and, because I am Alex Palmer, finished with a gif of a dancing ghost:

Meghan was going to be added to the ever increasing list of people who have either matched with me and never bothered to start a conversation or who have started a conversation and quickly baled out when they realised we weren’t just going to discuss the weather or Strictly Come Dancing or house prices or whatever the fuck normal people talk about. But… she then replied.. Another #DatingHack to add to my soon to be published tips and tricks book- chicks fucking love gifs of dancing ghosts. Hey, I can’t explain the rules, I just know what they are. And with that response, immediately knew where Meghan would fit into this blog:

Yes! Here was my angle! Meghan would act as a cautionary tale- when people don’t say they appreciate a ‘good sense of humour’, it’s because they really don’t have a sense of humour!! This was going to be at least 750 words of fun. I continued being my usual annoying self- y’know, about 50% annoying and 50% grossly incorrect:

Yeah, got the pace she lived wrong, just firing on all cylinders. She responded to this by saying that Wilmslow was very different from Manchester (it is much richer, yes) and that I- and I fucking quote– ‘can do better than that sarcastic tone’! I started to get more and more interested in Meghan, she was someone I believe is scientifically described as ‘a wild one’. She was calling me out on my nonsense, and she’d only seen about 12% of my nonsense!! This was going to be a brilliant blog post.

We exchanged text for quite a while, me spouting my usual nonsense, her quickly emphasising how she had no fucking time for that nonsense, such as when she mentioned how she split up with her ex over a ‘difference over politics’:

Meghan was (and in all likelihood probably still is) black by the way, so, yeah, that was me being really annoying. But she just… called me out on it… she just stated the already accepted fact that I am annoying. She didn’t play along in fear of offending, she didn’t politely type ‘lol’ because she realised she was supposed to find that grossly unfunny line funny. I would occasionally make jokes about us getting married and having kids or whatever, mainly playing on the fact that up to now it seemed obvious to me that she didn’t really like me much at all, and she would also shut that shit down, like when she said how that she was born in Scotland to Nigerian parents:

Woooooooooow! This woman was unbullshitable!! We already had more than enough great stuff for a blog entry. Meghan was obviously a vast pit of personality, and considering I got more than 3’000 words out of TD Girl’s, erm, shall we say ‘less deep’ personality pit, then Meghan’s entry was going to be spectacular. But… it wasn’t just the blog this time… Meghan was really smart, she was incredibly interesting, she kind of  ‘got’ me, in that she recognised exactly what I was throwing down and could articulate exactly why she wasn’t picking it up. Sure, most of her replies to me were just her explaining exactly how annoying I was, but she was still engaging with me, I was becoming that irritating jingle that you can’t seem to get out of your head.

The lack of a sense of humour was probably too big a hurdle to overcome though, and then the fact that surely she didn’t really enjoy talking to me kind of put a stop to any future plans. Or was she kind of just like me, playing with me and curious over what nonsense I’d come up with next. That’s still fine though, isn’t it? If you’re reading this and you’re with a partner that you otherwise hate and only stay with only because you’re absolutely desperate to hear what fucking crap they come up with next, then know that, actually, that is the purest form of relationship and you should marry that person as soon as possible. Yeah, you’ll hate the wedding, but doesn’t everybody hate weddings? You’ll get a nice outfit out of it and be with someone you’re always going to be interested in. ‘Love’ and ‘hate’ are essentially nonsense- if this person is guaranteed to make you curious for the rest of your life then tie that motherfucker down! I know, marriage, the only weapon us guys have in our arsenal, right? But, did the fact that Meghan was toying with me this way- like a cat casually swatting a baby mouse around the kitchen floor before mercilessly pulling its guts out of its tiny chest- betray the fact that maybe she did have a sense of humour? She had a sense of… something… didn’t she…? Then the conversation turned to her describing her type (after stating that it wasn’t Rio Ferdinand. It’s… it’s a long story, just roll with it):

That was… Was that…? A joke…? It was! And relatively funny one that referenced my three amazing Bumble profile pics. My face is clearly painted blue, not purple, but I let that slide in the face of the amazing discovery of Meghan’s sense of humour. It was more than that though, with that one message she also kinda (sorta!) implied that she might like me, or that she was at least wiling to joke about liking me. This is absolutely good enough- if someone jokes about liking you then you can actually marry, have children with and spend the rest of your life with that person as long as you keep the joke going. Don’t knock it, it’s how literally all of your parents met and the reason you were conceived. Have you seen your Dad? Can you imagine anyone getting with that sack of nonsense for any other reason than a well maintained joke?

