For the past few weeks I’ve been getting wave after wave of new matches on my trial eHarmony account, an account I’ve kept open just for kicks for the past year or so. Lately some of them have been sending me communication requests, but since I wasn’t paying I couldn’t respond to them, or see how ugly they looked either.

And of course this is all times neatly with eHarmony’s 3 month deal where I “only” have to pay 19.95 a month, a deal that ended July 25th, which they then extended to August 5th, then August 15th, then August 20th, then the 25th, then the 30th, with each new email alert giving me the same URGENT message that I better hurry up and sign up soon or the deal will expire and be gone forever and ever and ever…!

Whatever.

But since women were attempting to contact me, I thought I owed it to them to at least be courteous and respond, since they obviously paid for the service, and eHarmony’s horse crapola practice of matching people with non-paying subscribers was a fraudulent injustice that I could personally do something about (as long as I was willing to chivalrously fall on my sword and let the scum sucking bastages scam me out of $60.)

Plus, I wanted to see how ugly my matches looked.

So I finally signed up for real today and began sifting through all my matches. I had about 100 up to this point, roughly have of which were closed too, and of course these were the better looking matches too. Ah well, they all looked like slutty babylonian harlots anyway, so I counted it no big loss. When you close a match you can give a reason as to why you’re doing so, and my favorite one thus far was some hoochie mama of a ho bag who closed her match with me because “the physical distance between us was too great,” despite the fact that she lives about 4 miles away from me. Yeah, ok. I guess I had to live in the same apartment building to be close enough for her.

After I went through the closed matches out of morbid curiosity, I started going through my active ones. I noticed what seems to be a consistent pattern too. Either the matches were whale mountain beasts who create human solar eclipses wherever they walked, or they were hot but slutty looking trampers who worked for the theater. I must have emphasized my creative side a bit too much in my personality profile, because these theater/actress matches were a dime a dozen.

I knew what they were all about too. Since they travel around the country to perform in shows and musicals, their social circle is therefore limited to the people they travel with, and if they’re having no success with that circle, their only recourse for the most part is to go online.

Basically those theater girls would expect me to be content with a relationship where they blow town for several weeks or months at a time, and when they come back, I’m to be their stand-by male escort where I cater to their feminine needs by providing them manly company and buying them jewelry, all in the vain hopes that I’ll get a kissy wissy in return, at least until they skip town again after 3-4 days to perform at other shows.

It only takes me 2-3 seconds to close those kinds of matches. Maybe a few seconds more if they’re hotter than usual and have nice big honking-

But anyhoo…

After dropping the theater harlots and the whale mountain man beasts, I went from 50 active matches to about 4. One girl mentioned her love for pizza and actually eating a whole pie once, so she automatically made the cut. What? You talk pizza and you’re already halfway into my heart, fo’ sho’!

The other two were missionaries and seemed like nice people, so I kept them as well (even though the traveling thing becomes an issue again with missionary types, but at least they’re better stock than the theater people…. I hope.) The last one was a lawyer, which alone was grounds for closing, but she was very pretty, so I hesitated. She also has a huge smile too… like ridiculously Joker huge, but since her teeth are white and purdy I guess it’s all good. Judging from her profile though, she does seem a bit too far out of my caste system, so I don’t expect much there.

And that’s pretty much it. My account will expire at the end of November, and once it does I am DONE. Seriously. I’ve always gravitated towards dating sites because of my hearing loss, but I think that’s an issue I’m just gonna have to learn to put up with when befriending women in real life, and maybe over the course of time I’ll meet one who won’t think of me as broken, inferior goods just because I have a hearing loss, or because my job doesn’t pay well enough, or because I don’t drive a BMW.

Maybe, some day. But if not, I think the single life paired with an occasional trip to Prague (where prostitution is legal and CHEAP) would suit me just fine.

Tags: dating, dating site, dating sites, eharmony, girls, harlot, hearing loss, online, pizza, profile, relationship, theater, women
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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Ok, so I’ve been playing around with OKCupid for the past couple of weeks, sifting through literally hundreds of profiles, trying to find someone, ANYONE, with a good head on her shoulders that I could talk to. I’m so lonely.

I actually did find a few nice ones though. Pretty, morally upright girls, one of who mentioned her distaste for OKCupid’s lewdness (she gets 20 points for that) and her love for 80s music (she gets 5000 points for that).

They were all active and visited the site on a regular basis, so I decided to send them a friendly email commending their profiles and asking them if we could be penpals or friends.

I got completely blown off by everyone. 2 weeks of obsessively checking my inbox every ten minutes to see if they responded, and… nothing.

Now before I start going off and calling them rude, icy-cold hearted spawns of Satan and earnestly hoping that they would spontaneously combust and explode into a fiery pus filled death, I’m willing to concede that all the women I contacted just lead busy lives, and may not have had time to get back to me yet.

Therein however lies the reason for why I might be royally screwed.

