The Man

Synopsis: A lonely man checks Craigslist almost hourly in hopes of finding a Missed Connection posted to him. His only reasons for going out in public are to interact very imperceptibly with women he sees, in hopes they will search for him via Craigslist. When he meets a strange man at work who seems to know more about him than anyone could, the depressing reality of his Craigslist fantasy comes into focus. 

by Philip Mason

Gaston got home from work early on Monday. Having worked a bit over the weekend meant he could leave the architect firm right after lunch, that day. He said hello to his dog Pat, patted Pat on the head, and sat down on the couch with his laptop. He opened a browser and typed "cr" into the address bar before the browsing history filled it in as craigslist.com. He hit enter.

It took him to the craigslist page for his town. He clicked on the only purple link on the page, under personals. It was the link for Missed Connections. He clicked on w4m, and briefly browsed the newly submitted posts. 

June 13th - You bought us pizza and beer at Lord Pizza - w4m - 35

You bought my friend and I pizza and then offered us drinks, which we turned down for some stupid reason. Hope you see this. I, for one, would like to take you up on those drinks.

"Never bought anyone pizza," he thought to himself. He clicked the next one.

June 13th - hot boy on bike - w4m - 22 

I was on a bicycle riding down Granby and you were on your motorcycle going the opposite way. I know you were looking at me because I was looking at you! Respond with the color of your helmet as the subject.

He grumbled a bit and clicked the next one.

June 13th - Dunkin Donuts near airport - w4m

You're the tall blond guy who works at DD. You served me yesterday and asked me if I was waiting for anyone. I'm in there at least once a week but now maybe I'll be coming in more often...

"Fuck", Gaston said. He closed the browser and shut down his computer. 

In the kitchen, he made himself some soup and a sandwich, and fed Pat a bowl of Cheerios and meat chunks. Walking back into the living room, he turned the TV on just loud enough for some background noise to keep Pat happy, and put his shoes on. He grabbed his keys, patted Pat once more, and walked out the door. 

Gaston drove to the grocery store despite his fully stocked cabinets and refrigerator at home. There was always something to buy, he thought. Maybe some more paper towels. Maybe a new kind of fruit he'd never tried. Maybe a pack of interesting beer. But he didn't really like beer, so maybe he'd buy some wine instead. Red or white? He hadn't decided. 

At the store, Gaston picked up a shopping basket and walked slowly and faux-confidently through the aisles, without much concern for what he would be buying. The vegetables looked interesting, but there was no reason to buy them right now. It was the same story for the fruit. It bored him. He walked to the fish and seafood and found nothing really compelling. His eyes wandered. Aisle after aisle was uninteresting to him.

Finally, though, his eye was caught by something in the juices aisle, so he made his way to the large variety of juices, discovering, for the first time, that there were things called Acai berries and that they were a popular ingredient in healthy juices. That really wasn't the most interesting thing in the juice aisle, though, nor was it the Acai berry juice that caught his eye. The girl in a black t-shirt and black pants that were composed of a material unfamiliar to Gaston, but that seemed to be very complimentary to her figure, was the more interesting feature of this aisle. She appeared to be very interested in the juices, so Gaston, too, appeared to be very interested in the juices. He couldn't take his eyes off the Acai berry juice, and picked up a bottle to look it over, to inspect its other ingredients and to make sure this was a healthy choice (it was very clear that it was). While reading the bottle, his eyes would dart over to the girl to see if her eyes were darting over to him. It wasn't immediately obvious if they were, so Gaston messed with the juices a bit, turning the bottles on their sides, upside down, spinning them around, generally being a nuisance to the bottles of juice. The girl didn't seem to notice. 

"I can stand here as long as you can stand here," Gaston said to the girl (in his mind). He would prove it by doing just that. At one point it seemed that the girl was looking at him, so Gaston's heart started to beat really fast, and he kept his eyes on the prize - the bottle of V8 V-Fusion Acai Mixed Berry 100% juice in his hands. He threw it in his basket. 

The girl was still contemplating her juices. 

