single female

Nice Profile Pic

When casting a wide net in collecting possibilities for online dates, a good rule of thumb is to start out with some great photos of one’s self. After all, most people on such sites don’t take the time to actually read the text of one’s profile and base their opinions purely on the images provided.

And with that, I decided to start a little examination of the profile photos I see during my regular perusals of the online dating scene. Take a gander, and be advised that the majority of these photos are either the primary or the only photo attached to the profiles of these possible suitors…

nice profile pic

I love a good smartphone selfie in the bathroom mirror as much as anyone else, but if you’re going to use it to represent yourself, you might want to make sure your face is shown.

nice profile pic 5

Funny – but I’m thinking this isn’t the dude I would be talking to online?

nice profile pic 4

Uh, yeah, it would be nice if there even was an image in place of this important hipster message.

nice profile pic 3

I always look for a guy who takes good pictures of citrus. Awesome.

nice profile pic 2

This person knows what women fantasize about. And he wants everyone to know how creative he is with those fantasies in mind. Too bad his bikini underwear is an ugly neutral color. Otherwise, I’d be all over this.

By the way, I love when the sassy boys on online dating sites say that they don’t like “fish-face” or “extreme close-up” photos that girls post, since it means that the girl will be bigger or not-as-attractive in person. To those hotties, I say: Point taken. Yet, you should take take your own advice and avoid standing in front of the toilet for your own glamour shots, loser.

More pics to come…(get excited!)

Denim Surveys and the Art of the Written Word

My recent correspondence on okcupid.com:

2ofakindguy:

hey there I know opposites attract so I figured we would be a perfect match, your funny, smart, in good shape, and seem witty, what more are you looking for? Let me guess a more attainable , humble, less egocentric version of Channing Tatum? Also I wanted to ask you because it looks like you’re into fashion have you ever heard of Joe’s jeans or 7 for all mankind?
mike

(I know there’s a lot of magic in this message. So much so that it makes little to no sense. If you want to read it more than once, I totally understand).

I remember receiving this exact message from this guy months earlier, but since he was still carrying out his market research, I was curious…:

Me:

You’re selling jeans on okcupid?

2ofakindguy:

lol im not selling jeans silly i was curious if you had heard of them?

Me (so silly):

Yes, I’ve heard of them.

2ofakindguy:

thats awesome good to hear that

Survey-851x1024

http://survey4u.org/

(No answer from me but awesome response from him)

2ofakindguy:

so how long have you been on this site and have you actually met anyone from here?

I didn’t write back to him, but here’s a hypothetical answer:

Well, yeah, “Mike,” I have met people on here. None of them have asked me if I ever heard of jeans companies before though…so that’s a big turn-on. So is your lack of punctuation, capital letters or any grasp of reality. Have fun with your survey results!

This was not as good as the last two e-mails I received via Match.com, and from okcupid.com, respectively:

1. how are you doing today, can i know more about you.

(the guy is 24 years older than me and lives in Texas…besides his incredible way with words).

2. you are very nice!

(23 years older than me and obviously knows what he’s talking about).

Summer’s upon us – so don’t be jealous of my latest online romances! There are tons to go around. I promise.

No Voice

John was a cool guy. Regardless of the way in which I spin our experience together in my head, I can’t really say that there was anything majorly screwed up about him. I can’t say that once we met, I felt too much chemistry either. So why would I even bring him up? Well…a few odd things happened on our date and I think they need to be scribed for posterity.

John and I had spoken on the phone early during the week and made arrangements to meet up for a drink that upcoming Friday. It was the beginning of summer and not only had I felt some sort of sniffle coming on, I had spent a decent portion of the day spraying the perimeter of my apartment with very strong bug spray to alleviate a small spider issue. The spray was meant for both the outdoors and indoors, and I probably would have benefitted from opening my windows just a tad more after spraying, so I didn’t swallow most of the vapors. My bad.

About 6 hours later, I stood outside of a really cute bar (his choice) waiting to meet John for Happy Hour. It was early evening at the beginning of the summer and the sun was pretty much blinding me as I stood by the bar entrance, casually turning my head to and fro, to see if he was making his way toward our meeting spot.

