“Good morning, Melting Kitty”
I looked over at my phone and couldn’t hide the smile on my face. I think pet names are stupid. The only person who ever got away with them was my grandfather, who called me “Da Punkin” for my entire life. Other than him, I would correct people fairly quickly on how to pronounce my real name before even telling them my nickname(s).
But somehow, this guy got away with calling me Melting Kitty. He’d reached out to me on an online dating app. We’d chatted online a few times before I told him I wanted to meet in person. I will never understand the MTV show “Catfish” because I have always met anyone I talked to online in person within a couple of weeks. Time is important to me. I don’t let anyone waste mine.
I wasn’t particularly nervous about meeting him in the flesh. Quite frankly, I thought it was a setup because his photo looked like something you put in a picture frame. I was prepared to point my finger and go, “Ah ha! I knew you were lying!” I brushed my hair into a ponytail, threw on a sweatshirt and didn’t give one iota of a care about looking “date cute.” But he walked through the café where we were supposed to meet, and it really was the “model” in the photo. I sighed, wishing I’d have actually worn “first date attire” instead of “putting salt down for snow” attire. Ah well.
“How’s your day going, Melting Kitty?”
Although I’d lost interest in being Joan Clayton from “Girlfriends” and waiting 90 days to be intimate, I also never nor would I ever have a one-night stand. (As an HIV/AIDS activist who spent my college years and beyond educating people on safe sex and passing out condoms at charity auctions, I’m a bit too prudish to be Lynn Ann Searcy. I’m not nearly as stiff as Toni Childs. I’m somewhere in the middle, maybe Maya Wilkes.)
But after a few movie nights and dates with this guy, my mind was all over the place.
“Look at you,” he said. “You look like you want to. You’re all curled up on the other side of the couch like a kitty, just melting away. Melting Kitty. That’s what I’ll call you.”
I laughed. He wasn’t wrong. Although I would’ve preferred a puppy reference, I was indeed curled up into a ball with my mind in a thousand different places. (I don’t even like cats, which makes the nickname Melting Kitty the ultimate irony. Even though both of my dogs have passed on after 22 years combined, I automatically chose a dog as my WingPet on FetchaDate. Diamonds are some women’s best friends. Dogs are mine.)
“Do you want company, Melting Kitty?”
Restaurant. Movie. Many dinner nights. Overnights. He was a cool guy. I’d dated a few other guys from online dating sites before, but he won over all of them. How? He knew the right amount of times to contact me without being clingy. I woke up to a good morning text. I went to sleep (if he was not with me) to a goodnight text. I’d be at work, and midday, I’d get a “How’s your day doing?” text. Always with the pet name. And always when I really needed to get my mind off of a job I despised. If that Cappuccino app were around, he’d have probably sent voice messages at 8 a.m. playing his violin. (I would’ve ate that up!)
We didn’t work out in the end. We wanted different things from a relationship, and neither of us was budging. He went his way, and I went mine. About a month later, I ended up seeing a guy on another online dating site who I’d dated right before my second year of college. He and I met at a mall and ended up going to a carnival with a friend of mine who was with me. His friend bailed on a double date, but the three of us still wanted to hang out so we played games and had a blast. But my friend liked him a lot and kissed him when he dropped us off at home, so I went into immediate Girl Code mode. Hands off!
“Hi”
But more than a decade later, she and I were no longer friends. We went to separate colleges. He went overseas to play basketball. We never spoke of him nor did those two pan out past that carnival hangout. I reached out to him to see what he was like these days. He was interested in me, so we decided to meet up. I always wanted to kiss him, but she beat me to the bunch. We hung out twice after that, for less than an hour. I did end up kissing him. It was overrated. I liked kissing the guy who called me Melting Kitty 100x more.
Carnival Guy texted me all the time, too. Morning, afternoon, evening. He barely had anything of substance to say. The messages were just “hi.” I could easily say that they both thought about me throughout their day. But Melting Kitty Guy wanted to see me. He wanted to hang out, crack jokes at movies, kiss me, hug me, knew my favorite foods and would order them on food apps ahead of time, and bring them in with him.
“Hi”
Carnival Guy didn’t know much. He asked me to send him nudes. He sent “hi” texts. With his hand to the fire, and even after already “knowing” me in my college years, our conversations were surface-level. I was bored out of my mind with him, and we argued a ridiculous amount of times. Then the next day I’d get a “hi” text. I found his need for more of a “texting-ship” rather than old-school dating annoying. I’m not a teenager. My Love Language is Quality Time. Eventually, I changed my phone number and blocked him on the app. I’m a grown woman. I don’t do texting-ships.
“Hi”
In the online dating world, I think people get too wrapped up in meeting online and keeping the relationship online. We’re in a tech-crazed world where we text instead of picking up the phone. I’m an Old Millennial. I can mimic the AOL dial-up sound and felt a way when an ex-flame took me out of his Top 8. But I also want to meet in person to talk, walk around, laugh, and hang out.
As Melting Kitty, I was seen. He was interested. He wanted to know more about me, even if it was just something random about what I was doing at work. Meanwhile, Carnival Guy texted me far more to talk about absolutely nothing. While technology is the way for online daters to initially connect and say, “Nice to meet you,” the keyword here is meet them. Get to know them. There’s not enough texting in the world that can do that. This is your chance. Make yourself memorable, even if you two don’t work out in the end.
