Brazilian Cookie-Makers and Teenagers Who Still Like Playing House

People, stop trying to guess how old I am.

In the past few weeks--pretty much all of a sudden--bloggers and other Internet-users have been asking me how old I am via e-mail, Formspring, comments on my blog, or mysterious, raspy phone calls made under the alias of "Deep Throat." And it's really starting to annoy me.

When I was a kid, my parents impressed only a few things on me. Examples being:

A. Leaves of three, let it be.
B. If you masturbate, your hands will grow fur.
C. Never gamble with 5'4 Irish-American men named Finn. They will double-cross you.

Another thing they constantly told me was to not reveal too much about myself to strangers on the internet. Yes, it's true that this probably doesn't apply now. Yes, I am just being paranoid. BUT REMEMBER, you're not being paranoid if there really is a hooded man with a knife stalking you whenever you're alone. So in my case, I'm not paranoid.

I have on two occasions told a stranger directly how old I was on the internet. The first was a Brazilian teenage girl with a blog about baking cookies back in my Review Raves and Some Other R Word days. She spoke little English but immediately began hitting on me for the same reason that all Internet users flirt with total strangers on the Internet: they imagine them good-looking: tan and well-toned. Eventually she asked, "How old are you?" I told her and she said "I'm sorry, Christopher. We cannot be together. Can we be friends?" as if I was the one hitting on a total stranger.

The second instance something like this happened was when I mentioned what city I live in on The Nerd Archives. Another blogger told me she lived in the same city and asked me if I had a Facebook, iChat, MySpace, Twitter, and other social networking sites which I personally don't have even though my better-looking, more charming alter-ego Brent does have. I told her I had e-mail. She then asked me how old I was. I told her. About a week later, I was bombarded with questions from kids on my basketball team who went to the same school as her and were all under the impression I was dating her. A day after that, she invited me to go to an inter-mural dance with her. Half a month later, she at least considered us boyfriend and girlfriend.

We went on "dating" for several months during which she swayed between irritatingly clingy and remarkably detached. It was during these months that she put me on speakerphone with about a dozen strange teenage girls from her summer camp, four of which called me an "asshole" simultaneously when I refused to tell them that I loved this girl. After three or four months, this girl said she was leaving the state for boarding school and called me, tearful, saying that she just knew I was going to break up with her because she was leaving. I said that was silly and scheduled a "date" for the next week. Several hours before it happened, she called me, cancelled, and refused to answer her phone or e-mail for the next two weeks. After that, I received a curt e-mail explaining why we couldn't "be together" because "fate was conspiring against us."

We didn't talk for the duration of that summer. At one point, I was so filled with irrational guilt that I sent her a letter saying how I could have been a better "boyfriend" during our "relationship." She left ten messages on my phone and sent me three e-mails and later sent me a letter explaining how the reason she left me was because she liked me too much and decided to lock her emotions away by not talking to me.

We agreed to meet at an art museum in Downtown after a couple of weeks of very friendly and apologetic phone calls. I showed up. She was her usual self for the first hour or so: chipper, peculiar, and especially blatant in her complaints about me. The next few hours, she became quiet, reserved, and she refused to walk with me. At her house, I had to talk to her brother more than I talked to her. (A bad thing--her brother despised me.)

She didn't even say goodbye to me when I left.

When I tried to call her after that day, she always sound polite but impatient to get off the phone. At one point, I called her and she answered the phone with "What do you want?" I took the hint then and haven't called her since. It's been three or four months since I've talked to her.

During the relationship, I had to pinch myself every morning to convince myself that this was a real relationship and that I liked this girl. That I liked this girl who deserted me once, wrote me a letter saying how she had truly loved me all along, then deserted me again little more than a month later. This girl who clung onto me when she needed me and took off whenever it was the other way around. This girl who was apparently horrified and guilty by the fact that she had sex with her boyfriend before me, who she made out to be a brutish idiot and, less than a week after she "broke up with me," they did the same thing on the school bus one bright Monday morning.

Maybe this is why I don't like telling my age. Not because I'm afraid you'll all want to date me. Because I'm paranoid and psycologically wired to think that next time I tell anyone on the internet my age, another eight months that could have been perfect will be stolen from my fingertips. Other human beings hate dogs because they were bitten by a rabid Rottweiler as a child. I don't like telling my age to other people on the internet.

(Sigh.)

Check out my Regina Spektor post below this one if you haven't already. It's long, erotic, and at least moderately amusing.

ALSO, vote on the poll at the top of the right sidebar. I don't even have enough willpower to tell you what it is.

Cheers,
That Blond Guy