Suddenly, a guy in a black t-shirt and dark-framed glasses walked swiftly past me and into the bar. I could have sworn it was John, and as it turned out it was.

run to bathroom
https://forums.playfire.com/general-discussion/thread/96053?page=2#post-2647305

“Did you just rush into the bar by any chance?” I texted him.

Two minutes later, he replied, “Yeah, I really needed to go to the bathroom.”

Fair enough. I suppose.

So I walked into the bar and we greeted one another, got some cocktails and sat at a little table. Our conversation went pretty well. I have nothing against glasses, but didn’t really expect him to be wearing them, since he wasn’t wearing them in any of his photos – which is why it kind of threw me off when a be-spectacled version of him ran past me towards the loo. To be honest, I didn’t find him as attractive in person as I thought he was in his photos but he was a good guy with a warm personality so I thought chemistry could possibly develop.

We were talking about traveling a little bit, and I mentioned a recent work trip. John asked who I went with on the trip and when I told him “my boss,” he asked me if my boss was male or female. There were a few more questions after this from him, which basically turned into John claiming that there was something besides work going on between myself and my male boss. You know, because every workplace is a setting for a porn movie. Oh and EW! So that was a little awkward, but we moved on to another topic.

accusatory
http://www.ehow.com/how_6802365_handle-accusatory-boss.html

John was eventually on his third beer and once we were past the accusations of the affair I was having at work, he brought up the innocent topic of a friend’s upcoming wedding. He was one of the groomsmen and was really excited about it, as it would be a vacation for him and some friends across the country. We were discussing some of the details about it and my voice basically dwindled down to a whisper. I couldn’t get any sound out above some scratches and squeaks, despite multiple attempts at clearing my throat. I was not only sick, but I was instantaneously hit with laryngitis.

sorrycantspeak
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgoralnick/93388706/

I believe it was right around the time when my voice disappeared that a large portion of John’s sanity went with it. First he said, “I would love for you to be my date for the wedding but you know, we just met.” Well, yeah…that’s true John. Then he asked me at least 3 times during the next 10 minutes why I didn’t seem like I was into him. I smiled and tried to talk as much as possible, swearing (in a scratchy whisper) that I was enjoying myself and everything was fine. It was almost as if he was accusing me of not liking him…very early on in our “relationship.” He wasn’t the least bit concerned that I couldn’t speak…only that I didn’t seem interested enough. So at that point, I was uncomfortable with both my date and my state of health. It was time to go.

I think John walked me to the train station from the bar and basically waved me away.

I ended up not being able to speak for two weeks. While I wasn’t challenged to explain to anyone else that I, indeed, did like them or that they had just sprinted past me toward a urinal, it was extremely frustrating.

Damn spider spray.

Why are we Holding Hands?

On a beautiful summer afternoon, I was obviously sitting inside, on my couch in the air conditioning, and staring at profiles on my favorite free online dating site. Jay and I started IMing and since he typed in full sentences and didn’t ask me to come over to his house within the hour in a costume (happens all the time), I decided that he was dating material. Jay had his own apartment, a job and looked to be pretty handsome. About 6 feet tall, with wavy dark blond hair and he worked at a music label (yes, I was shocked that some still exist too!) We bantered humorously back and forth via text for the next day or so and made plans to meet at a wine bar that Saturday night.

I had left another bar earlier after watching a friend’s band to make it on time for our date and it turned out that I was early. He picked a cute place. I sat at the bar and sipped my wine waiting for him to walk in, while yet again, trying to look cute and breezy. And then Jay came through the door. I suppose he kind of looked like the person in his photos, but there was something lacking. I honestly feel like online profiles can really mess with one’s head since they are only one-dimensional. This then forces us to create the second and third dimensions in our heads and if our date doesn’t match up to that creation, there might be some severe disappointment and lack of chemistry.