"How fucking long is she going to look at this juice?" Gaston asked himself.  

She stood around a while longer.

Gaston, not to be made to look like a fool at a critical moment like this, threw a few more bottles of juice into his basket to make it apparent he was here for the juice and nothing else. He most certainly was not standing around here in hopes of making eye contact with this cute girl. "If we make eye contact I can strike up a conversation," Gaston thought. "It appears I'll have to start a conversation about juice, because that looks like the only interest we might have in common right off the bat. And I'm not really interested in juice at all. If this were the wine section our conversation would be much more fascinating, and I'd really look like I know what I'm talking about." Gaston kept hypothesizing about fictitious conversations with pretty girls in his head while he visibly searched for more alluring juices. 

Finally, the girl found what she wanted -- a simple bottle of apple juice --  and threw it into her shopping cart. She strolled on away, without so much as a glance back toward Gaston. It didn't matter. 

Gaston continued his shopping, walking through each aisle, now with a basket completely filled with juice he didn't intend to drink. When he made it to the frozen foods and pizzas aisle Gaston noticed two women shopping together. As he got closer he noticed one was clearly the mother and the other was the daughter.  They were both strikingly beautiful to Gaston, and seemed like people he'd like to get to know. He was able to feign interest in the frozen foods just as he had with the juice, and found himself throwing boxes of frozen Indian food and frozen paninis into his basket. "I wonder what these lovely ladies are buying," he thought. He followed this thought with the highly flawed but adorable thought that "the kind of food a person buys says a lot about them." The two women moved toward Gaston, oblivious to his existence while they talked about people who Gaston didn't know. "Two ladies, oblivious to my existence, are right now talking about people of whose existence I was heretofore oblivious. We are like three peas in a pod, singing each a similar song. How I would love for them to be aware of me and then to make me aware of the people in their life so that we may talk at great depth of these people and share stories. Boy, have I got some stories to tell them!" 

Gaston kept thinking this way until the women walked past him, still deeply focused on their discussion. "It will never happen," he decided. 

The younger of the women, the one he assumed to be the daughter, briefly looked up and saw Gaston, and then looked back at the woman he assumed to be her mother. 

"I was wrong. Success."

Gaston made his way further into the romantic trenches of the supermarket. As he rounded the corner into the dairy aisle, full of milk and cheese, he spotted a leggy, lovely, dark haired goddess walking his way with the sway of sin and the look of general cocksureness that is reserved for those without cocks but who are as confident as a man who is very sure of things. The woman was stunning in her gorgeousness, and Gaston immediately made eye contact with her as they passed one another. Noticing that she was looking at something, Gaston, once more, found himself inexplicably fixated on the objects before him. These objects happened to be string cheese and sliced cheese. Never before had he spent so long a time examining different string cheeses and sliced cheeses. "What a smorgasbord of selections," he thought. He glanced at the lovely woman as she contemplated different yogurts. "Any yogurt will do," Gaston thought. "Maybe come look at the cheese with me," he also thought. His glances toward this woman became more frequent as he became less interested in cheese. Having no room left in his basket, he could no longer feign the innocent interest of a consumer in these products and he felt that his charade was about to be exposed. 

Out of the corner of his eye, on the opposite end of the aisle, away from the beauty, Gaston noticed the girl in the black t-shirt - the girl from the juices aisle. 

"Shit." He had to keep moving. He had accomplished what he came here for, more or less, and it was time to go. 

               After putting the juices and frozen food in his refrigerator and freezer at home, Gaston sat down on his couch again. He turned on his laptop and went back to craigslist. "It's only been about an hour, but it's still possible," he said. He looked for new entries. Nothing new. "Give it some time," he thought. 

***

When Gaston got home from work on Tuesday he repeated his routine. But Craigslist's missed connections wasn't showing any new posts. He poured himself some coffee, and watched TV while refreshing the page every five minutes. 

               Around 8 o'clock he noticed a new post. "Did I go to Walgreens recently?" he wondered.

