By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Dated
Marriage put a crimp on my dating and itself grows dated. Internet to the rescue. “[Dating] begins No find I able to impossible was to It be letter it is,” emailed Calvina Grasso. I couldn’t have said it better.
Copied in with me were dgrumpy, b_angell1389 and bigbubba16. How do people get these names? Calvina got mine, I assume from a databases, but how do people choose email handles? There are 1,388 other b_angells? Sixteen bigbubbas and dgrumpy I can see.
Just when you think advice can’t get better, it does. Ma-bdfphq-103763 reached out to me at the same time, noting sagely, “[Dating] want for of in having pined weariness.” Who can argue that?
Online friends I’ve never meet are the best kind. Only strangers understand the love life to which I’m stranger. Both emails had “Open Site” links. Collaboration takes labor; could we click? I emailed back sayin we should meet.
I don’t always have a nightlife, but when I do I prefer Pullman Tavern. There I learned dgrumpy was a dwarf and Calvino hot. “Where’s ma-bdfphq?” I asked.
“Which one?” asked Calvina. “There are 103,753 of them.” At the bar were all 16 Bubbas but no angels. “Blatzes for everyone,” I told Zeke the bartender.
In walked Ann Landers and Dear Abby, the advice column twins. “I thought you were dead,” I said.
“Watch it Bub,” Ann warned. The Bubbas looked up from their Blatzes. “Careful, toots,” Abby added.
“Why can’t I get a date?” I wailed.
“We’re outdated,” Ann explained. “Who reads print when TV has Oprah, Judge Judy, Dr. Phil and social media influencers are everywhere? I advise you think for yourself.”
“Worst advice I’ve heard,” I said, blowing the paltry head off my Blatz foam.
“Blow your head off instead,” Ann said.
Too bad I’d shirked my right and responsibility to bear AR-15s handy on the spur of a whim for mass shootings. I would need a different attack. “What about wild horses coming to Cassopolis?”
“What?” asked Calvina.
“Ride your own stallion —or if married, gelding — south to that toddlin’ town 44 miles south of here May 12-13,” I said. “I read online Red Horse Ranch has 60 of what it calls ‘excess animals,’ including burros, rounded up from western rangelands by the U.S. Land Management Bureau.”
“Shouldn’t burros have their own bureau?” Zeke asked.
“Bar that bartender,” Abby demanded. “The Fed has enough asses.”
“What do I do with a wild horse or burro?” Zeke persisted.
“Break it or marry it,” Ann advised. “Same difference.”
“The only dates you’ll get are figs,” Abby told me. “I advise you blend into nothing.”
In walked all 103,753 ma-bdfphqs. Talk about excess animals. “Blatzes for all,” I said.
No one thanks me enough; they just stone and take me for granite. “Take your shoes off,” I told Calvina. “I do in Japan before seeing a geisha.
“Gay Shah … Is that a slur?” asked ma-bdfphq 51,876.5. (We all wore numbers on our chests, being just released.)
“No!” I cried. “Shahs are desert rulers with oil billions. Straight, crooked, curved … they walk miles on camels. There’s no end.”
“This column’s too long. Kill it,” Ann advised.
“We know all about being dead,” Abby added. “We’re all sentenced for life.”
“Would you date me?” I begged. I had eyes on Calvina but she was playing geisha to the Bubbas.
“The Be Angels are here,” cried Zeke. “Blatzes for them too?”
The bar’s front room was filling up, but end rooms stretched south to Cassopolis. Calvina sidled up to me. “Where ya goin’?” she purred.
“No find I able to impossible,” I said. “Doesn’t matter where; I just need to get there.”
“Johns in the rear,” Zeke said. On and on went the back rooms. Echoes of whinnies and brays grew louder. At the end the Rolling Stones were playing “Wild Horses.”
“You’re early,” said Mick. “Auction’s three weeks away.”
“You recorded that song long ago,” I said. “You’re still playing it?”
“Can’t miss Cassopolis,” Keith answered.
“You think Diamond Lake southeast of here’s great?” I asked. “You should see Scott Creek Drain in Pullman. Follow me.”
The Stones left De-Grumpy cold, but Be Angels flocked to them. Bubbas flexed bicep tattoos in veins as the band sang “Angie.”
“That’s about David Bowie’s first wife,” I observed as my own walked in,
“When was the last time we went on a date?” she demanded.
“You’re here?”
“Everywhere,” she said.