This post contains Nicholas Cage

I’ve been using OkCupid since 2008. If you don’t use that site, you don’t know how it works, but it like, totally encourages you to stick around. It’s like an aggressive version of those little creatures popping up behind Sarah in Labrynth, “Should you need us…” Only it’s like “Listen, we’re really happy that you’re off the market, but if you delete your profile you can never use the same username and all the hard work that went into creating this stunning profile will be lost, so how about you just click the “Disable” button. Then, if things don’t work out, you can just pick up where you left off.”

And over the years, I’ve become protective of that profile. I love my username. That profile is one of my finest works, always evolving. That profile gets me so many messages that I’ve never been at a loss for anything to do. If I’m bored, I just make my way down the list and find someone who’s not busy right then. Bad or good, that profile has been a huge chunk of my self-esteem for years.

“Don’t forget to text me when the race is over so I know you’re not smashed to bits.”

Yesterday, as the hours ticked by and I hadn’t heard from him, I realized that if there was an accident, I wouldn’t know about it. He races bicycle for a living. I don’t know how to say that. He’s a pro-bike guy. A professional racist? He goes out on these big races with a team and they race and they get hurt and all of a sudden I feel like I’m in Jerry MacGuire and I am watching a football game and my husband Cuba Gooding Jr. gets smashed into by other football guys and I don’t know if he’s going to get up and dance around. Only I can’t watch *his* race on tv. Or can I? I dunno. Never checked the channels for this kind of stuff.

In the past, when I’ve met someone on OkCupid and I really like-like them, I’ve changed my status to “Seeing Someone”. This is a thing you can do. You can say “Seeing Someone” and that you’re only looking for new friends. Or you can say “Seeing Someone” and if you say you’re looking for casual sex or dating, that shows up to other people as “Available”. So, I’d change it, as a gesture, as a way to say “Look, I think you’re pretty great.” A few times I even disabled that profile. That was when things were really going full-steam. Like, when Josh and I moved in together. Or when K and I started dating. Hell, I didn’t even disable my profile when Lee moved across the ocean to live with me.

We lay in bed one night trying to figure out what we’re going to hate about each other. He’s gone a lot. We both have a bit of the crazy in us. I post about my personal life on every imaginable platform. He’s fairly private. This is a thing I usually do by myself. Whenever I feel especially drawn to a person, I start to think of the things that won’t work about it. “He dresses like a dweeb.” “I already can’t stand the way he chews.” “He dances. I hate that.” It’s not a thing I try to do. I’m just the kind of person who thinks long-term about everything. I worry it into the ground.

But now that worry is replaced by a new worry. I’m terrified that now that I’ve met him, something will take him away. One of my co-workers got hit by a car on his bike Friday night. There were 618 bicycle riding deaths in America in 2010. Remember when Nicholas Cage became a human so he could hang out with Meg Ryan and then they are super happy? What takes her out? That’s right. She’s riding a bike and gets hit by a truck. Bikes are death-traps.

I woke up because I had a dream he was telling me goodbye in the morning. I woke up smiling. What a twit. That keeps happening to me. My face hurts from smiling. I keep staring off into space, thinking of him, looking like someone just plunged me full of morphine. My friends are downright sick of my infatuation phase.

I opened OkCupid, gazed at a few of the faces of people who’d sent me messages. No interest. I clicked on my settings, got to the disable profile page. They let you do this thing where you can tell them why you’re going. You can tell them who you met on their site. They say this improved their matching abilities. I guess that makes sense based on the numbers system they use. And I entered his name, and was about to hit that disable button. Then I thought better of it and hit “Delete”.

Now I’m waiting for the hours to pass, the text message to come, and reading too many articles about bicycle deaths. Everyone loves in their own way.

The beautiful Ms. Seberg, before she decided to off herself with pills.

1. Jean Seberg as Lilith

While I fancy myself a bit of a Seberg, on account of my close, personal ties with the Black Panthers, it is her portrayal of a mental patient that really made me feel close to the gal. I came across Lilith a few years back, when I went on a massive Warren Beatty viewing binge, having decided that I was kind of in love with the guy. Hopefully Warren Beatty googles his name frequently enough that he will stumble across this blog and we’ll be very happy together. I don’t even need him to get a divorce. Annette seems like a pretty cool lady. But, let’s get back to Jean, whose madness in this movie isn’t anything compared to the raw power of turning men’s knees and brains to mush. By the end of the film, Beatty, who’d gotten a job working at the mental hospital, loses his own damn mind.

