Three weeks ago I matched with a guy who’s famous overseas. Let’s just say he’s big in Japan. That’s easy shorthand, you get it.
I know he’s big in Japan because I did some light internet stalking. The clues were right there in his profile, it took only the tiniest bit of curiosity to find him. And then I was all, “Oh, shit, this guy is big in Japan. Huge. Oh boy.”
I asked him, “WTF are you doing on this dating site if you’re so big in Japan? Don’t you meet all kinds of fancy people on the regular?”
“I want to meet someone away from all that razzamatazz.” He used that word. Reader, I giggled.
“What brings you to my hometown?”
”My agent wants me to explore new opportunities in this part of the world.”
We chatted for a week and he asked for my number. I don’t usually give out my number until I have a plan to meet in person, so I don’t know why I gave in. But I did, and then I said, “Use it to ask me out for coffee, okay?”
He did not ask me out for coffee. He did continue to chat me up. He made none of the classic blunders that have become so familiar in my interactions. This should not be noteworthy, but the bar is shockingly low. Maybe the upside to matching with someone big in Japan is they have to behave. You might sell their messages to the gossip press. “Which big in Japan celeb is messaging inappropriate pics to a normal?! Page 13.”
In an effort to move towards meeting in person, I asked him what he was doing over the upcoming weekend.
“I’m supposed to be traveling.”
”Is THAT why you haven’t asked me out?”
”Yeah, also, I thought maybe you weren’t feeling it?”
”Ha, no, I’m just really, really bad at this. You should have asked, I would have said yes. Now I guess you’ll be swept into the world of big in Japan supermodels.”
”Ugh, no. So superficial. Send me a picture of you and your dog?”
I oblige. Me and the dog in the wind on the beach. I’m in thrift store jeans and flannel, a beanie, my hair everywhere, I’m barefoot, holding my shoes by their laces. A woman I met that morning snapped it for me. I like it because I’m so clearly happy.
“I like your outfit,” he says.
”Outfit? This is not an ‘outfit,’ this is just stuff I threw on to run the dog on the beach.”
”That’s why I like it.”
He was off to shoot a season of on-location television and asked if we could stay in touch, which we have done. He sent me terrible airport selfies in which he just looks like some random guy in a ball cap with a wheelie bag. I also got a handful of set photos with the camera and lighting crew. I like these terrible photos because they look real.
“Those people look serious and tired.”
”That’s because they are. We’ve been on the set for 24 hours.”
He’s ten years younger than me, handsome, and big in Japan, shouldn’t he be courting the hot young designer from Fashion Week? Shouldn’t he be spotted with a set of cheekbones in Jimmy Choo’s at Cannes? I look at the carefully styled images of him on social media and I get cold feet. I can’t match with some guy who owns a bunch of tailored blazers. I imagine amazing hair products in his shower, which probably has heated floors. I imagine saying, “You seem great and everything, but what I really want is to hook up with this bath towel.”
I told a friend about this, how it all had to be some cosmic joke.
“You’re underestimating yourself. Miss Been-to-Seven-Continents-Memoir-on-a-New-York-Press. Knock it off.”
”Okay but…”
”Stop it.”
I am not counting my paparazzi before they hatch. My expectation is the whole thing will fizzle out before he returns to my part of the world.