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FRIENDS AND BENEFITS

What Happened When I Finally Met My Craiglist Crush of Two Years

How we jumped from an email-only correspondence to kissing in his Tesla.

Tootsie Haine
Published
Updated
illo illustration of doodles in a notebook showing a man hiking

Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

Welcome to Friends and Benefits. Follow our sex and relationships columnist into the lives and psyches of men and women, young and old, gorgeous and tragic, divine and insane. All names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the bachelors in question.

The rain was whimpering as I stepped out of my car in a parking lot in San Diego’s Balboa Park. I was dressed in a sweater and pleated skirt, and I was looking for Jerome, a tall, handsome, not-quite-a-stranger.

Jerome and I had “met” two years before on a Craigslist housing page for would-be New Orleans residents. There, he’d posted a well-written advert for a roommate; I had been curious about living in the South, so I emailed him. Though neither of us ended up moving there, we remained in loose touch, sending epistolary emails with yearnings, music recommendations, and geographic updates.

He had settled after all in Southern California. So on a trip to Los Angeles, I told Jerome that we should do something. He was game and invited me down for the weekend.

He wanted to take me to some fancy gastropub. I redirected him to the darkest, scuzziest dive I could find, a low-slung linoleum joint in a strip mall.

Though we had yet to meet in the flesh, I’d given him a light e-stalking and found that he was hot—his past participation in high school and collegiate sports left me with ample body statistics to peruse on various team websites. His LinkedIn, which he had troubled to link in his email sign-off, meanwhile, bragged that he was one of those executive types.

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In other words, Jerome was a soul-searching hunk in a suit.

We walked around the park and various exhibitions within. He was easy to talk to, as if we really had known each other for two years. He wanted to take me to some fancy gastropub; when we arrived, and it was full, I redirected him to the darkest, scuzziest dive I could find: a low-slung linoleum joint in a strip mall.

We sat at the bar, Nancy Drew prepsters compared to the fake-titted, real-tatted regular patrons working the pool table. We knocked back Long Island iced teas until I was too drunk to drive.

In the rainy parking lot, I popped the trunk to remove a presumptuous night-bag and followed Jerome into his Tesla. He first took me to the cliffs, where we kissed against the thrash of wind and waves.

Back at his place (a sandy but not un-luxe space with surfboards and chunky brown furniture), we kissed some more, and petted and half-watched Collateral.

Tom Cruise as Vincent in "Collateral" (2004)

As Vincent (Tom Cruise) tells Max (Jamie Foxx), "Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, s--- happens."

Collateral (2004)

After a soothing shower, I bounded into his bed, and we tried to make some kind of love, but his enthusiasm ended the act early.

In the morning, however, we made up for the previous night and sped off hungrily to breakfast.

“I’m curious. Being a young man in San Diego, what’s the dating scene like?”

“I met someone a few months ago at an acupuncture convention. My masseuse set us up. It didn’t really go anywhere.”

Maybe Jerome was being polite and coy, but I was surprised and a little deterred by the fact that he wasn’t getting any, that he didn’t seem to be a catch in the eyes of other people. It was time to go home.

I’m an optimist, and I hate to miss out, even if it means I often end up staying too long at the fair.

On the way back to my car, we stopped in a record shop where I spent $80 on vinyls I would never listen to—and for a player I didn’t own. Like Jerome, perhaps, they were a good prospect and a good deal, but I didn’t have the equipment to enjoy them.

Still, I bought them because I have hope—I’m an optimist, and I hate to miss out, even if it means I often end up staying too long at the fair. Maybe someday I could put them to use.

Jerome and I kept emailing. I was sort of expecting to see him again—but then I had a family emergency, which curtailed our plans, and then he decided to quit his job and hike the Camino de Santiago.

Cesar, 34, a pilgrim from Mexico, walks on the San Antolin beach while continuing his pilgrimage in the "Camino de Santiago del Norte", in Llanes, Spain on September 24, 2022.

I’m not a hiker, but I trust that we will remain attached, in some way, forever.

Nacho Doce/REUTERS

Clearly, we are not geo-compatible and have our own life changes to worry about. I’m not a hiker, but I trust that we will remain attached, in some way, forever.

There’s an R.E.M. lyric that I find applies to many of the most intriguing people (Jerome included) I’ve met, and many of the most fleeting encounters: “I don’t know what you mean to me, but I want to take you on.” It’s a sentiment worthy of a vinyl collection itself; in fact, I believe so strongly in the message that I’d also bought the relevant CD. And that, I could listen along to.

Tootsie Haine
Tootsie Haine

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