Flights of Fancy: the third instalment of the Fan Boys & Fear Boners trilogy

Posted On May 1, 2016

You say you want it, but you can’t get it in…

Australia/Singapore Getting on a plane to see the object of your affection is supposed to be grand and romantic, but ever since the Bahamas incident, I’ve learned that getting on the plane isn’t actually the hard part. No, it seems getting off the plane and following through on your promises and gushy sentiments is where most people get cold feet. Sadly, ever since I moved to Singapore boarding for “love” has gone horribly wrong.

It had been just over a year since that bizarre trip to the Caribbean, where a guy had bought me not one but two flights to Nassau, only to stand me up while I was already on the plane. It had also been six months since my trip to Rome, where I had met Venti, a guy who not only showed me the sights from the back of his motorcycle, but also showed me a great time, if you know what I mean. It’s no surprise that once I left Rome, Venti began the typical “big talk” about his feelings and desires, which my six years of experience abroad tells me is common practice with men who have large distances to hide behind. Imagine my surprise when he announced he had booked a flight and was coming to Singapore to see me.

But like so many Fan Boys before him, as soon as Venti was in the final countdown before take-off, he started acting weird. All of a sudden he seemed distant and stopped verbalizing all of his fond memories and fantasies from my Roman Holiday. Yep, as soon as he got to the Lion City, Venti started saying things like, “It will be nice just to see you even if it’s just to take a walk,” which was a major downgrade from the more X-rated ideas he had been sharing with me over the six months since I left Italy. First, I thought he was just nervous that I might be expecting him to deliver on his fantasies as if they were promises or guarantees.  But surely he didn’t simply intend to fly all the way from Rome just to take a walk around Marina Bay with me after all that was said and done.

Oh yes, he did.

After our walk, (yes, it was just a walk. No dinner. No drinks. An actual walk.), he handed me a bag with a postcard inside that he bought in Rome for me. When I went to look at it, he stopped me and told me to read it later, like it was some sort of juicy secret I would want to read only in the privacy of my own bedroom. When I got on the train, I couldn’t wait to whip it out and see what was so sensitive I couldn’t look at it in front of him. It was a classic one-liner:

“I hope you will come back to Rome soon.”

Well as much as I love Rome, I definitely won’t be looking Venti up the next time I’m in town. The whole thing makes you wonder what really happened. Like the mystery of the two flights to the Bahamas, perhaps I will never know the truth. Likely, Venti had met someone in Rome in the six months since I left (or maybe before that), and perhaps he wasn’t ready to actually follow through and cheat on her physically. Although some might argue that the emotional cheating that goes along with texting and sexting is actually worse. Of course, he might just be an idiot.

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t end here, and six months later I once again found myself on a plane bound for Australia and flying towards a guy. This guy, let’s call him Milhouse, had been in Singapore a few months before on vacation when we met. He was pleasant enough for an out-of-towner, but even then I found some things a little awkward about him. But the beauty of travelling (whether you are the tourist or the local) is that people are less judgmental because no one is seriously thinking about a future together.

Naturally, once he was back in Australia the chatting began. And as the months went on he professed to me that it had been such a long time since a girl had been able to stay on his mind for this long. Given my past experiences I knew better than to believe all that.  “If I was there or you were here, “ I said. “You wouldn’t feel that way. It’s the nature of the beast.” Of course, he insisted that I was wrong. And so when my flight to New Zealand had a layover in his town, he convinced me that I wouldn’t be sorry if I extended it to spend at least a night with him again.

So I did. If I’m being honest, I was more curious than anything. Truthfully, if he was living in Singapore, I wouldn’t have been interested enough to actually date him. But, like I said, travelling isn’t real life, so I was curious to see if Milhouse was more of a man than Bahamas or Venti, and the type to actually follow through on all of his talk.

Spoiler Alert: he wasn’t.

I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t cross my mind that there might not be anyone waiting for me at the airport when I landed. Truthfully, I was shocked that he was there as promised. But that sense of relief was short-lived, as it didn’t take long for me to totally regret going there in the first place. Maybe, at the end of the day, I’m just as bad as Bahamas and Venti. Maybe I was the one who couldn’t put her money where her mouth was.  But, no, I’d like to think Milhouse was the only one ensuring that nothing was “coming up Milhouse” on my visit.

I got a better idea about who he was as a person before we even had breakfast that morning. He was indecisive as fuck. He changed his mind about twenty times about where we should go for breakfast before settling for the place that was the most convenient at that very moment (despite just talking up how much better all the other places were). I know that probably makes me sound like a princess, but he would do that again and again about everything – dinner, things to do – and it seemed symptomatic of being the all talk, no action type.

He also kept talking himself up, not realizing he was actually making himself seem like a moron. For example, he had been offered a job in the US some months back and was “smart not to take it” because the company wouldn’t put a clause in his contract that said he couldn’t be fired with cause. Yeah, welcome to the real world, buddy. And, worst of all, after hearing him talk and talk and talk about how he’s such a smart, amazing non-risk taker, whenever I tried to say anything about anything, he’d either cut me off because he saw something shiny, or cut me off because he was trying to kiss me. Yeah, that’s what every girl wants. Shut her up whenever she opens her mouth.