Oh, and she mentioned how much she enjoyed sex relatively early on. Another #DatingHack for the book: guys kinda dig that:

From this point on, I gradually lost interest in writing on this dumb piece of shit blog about Meghan, and gradually gained interest in getting to know Meghan. I told her my real name, she told me her full Nigerian (first!) name. She would keep mentioning how, once we got to know each other a little better, I could explain why I chose the name ‘Calloway’. That would be when I told her about this blog. It would be fine, I could explain that I’m not writing about her, I’m writing about the crazy ones! We spoke about what we do for a living. She wouldn’t tell me exactly where she worked, which I initially thought was a bit overprotective, until she explained how she had no idea how this was going to end and didn’t want an angry psychopath turning up to the place she works if things go badly. And I remembered, oh yeah! Women have to be careful about things like that! Because men are often insane and will likely hunt them down and kill women if they fee in any way slighted! Lol! Men are craaaaaaazeeeeeeeeeeeee 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂!! That statement would, erm, actually be brought up again later. This doesn’t have a happy ending, you guys.

I continued to irritate her, she continued to berate me, but now it was alongside deep, interesting and funny conversations where it was quite obvious we were becoming far more interested in each other. I could show you screenshots, but… I’d long stopped taking them by this point. Shit, this wasn’t about the blog anymore, this was just me having an engrossing conversation with somebody I actually enjoy conversing with. This wasn’t work anymore, this was me enjoying time with another person, and to write about that would be just weird. Yeah, I know, I am weird, but not weird in that way, alright?

OK, so maybe I am weird in that way, but I just wasn’t feeling that weird in that way at that particular time, alright? Maybe Meghan made me less weird, who knows? Can we stop the fucking Spanish inzuzzizzion now, please?

After a few days of Bumbling into each other and lightly referencing the size and feel of  the appendages of each others’ abdomens, she told me one day that she was going out for a walk and a ‘think’. A think?! Who the fuck thinks?? It’s 2020, you don’t think! You do stuff then you later regret! Respect the process, woman! In my experience, a woman only ‘thinks’ about one thing, and that’s how to calmly and politely finish with you without upsetting you enough for you to go on a classic male rampage of rape, murder and desecrating the corpse with his semen. LOL! #Bantz #NotAllMen #ButSeriouslyLikeMostMenSeriouslyGuysKeepItInCheckYeah #ROFL 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂. Meghan went out for her walk and her ‘think’. When she returned, she sent me her mobile number. She mentioned how I still hadn’t explained why I chose ‘Calloway’, and maybe it’s best to explain it over the phone. I said cool, but it would have to be the next day, because I was busy that night. Boom! Motherfucker’s a busy man! I mean, I was busy because I’d arranged to play Playstation online with a friend, but she didn’t have to know that!

