Meeting Amberly

It takes nearly an hour of browsing through different matches before you decide to give up on men. A majority of the profiles were either empty, or so full of chocolate sprinkles that you could throw up. Fortunately for you, there's twice as many matches available to you - it's just that half of them are other women. Changing your profile a bit, you start looking for a female buddy to hang out with and you immediately notice the change of tone among the profiles.

Maybe half an hour later, you already find the perfect person. Amberly. A nice woman in her thirties, divorced, and with the best kind of contraceptive that you can imagine - multiple kids. You're getting along great with her in the short conversation by phone, and decide to meet up at her small apartment.

She looks a little neglected at first glance - overweight, breath that smells of cigarettes, old clothes, but nothing particularly alarming or awful. You two hang out in the kitchen at first, drinking some more coffee and eating cake before she introduces you to her children. Her first son was a teenager like yourself, and she also had two daughters and another boy who were much younger and running around the apartment in random intervals to chase each other while yelling and screaming. Ugggh. Perfect birth control right there, it takes you less than five minutes to decide that you won't be ready for children for the next decade or so.

Eventually you decide to spend some more time with the first son, Ricky. He had a room for himself with a couple posters of various rock bands, leather furniture, and piles of clothes all over. You would talk to him, but the music was so loud that you didn't even try until he decided to lower the volume a bit. Turns out he's some kind of rebel, but against what? Beats you. He also seems to be pretty lazy and without any particular ambitions in life, and you're grateful that you don't have to deal with him for more than two days.

Next you spend some time with the bubbly daughters Mary-Lynn and Mary-Beth, who immediately invite you to play with their dolls while excitedly talking on and on about made up stories for each and every character. Ugggh. It takes all of your will and mind power not to run out of there, it's like somebody is stabbing your manliness with a rusty spoon. Reluctantly you play along, and it's probably one of the most difficult actions you had to do in your entire life. The second brother Jimmy was keeping himself busy on his side of the room, a fair distance away from his sisters. You also learn that the daughters are both nine years old and their nearby brother was just a year or two older - Amberly sure had been busy, and you wonder if she might become a bad influence given your delicate situation. As you take a quick look around, you notice that there's only two beds in the room in total, which means they're living under pretty cramped conditions. It's somewhat surprising to you, given how you grew up in a large house where every kid had their own room, and certainly their own bed.

After another hour passes, you decide to pop the big question. Returning to Amberly, you ask her if it's ok for you to stay two days. You make up some sad story about having trouble at home, parents aren't nice to you, whatever. She believes it, but tells you upfront that she doesn't have any spare beds. "Oh," you reply softly, but she reassures you that you can share a bed with her daughters or her older son. Given the alternative of living on the street, you thank her again and think about your options while dinner is being prepared.