Gamer Girls

When I moved to London, like 20 years ago, I was looking for a girlfriend. So I went to the internet. This was before Tinder. I think even before OkCupid. I used both OkCupid and Tinder subsequently but in these early days, it was Gumtree. Gumtree was a ripoff version of Craigslist. Gumtree was popular in the UK and possibly Australia (where I think it originated). Craigslist was not popular in the UK.

They had a dating section. It was kind of like an old-fashioned newspaper personals section. You would just describe yourself and maybe what you’re looking for and people would reply.

There were women who would post these ads, I guess, but I never looked at them. I assumed that they were getting swamped with replies so what’s the point?

Instead, I just wrote my own ads and people would reply. It was entirely in text. No pictures.

So I’d write sort of funny ads and I would usually say that I was looking for Asian women. My thinking here was that I didn’t want fat chicks. At the time, internet dating wasn’t so popular. You were considered desperate if you used the internet to get a date. So I didn’t want desperate fat chicks replying to my message. How many fat Asian women are there? Not many. Perfect. Say that I’m looking for an Asian woman.

And it worked. They didn’t give a fuck that I was some weirdo specifically looking for Asian women. I got loads of replies and I went out on loads of dates.

What would happen is you’d get a response to your email address and then you’d email the person a few times. Sometimes you would exchange pictures but not always. Often when I would send a picture, that would be the last time that I’d hear from them. That’s just the way with things unless you’re Clark Gable or that Frank guy from Hack the Movies.

One of the first women I met was from Singapore. I could swear that I told this story before so I’ll keep it brief.

She was painfully unattractive. We went to a cafe or restaurant. She told a story about how when she first arrived in the UK, somebody at the airport approached her and told her to follow him. So she did. And then she realised that something might be up so she stopped. I asked why she possibly thought that it was a good idea and she didn’t know.

She was also Muslim. But during the “date” she said that she would like to go and see different churches. Just as a tourist thing, I guess, see the architecture. So I told her that we can do that and she was really surprised. She also at some point said that she thought that I would vomit upon seeing her. She had really low self-esteem.

I was much the same, I guess, and I was desperate as fuck so the next day I texted her or emailed saying that I had a nice time and I’d like to go out again. She gave kind of a non-committal response. We talked for a little while after that and she asked if I found a job yet, I said that I hadn’t, and that was pretty much the end of it. She worked in an office or something. It wasn’t anything impressive. But I didn’t have a job so she thought that I would always be unemployed, I guess.

There was a Malaysian woman. I could swear that I told this story as well but maybe it’s in one of the posts that got lost.

She worked doing some pyramid scheme called Success University. It’s subsequently been shut down for being a pyramid scheme. But she was really proud of this “job”.

What she would do is con people into signing up for courses on how to make money. And then when you would go to these courses, their solution for making money was to sign people up for the courses. She would get a percentage for every person she signed up for the course and cuts would be given up the pyramid. She was targetting her fellow Malyasian immigrants, which I think makes it particularly disgusting.

She knew that it was a scam but she said that all jobs are scams. There’s always somebody above you taking your money.

So I met her, because I was desperate as fuck, and she was painfully unattractive. She was also a giant bitch. In most of my stories, the woman is painfully unattractive. But very few of them involve giant bitches. Most of the women I met were pleasant people. Not this woman. Huge bitch. I can’t remember specific examples but I hated her. She was awful.

Then after the date, she suggested that I should read How to Make Friends and Influence People. And she made this suggestion totally genuinely. Like this was some obscure book that I didn’t know about. It was obscure to her because she’s from Malaysia but no. I know about the book. It’s obviously insulting but I don’t even know if she intended it that way. Maybe she was genuinely trying to be helpful. But given her horrendous personality, I’m inclined to think that it was intended to be insulting as opposed to some kind of cultural misunderstanding.

She also recommended Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And she denigrated the fact that I was doing data entry work, which, while low-paying, is at least an actual job. “Success University” is not a job. It’s a scam. You’re a scammer.

Anyway, as desperate as I was, I was not interested in this horrible woman.

There was also a Japanese woman. She was a few years older than me. Smoking hot. Hottest woman I met from the internet, by far. She was dressed in some crazy Japanese outfit. Knee-high white boots is all I remember. And she would walk behind me. Some cultural thing in Japan. I once tried to nudge her to walk next to me and she just stopped. She wouldn’t move. She did not like it. She wanted to walk behind. Well, okay. Have to be sensitive to cultural differences.

So we went to a restaurant and I was just really bad at conversation. I didn’t say much. So she didn’t want to go out again. That was that. She worked as a dental nurse or something so good for her.

I also went out with a Korean woman. She was also…well, I’m not sure if “hot” is the word but she was cute. She was maybe 5’2″, really crooked teeth (as a lot of Asian people have), but giant fucking tits. I don’t mean big just by Asian standards. These were huge by anyone’s standards.

So I was…oh my fucking god. Massive. I’m on a date with a Korean woman with huge fucking tits. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I was really on form that day. I was witty. I was sophisticated. And I don’t think that I looked at her face even one time.

