Revenge is a dish best served by someone else: The not so secret Dating Vigilante Taskforce

Hullo readers! Some updates from Washington, D.C., where I am pleased to report that more has been happening than me just hating on JDate. Well, actually, not a ton more. Mostly just me going on dates with Js from the site and then finding something about them to hate on.

tim gunn concerned

http://giphy.com/gifs/nervous-worried-stressed-iQA2hMPX88icM

Yup, hold on to your hat Tim Gunn, because there is a date post coming your way in a couple days, and it features  a whole litany of complaints, including some about what I consider one of most serious fashion faux-pas of our time.

Meanwhile, since I have your captive attention, I thought I’d use a few minutes on the mic to run an idea by you. What if: there was a way to discipline your dates and exes for not acting like they had any basic human decency or manners, without seeming like a total lunatic or having to bear the uncomfortable pain of conflict yourself?

kardashian amen

http://fiercegifs.tumblr.com/post/80909624140

I mean, if you’ve read this blog before, or ever dated for more than seven minutes, it’s abundantly clear that there are plenty of people who exhibit some pretty obnoxious or just plain mean and cowardly behaviors just lurking around on dating sites, waiting to pounce on a yet another sad, single victim. And I’m not talking about simple fade aways here. I’m talking about the more egregious stuff. For example, the unemployed former child star who shows up an hour late for any date that doesn’t involve a puppet. Or, the guy who strings you along for weeks, and then lets you know he has a girlfriend. Or the legit movie theater narc. The list goes on and on. Tonight, I had the (mis)fortune of running into one of Stucu’s worst offenders in the flesh, on my commute home. And that, my friends, is why this is on my mind.

Remember, J, the guy who had a girlfriend and knowingly let me use her toiletries to freshen up in the AM? Well, you probably don’t, but I do. As an avowed feminist, and aspiring bad ass, it KILLED me that I basically let this guy get away with 1) probably cheating on his girlfriend 2) lying to me and 3) making fun of the movie “Marley and Me, “which was actually REALLY EMOTIONAL AND MEANINGFUL. They loved that dog so much. And that dog loved them right back.

In fact, I’d be a liar too if I didn’t admit that over the past 6 months, there have been a few monologues rehearsed in my mirror where I tell J I know he’s a big lying cheater and that I have gonorrhea. (Don’t worry mom, I don’t have it. I don’t even know how to spell it. I had to use google because even my spell check doesn’t know how to spell it.)

gonnerea

Anyway, when I saw J today, getting off the metro. I totally froze:

anna kendrick

I barely managed to give him my trademark side-eye glare before I actually quickened my pace and headed to the turnstile, even though at that point he fully turned around and looked at me. (When I got home and looked in the mirror, I sadly realized I was rocking a creative looking side part and had magic marker all over my hands. So I am kinda glad the confrontation didn’t go any further).

I mean, the reason why I didn’t say anything is the same reason I don’t implement many of my revenge fantasies, or give some of these fools the talking to they deserve. I didn’t want to be this girl:

crazy

However, my (well-advised) fear of conflict/humiliating myself means that J gets to walk around this earth (or to be less dramatic, NW DC) thinking that he can just be a douche and no one will care.

Now, enter the solution: the secret vigilante dating task force. What if, I could enlist volunteers (presumably other scorned, righteous ladies and the odd sassy gay friend or two, of course), to deliver anonymous hate telegrams to J and the other creeps that have come before and after him:

i know what you did last summer

https://www.tumblr.com/search/Helen+Shivers

I mean, clearly leaving terrifying notes in someone’s home would be reserved for the worst level of offenders. But we could ask volunteers to implement a number of services, perhaps based on a sliding scale donation.

Back of the envelope calculations on pricing and services:

  • $10: We’ll send the offending party a facebook message from an untraceable source, calling out his bad behavior and concluding with a spooky, “we’re watching you.”
  • $20: We’ll up the ante and make the facebook message a public wall post (or tweet), so everyone can see what he did.
    • I.e. Hey there J, It’s about time that you stopped cheating on C (tagged) with petite, ambiguously ethnic girls you meet on the internet. #cheater #herpes
  • $50: We’ll triangulate social media data to pinpoint a time and location where one of our trained volunteers can confront this clown in person. (Add $25 if you’d like volunteer to be dressed in a fake sheriff’s outfit. Add $50 more dollars if you’d like the volunteer to throw a drink in his face).

