Random Afternoon Reading Series, Part One: OkCupid, page 59

I wrote this after a couple months of speed dating, which ended in the disaster of a man running after my car screaming "I'm going to masturbate thinking about you." I wrote this after I joined OkCupid (back when it was popular in 2011) and thought that would make me feel better, since the first person who ever really broke my heart was on there and constantly writing on his blog about it, which of course I tortured myself by reading. I wrote this during a time when I kept telling myself someone else would come that I would fall just as in love with, though I was telling myself as a way of convincing rather than knowing it was true.

It's called OkCupid

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OkCupid

Hi. My name is Jessica. I am twenty-six years old. I have lived in eight cities and all of their cobbled alleys, dingy subway stairwells I know by heart. I’m telling you this because I would like you to make assumptions about me. The picture you see, it’s me holding that baby lion cub, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. This is meant to intrigue you, a young girl holding a wild animal. I believe in feng shui. I am a poet. I’d be impressed if you’d read poetry with me. If you were able to talk about the future with both gravity and ease. A ninety-eight percent match. Is this destroying the mystery, the magic? I’m asking you. And I’m asking myself. Like love is an algorithm. Parallel answers to survey questions could lead to lust then love then that’s it, so easy. Easy as atoms attracting and repelling each other. Based on laws that simply exist. Laws that are us. I should mention that my ex wouldn’t acknowledge our relationship, so I may have a complex. About language. About commitment. About what love is exactly. If you bring me to the highest spot in the city, where we can hear ourselves echoing through the hills, Mount Hood sitting ghostlike in the misty distance, I’ll want to mistake that expansiveness in every direction for a spark. But try describing a scent, let’s say the ocean, with something better than ocean. Brief winter sun of the far north shimmering against the icicles, the sound of cold, somewhere we’re aching from it. I know what’s true. No one’s wandering into my room while I’m alone with a book or a movie or empty brown beer bottles piling up on the nightstand; no one’s barging in unless I set my house on fire.

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If by chance you want a hardcopy of the book, you can find it here:

http://jessicalakritz.com/shop/

If you're interested but don't have the money to spend/don't want to spend the money, I can also send you the ebook for free. You just have to ask :)

xoxo