PART 1
When I first heard from her, I thought that it must be a joke. I mean, in the world of online dating you just don’t find too many stunning women looking to make contact with you. But there she was—Rachelle Maynard—this brilliant and hilarious and insanely talented tall drink of water from Toronto.
Man, Rebecca Eckler is a real work. Have you seen her blog? Lordy! At any rate, I have no doubt that she’d think it was fun to trick some slightly older guy from Ottawa into going down to Toronto on a dream date only to get mocked by a bunch of snotty sex-in-the-city types and then pushed around by
their thick-necked boyfriends.
PART 2
The date took place in Toronto, in the rooftop bar of the Park Hyatt hotel. Rachelle looked like a movie star, like a sweet and kind movie star. Everybody, everything faded into the light of her eyes. It was positively cinematic. I felt kind of dizzy for a moment there and started to think about those scary stroke commercials they’re always running on television, but I shook it off. I manned-up. When we started to talk, I realized that this was the woman I was made to love. Word.
Getting out of the elevator, I got somebody to take a photograph of us. “Let me forever have this moment,” I said to myself. I thought it would have been pretty faggy to have said that out loud, one hour into our first date, so I kept it to myself. I also kept it to myself that I thought she had a hot body.
We had roast chicken for dinner, the first of many excellent meals we’ve shared together. I’m not sure what my favourite one was, but man, does Rachelle ever nail pork chops!! They’re just dynamite! At any rate, I sat on the sofa, thinking about kissing her. Suave and dramatic, suggesting George Clooney rather than Woody Allen, I knocked the phone receiver to the floor and began to kiss her madly, quickly, like in one of those movies. And then we went to her closet.
Our second date was less than a month later, in Washington D.C. We stayed at her sister’s house. On a beautiful day, we went to the zoo. It turns out that the zoo is a hilly spot. It’s easy to get tired walking up all those hills. I often found myself winded and had to stop, but as I am smart like lightning I pretended the reason I had to pause was to pick-up errant litter and put it in the garbage.
Later, we had steak and scallops for dinner. Holding onto one another in her sister’s living room, we swayed while listening to Lauren Hill sing Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You, a memory I often close my eyes to recall.
(The pandas, by the way, are over-rated. They’re lazy and they’re dirty and they will not play fetch with you if you throw a Pepsi can into their enclosure.)
PART 3
Our most recent trip was to Virginia. We saw Battleships, fireworks, and people in hot tubs in 109-degree weather. It was great! We also saw the movie The Exorcist and a person throwing up in a fast food parking lot. And for the first time in our lives, we both fired a handgun. I tell you, I could shoot the eyes out of a chipmunk at one hundred feet. I’m a natural, a stone-cold killa.
It was on this trip that Rachelle got the worst sunburn in the history of sunburns. Man, it was something! It was like a contagion an angry God might smite you with. She didn’t think she’d need any sun block. She’s a bit of a donkey, that one—kinda stubborn—but man, I love her like crazy beans. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