Clearly, all the deets aren’t figured out yet, but you get the gist. I’m basically the new Mark Zuckerberg. (After all, at one time in my life we sported similar haircuts. AND, we both like to sit at our computers and scheme). Instead of facebook, I’d call it HATESbook. (I realize that name doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I could resist the rhyme).

So what do you think ladies and gents? (Though mostly ladies, because if you haven’t inferred it yet, this blog is pretty biased against men). You in?

Emily-Revenge

http://www.crushable.com/2012/12/03/entertainment/revenge-the-tv-show-season-two-winter-finale-sucks/

Oh be quiet, Emily Thorne. I think we can all agree you’re way more fun when you’re not sorry. Revenge can rock. Just ask these folks.

First Date with Keith Mars, P.I.

I’m sure some of you just read that title and thought wow, the Stucu ladies have gone completely off the rails and are now just casually revealing their dates’ full names on their “anonymous” blog. Next up it’ll be their home addresses and social security #s. I should probably stop reading before they get slapped with a huge lawsuit.

mean girls wild

Source: wifflegif.com

For those of you who don’t recognize the name ‘Keith Mars’, let me assure you that it’s NOT my date’s name. It is, however, the name of an infamous dad slash detective on one of the greatest, most underrated teen crime fighting mystery TV shows (that yes, we’ve gushed about before) of our time. That’s right, I’m talking about my homegirl Veronica Mars and her wonderful, hilarious, brilliant private investigator dad, Keith:

So why have I gone on a tangent about a fictional middle aged TV character? Because, readers, last week I went on a first date with a real live P.I.!

gryffindor-cheering-quidditch-dean-thomas

Source: www.survivingcollege.com

You guys. Stalking/sleuthing/investigating shit/being nosy is honest to God one of my favorite pastimes. Well, I should say our favorite pastimes. As we’ve mentioned before, we here at Stupid Cupid take our stalking investigative skills VERY seriously. L and I always dream joke about opening up a ladies’ detective agency because we’re so fucking good at getting information. TRUE STORY: L once impersonated a college guidance counselor on the phone in order to pump a girl (who we’d never met but who happened to be dating a friend’s ex) for information on her relationship. AND IT WORKED. I mean:

someecards find shit out

Source: www.someecards.com

So when this guy contacted me on Okcupid (I’ll be posting an eHarmony update in the next week but as of today I still refuse to give those crazy bastards my money) and a few messages in revealed that he’s a private investigator, I went from mildly interested to:

buster excited

Source: gifrific.com

Back to the name. Good old Keith garnered this nickname well before I decided to blog about him or frankly, even meet him, for two important reasons:

  • He bizarrely shares a name with H, the guy who I dated and was super into last summer and who it took me a while to get over. Obviously I can’t reveal the actual name to you, but trust me, it is NOT a common name. H1 was the first person with that name that I’d ever met, so when Mr. P.I. introduced himself, I kind of maybe thought someone was playing a prank on me. Saying that name in reference to a different person felt so weird that I knew he needed a nickname, and he needed one fast.
  • In case you forgot/just stumbled upon this blog, we recently started referring to our dates using nicknames. And when I hear the term ‘private investigator’, a certain balding, badass vigilante of the law hailing from Neptune, California who literally walks through fire to save his only daughter inevitably comes to mind:

After messaging back and forth a handful of times, we set up a date. Truth be told I wasn’t totally excited about Keith, aside from the prospect of interviewing him about his job, cases, busts, whether he carried a fake ID/got to taser people,

veronica mars taser

Source: www.sheknows.com

and general tricks of the trade. Besides the fact that he was a P.I., here’s what I knew about him going into the date:

  • He went to Penn State
  • He lives in the suburbs (what is with me and suburban dudes??)

Aaaaand that’s basically it. It should also be noted that this was my first date since my breakup with D two months ago, and my first first date in over six months. Needless to say, I was feeling a bit rusty.

leslie knope cargo pants

Source: www.tressugar.com

We decided to meet for drinks in my ‘hood. The night of our date arrived, and Keith was running late. Like, a half hour plus late. STRIKE ONE. I mean, I’m kidding (sort of), because I know shit happens, but this seems to be a common theme among suburban guys I go out with: they are all SHOCKED that the traffic into the city is bad. At rush hour. On a notoriously awful two lane highway. I mean, am I missing something? How hard is it to leave yourself an extra 20 minutes figuring that you probably won’t be flying down 76 at 6:30 pm? Especially when you’re the one who set the time of our date? FOOLS.