I’ve been thinking about this: these girls seem happy enough, living busy and productive lives, with loving families and a large circle of friends. Why would they need me then? Unless of course, they’re only interested in a sperm donor to help them make babies, in which case once the child is born they would then go back to refusing to acknowledge my existence (except for the paycheck, which they’ll happily take of course.)

But let’s pretend for the sake of argument that women are not that conniving and evil. Or rather, let’s assume the women I contacted are basically good and caring folks. But the fact is, their lives are so busy they simply don’t have time to give someone like me a chance. They may check their inboxes maybe once or twice a week, meanwhile I’m checking my inbox once every ten minutes. I yearn for companionship and wubs so badly, but for them it doesn’t seem to be a priority at all. If we ever had a relationship, they could wind up being aloof and distant, meeting me only when they can fit it into their busy schedules, while for my part all I can do is cry into my pillow at night, knowing I’ll never be truly loved. Truthfully though, it would be a severely unbalanced courtship, where I would yearn for her more than she’d ever yearn for me.

It’s times like this when I really start to despise this Internet thing though. I know people would say get off of it and start putting myself out there, but it’s not really that simple.

For those who don’t know, I have a profound hearing loss in both my ears that severely crippled my ability to have a social life. As I grew up, my attempts to participate in conversations and groups almost always resulted in embarassment. I would miss key bits of phrases in a conversation, and when I would try to contribute, people would end up laughing at me because I had completely misinterpreted what they were talking about. It never failed, and it wasn’t long before my intelligence itself would be questioned too. People would just assume I was an idiot and thus unworthy of their attention. Eventually I just drifted away and no longer tried to socialize anymore. My hearing loss certainly played a large role in my becoming a loner, though I still did ok in tightly knit groups and in one-on-one situations. But whenever we went someplace noisy (which was all the time), it really crippled my ability to engage in conversations with the people I was with. Part of what makes it so hard is that when you have a hearing loss, you can’t passively listen and pick up voices easily. You have to exert a considerable amount of mental effort to follow a conversation, and after a while you can get pretty fatigued.

That’s why I gravitate to using the Internet all the time. Here, conversation is easy, and people can’t see me at first so they can’t quickly pass judgment on me because of my disability or looks. Unfortunately though, I made it my whole world, and it’s not a world I want to live in anymore. It’s all MySpace and Facebook silliness topped off with a generous load of unhinged insanity.

Statistics say most couples find each other through friends and family. All my friends though have drifted away, and I’ve been cut off from 99 percent of my family. My parents ironically enough don’t have any friends either (well at least not any with single daughters my age.)

I could go back to school, which would be the easiest way since they are popular dating mills (or to save money, I could just hang out on campus and pretend I’m a student.)

Or, I could join interest groups like a photography club, but I don’t know. Same thing with church, which I really can’t stand (specifically the local ones here). I’d go if I knew there’d be a lot of girls there, but I’d have no interest in any of the church services (except maybe the singles group.) Charity organizations might be a good idea though.

Still, this is a pretty big hole I’m in. I may have to consider the real possibility that I am never going to meet anyone, and that life will continue to conspire against me to ensure that I will always be alone. That’s one of the reasons I want to travel so much. There’s something romantic about the idea of a lost soul travelling around America, looking for the girl of his dreams. Someday, maybe.

In the meantime though, I’ll be checking my inbox. (checks again… still nothing, *&^%$#@!!!!)

Tags: dating, despair, hearing loss, internet, loneliness, okcupid, penpals, single, singlehood, social life, socializing, soulmate, travel, women, women suck
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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Had a bad dream last night.

I dreamt of having a chance encounter with the very comely Mary Katharine Ham, the conservative journalist and blogger from Townhall.com. We were inside the lobby of a museum, and I somehow managed to engage her in a conversation. Only problem was, I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. My hearing aids completely failed to pick up her speech patterns, so I was left there to helpessly either nod while she talked or give blank stares. She quickly lost interest and blew me off, thinking I was a retard. All I could do was watch while she walked away, knowing I’d never be able to convince her otherwise.

Man was I depressed when I woke up. I think it’s obvious that the new hearing aids I’m trying out has been causing a lot of grief and anxiety for me. I want to hear better so I can engage people in conversation and not be afraid of putting myself out there so I could meet new people and escape this solitary bubble I’ve built for myself. But so far the aids just aren’t living up to expectations. I’m hoping programming adjustments will fix it, but I’ll have to wait till my next appointment before I’ll know for sure.

That dream reflected my worst fears too. People have a tendency to form opinions about me based purely on my disability, and if I can’t communicate with people normally, or have trouble understanding them, it’s automatically presumed that I’m either mentally underdeveloped, or to put it quite bluntly, that I’m just a flipping idiot with the equivalent IQ of a cardboard box. Nothing I say about anything will have any merit. I’m talked down to like I’m 7 years old, and there are times when I’m treated like one too.