Perhaps, he was just unfortunate  – a Milhouse type, if you will – but he did everything in his power to ensure that all I could possibly be was disappointed in my visit with him. I’m all about having no expectations when I embark upon a new adventure like this, but if someone tells me all the things they have planned and organized prior to my arrival, well I’m going to expect that they are telling the truth. These weren’t big let downs, but it was the principle of it. He had told me he went to the store and bought my favourite chocolate because I had mentioned that I had a craving (how sweet!), that he had organized a nice dinner, and had even taken the day off work to spend as much time with me as possible. But the truth was he didn’t take the day off work. He was just as clueless about what to do for dinner as he was about breakfast, so he clearly hadn’t organized shit. And there was no chocolate! I wouldn’t have expected him to do any of these things if he hadn’t told me he had done them. How can a girl be anything but disappointed when she had been blatantly lied to, even if it’s just about minor things like chocolate? Here’s a tip, guys – say nothing and that’s what she’ll expect.

Having him leave for work was actually a blessing in disguise. It was kind of nice to be rid of him, and I seriously contemplated grabbing my bag, finding another place to stay and not looking back. Perhaps even fate was trying to get me out of there, when extra money magically appeared in my wallet. I’m not sure if I got lucky when I hit the ATM machine or if the guy working the register at the coffee shop got distracted giving me my change, but there it was. But despite thinking bitchy, judgemental thoughts about him, I wasn’t prepared to be the kind of bitch that just cuts and runs.

I even tried to spice things up again. I thought maybe I was just cranky from my terrible flight, and that I would feel better after a nice hot shower. And I thought I might feel better about him if I wasn’t alone in said shower. Once again, it seemed fate had other ideas. As soon as I went to get in the shower, I noticed that a nest of spiders had hatched inside it. There must have been hundreds of them. I ran out of there in my towel, not to seduce him as planned, but to tell him something needed to be done about the tsunami of spiders that had just hit his bathroom. He acted like it had never happened before, yet for some reason he already had the spray to kill them on hand. He sprayed the bathroom and it was literally raining spiders, as they began to cascade down from the walls and ceiling. If there was any chance that I was going to get turned on that night, it went down the drain along with hundreds of dead, baby spiders. I may have been sleeping in his bed with him, but that’s ALL I was doing in there.

The following morning I woke up alone. Milhouse told me not to bother setting an alarm and that he would wake me up and then we would go to some tourist attraction in town. Luckily, I didn’t listen to him, because instead of waking me up, he decided to voluntarily go into work. He told me he’d pick up breakfast on the way back. Then he called me an hour later and told me we’d go for breakfast on the beach. Then he called me again and said we’d get breakfast at the airport before I took-off to New Zealand. Yeah… we never did have that breakfast.

Maybe Milhouse is an example of what really happens when you get off that plane. Maybe this is what would have happened in the Bahamas, or what would have happened if Venti didn’t get cold feet before we met up. But perhaps Milhouse is a unique situation. Perhaps I’m the fucked up one who spent the whole time looking for a reason to let this trip fail. But maybe the biggest factor of all in the fall of Milhouse, is that my attention and interest had actually been focused on the end of my trip, and another guy who was hopefully waiting for me there.

I know what you’re thinking. Two different guys in one trip… dick move. But it wasn’t like that. I had met him the first time I was in Australia, which just happened to be about a week after Venti gave me that touching postcard. I really, really liked him. But this was beyond some unrealistic flight of fancy about a guy who lived 6000 km away from me. When I met him, as much as I liked him, I didn’t start pining over him. What happened instead was that he gave me hope. He was exactly like me in both the good and the bad ways. I had always believed that I was odd, and that I would never find someone who would appreciate the things that make me that way. And truthfully whenever I’ve started going out with anyone, I have always felt that I was making some sort of compromise in the compatibility department. But when I met him, I suddenly realized that there was at least one other person on this planet just like me. It gave me hope that there may be others like him out there (who hopefully didn’t live on another continent).

But I still made a special point to end my New Zealand trip in his part of Oz. I had no expectations. We spoke a little bit over the six months between my two visits to Australia, but we never let our conversations go “that way.” Yes, I liked him. Yes, I wanted him and wanted to see him again. But apart from telling him two weeks before my arrival that I was coming, that’s all I did to influence the outcome. Imagine my surprise when he texted me as soon as he woke up that morning to see if my flight got in. Oooh! He remembered!

We went out all day and all night, and it was like we picked up right where we left off. But the night took an unexpected turn when he walked me back to my hotel. As soon as we got to the doors, he immediately hugged me and told me it was his turn to get on a plane and visit me in Singapore, and then he ran off back home because there was some Euro football game that he just had to watch. I was both confused and horny!  Naturally, I messaged my Wingmom for moral support.

Me: He just left!

Wingmom: He was probably waiting for you to invite him up. Message him and tell him to meet you at the hotel bar for a drink. 

The Wingmom is wise, so I went to do as she suggested, but the boy had already messaged me. Oooh! I planted the seed that he should come by the next night, and prayed he would take the bait. It seemed that fate played another hand to ensure that my wish would be granted, though, when a note from the hotel management was left under my door the following day. The hotel had “failed to acknowledge my VIP status” when I checked in, and to make up for it they had set up a suite for me to move to and were sending me a complimentary wine and cheese platter. All I had to do was tell my elusive koala about my upgrade, and he immediately volunteered to come over and help me enjoy it. He even left work early! If you can’t get into someone’s pants after a wine and cheese, then there’s really no getting into their pants.

Mission accomplished.

So, in a way, I guess this story has a happy ending. But it’s pretty obvious that the only reason getting on a plane to see Wine and Cheese worked out was because he simply didn’t know that he was the reason for my detour back to Singapore. Maybe the moral here is that flying for romantic reasons is doomed to fail (at least if both parties know about it). I think I need a little more research on the subject. Who knows, maybe someday a guy will actually get on a plane to see me and mean it, or the next time someone sends me to an island paradise, he’ll actually be there waiting to greet me with a fancy, frozen drink. Or maybe these are just fantasies that don’t actually happen in real life to girls like me. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what fate has in store for me next.