It’s amazing that after my first date, a coffee at Starbucks in the middle of the day, I didn’t deactivate my Friendster account and toss my computer out the window. Gary came across as borderline hostile. In between boasting about his (questionable) success as a screenwriter, he regaled me with tales of his last three relationships: the “nightmare girl from Nerve” and “those two needy women from Yahoo! Personals.” When I asked him if he ever met women in person and not on line, I knew that I’d probably forever castigated myself to being “that Friendster bitch” in future anecdotes. But what did I care? Even if it meant living out life as a spinster with 100 cats, I wouldn’t be going the Gary route or the virtual route again.
I wasn’t the only disgruntled online dater. Other people I knew reported horror stories far worse. My friend Sara, a sucker for spiritual seduction, started emailing a guy who told her she “touched his heart chakra.” She was swooning for him even before he wrote her a testimonial that declared she was his “future wife.” But when they met, all he did was try to get her to touch a different chakra altogether. Fed up with his pawing, she finally said that if he was so determined to get off, he should just go right ahead. He wasted no time in rising to the occasion.
Men also get screwed. Although my friend Peter, a good-looking stuntman who’s explored most of the dating sites, has actually slept with women from the virtual world, he’s also met some who were “at least 70 pounds heavier” or “a good 15 years older” than their pictures suggested. Even when he got laid, the experience was bizarre. “One woman, who was married but claimed it was only for a green card, offered to blow me because it was my birthday,” he confessed. “Another met me for coffee in the middle of the day and left because she had another date, then called me later and asked if she could come over.” Though he, like any man with a beating heart, took both women up on what they were so freely offering, he was loath to discover that neither returned his calls afterwards. “I’m sort of over it,” he eventually decided of Internet dating. I was feeling the same.
Then the tides turned in my favor.
My friend Jenny sent me an email on Friendster saying that she thought I should meet her friend Adam. I planned to ignore it but Adam’s reply to the suggestion was so charming, I agreed to get together for drinks. After all, his Friendster profile was decidedly impressive and the testimonials friends had written on his behalf praised his environmentalism, his passion for worthwhile causes, his talent and his success.
I ended up seeing Adam for a few weeks and couldn’t find a damn thing wrong with the guy. Not only was he intelligent, amusing, successful, and attractive, he drove an electric car, for Christ Sakes (not a mere hybrid) and ran foundations dedicated to helping those less fortunate. Yet after about four or five dates, I felt less enthusiastic. Oh sure, I liked how passionate he was about the plight of others, but sometimes I just wanted him to limit that to watching a Real World rerun and not marching in the name of inhumanity. Being around Adam started to constantly remind me of all the ways in which I wasn’t a do-gooder. (Plus, finding pumps that accommodated electric cars got exhausting pretty quickly.)
But none of that seemed to explain my change of heart.
One day I realized I just didn’t want to see Adam anymore. He was perfect, so perfect that I wondered what was wrong with me. Then I realized that perfect on paper isn’t actually what feels perfect to me. Sure, facts culled from Friendster, Google and the online club for bee enthusiasts can be helpful, but I’d rather discover those things from the actual person, while simultaneously gauging how much (or little) I want to reach out and touch him. A keyboard and screen may open up the playing field, but they also seem to eradicate most of what’s organic and enjoyable about dating.
Now if I could just see about fixing my Google profile.
