Social Experiments: Missed Connections

Submitted by Bumsita

A perennial purple peace sign on a plain white background, Craigslist has, more or less, resisted all of the temptations poised by modernity. It is a relic of American internet culture that remains widely-used; it is one of the few places where one can poke at the soft underbelly of a nation swirling aggressively down the drain while maintaining general anonymity. I have used Craigslist to find apartments and to purchase cars, to sell furniture and to recruit study participants. Apart from these white-bread utilizations, I have also used Craigslist to conduct small social experiments. Once, I posted to a community board that I wanted to go for a ride on a motorcycle, requesting that eligible candidates email me photos of their bikes to assess whether we were a good fit. A few oddballs acquiesced, and an even greater few sent me requests for photos in return. So goes the ancient parable of the internet message board: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

In terms of sociological interest, no section compares to Missed Connections. It is a space designated for members of the community to share their most heartbreaking encounters with other could-have-would-have souls. They describe gingham-patterned conversations at the dog park that ended with an unceremonious parting of ways. They describe friendships cut short and phone contacts lost. More often, they describe immediate physical characteristics, paired with a plead for access to your time and/or body. Though the executions are diverse, Missed Connections all share a common theme of pure fantasy—which, to an old romantic like me, is the most compelling substance on earth.

For a time, I held a quiet desire to be the subject of someone’s Missed Connection. Of course, my Missed Connector would be eloquent, and not the type of gal who usually posts these type of things. They would describe me, their Missed Connectee, with taste and admiration, reading the items in my shopping cart as a hunched old woman reads tea leaves. To be the topic of such blooming, one-sided yearning would surely dilate the pupils.

I have since abandoned this daydream for ones of an equally distasteful nature that threaten to get the best of me on mornings I forget to meditate. This has not, however, kept me from imagining what it would have been like to have been a Missed Connectee. Simultaneously, life has taught me that if you want something to happen, the most effective course of action is to do it yourself, begging the question: canst thou be thine own Craigslist Admirer?

What I present to you now is the next in my series of Social Experiments. What follows are real moments from my solitary life, described as though someone else had seen them and been enchanted by them; as though someone had kept me in the back of their mind for long enough to sit down and write something about it. The resulting text is, then, neither fiction nor nonfiction. The people writing these Missed Connections do not exist outside of the limits posed by imagination—put plainly, dear reader, I am real and everything else is fake.

I posted each of these vignettes to the Craigslists of the respective cities where these moments took place. Which opens a new possibility: if I know that I am the subject, whoever responds to these posts believes that they could be me.

I wonder, then, who will?

Scene 1

CITY: Las Vegas, NV

LOCATION: that french bistro at the bottom of the big, fake Eiffel tower. About 7am.

I don’t know what I was doing up so early. I don’t recall having gone to bed, or having made my way down to this end of the strip. It was not yet hot, but in Vegas, you learn that the heat is always coming from somewhere. When the sun is up it comes from above, in such powerful quantities that it charges the asphalt. After the sun has set, the heat comes up from beneath your feet.

I was thinking something along those lines when I noticed you sitting by yourself, in a little wrought-iron chair, at a little wrought-iron table, in the bistro they built at the bottom of the big, fake Eiffel tower.

From where I stood I could tell you smelled like wet skin. Your face was flushed and slightly damp, giving me the impression that you had interrupted a workout to sit and eat breakfast. In front of you, a waiter placed two glasses, one that was tall and cylindrical and contained six-to-eight ounces of green juice, and the other that was wide and full of water. Your ice chips ganged together at the surface of the water. To me, it looked like they were thankful it was only morning, and that the heat was still coming up and not down.

You had two legs that were neither short nor long. You folded them one over the other in an awkward way that made me think you must be around 25 years old. I could tell that the chair was uncomfortable against the places on the backs of your legs that your shorts did not cover. You were aware of people watching you. You didn’t have a bag with you, just a fanny-pack, that held your phone and a couple of loose cards. One was a room key from the Hooters Hotel and Casino, which I heard doesn’t exist anymore.

I kept on walking. I know that this was years ago, now, and that this may be a long-shot. But I was meaning to ask you: was it your idea to stay at the Hooters? If not, whose idea was it? Whoever’s idea it was, do you still talk to them? And if not, what happened?

What else is there? You had a yellow ponytail and a nose that is a little round at the end. It was neither big nor small. You were kind to the waitstaff. I hope this helps.

