what i'm not telling you is this. . .

I had only been to coffee and for a walk with Cooper once when he called and wanted to hang out again. It was last summer on a grey, rainy Saturday, and he wanted me to come over and watch a movie. I had just met him and barely knew him, and I am generally responsible, so I said I didn’t think it was a good idea.

“Well, I’m not sure this is a good idea, either,” he told me over the phone, “but go to this website. . . “

It was a blog. It took a moment to process. It was his blog. . . about his very busy dating life. . . and it mentioned me. And his blog said I was pretty. Awesome. But weird. I didn’t know what to think.

He was still on the phone, and his logic was this: if he were very scary and dangerous, someone would have alerted the internet and ruined his blog.

I guess it made sense. At any rate, I ended up at his apartment. And we had brunch the next morning. We decided that it counted as both our second and third dates.

Cooper and his blog are the reason this blog is so anonymous. Because dating Cooper was a two part process. First I dated him in real life, then I read the blog to see how it went. And then I checked back to see what readers had to say about it. Then I called him to say he’d misquoted me or that I didn’t quite understand what he’d written about me. It was far too complicated.

So this blog is going to stay completely anonymous.

The only foreseeable problem is that the whole story turns into a blockbuster romantic comedy. I’ll meet some amazing boy. We’ll get caught in the rain and he’ll discover that I’m knowledgeable about and/or competent at his childhood passion. His dog will love me, and my friends will adore him. But then he’ll discover my secret blog in a New York Times exposé, and he’ll believe that I was only using him for the material. He’ll break up with me. We will both be very sad and see lots of things and places that remind us of one another. Finally, I will write a big apology blog post (which he will read in a voice over). But one of us will already be on the way to the airport to go far away forever. The other will need to follow in a taxi, but will get stuck in traffic, which will inevitably necessitate getting out to follow on foot. Maybe the boy can be reading the blog post on his iPhone while actually on the way to the airport. Then he’ll turn around, too. And we’ll kiss in the street, probably on a bridge. And there will be lots of honking, but we won’t care. Pan out. Roll credits.

I’m not worried about the anonymous blog. These things always have happy endings. Right?


~beatrix