June 14th - Walgreens Monday Night - w4m - 23

I was walking into Walkgreens last night and you were walking out and said something to me. I smiled at you and when I left the store you were still in the parking lot. You drove a red Chevy Trailblazer. I wish I had talked to you.

Gaston sat  around for a couple more hours doing this, feeling that he had maybe wasted his entire trip to the supermarket. "Why do I even bother?" he wondered. "If the girls I briefly cross paths with out in public aren't going to rush home and make a craigslist ad directed to me, what's the point of going out in public?" Gaston realized it wasn't the fault of the women in his life (those few females he would fleetingly encounter for insignificant amounts of time only to never see again), but that he perhaps needed to work on his game. 

The next day, Gaston skipped out of work to go to the outlandishly large used book, movie, and music store down the street. He stood in the DVD section for what seemed like hours, because it was hours. He heard a woman's voice behind him, asking if he liked horror movies. "I.. love them," he responded. The woman was attractive. She smiled at him, and he liked that. 

"You need to see 'In the Valley of Death, I am Their King'", the woman said. "It's insane, fucked up, really crazy, but it's one of those things where you can't look away. It's really terrifying and gross."

"This sounds like something I'd like to see," Gaston said, turning back to look at the wall of horror DVDs. The woman stood around for a few more minutes while Gaston tried to think of a follow up to this conversation-starter she had just thrown at him. He  thought of nothing, and the woman walked away. As he went over, in his head, his checklist of social mistakes he had just made, he browsed the wall of movies for the movie she had suggested. He found it. Now, perhaps he should go ask her to watch it with him. "Maybe I should go ask her to watch this with me!" He set off to find her, but tried to make it look like he wasn't looking for her and was only trying to find some books or CDs. 

The woman seemed to have disappeared, since Gaston could not find her anywhere in the huge store. He went to check out and buy the movie when he saw the woman again. "Hey! I got that movie you recommended!" 

She looked at  him and smiled. That was about it. Then she picked up her phone and yelled into it, screaming things about her mother and her sisters. 

Gaston didn't ask her to watch it with him. He didn't say anything else to her at all. He justified this decision by patting himself on the back for talking to her in the first place, and arguing that since he'd actually said something to her, she'd be getting on her computer as soon as she got home to make a Craigslist ad about that cute man she met at the used media store, mentioning that she recommended a movie for him to watch, and asking the reader to reply to this post with the name of that movie. Gaston was so sure of this that  he couldn't wait to get home and watch this magic spark grow into a magic flame from the comfort of his computer screen. 

***

Every few minutes that night,  Gaston refreshed the missed connections page. 

June 15th - Saw u in walmart - w4m - 26

could not take my eyes off of u. u worked cashier but u worked my heart also. i called u grean beens. 

"I can't believe this." Gaston was getting nowhere. This week was shaping up to be like every other week of his life.

June 15th - seen u in ur pickup - w4m - 54

u druve black pickup and baseball hat is bakcward and u got sideburns long as chrismas. I hope u are single i was in the station wagon at the red light off macmahon parkway. saw u lookin. mmm.

The next day at work Gaston thought about new ways to meet women. He wondered if juggling was a good skill to have that might impress suitable ladies. Then he thought about juggling for a little while longer and concluded it wasn't for him, because it required hand-eye-coordination, mental coordination, probably a fair amount of balance, and also practice.  Gaston liked things that were easy and that came naturally to him, like sneezing, eating, walking, and daydreaming. Putting effort into things was not something Gaston was often inclined to do, even if the benefits were instant and gratifying. 

On his lunch break, Gaston poked his microwaved Indian food with his fork and sipped some of the Acai mixed berry juice from his thermos, while browsing the internet on his phone in an attempt to find answers. He wanted answers to the questions he couldn't bring himself to ask aloud, like "How do I get a girlfriend?", "How will girls like me?", "How many inches is normal for a penis from scrote to spout?", "What is it like to kiss a human girl?", "Do girls fart?", "If I marry a woman will she stop farting?", "Do all tongues taste the same?", "How many calories are in one scoop of Pepto-Bismol?", "How many times will I fail before I kill myself?". Many of these questions had answers, but some did not. Some might say that ambiguity could make life worth living, for the answers are only discovered through experience. Others would say that ambiguity made life worth ending because mystery was annoying and not worth anyone's time at all. 