So there was zero attraction to the in-person Jay. Nothing blatantly wrong with his appearance but it just wasn’t there. But hey, he was friendly enough and we were at a bar, so I had no problem getting to know someone over a glass of wine or two. The topics of conversation ranged from how Jay’s 19-year-old cousin was crashing at his apartment to how Jay liked to keep mixed nuts in his freezer and randomly snack on them. No, neither of these topics or anything else we discussed made him any more attractive, nor did the film of sweat that was easing its way across his forehead and heading down the rest of his face. He swabbed his brow with some napkins, but the sweat wasn’t stopping. The moisture was that of someone’s perspiration in the midst of a heavy work-out, but alas, he was merely sitting at a bar.

Jay at the bar.

After about an hour and approximately 4 not-so-absorbent cocktail napkins later, I made my move to leave. I was staying at a friend’s empty apartment for the night, which was a few blocks away. Jay offered to walk me there, which I thought was nice and polite, until I felt a giant clammy hand reach out and take mine as we walked down the street. I nervously glanced to my side while Jay kept the conversation going, and I kept wondering what made him think that this was an occasion for hand-holding. Yet, I didn’t pull away.

About two blocks away from my destination, while we were in the midst of discussing something very intense (most likely mothballs or the whittling industry or something) the giant cold cut-like hand pushed me over to the door of a CVS pharmacy. And suddenly, there was a tongue in my mouth for a few seconds. Astonished, and wondering how the cold cuts got from my hand to my mouth, I pulled away and said the only logical statement I could muster: “Thank you.”

CVS / Lover’s Paradise

I was sufficiently grossed-out, if not now terrified that Jay thought we were having a romantic experience. I kept him chatting about music for the rest of the walk to my friend’s apartment, and when I announced that we were there, he seemed to lean in for another tongue lash, or even worse: an invitation upstairs. I giggled like a 5 year old school girl while he stared at me. I figured a kiss on the cheek and a “Thanks, talk to you soon!” declaration into the smoke that billowed behind me as I ran into the building would politely hint that I was not interested.

Once I got into the apartment, I took to scrubbing and sanitizing my hands and mouth as much as possible. As I started a text to my friend, asking how much white wine of hers that she would allow me to drink to kill the creepy boy germs and my memory of our experience together, an incoming message popped up:

“Now you know I’m a good kisser.”

I do?

Needless to say, Jay was another (incredibly creepy) frog in my quest to find a prince.

Summer Venting

Warning: Angry female complaining coming up.

During the last two weeks of online dating adventures, I have had some very frustrating experiences.

There was GolfProSal who looks to be approximately 500 pounds and a lot younger than my dating age range. He has a pet that he poses with in all of his profile pictures. He claims she’s a dog but she looks like an extra hairy ferret. His e-mail:

Hi. I’m Sal. How are you? Whats your name? You are so beautiful. To describe myself in a few sentences is tough but I would say: I am a very sweet guy and a perfect gentleman. I am honest and loyal. Just as important as that is I am such a funny person and great with conversation as well. If you are at the point in your life where you are looking for something long term and looking for a guy that treats a woman like a lady then maybe we should chat and see if we are compatible. I am on this site hoping to find love again but this time for good; but if I only made a great friend in the process that would be nice too. I try to be laid back and don’t put pressure on things. I let the cards fall where they may. Hope to here from you soon. Ciao Bella. Sal

Oh, Sal. You seem kind. Take up something besides golf and change up the canned e-mails.

*
Luvsthemthick is about 20 years older than my dating age range, and between his screen name and his message, I can tell he definitely knows how to sweet-talk a lady:

Hi names angel. Awsome pic hun. Would love to chat let me know.

(Swoon).

