It was match.com and probably the blind leading the blind. I lived in a small town where everybody knew everything about everybody. As soon as I saw his ad, it hit me - who is this person I'm supposed to be meeting? How will I know if he's just another one of those creepy people who only talk to women so they can use them to access their collections?
I was still new to the game. I was skeptical of men back then, and I had seen some of them still collecting dolls like I was telling him. There was no way I would be put in a position where I would willingly put myself in a situation like this and watch the floors change color.
I had no interest in it and I didn't find it anything but sick and wrong. I even kept my distance from other people who were into this kind of thing. They were the ones who would go out and watch famous people's houses and stake out waiting for them to come back. That was just a whole different world to me.
I was taken by the video game designer. I mean the real deal. He was retired and spent his time playing chess and designing game systems. We got along famously and we talked for hours. We had the same interests and I loved his quick witted responses.
He wasn't at all what I pictured. And he wasn't a phony like I thought he would be. There was nothing creepy or obsessive about him. He was so much more real and real and I couldn't stop thinking about him. I didn't want to stop.
Maybe it was because I imagined him to be older or because he was so good looking with his white hair, but it didn't matter. I was drawn to him and did everything in my power to see him and talk to him again.
I had fallen constipated from drinking too many beers and was feeling sick from that as well. I know I shouldn't have drank so much, but I was a nervous and curious type. The night we met, we got together for a drink and a nice catch up.
He talked about his doll collection and I was a little shocked. He was more honest with me than I was with him, so it was nice to hear it from him. I didn't know what to say. I asked him about it and he told me he had been collecting dolls since he was a little boy.
Then he went on to explain that he was interested in the psychology of the dolls and how they would eventually evolve. He wanted to know why they were made that way and what they had meant to happen to the people who made them. I got lost in his explanation.
Later he told me that he was an artist and a doll collector. He also picked them up from garage sales and yard sales and I could tell that he wanted to share more about them. But I had had too much to drink and was feeling sick from it.
He had a very down-to-earth kind of innocence about him and I was impressed by his honesty. He was real and honest, so I didn't tell him about the stuff I had been seeing the guys at school do and the ones at the bar. I knew he would input that information and it would be in the paper next day.
We continued talking for a few weeks after that and he told me that he really liked me. I just had to tell him if I liked the dolls too. I couldn't lie to him, but I wanted to trust him. I wanted to so badly and I wanted to be real with him.
He went on to tell me that he had a huge collection that he kept in his old Victorian home and he had a lot of storage space, so he would even let me do art there. As that conversation went on, he told me that he had seen my art before and loved it. What? How did he know?
I didn't mention that to him, so I was surprised that he was able to find the things I had painted. I had put them into a box in my car and I let him know that I had put the artwork in it, but I was too embarrassed to show him many of them.
He told me that the pieces that he liked so far were ones that I had just made up of random things that I saw. He loved my concept and how thought out the pieces were. That was really helpful to me. As if I didn't have enough anxiety about meeting him, I had a lot of other things to deal with.
He started showing up at my house more often and we continued our conversations. We were having so much fun that I could not make myself go home after the beer I had downed. No, I needed more cold beer and I just wanted to keep drinking. I was the kind of person who was socially awkward and I needed all the friends I could get.
I didn't feel welcome in my hometown and I had a lot of problems. I wanted to leave so badly and I thought that I could find someone else online who could help me. I thought that maybe I had found someone remotely familiar and I could handle that, but then I really made myself sick.