Anyway, I was already salty about the delay, but I tried to brush off my irritation. Luckily the bar was close enough that I could just hang at my place and not awkwardly loiter or pathetically drink by myself until he arrived.

When we finally did meet, it was a classic case of picture fraud. Keith Mars was…not as cute as his pictures. More importantly, to me, he was not as tall (but as we know, ladies, they pretty much never are). He wasn’t bad looking, it was just a bit of a letdown.

I knew within the first five minutes that I wasn’t into him. He was perfectly nice, and not wholly unattractive, I just felt nothing. Zero interest. Zero attraction. Zero connection. The more he talked, the more I thought:

nope

Source: persephonemagazine.com

(What’s that? I use this GIF in almost every post? I don’t care, I fucking love that creeping octopus. You’re welcome.)

I was doing my best not to pounce on him immediately with my list of 900000 P.I.-related questions. As we exchanged standard small talk, I started to realize something: Keith Mars was kind of a bro.

If you have a chance, check out this excellent comic on bro criteria. Do you see the example at the very top? “Still brags about getting wasted years after college”?

DING DING DING DING DING

God, you guys. Keith Mars would not shut up about how much he and his friends “partied” at school. NEWS FLASH, BROS: everyone partied/drank in college. It’s COLLEGE. This does not make you cool or unique or interesting. In fact, as a 30 year old still telling these stories to strangers, it makes you kind of pathetic.

Thoroughly turned off by my date’s troubling brotastic tendencies, I decided to get to the main event. And I will give Keith credit where credit is due: he answered every single one of my P.I.-related questions (and I asked what some might call an uncomfortable number of questions). He didn’t seem annoyed, not even at the end, by my endless curiosity. If anything, he was bemused by my sheer excitement and joy. I feel weird about revealing specifics because, you know, this dude is a private investigator, and I don’t want to be a dick (HAHAHA get it?) but of course I’ll share some general things I learned:

  • His firm works almost exclusively on civil cases, which means entrapment isn’t illegal. According to Keith, you can entrap the shit out of people. He once Catfished a dude on Facebook and posed as a hot girl asking him out in order to get him to show up to a bar. It totally worked.
  • He doesn’t carry a gun or a taser, at least that he would admit to me, but if he has to make a house call that could be dicey, he’s usually working with at least one government bureau that will send someone along with him.
  • He has a few aliases, but no fake IDs (again, at least that he would admit to me).
  • Cell phone fraud is apparently a huge international problem…? And the main case he’s working on. He also does a fair number of insurance fraud, cheating spouse and custody cases.
  • He sometimes works with Homeland Security as well as the Secret Service. !!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • He claims he never does background checks on his dates (I call bullshit, because who wouldn’t), but that he’s done it for friends, and he did it once for his sister’s boyfriend.

swanson

Source: awesomegifs.com

Guys, I was in heaven. HEAVEN. I forgot that Keith Mars was a bro. I forgot that he was three inches shorter than he claimed to be and a half hour late. I left out some other really cool details that he shared with me, just because I feel funny putting it on the internet, and also because, well, he’s a P.I., so I wouldn’t put it past homeboy to find this post. He certainly wouldn’t be the first. Luckily I never mentioned that I had a dating blog, so he wouldn’t even know to look, but still.

Finally, after a solid 40 minutes grilling him about his job, I cut myself off. We went back to chatting about normal things, but it wasn’t as interesting. After we finished our second drinks, I was over it and ready to go home. We left and walked a few blocks in the same direction.

“Well this was a lot of fun,” Keith said. “We should do it again sometime.”

I wasn’t about to be like thanks but no thanks right there on the street, so I think I just said a vague “Yeah, it was nice meeting you, thanks for the drinks”. He awkwardly went in for a kiss on the cheek, I wiggled it into a half hug, and fled.

Well readers, to use the LINGO of those of us in the business, this was an open-and-shut-case. We met, we drank, he bro’d, I pumped him for information, and that was that. Except not really, though, because the Law of Dating Inverses held true: predictably, because I wasn’t into him, Keith Mars continued to text me after our date. I’ve been polite but brief, and I’m just waiting for him to actually ask me out again so I can say thanks, but no thanks, Mr. Mars. To quote a great:

veronica mars

Source: thoughtcatalog.com

Date Rating: 5/10. I was so enthralled by the P.I. stuff I’m seriously considering a career change, but the rest of the date was mediocre. And regarding the bro thing:

dealbreaker

Source: www.tvatemybaby.com