*
It’s not like I don’t reach out to those who interest me. I winked at FunnyLawyer, who I thought was promising. He wrote back and we entered into a wise-cracking, flirty e-mail exchange. For one day. See, what happened was that he wrote back to me within a few hours, then waited about 2 days to respond the second time, and even claimed he typically is “a lot quicker” with his responses. The next two times he wrote back to me, I was in shock that he even remembered to e-mail me back because he waited 5 days, and then 7 days to send me a few sentences. I know that’s not very eye-opening or humorous, but if you feel as though you have a decent repertoire with someone and a week goes by without communication, most people would assume that either the other person is dead or they are no longer interested. No – just really difficult for FunnyLawyer to get to that e-mail. It’s not cute to act like it takes you a week to write less than a paragraph. Done talking to me? Then don’t e-mail at all!

*

If that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, well you are right. However, a few weeks prior, I wasted a little bit of my life on someone whose texting habits were even worse than that. For example, he asked what I was doing for the weekend on a Tuesday evening, and I answered a few minutes later. He then thoughtfully responded on Wednesday night (24 hours later), “that’s cool.” And that was it. Very fulfilling.
*
LobsterHunter sent me this detailed message:

Hey there what a smile lets talk call me LEONARD @ 212 123 4567

* Cuban2121 wrote to me yesterday, telling me in his introduction that he recently got thrown off another online dating site and that he wasn’t looking for “prudes.” He also mentions in his profile that he has “naughty pictures.”

There have been others, but the aforementioned are the ones that stick out in my mind. As I copy and paste some of these messages from the sites, a hottie noticed I was online and sent me a comprehensive introduction:

Hi.

Oy.

Selfishly, I just want to get this negative activity off of my chest. I truly wish I was able to meet potential suitors the “normal way” as so many acquaintances advise me to. I also appreciate the “don’t give up with online dating – my best friend’s sister’s housekeeper met her second husband that way!” and the “you need to go out and do activities!” remarks. They’re keeping me afloat. Clearly.

Yep, I just became “that girl.”

One Hour of Passion

Matt had the sarcastic charm that I typically giggle at in his J-Date profile. He had light hair, blue eyes, a smile with a child-like quality and was totally unapologetic about liking reality TV shows. He spoke my language so I gave it a whirl. After about two e-mails in one day, I handed over my digits and Matt called me later that evening:

Me: “Hello?”

Matt: “Hey, it’s Matt.”

Me: “Oh hi. How are you?”

Matt: “Good. Okay, I won’t waste either of our time by having a long phone conversation. Are you free this Thursday after work?”

Me: “Tee hee… Um, yep, I think so.”

Matt: “Okay want to meet at Flanagan’s* on 7th at like 6 – 6:30? I’ll text you when I’m on my way.”

I dug Matt’s style. It really is logical. Why waste time going back and forth online or on the phone before meeting in person and knowing if there is any chemistry or not? I added “not beating around the bush” to my mental list of Matt’s attributes.

On Thursday evening, I sat at the bar sipping a drink while waiting for my charming, blue-eyed dreamboat to walk into the bar and sweep me off my feet. Every few seconds, I would glance at the door waiting for him to walk in, quickly looking down at my phone again, to make sure I kept up my breezy appearance. And then a crouched dude with a comb-over in a grass green polo shirt and khakis who looked generally annoyed at life walked in. I couldn’t help but stare at him obviously. I was once again mystified by online profile photos. Sure, the images of Matt I had checked out could have translated into a confident and good-looking guy with a good vibe. But in this case, the real-life Matt was a bitter, hollowed version of his photographs. I suppose his face was the same, but angrier-looking, and surrounded by a lot less hair. We exchanged greetings and got a table toward the front of the bar.

I am not the world’s best conversationalist by any means, but I can certainly hold my own and keep things interesting with the general population, and I have never had a problem on dates. Without even thinking of any sort of meaning behind it, I asked Matt how work was. You know, since most of us spend a large portion of our lives earning our keep, and we had both just come from our offices, that topic just came naturally.

Matt: “Oh, I’m not talking about work. I was there all day, and now I’m not.”

Amused by the angry leprechaun, I asked him what he would like to talk about.

With a deadpan look on his face and the several dozen hairs he had left glistening with gel sweeping over his head, Matt said he wanted to discuss “our passions.” So I flipped the dialogue back in his court and asked him what he is passionate about.