But I tried to play it cool. So even though things were going well, I cut the date short. We could have gone somewhere after our coffee but I didn’t want to appear too eager. So I thanked her for coming and I think just gave her a hug.

Then afterwards, things were fine. She was telling me that she was going a trip somewhere but that we should go out again after her trip. I can’t remember where it was. But I kept talking about how I’ve been there and how awful the place is. And I don’t know. She just stopped replying. I was too negative. Should have talked about something else. Well, there are plenty of other giant-breasted Korean women out there. Oh wait. There aren’t? Then I really blew it.

That Korean woman and the Japanese woman are the only two even REMOTELY attractive women that I ever met off the internet.

There was also a British Indian woman. She described herself as “half-American” because one of her parents was American. An American of Indian descent, presumably. I found this odd at the time, but I guess it makes as much sense as anything else. You don’t really think of American as an ethnicity, as you would English or Polish or Japanese or whatever but why not? If somebody said that they’re “half-Mexican” you wouldn’t think anything of it even though people in Mexico come various cultures and they have different skin tones and whatever. So why not be half-American?

Very early on, she told me that she was an asexual virgin. Well, okay. You do you. I don’t particularly need to know this. But she was fucking nuttier than a fruitcake.

She told me that she was drawing an erotic comic. I was interested in seeing that. What would an erotic comic from an asexual virgin look like? But she never showed me the comic.

She also wrote a book. It was some psychology book. I saw it on Amazon. It had two reviews and both were extremely negative. They said that it was just copy and pasted from other sources. She had a degree in psychology or psychiatry or something.

Now that I think about it, she was a real Newt Wallen. Except for the asexual virgin thing. Newt is getting busy with the ladies (or whatever) all the time. But in terms of erotic comics and love of plagiarism, they’re both very similar.

She would also tell me to call her a lot. She would text me and make it seem like it’s an emergency and I have to call right now and then it was nothing. She just wanted to talk.

One time she said, “Your deep voice is really making me aroused. Maybe I shouldn’t say that.” And I made whatever borderline autistic comment in response. But I don’t even have a deep voice which makes the whole thing even weirder.

So I was sick of the nonsense and said that we should just meet up. She agreed. We were going to get coffee and meet up at a train station.

My train was delayed so I texted her saying that I’m going to be about 15 minutes late. So I get there, I apologise for being late, and she says that she already got coffee because she was thirsty but that I should get coffee. What? So she’s just going to watch me drink coffee? Why couldn’t she wait?

But whatever. I went to some stall in the train station. Some old Indian guy was selling the coffee. He flirted with this woman for a bit and then I got my coffee.

Oh. I should mention her appearance. Painfully unattractive. The only thing I remember is really horrible teeth. The worst teeth I’ve ever seen on anyone, including the homeless. They were brown. They were green. They were rotted. They were chipped. And I remember there being a hole through the centre of one of her front teeth.

I look back and think, “How is it possible? Am I maybe misremembering things? How could a non-homeless person possibly have teeth that are this bad? This was a woman in her mid to late 20s.”

I don’t know. This is what I remember. And why would I misremember this?

So we sit on a bench in this outdoors area of the train station. She’s watching me drink my coffee and she’s talking a mile a minute. I’m saying, “uh huh” periodically. And then she says, “Okay, now you say something.”

No. She’s talking insanely quickly, I’m trying to focus on my coffee, I’m not good at conversations at the best of times, and now I’m just supposed to come up with something on command? It’s not going to happen. So I suggested that we go for a walk.

We’re walking around the block. It was just a commercial area. Tall buildings and shit. There was construction work going on. It was nothing romantic.

She starts telling me about her job. She worked as somebody who goes to companies and tells the company how they can be more efficient. Basically, which people they can fire. And she said that the workers at these places really resent her because she’s a young woman coming in and telling them how they can do their jobs more efficiently.

So I say, “Well, that’s understandable. These people might have been working there for many years and they know how the job should be done.”

She shut right up. Really offended. “What difference does it make how old I am as long as I know what I’m talking about?” Shit like this.

I didn’t care. I was just trying to contribute to the conversation. It’s just a matter of common sense that people would resent her coming in and telling them how they should do their job. It’s not about her age or gender.

But I apologised and we continued our walk around the block. She didn’t say much after that. She was stewing.

We circled back to the train station and I thanked her for coming, apologised again for my earlier transgression, and gave her the most chaste of hugs. She just stood there and was really uncomfortable with it. That’s when I remembered the asexual virgin thing.

I get home and she’d already texted me saying that she had a nice time and wants to do it again. I tell her that she needs to find somebody more talkative. She disagrees and says again that we should go out again. I tell her that I don’t think we’re really compatible. This goes on for a few more messages until finally she gets the hint and decides that I’m not the right guy for her.

I really wish that I would have seen that comic, though. She said that she was going to send it but then that awful date happened. Actually, I guess the date wasn’t that bad. It was just the teeth. If she had teeth that even approached normality, I think that I might have given it another shot. I mean, she was fucking insane but I really wanted to see the comic. I would have gone out again just to see the comic. But not with those teeth. I’m sorry to say that, I know that it’s superficial but…how do teeth even get that bad? That’s decades of neglect.