I’m not exactly a catch.
Mid-30s, only mildly successful, living in an overpriced and under-maintained apartment, driving a rusted-out shitmobile that any sane person would’ve traded in years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, I can talk a good game. Growing up in my father’s carpet store, I learned how to convince a customer to purchase an inferior product. Those same skills work wonders when you’re pitching yourself to a potential mate.
Am I struggling to hold onto my paycheck every month? Nah, I’m an exciting free spirit who believes in living life by the seat of my pants.
Am I thinking of moving back in with my mom and dad before I’m homeless? No way, I have a strong connection to family and want to help my aging parents through their elder years.
You get the idea.
It shouldn’t surprise you that I use a healthy amount of salesmanship on my online dating profiles. Would it be more appropriate to call it lying? I don’t know, dad never heard any complaints about the discount rugs he sold at luxury prices, and I’ve yet to have any exes that wanted me dead by the time we grew apart.
Naturally, when I saw Maddie’s profile on DownToFriend, I immediately began projecting and assumed she must have been a sales professional like myself.
10 out of 10. She looked like a model, to the point that I was looking for stock photography watermarks on the pictures. Long, glossy hair, tall and elegant with absolutely angelic features.
The pure white dresses she wore in every shot immediately brought to mind the cliché joke about falling from heaven.
Her bio was great. She came across as smart, funny, with unique interests and compelling personality traits.
Forget salesmanship.
She was just a liar.
She had to be.
Someone as amazing as that didn’t belong in the same digital space, breathing the same digital air, as someone as shop-worn as me.
…
I mean, I took my shot anyway, but yeah.
Maddie was easy-going, at least over text messages. She didn’t care where we met, didn’t mind if it was at a movie, over dinner, or even a wallet-conscious a picnic in the park. I almost made it a little game, to see if I could find the fault with this person who presented herself so perfectly, but it was a game I lost.
Hell, as the date approached, I actually started getting nervous. That was a new one for me. Butterflies in my stomach, the works. On at least one occasion, I dreamt about our wedding. It was absolutely crazy, and something in the back of my head was telling me to call it off before I created a permanent memory of screwing up the best opportunity to ever come my way.
Sitting in the restaurant, I felt all of that weight sitting square on my shoulders.
Maddie was coming from a research lab… yikes, that was way above my station… and wanted to meet at our destination. I was incredibly relieved when I found out her first impression of me wouldn’t be seeing my uncooperative asshole of a car.
It was a small Italian place, nothing special. “It should have been special,” I thought, as I looked around at the obnoxious elderly couple arguing in the middle of the room and uncontrollable children jumping from booth to booth.
I only had a short few minutes to consider the Hell I was dragging her into before I saw her walk through the front door.
Tall. Graceful. Angelic.
White dress.
Exactly like her photos.
Fuck.
Nearly falling out of my seat, I tripped over myself and rushed to pull her chair out for her. She thanked me and apologized if she was a little late, her melodic voice tickling the back of my brain.
As she approached, when she was close, I finally noticed the flaw.
She’s a 10… but she’s covered in spiders.
Thousands of spiders.
Long-legged, fragile stalkers scurried through her hair. Small, dark jumpers perched on her shoulders and rotated in place to watch me. Hairy, blobby little crawlers darted and froze across her entire body.
Spiders, spiders, and more spiders, appearing from under her chin, disappearing under her arms, moving quickly away from her back as she sat down.
As she adjusted her dress, it clung slightly to the chair.
Spider webbing.
I politely excused myself and told Maddie to order whatever she wanted if the waiter came by before I was back. She nodded, a sad smile suddenly taking over her bright expression. I immediately recognized that she had heard this before, and no one had come back.
Going strictly by the unnatural dread rising up from my chest and making my head swim with primal fear of creepy-crawlies, I could understand why.
In the men’s room, I took out my phone and brought up her profile again.
Zoom. Zoom more. More.
In every picture, I could see the spiders, but only when I looked closely. She hadn’t even been trying to hide it. She wasn’t a liar, even about this.
I looked at the bathroom window a few times. I could easily fit through it.
Still, something inside kept preventing me from actually making a move to leave.
We all have our problems.
Our spiders.
Most of us just wear them on the inside, right?
Convinced that, at the end of the day, I could just ignore her phone calls and texts if things turned out to be too weird, I washed up, mopped the sweat off of my face, and went back to the table.
“You’re back.” she said, her mood brightening again.
I nodded.
She picked up a menu and opened it, spiders already starting to weave fine filaments between the gap.
“So… you work in a lab.” I stated. I intended for it to be a question, but it wasn’t.
Maddie looked to the side, tilted her head, and half nodded.
“I was at a lab,” she corrected me.
“For the, uh-“ I hesitated.
“The spiders,” she finished for me.
“Look,” she said quickly, holding out a single, delicate finger.
A small, colorful spider with a spiny, crab-like shell walked out to her fingertip and stopped to proudly pose on the nail.
“This is one of my favorite kinds. It’s a spiny orb weaver. It looks like a little crab.”
Not wanting to be rude, I leaned in for a closer look.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Maddie added, “If you leave a spider alone, it’ll leave you alone. Lots of people keep them as pets, or even just let them live in windowsills… like, for pest control. Plus, nobody really bothers you when you’re covered in them, and if they do, they get bitten and it doesn’t happen again.”
“I mean,” I opened my own menu and tried to look like I still had an appetite, “Yeah, sure, if you think about it, I guess you’re kind of like a Disney princess. With spiders.”
Maddie gasped approvingly and took my hand in hers.
“That’s what I always told myself when I was little!” she cooed.
Our eyes met, and they met hard. I couldn’t look away, even as I felt tiny arachnid legs starting to bind our hands together with little, feeble threads.
So… I put any misgivings aside.
As I said, we all have our own spiders.
I could look past hers. She could look past mine.
For the rest of the night, we ate, drank, talked, and laughed. It didn’t take long for things to feel comfortable. After a while, it was like we’d been friends for years. I learned all about her life, and I found myself opening up about things I actually hadn’t told anyone else in a very long time.
It might sound pathetic or weird, but I honestly think I fell deeply in love right then and there.
As it turned out, she had been dropped off at the restaurant by a blacked-out van from the research facility, so I ended up walking her back to her place. I explained that it was a beautiful night, and a walk was always good after a meal, but in reality I was still trying to hide my horrible, horrible, wheeled city dumpster of a car.
When we got to the door of her apartment building, things got pleasantly awkward.
I knew I wasn’t coming up on the first date, and in no way was I going to press the issue. We exchanged pleasantries, she said she had her first good date in years, and we kissed.
It was a nice kiss, after which I brushed a daddy long legs from my cheek.
Then, she happily waved goodbye as a million silken strands lifted her off of her feet and up toward a lofty balcony.
I spent the next few days thinking almost exclusively about Maddie. How great she was, and how great we’d be together. I imagined a future where whatever strange problem she had was cured, and we lived a normal spider-free existence into our old age.
It took almost a week before I realized she wasn’t returning my calls.
She wasn’t answering my texts.
That’s when I noticed I had been looking at things the wrong way, all along.
She’s covered in spiders… but she’s a 10.
-—