Gaston's internet question and answer session was interrupted by the loud sounds of what seemed to be a parade right outside the window of his office building. "Is there a parade today?" Gaston asked himself in his brain. 

A man walked past the door to the break room and peeked inside, saying, "yes, there is a parade! It's right outside! Come take a look."

Gaston looked with a puzzled stare at the man for a moment and then asked, "did you...  can you... read my mind?"

The man paused, looked as if he had made something of a big mistake, and then replied: "Nope." He walked off. 

That answer wasn't satisfactory to Gaston. He was pretty convinced this fellow had read his mind, but he didn't know what to do about it. 

As it turns out, Gaston was pretty easily able to figure out exactly what to do about it. He spent the remaining 5 minutes of his lunch break making a Craigslist ad directed to the stranger who had seemingly read his mind, and informed him that he didn't like it.

June 16th - You read my mind

I don't appreciate you taking my thoughts and invading my mindscape where I keep memories and controversial opinions. If you'd like to hear more about what I have to say, don't read my mind but come talk to me. I want to let you know how upset I am right now, but I don't know you or how to find you. If you read this just don't do it again!!!!!!!!

"It's in the hands of the internet, now," Gaston whispered. "Back to work."

That night, Gaston checked his email to find no responses to his ad. He got on Craigslist to look for more missed connections. What he found, instead, was this:

June 16th - Gaston - w4m

Gaston, you really should have seen the parade today. Sorry that I read your thoughts, but your mind is an interesting place for me to play.

Gaston wasn't about to have any of this. He responded through email to the post, and requested that the man take down that comment and correspond with him through email from this point forward. In minutes, another post appeared on missed connections.

June 16th - Re: Gaston -w4m

If we correspond through email I will be able to read your thoughts. If you wish me to not read them then we must talk through craigslist like this. I am sorry but it is the only way. 

The next reply Gaston sent was on craigslist.

June 16th - mind reader - w4m

Just don't read my thoughts. I'm not going to communicate with you through craigslist like this. Just because you CAN read my thoughts doesn't mean you have to. 

The response came quickly.

June 16th - Re: Gaston - w4m

Yes, Gaston, I do have to read your thoughts. I'm helping you. There's a reason you're not meeting women through craigslist.

Gaston felt like this was getting a little too personal and creepy, and refused to write anything else that night. He spent the next few hours horrified at the thought of a stranger reading his mind from an unknown location. Instead of  masturbating before sleeping, he read a book about gardening. This knocked him out almost instantly.

Friday was a long day of work for Gaston because he was tired and knew there was a man in the building, probably not far away, reading his thoughts. Work was safe for him and his mind since his thoughts were occupied with his job, but he would frequently find his mind wandering to thoughts of how he would present himself in a public place after work so as to attract the attention of a female who would go home and seek out Gaston via missed connections ads. But quickly he'd force his mind back to the tasks at hand.

Too much coffee going into Gaston's guts that day, as every other day, meant he was visiting the bathroom often. On his third such trip to the bathroom his cell phone vibrated. It vibrated only once, meaning it was a text message. Not being one to get his expectations up, Gaston didn't imagine it could be anyone important. It definitely wouldn't be a female, he reasoned, because he didn't know any who had his number. Even if they did have his number, he thought, they wouldn't want to talk to him. After washing his hands, he checked his phone. There was a new text message waiting for him.

Didn't mean to creep you out last night. Still, I wish you had seen the parade.

"Motherfucker," Gaston whispered. He began to type a response to the message but realized he didn't need to do that. If this man was reading his mind, Gaston only needed to think of a question and this man would hear it and respond. He sent the thought: "What was so goddamn special about this fucking parade? And what's the reason I'm not meeting women through craigslist? Tell me these things."

His phone vibrated a minute later.

Stay in the bathroom. I'll be there in a minute. 