Matt: “Reality TV shows!”

Again, I thought he was kidding, but his diatribe about people being crazy enough to go on television with their eccentricities proved that this was a topic he was certainly zealous about. He went on for a few minutes about some of his favorite shows and though I tried to chime in a few times, I couldn’t keep up.

The ongoing serious look on his face caused me to look elsewhere, and while I didn’t even notice that I kept glancing away from Matt, he declared that I had horrible eye contact, which just made me more paranoid. About 15 minutes into this date, I assumed that I was sitting with a gay guy who had an unhealthy obsession with “Survivor.” What’s worse is that I realized that I couldn’t even be friends with him because he seemed to not have a friendly bone in his body.

At some point, Matt decided to switch topics. Rest assured, he was still focused on being passionate about nothing and indirectly insulting me.

Matt: “So, you’re alone in a room that is 12 feet by 12 feet. You have an old ladder, no light source, a horse and a small window with bars over it. How do you find a meal?”

Ah yes, the ol’ psychological study performed by those who like to find strangers online, pretend they are looking for heterosexual companionship and truly know how to get to hold eye contact throughout a romantic conversation. Whatever my answer to Matt’s hypothetical situation was, he wasn’t satisfied with it and told me that a psychologist would say I am insecure, negative and basically sucked at life.

So, no, there certainly wasn’t a love connection with Matt. The only sign of human warmth he demonstrated during that evening was that he walked me to the train station. And that was only because his train would be stopping at the same station.

I often wonder if Matt ever found the masochist who is able to look him in the eye and discuss episodes of “The Real World” for hours. That is one lucky man.

*For the life of me, I can’t think of the name of the place. It’s a dive bar – that’s all you need to know anyway. Nosey-pants!

Dave from Philly – Part 2: Nobody’s Perfect

Continued from Dave from Philly – Part 1….

After the weekend we first met up, Dave* and I kept in touch and texted daily. Most of the texts coming from his end included self-portraits of him doing exciting things like driving to work, or coming off of the treadmill, which got old after about 3 consecutive days. I did ask him at one point why his hair was so different than it was in his profile pictures. He explained that since his mother had passed away from cancer, he had decided to grow it out to cut and donate to chemotherapy patients. Obviously, that is a very sensitive and caring move to make… but I still think he could have posted more recent pictures online. This was several months of growth – the difference between a bald head and an anchorwoman’s haircut.

When we spoke on the phone, I tried so hard to somehow impair my hearing so that Dave sounded masculine, but I just couldn’t avoid squirming every time his falsetto voice squeaked during a particular animated story or strong comment. I figured I could somehow get used to it, especially if we got to see each other in person more often. We started planning on the next time we would meet up. It went something like this:

Dave: I was thinking that maybe you can come here next time and we can go for dinner.

Me: That sounds good.

Dave: Yeah, I got a gift card to the Cheesecake Factory a few months ago.

Me: Oh…so you’re going to use it soon?

Dave: Yeah, silly, for when we go to dinner.

So if you can imagine that phone conversation with two female voices, and a lot of awkward silences, that’s pretty much how it went. I now had the long hair, high voice, the aversion to drinking, the incessant photo sending, the obsession with sale searching and the extreme frugality well-noted.

With all of that, I still thought I should see Dave again just to make sure we had no hope. In a fit of ridiculous decision-making, I had confirmed with him that I would come to Pennsylvania the next weekend and stay over his house. Luckily, two very well-balanced friends talked me out of that choice. They feared that I would have no way of getting out of a stranger’s house outside of the metropolitan area if and when he pulled his machete out. They definitely had a point, so I told Dave that I couldn’t stay by his house quite yet. I offered to simply come to his area and we could spend the day together. His reaction was not very positive. While I stated my position very gently in the hopes that we can move slowly and I was not ready for any overnight dates just yet, he felt that I had accused him of being a bad person. I received a two page e-mail that declared that while “nobody’s perfect” (just like his profile headline), he is a good person and doesn’t deserve to be treated the way I was treating him. It was quite detailed and a bit dramatic and accusatory, considering we were just getting to know one another. I had no reason to feel guilty and to this day, I really don’t know why I did this, but I ended up apologizing for upsetting him and asked if he would want to spend the day with me.