Scene 2

CITY: St. George Island, FL

LOCATION: the frosted beer coolers in that liquor store at the base of the bridge that connects to the mainland.

You caught my ear before you caught my eye. In fact, I may have not noticed you, were it not for the too-loud music coming from your car when you pulled up, and the subsequent noise that leaked from your also too-loud headphones as you entered the liquor store. You and your noisy life walked right past me, right past me to touch the grimy metal handle of a beer cooler, and when you emerged from the beer cooler, six pack of Bud Lite Platinum dangled from the hand that touched the grime.

It didn’t look right. Your eyes did not match your presence. There was no confidence or familiarity with the action you were conducting—you were not the type of young person who emerges from beer coolers. If it were my business, I would be skeptical.

I don’t know if you noticed this, but stores around here have funny little names. Isle Be Back vacation rentals, stuff like that. We even named the watery inlet at the end of the island that separates the human-habitat from the other-life-habitat the Government Cut. I wasn’t living here when that happened, but I’ve been around long enough to feel involved in some way.

People come here because of funny little names, because of our panhandle charm. It helps folks relax and offers a delicious change of pace. I mention this because no part of you looked relaxed. You looked very alone. You looked like you did not know what you were doing here.

I didn’t have the time to ask. You were gone too soon, in your car, with that music again. And since I didn’t ask, I’ve made up a story for you:

You were in day three of a week-long solo road trip that began and ended in Detroit. Earlier in the day, you had checked in to an Airbnb on the bay side of the island, and were greeted by an old man with a scabby parrot on one shoulder. He was nice enough. However, as you unloaded your bags, you began to notice the home was in a state of deep filth and disrepair. You had just overcome a traumatic experience with bedbugs earlier in the year and were not prepared to relive it. Without other options, you resigned to stay the night, and brought your bag back down to your car, not interested in picking up hitchhikers. You told yourself you would just sleep on top of the sheets and shower thoroughly the next day. As the night wore on, you became afraid of the guests in the other rooms, who were in every way Floridian, and were entering and exiting the house to smoke while they yelled at unknown persons at the other end of a phone line. You could not handle it anymore when you went to put the snacks you packed in your room’s mini fridge and noticed carcasses of cockroaches. Your crawling skin flew you to your car. That’s why you were here, buying beer, to drink it and get you through the night. I would feel bad for you if I felt that you had it bad.

Let me know if that sounds right. You had on a beige baseball hat with no design

Scene 3

CITY: New York, NY

LOCATION: the chrome counter of Russ & Daughter’s deli in lower Manhattan, on a wet and cold December night.

The windows, even painted as they were in steam, could not obscure the sight of snow melting off the leather shoulder of your jacket. It was the time of year in New York City where restaurant owners affix gnarled plastic vestibules to the outside of their doors, and since I knew that the soup was good here, and since I guessed you’d be sticking around for a while, I pulled on the exterior handle and made my way inside. I can’t remember what day of the week it was, only that the deli was about half full with a majority of patrons clustered in groups that leaned in towards one another. You were a solitary sore thumb. I mean this in the sincerest of ways a body can say it.

I picked a seat in a small booth an unassuming distance away, and watched as a crisp waiter approached you. You pointed to three areas on the menu and smiled after each one. The waiter nodded before retreating from the chrome counter—your chrome counter. The book that lay open beside you was being observed, not read. I could tell by the way your eyes wavered so easily towards every errant sound. You kept pulling a phone from your pocket and hungrily checking it, then squirreling it away again, only to repeat within 3 minutes. I interpreted this scene as you being stood up—by a friend, by a lover, by the potential surrogate for your much longed for child, by your estranged mother who you last saw tossing pennies into a fountain at the Amsterdam airport. I weighed each of these hypotheses.

The waiter placed a bowl of matzah ball soup in front of you. You, almost reflexively, navigated your face directly above the steaming broth and took a powerful inhale. I saw little swirls of matzah vapor go right up your flared nostrils. You trembled slightly. More snow dripped from the shoulder of your jacket.

Just then, I remembered that I had forgotten to pick up my dry cleaning earlier in the day. I work for an insurance company that primarily services doomsday cults in the Tri-State area. If there’s one thing you should know about conducting business with cultists, it’s that they respect a good outfit. I quickly gathered my things and slipped back out into the street.

All I wanted to tell you was this: I have never seen someone eat matzah balls without opening their mouth.