Gaston panicked. Should he stay or should he go? He didn't know. It didn't take him long to decide to go, though. He ran out of the bathroom and down the hall toward his desk, and stared at his computer screen. He wasn't really surprised to see a small note stuck to the screen that said, "I thought you'd probably leave. Please just turn around."

Holding his breath and trying to keep his heart from pumping out of his chest, Gaston turned around. The man was standing right behind him. He really wasn't so terrifying at all. He was kind of short, had a gray little beard, and still looked as friendly as he had looked the day before.

"Hi, Gaston," he said. "You were right, I was reading your mind and I'm sorry about it."

"Who are you?" Gaston asked the man.

"Just a friend, really."

"Are you going to answer my questions?"

"Yes, certainly. What was so special about yesterday's parade was that it was full of answers to your questions you wanted answered. Do all tongues taste the same? The answer was there. Do girls fart? Will they continue to fart when we get married? The answer was there. What is it like to kiss a human girl? That would have been answered for you. How many times will I fail before I kill myself? You really would have liked the answer to that. We orchestrated this parade for you, Gaston."

"Who is 'we'?"

"The architects and I. Not all of us at this firm are structural architects. Some are architects of events, some are architects of things more like space and less like buildings. You might have guessed it, but I'm an architect of the mind."

"I'm done talking to you about this, mind architect." Gaston turned around to face his computer.

"Gaston, I know the title is absurd. I don't come up with these titles. But that parade really would have cheered you up, I think."

"Why don't you tell me, brain wizard, why I can't meet girls on craigslist?" Gaston requested.

"Because I erase all the posts that might be directed toward you."

"What?" Gaston furrowed his brow like a man upset by the statements made in his presence because that's precisely what he was. "I was making eye contact with pretty girls and even buying juice that I won't drink. How can you erase posts on craigslist?"

"Because I'm Craig."

"The Craig? Craigslist Craig?"

"No, not the same one. But I met Craig at a National Craigfest not too long ago and became fast friends with the man. I demonstrated to him my amazing mental abilities as a mind architect, dancing my mind down the catwalk of the brainspace and showed him things about himself he never knew. Craig got this crazy idea in his head that he wanted to appoint me as protector of the Craigs."

"What's that mean?"

"It means... well, ok, Craig liked to call the people who used Craigslist Craigs. I'd like to say I don't know why, but since I can read minds that's obviously not true. He calls them Craigs because at home he imagines that every person using Craigslist is a representation of himself. He knows they aren't, but he likes to think of them as each being little cells that belong to the Craig supercell, but which each interact with one another unknowingly linked by the Craigsblood."

Gaston didn't know what to say.

"Didn't really want to tell you that part. But anyway, he appointed me as Chief Protector of the Craigs. This meant he would use my mind architect services to protect people who might be harmed through Craigslist."

"That makes no sense," Gaston said. "Women posting things intended for me wouldn't harm me. Not physically."

"You  don't know that Gaston. As a mind reader, a mental master, I know that these she-beasts were preying on you. Each of them found you in the wild, in public places, noted your pitiful demeanor and pathetic eyes."

Gaston had liked to think of his demeanor as respectable and strong, and of his eyes as attractive and maybe penetrating - not pathetic. These words were hurting him.

"They salivated at the thought of your pathetic existence and knew they could ruin you through the one medium in which you considered yourself a knight -- the internet. Maybe not all of them. But the ones who would write something on craigslist for someone like you were surely doing it for devious reasons."

Gaston put his hands to his head and said, " I can't believe I'm listening to you. Do you even know what you're saying? Leave me alone."

"Please believe me, Gaston. I am trying to help you."

"Leave me alone or I will kill you."

"No you won't. I can read your mind."

"Leave me alone or I'll accuse you of rape."

The man knew this threat was real, so he left Gaston alone and went back to wherever it was he had come from.

Gaston finished his work for the day and headed home.

When he arrived home he turned on his laptop and began his routine. There was a new ad in the missed connections.

June 17th - Two days ago at the used media store - w4m - 30

We were by the used DVDs. I told you to check out a movie and you later told me that you had bought it. I was wanting to come watch it with you but you never invited me. If you see this, tell me the name of that movie and maybe this can happen!