Normally I wouldn’t care. But what scares me is the thought that no matter how many single women I meet, they will all look at me the same way because of my hearing loss: like I’m a retard. A handicapped piece of trash unworthy of their attention, much less their love. Whether it’s in dreams or in real life, it’s always been something that weighed heavily on my mind. I fear I’ll never live up to expectations, that I can never be the “perfect guy” they’re looking for, and for that I’ll always continue to be passed over until I’m well into my 70s, living alone in some dinky apartment somewhere with only a few dogs and cats to keep me company.

I can understand why some people settle now. Why they give up all hope and just hitch on to the first person who comes along that pays any kind of attention to them, even if that person ends up being the next Son of Sam. Will that be my future as well?

Crap, I gotta get these hearing aids fixed.

Tags: aids, alone, anxiety, appointment, bad dream, blogger, cardboard box, communication, dating, disability, disabled, dreams, fears, grief, handicap, hearing, hearing aids, hearing loss, iq, journalist, loneliness, love, mary katharine ham, nightmares, nod, single women, social life, tendency, women, worst fears
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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Tags: back to the future, funny, hearing, hearing aids, hearing loss, overload
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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Today I get fitted with my new $6000 hearing aids, the Destiny 1600 by Starkey. I’m not expecting miracles, or the ability to hear conversations from 100 yards away, but it would be nice to have a normal conversation in noisy settings for once without finding myself trapped in a puffy shirt situation.

I grew up hoping with each new generation of hearing aids that passed, that the technology would finally advance enough to give me the level of hearing I so desperately needed and wanted. I wanted to be able to hear someone whispering in my ear at the movie theater, or the sound of crickets chirping in the early hours of the morning, or the sound of my car jingling its merry little tune whenever the keys were left in the ignition. I wanted to be able to carry on a decent conversation in places like the subway, or at ballparks, or anywhere I happened to be.

But most of all, I no longer wanted to be afraid. Afraid that if someone asked me for help, I wouldn’t be able to tell them because I’d have no idea what they were saying. Afraid to approach beautiful women I saw in everyday life, not so much because I was shy and ugly, but also because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear a single thing they said to me.

But after 27 years of wearing all different kinds of hearing aids from all different kinds of manufacturers, I still have yet to realize those dreams.

Will today be the day? After so many years of disappointments and heartaches, has the moment finally arrived where I can at long get my life back?

We shall see.

Tags: aids, audiology, ballparks, beautiful women, conversations, crickets, destiny, everyday life, hearing, hearing aids, hearing loss, life, movie theater, new generation, puffy shirt, social, social life, starkey, subway, technology
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I just came back from the audiologist and learned how much my new hearing aids would cost.

$5,700.

Fortunately health insurance is footing roughly half of the bill, but I’m still out close to 3 grand. @#%$ man, and I was getting so close to paying off my credit card debt too.

These are supposed to be the top of the line hearing aids though, something called the Destiny 1600 which is made by Starkey. Hopefully they’ll prove to be far superior to the ones I’m wearing now. Hell for 5700 bucks I better fricking believe they were sent from heaven.

One of the reasons why my social life is so nonexistent has been partly because I just couldn’t participate in conversations when it took place in noisy environments (which is basically everywhere). I could only go “Mmmmhmmm, uh huh, interesting, uh huh, mmhmmm” meanwhile not having the first bloody clue what the the person was saying. Sometimes I got lucky and could get away unscathed. Most of the time I didn’t. What surprised me about it all was that I thought it would be different once I went from analog to digital hearing aids. Nope. It was all still pretty much the same.

However, from what they say about these new hearing aids, they’re promising the moon. We’ll see. At the very least I’ll finally be able to get away from my current crook of an audiologist, who always found new and creative ways to pad her bills so I’d end up having to pay out of pocket for some of the repair expenses, even though my hearing aids were insured. Now I’m going back to the audiologist I had before her, a good guy who had always been straight with me, and whose warranty covered everything for 4 years and more (instead of the only two years that I had with this money grubbing ho). The only reason I went with another audiologist after him was because he only dealt with Starkey hearing aids, and they still did not have digital aids available for someone with my profound degree of hearing loss, even though it was what I wanted and I badly needed to replace the 6 year old analogs I’d been wearing back then. Oy, if I only knew, I would have bit the bullet and waited just a little while longer.

Now it looks like Starkey not only have digitals now, but even leapfrogged the competition with all these crazy new advancements to their technology. I’m still guarded about how effective the new aids will be, but for the first time in a long time I have hope. Maybe these new aids will finally be able to help me get back a part of my life that I’ve been missing for so long.

Tags: aids, analog to digital, audiologist, audiology, clue, conversations, credit card debt, crooks, deaf, destiny, extortion, extortionist, health insurance, hearing aids, hearing loss, heaven, moon, social life, starkey, top of the line, warranty
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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