I have an addiction to the things that make me feel good. Yet my vices are nowhere near normal. Alcohol and drugs have never truly appealed to me; I distinctly remember telling friends in high school when they’d proffer me something temptingly illegal, “Why should I pay to act stupid when I can do that for free?”

At 32, I feel the same way most of the time, still not quite understanding my friends who require regular trips to their dealer or the liquor store to numb their lives just a little bit longer.

I’m no princess either though. For my 31^st birthday I retardedly decided to erase my own pain with some yet-to-be-named white, tasteless liquor that went down oh-to-well, leaving my friends to force water down my throat at every corner and walking me not unlike their precious Fido’s. I definitely had a short leash.

Still, that was a one-off event, and honestly? It didn’t make me feel good.

What does make me feel good however are - words. Words that, when proffered to me in a very particular combination, remind me of the blood coursing through my veins and how lovely it is to be alive, even if what I’m feeling isn’t terribly pleasant.

For instance: one of my favorite 80’s films (what can I say? I’m a child of the eighties) had a bit part in it where a tall, very large breasted high school girl unwittingly became the obsession of an Asian exchange student named Long Duck Dong. His call to said girlfriend, hanging from a tree encased in toilet paper after an especially raucious party, “Where’s my sexy GIRLfriend?” in a singsong voice, is a powerful bore into the depths of my psyche. Although I identified as gay in middle school, I felt like I was that girl: geeky, way too developed in the chest region, and oblivious to attraction from any direction. The fact that it came from a foreign exchange student wasn’t lost on me, and my affinity for people from other places still lives on, partially because of this one line in a silly little movie that definitely hasn’t made it through the test of time.

When I hear those words, I am instantly taken back in time. I feel warm and sexy even though my awkwardness never really went away. A million things go through my mind, but they only take a second to register.

THIS is the feeling I want when I read someone’s profile introduction.

I realize it’s a lot to ask of mere mortals in a hastily-crafted one liner for an online dating site. Really, I get it.

But until I get that warm feeling from a strangers’ attempts at extending a friendly handshake and saying hello, I can’t bring myself to find the person in question interesting.

And really, isn’t that what dating, and love, is all about? Those magical moments that take your breath away, leave you aching for more, and delightfully intrigued as to what’s coming next?

Unfortunately the online dating world loses this extremely important rush of feeling. I still get butterflies if I see a gorgeous person gazing right at me from across a crowded coffee shop, but a picture on a web dating site? No shazaam for me.

People’s words however? THEY matter.

I’ve met and dated so many people from online dating sites over the past decade, I’ve lost count, but it lands squarely somewhere in the high thousands. And I STILL remember a select few opening lines and first-time chats, all of whom I still keep in contact with today.

Sure, all of my opening lines haven’t been stellar. But most of them have. I change them frequently mind you, because I find different words resonate with different people, and my moods are mercurial to boot.

But I always know when I’ve gotten it right: I get several creatively minded, intriguing people within driving distance contact me immediately saying, “I HAVE to meet you!”

It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?