Slim Pickin's from the Bay State

(From the files of Catholic Match)

During the first few days of my Catholic Match membership, I searched for the profiles of local women figuring it would be my best chance to get a date.  The results didn't exactly impress me.

One girl from the nearby city of Peabody said in her profile that she liked bowling so with no romantic expectations in mind, I reached out to her hoping we could just get together and go bowling sometime.  I never got a response.  Her profile remained on Catholic Match for many years and with an unwillingness to even talk to a guy who sent her a very benign message, it didn't surprise me.

A woman from Boston contacted me but not only was she not that attractive, she listed disagreement with the Church's position on abortion.  I decided to talk to her anyway but it didn't take long for her elitism to shine.  She wanted to know how “cultured” I was so I mentioned going to museums and taking in a musical every once in a great while.  Now the true test of her character: I also mentioned my low-wage job just to see what would happen.  She decided to end all communication right then and there.  Predictable.

I reached out to another never-married local single with an exotic name but got no response.  A couple of years later, her profile was still on Catholic Match but when I checked it out again, she listed herself as being divorced.  I wondered what happened during those years to warrant such a drastic change.

Another woman from Boston reached out to me and I thought she was very cute.  We were both caregivers and she figured having that one thing in common was a good starting point to a possible relationship.  Unfortunately, the more I talked to her, the more she seemed like she had issues.  At one point in our conversation, she blocked me from sending her any more messages.  I thought, “Oh well.  No big loss.”  After a while, she lifted the block and reached out to me again.  Apparently, she thought I had been talking to other women on the site and got jealous.  Now my guard was up and as we continued to message each other, I tried to learn more about her past.  She didn't reveal much...except for the fact that she had been pregnant once but never had any kids.  Hmmm.  What does that mean?  A miscarriage?  An abortion?  Either way, I wasn't looking for someone with that kind of “experience” and decided to part ways with her.  I was still open to being just friends but the idea went over her head.

It didn't take long for the pool of eligible local singles on Catholic Match to dry up.  Unfortunately, Massachusetts is home to not only some very homely-looking women, but Catholics here tend to be liberal and lukewarm.  These “Kennedy Catholics” as I like to call them, pick and choose which of the key Church teachings to embrace and usually discard anything that's an inconvenience.  Naturally, the local females of Catholic Match reflected this demographic.  A good number of them tended to be flakes as well.  (Also, I don't care about the Red Sox or Patriots and I think the Boston accent is annoying.  There go my chances!) 

Unfortunately, Catholic Match doesn't let you search profiles by state.  Rather, it narrows your choices down to a certain radius from your hometown.  You can select something as small as a twenty-five mile radius but that seriously limits the amount of profiles you'll see, especially if you come from a sparely-populated suburb.  One woman I recognized from church listed Boston and not Beverly as her hometown to protect herself from potential stalkers but doing so skews the search results.  Chances are, many of those Catholic Match residents from Boston probably live somewhere else.

    

The website does let you search a much larger radius but this has its problems too.  If you cast a wide net like a 200+ mile radius, that's a lot of unnecessary profiles to go through especially if long distance relationships are off the table.  Also, there are big differences between someone living in metropolitan New Jersey and someone living in rural Vermont.  

For laughs, I tried to search every single profile on Catholic Match by setting no mile limitations but the site crashed after a while.  Why can't the website follow the lead of Ave Maria Singles and simply list the number of members in each state?  It would certainly make things simpler and more efficient but I have a feeling it would also expose how few local Catholic Match users there really are.  It's very telling when other members from different parts of the country complain in the forums about the lack of local singles.  This was not a good sign.

Here We Go Again

Ringing in the new year means heading into Boston to see all the ice sculptures artists create for the city's First Night celebration.  This tradition arose from my desire to get out and go somewhere after a few years of watching those Three Stooges marathons on TV.  One of my friends would join me but since he moved away in 2011, I've been making the trip into the city by myself.

Boston's winding streets and subway lines became familiar to me during my college years but I never developed a great love for the place thanks in part to many encounters with strange or antisocial people.  It's like they were drawn to me and in my frustration I joked there must be an "idiot magnet" somewhere inside my soul.  After college, I continued to visit Boston for a few years but the increases in gas prices and transit fares made trips into the city rare.

For First Night, all public transportation is free after 8 PM so that's enough incentive to return to Boston.  I like to drive to the city of Revere and then take a rapid transit train the rest of the way.  Sometimes when I stand on the subway platform, it feels like a thousand wonderful possibilities await.  Who will I see?  Will anyone interact with me?  Every now and then you hear stories about a couple who got married on a bus or a train because that's where they first met.  It doesn't take long for someone to derail this tinge of optimism, however.

During the final hours of 2016, a guy waiting for the train asked me why I was carrying a tripod.  When I told him it was to take time exposed photographs of the ice sculptures, he added, "I know that but where's your camera?"  I replied, "In my pocket.  I have a cheap camera that's pretty small."  I was put off by his backhanded officiousness.  Instead of being interested in my photography hobby, the sight of a tripod without a camera didn't sit right with him.  Was this interaction a bad omen?

When the train finally arrived, I took a seat at the far end of the car and tried to relax.  At the very next stop, a drunk woman and her boyfriend shuffled in and plunked themselves down in the seat across from me.  She appeared to be heroin addict with a prematurely aged face and slurred speech that was almost unintelligible.  Her boyfriend acted tough by lacing his remarks with profanities.  I thought to myself, "Here we go again."

She pulled a bottle of beer out of her jacket and asked me if I had a bottle opener.  I shook my head no.  She then decided to walk around the train to ask the other passengers while her boyfriend got mad.  She came back with the opened bottle and the two decided to argue loudly.  It was a sad sight brought on by many years of addiction but most of my fellow passengers just laughed and pointed.  The woman then bit her boyfriend on the forehead so he shoved her and swore.  She made up to him by hugging and later straddling him.  Two girls nearby decided to record the scene on their smart phone.  Even a few passengers in the next car took notice.  The woman's bottle of beer spilled all over the place and the two argued once more.  The guy looked at me in disgust and said, "Don't ever get married."  I had seen enough.  When the train stopped at the next station, I fled to the rear car.  The passengers there who had observed the spectacle asked me what it was all about.  I replied, "Substance abuse."

The incident left me feeling cold and I found myself wondering why I had to see such ugliness from the world.  The woman was basically a walking corpse.  Should I have said something to her about getting help?  Would it have made a difference or would her boyfriend have told me to mind my own business?  He did look very tough.  I then wondered why God had to put these people in my path.  Was it a test or was the incident meant to humble me?  As I walked by fancy restaurants filled with well-dressed New Year's Eve revelers, I thought about how the wealthy have the means to insulate themselves from such things.  You're not likely to meet people on the fringe of society while taking a limousine into Boston.

One of the ice sculptures for Boston's 2017 First Night 

I managed to photograph the ice sculptures that night but walking around the city by myself only made me feel disconnected.  After the midnight fireworks, I headed back to the subway and gave directions to a young couple who had their drunk friend in tow.  The return trip to Revere was pretty quiet since the subway car wasn't crowded.  I reflected on the two extremes that have constantly plagued me in my travels over the years: I'm either all alone or people really bother me.  It's hard not to be jaded.