Gaston didn't waste any time. He knew this was directed to him. He replied with an email mentioning the name of the movie, "In the Valley of Death, I am Their King" and asked the woman if she would like to come over to watch it with him. He showered and cleaned up his place before even checking for any replies. When finally he did check his email he saw a response from the woman which said she would love to come watch the movie with him.

And so it happened...

That night Gaston met Anna, the attractive woman he had first spoken to at the used media store. Gaston first took her to a gas station so they could buy some milk, and they talked about hobbies, jobs, life, and standard first date topics. When they returned to his place they made some creamy noodle dish and ate it together while watching the movie. It was just as Anna had described it, grotesque, horrible and full of filth. But neither of them could look away. Immeasurable cruelty and terror filled the screen and tortured their minds.

As the film ended, Anna made it known to Gaston that she wished to sleep over. "Do you ever fuck on a first date?" she asked.

"I don't know. This is my first date. Ever."

"Then I say you do!" she screamed playfully. "I'll be right back." She walked into the bathroom, presumably to freshen up.

Gaston hurried to clean up the food and made sure his shirt was nice and straight and that his pants remained impressive. He wasn't wearing any shoes so he was lucky he didn't have to worry about that aspect of his appearance. His socks seemed fine.

When Anna came out of the bathroom she wasn't looking any sexier than before. She looked the exact same as before, in fact, except for the hammer in her hands which she seemed intent on using.

"Um," Gastonn started to say something but really had no words for this. Perhaps it was a form of role playing. He'd heard all about role playing and had been eager to try some.

"Hammer time," Anna yelled, as she jumped at Gaston and began hammering away at his body and arms and face.

This wasn't how Gaston imagined his first date would go with Anna. He'd pictured them cuddling on the couch while watching the movie, which was pretty close to how the night started out. But he pictured it ending with perhaps a make out session and then, if he was really lucky, a session of sex, or a sexxion. Now things were looking grim. They were also looking red because there was blood in his eyes and his vision was going bad. The hammer just kept landing in sensitive spots. He was helpless to defend himself against Anna's violence.

Anna turned the hammer so that the claw was going to be the next part of the hammer to hit Gaston's body. But a piercing yell ruined the moment:

"Drop the hammer, sister. It's time for a real hammerfest."

Craig had entered Gaston's home without permission and taken it upon himself to interfere with this violent scene on the floor. He kicked Anna in her face, and took the hammer from her after she landed on her back. He proceeded to smash her face and body with the hammer, while smiling at Gaston and telling him he may want to get some towels for all the blood and that everything would be OK.

Gaston was in no shape to be moving, though, and so he just laid on the floor while he watched Craig murder Anna with a hammer. This was another development he hadn't planned for. His first girlfriend was being murdered in front of him. But to be fair, she had tried to murder him first. Craig was a good friend, after all.

Minutes later, Craig stood up covered in blood and bruises, and dropped the bloodied hammer at his side. He looked at Gaston and smirked, saying, "didn't I tell you those ladies were trouble?"

Gaston managed a slight laugh, but it was apparent he was muffling a little horror beneath his badly beaten but otherwise calm exterior. "Thank you," he said.

"I guess I'll get the towels," Craig joked. They both had a laugh.

While Craig cleaned up the mess, Pat, Gaston's dog who had inexplicably been sleeping in his bedroom the entire time that Anna was attacking him, licked up some of the blood to help clear the scene.

"I will need to call the police," Gaston said. His teeth were mostly missing, but he could still talk.

"Of course. As soon as I finish cleaning up here we'll call the police together."

"Where will I meet girls, now?" Gaston asked with his toothless mouth.

"The hospital," Craig replied. They both laughed again. Gaston noted that Craig was full of good zingers tonight, and was happy to finally have a friend who not only saved his life, but had a good sense of humor.

"Guess I won't be dating again for a while, though," Gaston said sadly.

"It takes some time, especially after such a messy break up."

Again, they laughed.