The next day I rang her. She said that she thought I would only use the number to text her ‘like a normal person’. I told her that, surely, it was clear by now that I’m not… and she finished the sentence and laughed. By this point I had long known that she absolutely did have a sense of humour, just unlike me she wasn’t as unsure and insecure about her own personality to lead with this sense of humour, like it’s the one thing she’s confident in and can act as a barrier against any potential disappointments with the person underneath. Meghan was confident enough in herself and her personality that she would only offer that at first, until she felt that you were good enough to experience her sense of humour. We spoke for an hour that first day. Then for two hours the next. Then for three the next day, which we both agreed was a ridiculous amount of time. So we only spoke for two the next day. We shared all kinds of personal information, stuff that she was initially guarded about but eventually trusted me enough to tell me about. I often felt like our phone conversations were like a therapy session, as I spilled out all kinds of personal fears and apprehension- in my role as the bundle of nerves and anxiety that I always am- and she would offer sage advice and tell me of the things she had learned in her lives- in her role as the most insanely confident person that I or anyone else has ever encountered. I didn’t need to frequently compliment her or intermittently remind her how I would like to place my face between her bottom cheeks and search for last Wednesday’s breakfast with my tongue- she already knew all of this, she was interested in actually conversing with me. The sex stuff would hopefully come later. We spoke about sex a lot. That’s another #DatingHack. She told me how she was first drawn to me because my opening gambit was different from the usual nonsense she got on Bumble (“Every other guy just says something boring like ‘You’re so beautiful’. I already know that!”). I asked why, if that was the case, she didn’t reply to my first message. She said because it was really annoying. It was only when I posted the other message and a gif that she thought “Wow, that’s even more annoying…!” and felt the need to reply. Another #DatingHack there, gotta really push that irritation. After every call, she would send a message saying something along the lines of ‘I still don’t know about Calloway!’. I planned to get to it, it was just that we honestly spoke about so much other stuff that we never had time. Meghan’s life and opinions were just so intriguing that it always felt like such a dull turn to talk about this stupid fucking blog that nobody reads. Other the course of the week, we grew rather fond of each other, and we agreed tha even if this ‘relationship’ (or whatever the fuck it was) didn’t evolve to the level of wedding bells and giving our babies their own Instagram accounts, we’d almost definitely remain friends. Neither of us had ever met anyone quite like the other, and it was a relationship we both became extremely interesting in continuing in some form.

Have I built that up enough? OK, now here comes the tragedy:

Remember how my previous relationship ended because of this fucking blog? Well, more observant readers might notice a theme emerging.

The last time I spoke to Meghan- I mean, likely, the fucking last time ever– she mentioned how she was so incensed about recent furore claiming the Lake District is racist that she was moved to start her own Twitter account for the first time (that I can’t link to, for reasons that will become clear). After the call finished, I scrolled through her Twitter feed in the acceptably stalkerish way, and gave her a follow. Now, my Twitter bio- that she would have read when she was acceptably stalking me- contains a link to my blog. I still hadn’t had the time to explain my blog. I quickly realised she knew about it when she sent me a message:

I mean, at that point, no. And even now, her ‘deets’ are barely on here, right?? I tried to honestly explain myself:

This was all true, as I think I’ve covered in this post. Her reply though, really got at the heart of why she was so upset:

Meghan had trusted me enough to open up to me and share personal details that she was never going to just chuck out in the direction of some stranger. She was a guarded enough person to not even let people know she was funny until they’d gone through a strenuous vetting procedure. Meghan had a (correctly!) very high opinion of herself and knew exactly what she was worth, she felt like she had traded pieces of an item of extremely  high value with a person who might have just been taking the piss all the time. I completely understand that. Then she sent the most devastating text:

Ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch! The crazy guys she was wary of when she didn’t give me her work details? I was that crazy guy! I was the weird man that she was terrified would turn up at her place of work and stage a dirty protest involving gallons of blood mixed with fresh semen and possibly her sliced off clitoris. I’m the psycho that women are scared of! I thought I was a nice guy… Fuck! I’m even saying that now!! I of course, tried to ring her, but the call was rejected, so I wrote a long and probably pathetic explanation, explaining that blah blah blah and if you think about it then blerg blerg blerg and that actually the situation is more waff waff waff. The messages never got those two ticks to confirm that they were received by Meghan. I then worked out that my number was blocked on WhatsApp. I tried ringing using my actual phone, like a freaking caveman, but that was blocked as well. Later, when I wondered if she’d been moved enough to Tweet about it- if our ‘relationship’ was of ‘National Park Bigotry’ levels of importance in her mind- but she’d even blocked me on Twitter. Which, wow, has actually never happened to me before, and I’ve Tweeted some really distasteful shit. It’s the most comprehensively I’ve ever been removed from someone’s life, which is a record I never imagined my ex-wife surrendering. I could sit here and complain about how if I just had the chance to explain then maybe she would see it differently, but that’s all just pathetic scratching at the grave’s inner walls when I really should just let the dirt be poured over me. Yet another relationship destroyed because of this stupid fucking blog that nobody reads. What’s most annoying, is that Meghan can’t even know how little I’m phoning her! I phoned her once to confirm that my number had been blocked, and that’s it! I feel like I’ve been extremely mature and civilised, but as far as Meghan knows I’m phoning in tears ten times a day! I deserve far more respect for how well I’m taking all this! I really should find out where she works, go and tell her to her face…