Apparently, he got over the pain of my insulting actions, and agreed to a daytime date. I took the 2 hour train ride to New Jersey to meet Dave, who lived about 40 minutes from the station. The plan was to (you guessed it) go shopping at a well-known mall and see what the day brought for us. Well, here are a few things that day brought for me:

– Someone that looked very much like Dave showed up at the station to pick me up. He had his trademark feathered-hair, now a bit longer, along with his periwinkle shorts on. Yet, he also had grown a beard, let more than a few hairs between his eyebrows collect and seemed to have stolen Sally Jessy Raphael’s eyeglasses. He said something about his contact lenses when we first greeted one another, but I was too busy wiping my face where his beard had stabbed me and wondering if the giant red frames on his face could get any bigger.

– I learned that Dave drives a giant, beat-up royal blue mini-van. While we were supposed to go to some places in Pennsylvania that day, he opted to stay in New Jersey, where he picked me up, to “save miles.” He also pays for his gas with change. All change.

– I got to experience not one but three different malls of New Jersey. We went to every Macy’s to look for the same Affliction-brand t-shirt to see which one had it at the best price. If you guessed that he didn’t buy it at all, you would be right.

– I got to buy my own soda, as well as his. However, he did spring to pay for lunch at Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse – where he couldn’t rave enough about their free salad bar. The 75 year old woman next to us who couldn’t stop sneezing seemed to agree. It was a good thing we went there, he told me, because we had enough left over for his dinner that night. I know what you’re thinking. I was a bit torn up about not being part of that Cheesecake Factory gift card at the time as well.

– I also learned that if any man with the voice of a 5-year-old female rabbi who wears accessories that Bruce Valanch could have easily lent to him tries to touch me in any sort of friendly manner, I start laughing uncontrollably.

– To make up for the dismay I endured throughout most of the day, I did take advantage of Dave’s keen sense of deal-finding and coupon clipping and ended up with a great summer wardrobe.

– Most importantly, I had concluded that Dave was definitely not the guy for me. But apparently he didn’t get the hint.

I received another photo of him on my blackberry the very next day, taken from the now familiar-looking front seat of his mini-van. He asked how I was doing, and I told him it just wasn’t working between us, which couldn’t have been more obvious to me, or anyone else on the planet.

His reply: “Well, don’t expect me not to be surprised by that.”

Okay, I won’t.

*His full name is David Berkowitz. He assured me when we first mentioned our last names in person that he was not the Son of Sam, but I am pretty sure that there might be a crime spree documented about him some time soon.

Dave from Philly – Part 1

J-date told me that he lived near Philadelphia, and as I was living in Manhattan at the time, I felt I can travel anywhere easily, especially for love. I saw a great smile, beautiful blue eyes and a short buzz cut. Paired with the headline, “Nobody’s perfect!” – I was already besotted. I was thrilled when, after taking a chance and sending him a message about how distance didn’t matter and I thought we would “mesh quite well,” he responded, saying that he happened to be coming to New York City for the weekend! It was clearly fate. We agreed via e-mail, and then text messages to meet the next day (Friday) at a café downstairs from the apartment where he was staying.

After freshening up from work, I was on my way to the Upper West Side to meet Dave. Turns out, the café was closed, but I stood there anyway, figuring that it is a nice Friday afternoon in Manhattan and there were plenty of places we could go. A muscular guy with a sandy-brown mop of hair approached me and in a questionably feminine voice said “oh, I guess it’s closed…bad choice.” Once he smiled, I realized that he was, in fact, Dave.

“Oh hey, how are you?” I answered, internally questioning the long hair and high voice but acting as though I knew it was him immediately. We started walking around while we chit-chatted about his bus ride to NYC with his friend. I quietly noted his fitted graphic t-shirt, wide chest and feathered hair as he went on about “Jon,” who sounded like a horrible travel companion.

