Hope Floats
By 6pm, AwShucks had written back. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I had only wrecked things with Ocean Boy, that shallow bastard who didn't like my second photo enough to write back to me. AwShucks replied to my reply regarding meeting in person and we set a Sunday 3pm late lunch/early dinner date. He took my number and said he would call to confirm. This whole thing is strangely business-like, come to find out, and eerily reminiscent of last summer when I lost my job and was dealing with a barrage of interviews. But now I'm getting somewhere, an actual date! The ultimate test for this crazy little system of romantic instant gratification.
I should probably tell you that I think I'm now hooked on Nerve.com. I'm like a crazed junkie at this point, and I find myself running to any computer I come into contact with and frantically checking my inbox for a fix. I was out at my folks' house this weekend, got a little bored, and well, I went shopping again. I met ManOne, CyBorg, BklynGuy and KamaKazee. I'm obsessed and I think I may need help. CyBorg and I talked for a few hours on Sat. night, online. He is in the home stretch at Columbia Law. Smart and well written, he looks like some kind of Nordic god in his photo. I think he's about 6'4", therefore not even my type physically at all. But his emails were full of anecdotes and stories about his crazy Michigan Polish family and their pirogue-making, so I kept writing back. ManOne is wearing cool horn-rimmed glasses and a Superman t-shirt in his photo. He is also smart and well written, but a little too, "Hey...you're a cutie!" for my taste. BklynGuy is a teacher, loves scrabble and the NY Rangers. KamaKazee is a freelance writer and part-time farmer in Brooklyn. Yes, he actually has a huge garden in his backyard, and even grows corn. He and I have a lunch date for Sat., and I'm supposed to have drinks with CyBorg this week. The possibilities are endless here, folks. I could literally have at least one date (or more!) per day if I wanted it. I'm almost drunk with power! I'm feeling like The Bachelorette, and inexplicably, my mind's eye has determined that all of these men-ManOne, AwShucks, BklynGuy, all of ‘em-are perfect. They are all handsome, funny, intelligent without being too overly intellectual, quirky and loving prospects. They are all vying for my attention. My future is bright.
Date One
Then the high, dramatically, came crashing down. I had my first physical meeting and it was with AwShucks. While a perfectly nice human being, there was absolutely no spark between us. Not even the inkling of a spark that may be generated at some future time. Nope. Nada. Zilch. He was so witty and interesting online!? We had lunch in the East Village, and the conversation was almost painful. We just didn't have a lot to talk about, and when we did talk, it felt more like a job interview than a date. The one great story I did get out of it was his account of his Nerve date from the night before. She was totally out on control, blowing endless lines of cocaine by herself and hanging all over their bartender. AwShucks was so embarrassed and horrified that he left while she was in the bathroom, snuck out the backdoor, as it were. While our date wasn't quite as uncomfortable as that, I did feel slightly trapped. After lunch, I begged off going to have another drink saying that I was exhausted from staying out late the night before. I said ‘it was lovely to meet you', ‘give me a call', and gave a stiff goodbye hug. It feels shallow to say, but I never would have agreed to go out with this guy had I met him in a regular setting (in a bar, through work or friends, etc.). He wasn't my type, nor was I his. We wouldn't have even gotten to the stage where we were having a romantic little lunch in the East Village. And while so much can be said for meeting new friends, opening yourself up for possibility and new experiences, essentially...we had just wasted each other's afternoon.
And herein lies the central problem with internet dating: you just never know what you're going to get. It's a gamble. There are millions of singles out there, but how many of them are actually a match for your own personal mix of chemistry? It's a find the needle-in-the-haystack situation. The online format only lures you into a false sense of possibility, when really your odds are no better than regular dating. And worse, you end up wasting a ton of time and energy on conversing with people with whom there will be absolutely no spark present in person. The striving to seem cool in your allotted one page profile, the eager, witty email banter, all of it just so much work. For a venue that appears, at first, to be the saving grace of the busy young city dweller who doesn't have the time or energy to go out and meet people- it takes just as much, if not more, out of you.
Date Two
I really like KamaKazee. On the phone, he is hilarious, smart and self-deprecating in all the right places. We talk for almost 2 hours, and never run out of topics! He is a freelance writer to pay the bills, and is rewriting his first novel, a historical epic saga set in WWII London. He spends almost the entire 2 hours preparing his dinner, which he never really ends up eating. It's something like shrimp in tamari sauce with fresh lemongrass and jasmine rice. As a part-time cook, my interest is piqued. He asks me dozens of questions about myself, and he listens to the answers, finds relevancy within them and makes interesting connections. Our conversation twists and builds, we laugh a lot. I'm actually enjoying this, and never once try to think up a way to get off of the phone. He makes a fantastic date offer, to meet him in Chinatown on Saturday afternoon. He claims to know of an amazing hole-in-the-wall Chinese dumpling shop where the old women sit in the back of the store smiling and twisting pasta into dumplings. He makes this Chinatown offer because he loves Chinatown, and because he claims, "You cook, so I thought of you when I was there today. I think you'll like this. Then we can walk around, hit a teahouse maybe. I'll show you where I think the Five Points is." I'm floored, truly. He has made connections to things I've talked about, and come up with an interesting and creative day for the two of us. This is something entirely new for me, a guy who actually plans a date tailored to what he knows about me so far. If nothing else, I think I've made a friend.
I met him the following Saturday in Chinatown. He is sort of cute, looks like a scruffier version of Sean Penn with a little Patrick Dempsey thrown in. We had the awkward first 10 minutes where I didn't really know what to say to him, and vice versa. I was struggling for conversation in the freezing wind, and he seemed a little distant. We went to the dumpling shop he promised me, the old ladies twisting dumplings furiously in the back, no one speaking English. He ordered up a vast array of dumplings and pork buns, and we took it to go, across the street to a little park. We found a sunny spot and sit to eat, warming our hands up with the steaming hot dumplings, but it was so freezing we abandoned the park and headed to a teahouse. We ended up sitting in the teahouse for over 2 hours, drinking coconut tea and chatting. Conversation never lagged, it actually was quite comfortable. I'm beginning to see that these dates follow a certain protocol, and I'm actually getting kind of good at it. It's so different than what I'm used to, i.e.: having a few drinks in me and trying to seem alluring to some guy in a bar. This dating structure has entirely different rules; it feels more grown-up somehow. We ended our date in a bar at the South Street Seaport with a glass of wine while looking out over the East River as the sun went down. Do I feel a huge pull towards this man? No. Not yet, anyway. But the date was enjoyable, and we have agreed to see each other again. It's somewhere in the middle of being a horror and being wonderful. It's difficult for my New York sensibilities to process, as it's not extreme enough for me to make sense of it yet. It was just a nice date with a nice guy.
Continue to Part 3