Wearing bathing suits is an art. Like everything, Sylvia did it well.

2. Sylvia Plath, naturally

“Dying is an art. Like everything. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say, I’ve a call.”
Sigh. Oh, Sylvia, from the moment my 13 year old eyeballs devoured that bit of literary awesome, I have loved you. And even though the movies tell us he was a jerk-face, I totally love Ted. I mean, yeah, he messed around. Yeah, he wasn’t always there for you. But you loved him, Sylvia. And you were no dummy.
What I love most about Sylvia and Ted Hughes is how much they loved each other’s writing. Basically, they’re like Tim and I. Yup. I just compared myself and my best friend to two literary geniuses. Because, duh, we totally are, and also, I once wrote a poem that was pretty good.

F Scott and his dear lady who always looked great in hats.

3. Zelda Fitzgerald

F. Scott loved that woman deeply, as she inspired every single one of his heroines once he met her. She was beautiful, and wild, and the two of them found each other in real life. That gives me hope that my own F. Scott may show up one day. It also gives me hope that if he does, I can be a flapper.

4. Mabel in A Woman Under the Influence

Man, Mabel is a goddam champ. All she wants is to make her husband happy, and she tries, but she’s too much of a wild card to fit in with all of these ridiculous ideas society keep foisting on her. Her stupid dingbat husband has her locked up, but then he gets a taste of what it’s like to be a housewife. Frrr-reallz, that shit would drive anyone over the edge.

5. Betty Blue

I’ll admit it. I love Jean-Hugues Anglade even more than I love Warren Beatty or Ryan Gosling. If presented with the opportunity to make out with Beatty and Gosling or to merely lick one of Anglades deltoids, get him over here because my tongue is ready. And in the movie “Betty Blue”, you see Anglade (in the role of Zorg) naked naked naked so many times. Full on, weinie wagging in the wind, beautiful naked.
This is really one of the saddest films I have ever seen. When Zorg says the the name Betty when he’s happy, bringing her gifts and flowers, it’s like he’s laughing her name. But near the end, when he’s running up the stairs and yelling her name right before finding out that she done gone and popped out her own eyeball, well, I start sobbing every time.

At the age of 4, I fell in love. I knew it was love, too, not just some fleeting moment of fanciful desire. I was acutely aware that anyone I thought of so often that I couldn’t even make myself take a nap was a pretty special person, indeed. How could I nap? I was planning our future and naming our 12 children.

He was easy to love, too. He was lanky, shy, and without even trying he made me laugh. When he got picked on I wanted to wallop any smack talkers. When he was frightened, which was fairly often, I wanted to hold his hand and tell him that everything would work out; he’d see. It always worked out.

It became apparent through the years that it wouldn’t work out for us- he was a dog person, I prefer turtles; once school started I was busy whenever he was around; he was a cartoon, I was…not a cartoon. Despite this I will always remember Shaggy as my first love.

Oh, to be Scooby, who was always jumping into those pale, scrawny arms.

As cartoons progressed, everything changed. These days I can easily love a cartoon, but I have never been able to find one single character who gives me the tingles because of his innocence and beauty in the same way Shaggy had done.

Until today.

Today I watched The Velvet Mouse Show, a cartoon that takes me back to what cartoons used to be, back to a time when kids were supposed to watch them and adults might find themselves drawn in as well. And as I watched, that no-nap-time feeling crept back into my heart as the dreamy newly ordained wizard, Luck E. Charm entered the frame, bespeckled and slightly nervous. And just in case you didn’t know, he’s Merlin’s nephew. I’m not name dropping, just stating a fact.

Oh, Lucky. She's not the girl for you.

This time, I’m going to be better at keeping the flame alive. Time is on our side. I can spend time with Lucky on the Velvet Mouse site. I can download him so that he’ll never leave me. I’ll even back up the file, that’s how devoted I am. And maybe one day, I will find a way to become a cartoon and join him. (I was just reading in Time magazine that scientist have created a reasonably textured chicken substitute, so I bet within three years they’ll have the technology to turn me into a cartoon. I’ve done crazier things for less worthy men.)

So, I recommend you check out the Velvet Mouse Show. Have a giggle. Get that old childhood feeling back for just a minute. Sing along to the happy music.  But stay away from my Luck E. Charm, or I’ll have to kick your ass.