We were near Lincoln Center, a cosmopolitan area of Manhattan, so the obvious place we ended up spending the next hour at was – you guessed it – Best Buy. He wanted to compare prices for video games, and a first date was a great time to get that accomplished. After doing that, Dave and I sat in the demo living room in the TV section and discussed our hopes and dreams. I pretended his voice was deeper and his hair wasn’t longer than mine…and that we were not in a retail store. As he set up my blackberry to receive BBMs, I noted his beautiful face and smile. I found him charming, in a high-pitched, cocky sort of way.

Once the appalling looks from employees and customers who realized that we were not, in fact, shopping for TVs got to be too much for me (he was totally fine with it), we wandered around a bit more, and ended up in a clothing store, where Dave was astonished by the prices of pretty much every item they had. He told me how much he loved to shop – that it was one of his favorite hobbies, and it seemed to me that statement was only true if he knew he was getting a good deal. After a short runway show, Dave purchased a pair of periwinkle pleated shorts they had on clearance.

It was still light out, and it being a Friday evening in the summer, I was very conscious of the valuable Happy Hour minutes burning away. Meanwhile, Dave somehow got me back to the apartment he was staying at. It was there that I didn’t get beaten to death as you may expect from such a poor decision, but met Jon, the travel companion. They were staying at Jon’s girlfriend’s studio. The girlfriend was “away” for the weekend. In the cozy apartment, Dave smiled at me, while brushing his brown layers away from his face as Jon and I got acquainted.

“Want to see the best tits ever?” Jon asked me from the kitchen counter, across from the couch I was tucked into, trying to look cute and breezy in front of Dave, who I still liked. Weren’t we sitting in Jon’s girlfriend’s apartment while she happened to be away for the weekend?

“Yeah, so?” he said to me as he clicked through a variety of profiles of different women on plentyoffish.com who he was in the middle of setting up meetings with for the weekend.

I couldn’t sit in the apartment anymore, but I still found Dave to be charming. As a self-proclaimed “work-out nut,” he wasn’t much of a drinker, but classy Jon made himself useful and helped me convince him to join me at the bar. Of course, Jon joined us and the whole situation was just as awkward as the apartment. I had purchased my own drink, as well as Jon’s. I went home soon after that, but promised to see Dave again the next day.

We met early the next day and I had a great time showing him different stores on 5th Avenue, where he wanted to “shop” some more. I thought I had hit the jackpot. I found a straight guy who loved to work out, wander around the city and shop! Dave did tell me that his mother had passed away a few months earlier, and shopping was one of the pastimes they used to share, so he felt closer to her when he went to stores. Okay, that is bittersweet, and I had no right to judge. Browsing for and pricing out pieces of menswear seemed to be a source of great enjoyment for him. Breaking him away for some coffee was a challenging task. As a nice gesture, I offered to pay for his water (no coffee for him), which he eagerly accepted, and then proceeded to take a few dozen photos of the two of us together. A bit awkward? Sure was. Especially when he sent each one to me later via BBM. I think I was supposed to save each one for the photo montage of our blossoming love.

[To be Continued]

And here we go!

Welcome to my first blog. I have decided to take the enormous amount of stories I have about blind dates I have endured during the past few years and document them for posterity. The majority of these experiences occurred with people that I met online, and I will most likely point out which site we met on, in case you are interested yourself.

Make sure you check out the “No First Date for You” section fairly often. The tales noted there are about people I am lucky enough to communicate with, but for one reason, or another, do not meet in person.

For years, I had these stories that I would only share with close friends. I never really wanted to be “that single girl” who has all the funny stories about online dating. I felt pathetic for continuously experiencing the crazy on my own. My feelings have gradually changed and I decided to share. Thus – sharing the crazy with everyone.

From time to time, I go through slumps and hide from the world, thinking that finding a good person online is an impossibility. And I always tell myself two things. For one, that is actually not true, since I have met some great people in the past. And two, like people always say,”you never know who you will find.”

That, my friends, is the understatement of the century.