Why I haven't Called

Horrible at dating. My track record is actually pretty hilarious when you really analyze it in retrospect which is not something I want to get into here. This all comes up due to an encounter with someone who I liked and I thought liked me and then there was the long slow suffering of the non-call which, really, takes a while to sink in because you keep thinking that they will call eventually with some fabulous and endearing excuse and things will just pick up from there. Here are some of the possible explanations Liz and I came up with the other night:

1. He is not alive anymore.
2. He suffered a horrible crushing injury to his larynx rendering any communication via telephone impossible, also, he broke his thumbs making a conciliatory text impossible.
3. Has amnesia, has no idea where, who or what he is and is living like a feral badger in a 24-hour Wal-Mart.
4. He was an avid non-movie watcher and I convinced him to watch a movie with me (this is true and not speculation). This resulted in a spiraling, crippling addiction to motion picture feature films which will take him years upon haggard years to recover from and I have ruined his life and at times, in strange moments of clarity, he curses my name (this is speculation).
5. He is dealing with the loss of a fish or a friend or something tragic of that nature.
6. He won the lottery and now is in Las Vegas covered with strippers and cocaine and Little People dressed like the members of Kiss.
7. His family has a blood feud against my family and when they realized what was going on he was forbidden to see me and is, at this very moment, lying in a tomb somewhere drugged to the point of near death waiting for me to come and stab myself in the heart over his not-really-dead body.
8. He was blinded in a senseless accident in his laboratory and is groping at the walls without reference and getting dangerously close to the proton radial particle accelerator device which happens to be turned on and a mouse happens to be sneaking through the lab and is attracted to the tiny chunks of cheese that are being radially accelerated (do you see where this is going? Mouse Man!)
9. He is actually a gypsy and when I go home tonight all of my belongings will be missing, as well as my car and my roommates and my house.
10. He’s actually a seal (selkie) and over the holidays he found his seal skin locked in a magical chest and he put it on and went straight out to Cannon Beach to reconvene with his brethren and seals don’t use cell phones so there you go.
11. He was actually a ghost who was granted one wish, kind of like Devon Sawa in Casper when he goes down the stairs all slow and romantic and starts slow-dancing with Christina Ricci.
12. We just found a trail of three fortunes scattered mysteriously on the office floor. I picked up one. It said: An admirer is too shy to greet you at the moment. I’m not even joking about this.
13. He was converted by a wandering Jehovah’s Witness and is now cutting off all ties with his former friends and acquaintances all of whom are mired in the depths of Satan’s sway.
14. He sensed that I am totally batshit crazy and would end up writing weird stories about him and posting them on the World Wide Web.
15. Witness Protection Program.
16. Jury duty. He is in the middle of a hot case (something very OJ Simpson-like) and he is not allowed to have any contact with civilians because they could taint his opinions or try to sway them and so he is sitting in a Motel 6 with the television shut off reading one of those Bourne Identity books (because that’s all they gave him which is really unfortunate because those books are among the worst ever written).
17. Oh man. He is probably a vampire.
18. Or he is in the sort of cult that would feature prominently in a Japanese movie in which the members have a secret pact to ruin people by breaking their hearts and crushing their spirits and this has all been a malicious game that will be revealed in a very climactic scene involving dripping candles and ravens and ritual sacrifice.
19. I just bought a new accordion (not speculation but fact). He is avoiding me because the torture of hearing someone who does not know how to play the accordion but attempts to anyway is far too painful to bear.
20. He has full-blown AIDS.