The next morning, my actual stomach hurt. I’m not sure if it was the usual gastroesophageal reflux of regret that I wake up with most mornings, or if I actually felt really bad because I’d let a pretty special woman pass me by because of this stupid fucking blog that nobody reads? Meghan really was (and likely still is) very special- she had been proposed to on nine different occasions, which sounds like a ridiculous boast until you speak to her, then you… you kinda get it… I wrote a blog post the next day, to take my mind off things. You could probably tel my heart wasn’t in it- I didn’t fucking want to do this shit anymore. Not just this stupid fucking series, but the whole Gig Economy dating bullshit. I didn’t want to swipe a selection of meat products based on how much I wanted to cum on their tits. I wanted real connections, which you can only really get with real interactions with real women. To quote ‘Big Sexy’Kevin Nash:

But… I do remember Meghan telling me about her past relationships, and how you should never really mourn two people drifting (or, y’know, being dragged aggressively) apart, because what you experienced still exists, it’s still a part of your life that happened. When it was good it will always be good. The only real sad departures are the ones where you feel that you totally wasted your time, and I really enjoyed my week talking with Meghan, she gave me a lot to think about and encouraged me to analyse myself. Honestly, I’ve been friends with people for years that ain’t given me none of that (You know. Who I’m talking. About). Really, what are we aiming for here? I fucking marry Meghan?? I spend the rest of my fucking life with her??? I move to fucking Wilmslow???? Christ, that shit would get tired real quick. Yeah, I realise how I’musing a piece of advice that Meghan gave me to analyse the end of my relationship with Meghan, but that’s just how fucking meta this blog gets sometimes sorry/not sorry.

I really fucking enjoyed my week in Meghan’s ‘Friend Zone’. I hate how people use the phrase ‘Friend Zone’ disparagingly, it suggests that woman are absolutely wasted as friends, that they’re fucking useless vessels unless they’re letting you stick your disheveled penis inside them and waiting patiently for your tearful orgasm. Maybe I don’t just want sentient wankcloths, maybe I actually want the friendship. The fact that this is the second consecutive time that a relationship has been ended by this blog got me thinking about Hugo. Yeah, Hugo realised she couldn’t stay with a man so obviously still obsessed with one woman from his past, but despite not being able to continue a ‘romantic’ relationship, we’ve still become unbelievably close friends. We speak almost every day during lockdown, and she got he blow by blow account of my tempestuous little affair with Meghan. I have with Hugo what I only fantasised about with Meghan- we didn’t work out as lovers but we’ve nonetheless become wonderful friends, because we’re both such wonderful people that are quite unlike anybody the other has ever met, and you’ve got to lock that motherfuckin’ relationship down!! Isn’t this, actually, what I’m looking for? Isn’t this actually the kind of human connection that I’m searching for, one you’re unlikely to find swiping right on a photo of an 18 year old’s bum in a bikini? Aren’t I just waiting for a way to return to Hejjy anyway? If I go on Bumble now, aren’t I looking for either someone hilariously dumb enough to feature on this blog or someone to just fill the void until Hej returns? Is that fair?? Does that void need filling?? Perhaps, I’ve already gotten all I’m ever likely to get from Bumble and online dating…

Also, did she not read this fucking blog?? Imagine finishing with Vincent van Gogh when you find out he’s doing a bit of painting on the side?? I’m not sure if I can be with such a philistine…