Mel: the Pipes Are Calling

Danny Boy lyrics:

“O Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountainside
The summer’s gone and all the roses falling
‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide

But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
Or all the valley’s hushed and white with snow
‘Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow
O Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so”

Let me go back to my very early days of online dating, when I was still on Plenty of Fish. Actually, it was so early I had a link to my blog on my dating profile, so you could read my posts which were reflective of my recent (but not current) dating activities. I had built myself up a decent little audience at the time, but it was pointed out to me, people I knew in real life could find the blog and then pass it onto my children or siblings or parents. I had seen women who I knew during my swiping sessions. There was the divorced mother of one of my son’s friends, another went to the town pool. My son or daughter reading about my dating exploits was not a scenario I would’ve liked to have seen fulfilled. Before I ended the link, however, I connected with a woman named Mel.

Those first weeks and months of online dating were a heady, adventure for me. I had never had so much and, frankly, such easy access to women. For a while there, I was going on a few dates a week. I think I may even have arranged two dates on a single Saturday. Behind the curtain though, hidden from everyone’s view, was a woman named Pía. She entered the picture even earlier than Mel. She is a several post series by herself and remains in my life from those days to this, mostly peripherally now. The importance of Pía is that I was dreadfully in lust with her and just the slightest bit of encouragement from loving her. (This poem is about Pía The Rightest Wrong One) The thing about Pía was she was an expert at handling men in general and me in particular. For a brief moment, she considered falling in love with me, but quite quickly decided no. It took a considerable amount of time for me to get that memorandum. What i did do correctly, despite my all-consuming lust for her, was not just twiddle my thumbs waiting on Pía. I was out there dating hard. It was during those Wild West dating days, I found Mel.

Some of the details are fuzzy, this is over three years ago now, but I must have seen her profile on Plenty of Fish. The one thing I remember from that profile was that it included a picture of her playing a bagpipe in a marching band. I’m not going to say I love the bagpipes. That might be overselling the point a bit, but I’ve been known to stop everything to listen to the skirl of “Amazing Grace”. She was a handsome woman, with a broad brow and a square jaw. She didn’t look overweight, but still had an appearance of substance, if you will. She looked to be large breasted, but that’s not my thing, so held no great attraction for me that it might have for other red blooded American men. Her upper teeth had never seen the inside of an orthodontia office, which is apparently a British trait that she shared with her countrymen, as she was in fact British. I thought she was probably not my type, but the pipes, the pipes were calling.

So I sent her a message saying hello. And began a whirlwind romance, wherein our hero (me) is really the villain.

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