Typical Saturday night for a typical single girl? Duh, partying it up with my OkCupid “matches” and browsing through people who have viewed my profile recently. The night took an interesting turn when I discovered my profile has been visited by girls.
Is the universe trying to tell me something?
I’m running out of time. The telltale signs are emerging. Late twenties, early bedtime, early wake-time, low(ish) tolerance for alcohol, a fear of hangovers so healthy it’s unhealthy, and an unnatural fear of the opposite sex infiltrating my personal space (aka texting me). My greatest joys are found avoiding people, staying in, cooking dinner for myself in my sweats, watching whatever I want on Netflix because no one is around to judge my “Recently Watched” list, going to sleep occasionally without brushing my teeth, and not showering. I am officially entering early spinster-hood.
Never one to give up without a fight, as of today I’ve decided I must put a stop to this downward spiral. I will start browsing my options on OkCupid again, maybe even consider paying for Match.com. This is a new epiphany, hot on the heels of my other recent decision to delete my profile after a certain creepy fellow kept writing letters to me despite said letters going unanswered… not once, not twice, but five times.
Fist in the air, I will do this. Force myself to meet new people, albeit online. Respond to texts. Maybe pick up phone calls. Maybe even go on a date.
Fuck, one step at a time. Stalking from behind the privacy of my computer screen first.
I discovered a genius way to meet new people (to date), much better than online dating, in fact. Just go to your single friends’ high school reunions. It works best when you go with a group of same sex friends, so your single status shines bright. It’s easy to get introductions because everyone knows each other and what’s even better: everyone is drunk. BOOM.
A male friend of mine put online dating quite well:
“Well, the dates were like… What’s the best way to put this? The dates were like sitting down to see a movie, and realizing within 10 minutes that the movie was gonna be terrible and not being able to leave.”
Took the words right out of my mouth. I’ve most certainly felt this way about online dates in the past, and it’s even how I feel within 10 seconds of meeting guys even in real life. To be frank, though meeting guys for me is a rarity these days, when it happens, I feel like going home and crawling under my sheets, never to be seen again by the human race. And I question why I’m still single?
My solution to that was supposed to be online dating. That, clearly, has not fared well, and we’re back at square one.
I wish they had a relationship status on Facebook called “Spinster.”
What do I win if I get all of them?
When word of my blog caught wind via Facebook, one of my friends showed his friend my blog, who immediately requested a date with me fully wanting an entry written about him afterward. His thought was that he wanted an honest analysis of his etiquette on a real-life date. I warned him that I might do things like make fun of his pants. With this disclosure out in the open, he accepted. (All of this correspondence, by the way, was done through my friend who served as the messenger via his Facebook. Good ol’ social media, right?)
This was about a month or so ago, and after some radio silence on their end (probably due to them having to gear up for opening a certain new restaurant), I received the official e-mail today from my friend, CC’ing his friend. We’ll call his friend “X” for now:
Sorry for the delay guys…
X meet S, S meet X. The deal was you guys go on a date and S you write about it. How you guys go about is up to the two of you haha.
Have fun guys haha
Oh shit, online dating has now become online-friend-set-ups-turned-into-journalism-projects.
Of course, the real test is how true to ourselves either one of us will be on this experiment date. Can he be real with me knowing I could very well be writing about anything? And could I really bring myself to write about anything, being fully aware that he would read it?
This is going to be interesting… and extremely uncomfortable.
What kind of question is “Hello, wow you’re big on hip hop music, have you heard of Nujabes?” in the year 2012?
A 43-year old keeps messaging me. His latest attempt:
older then you wanted, better then you expected
xx
Actually, sir, your attempts are futile, for I am a puma.
To help my readers understand what a “puma” is, I called on the help of the always dependable Urban Dictionary, and picked my favorites out of various definitions:
1. An attractive woman in her late 20s or early 30s. She is a pre-cougar/urban-cougar.
2. A woman who is not quite old enough to be a cougar, but still likes to date/mate with younger men.
Hell yeah.
A male friend once told me to keep message exchanges between online suitors brief and not to be alarmed if they asked to meet for coffee or drinks after just one or two exchanges. He rationalized that the whole point of online dating is to meet in person to better gauge both physical and mental chemistry. No use in chatting online with someone you’ve never met, right? I’ve since taken this philosophy/dating rule to heart, and quickly lose interest once someone has spent much too long playing online relay. It’s futile, really, to be discussing the origin of my OkCupid screen name when I’ve just worked 13 straight hours. My whole reason for being on online dating was to cut the BS for lack of free time. So do us both a favor, and cut to the chase.
This rule might even spill past virtual reality and into our daily lives. Waiting too long to ask a girl out, contact her, or even stay in touch with her after date #1 means you will no longer be top of mind. Boys, the truth of the matter is, women these days are too independent, too busy, too ambitious, and having too much damn fun doing it all, to be waiting around for you. Be a man and do something about it before you’re out of mind, out of sight.
Tonight I took up a friend’s offer to attend one of Match.com’s infamous singles mixer events, dubbed “Stir” for those who are unaware. Imagine the stories, I thought to myself. And stories, there were.
A detour to the wrong location and two hours later, I showed up, girl friends and trusty iPhone notepad in tow. Note about the iPhone: I was very well aware of how rude I was, typing furiously away at my phone in the middle of a mixer event, but it was all part of the experiment. Exactly how clueless and desperate can the opposite sex (or girls even) be towards social cues, when they’re put into a setting where the only objective is to date and be dated? The cluelessness was transcribed in my notes in quite the disorganized manner as I didn’t have much time to gather my thoughts, but I will try my best to decipher:
1. First guy (tall, Asian, too much gel in too short of hair, not bad looking). Initial thoughts:
- He is very inquisitive about the shape of our cups. (Glass cups, not boob cups.)
- Why is my cup smaller than yours? Because mine is on the rocks and I have bigger balls than you.
- He is standing too close. Must lean back. He leans forward to compensate.
- He is now pointing in my face. Or inches away from my chest as he tries desperately to include his friend in the conversation with my friend and I.
- No, I don’t want to guess your friend’s accent. I don’t care if I only get one guess.
- Am I too cool for school because I won’t play guessing games? Yes.
- No, I don’t know how many provinces there are in China.
2. Second guy (a blur.) Conversation as follows:
- Him: Why are you on your phone at an event like this?
- Me: I’m taking notes.
3. Third guy (and girl). Girl approaches and introduces her roommate to my friend. Girl proceeds to talk. Initial thoughts:
- How is a girl talking too much to me right now?
- She is standing too close. Must lean back. She catches the cue, covers her mouth, suddenly self conscious of her breath.
4. Third guy (from perspective of my friend). Conversation as follows:
- Him: So what do you do right now?
- Her: (Insert job here). What do you do?
- Him: Oh, I’m between jobs.
- Her: (Ok, we’re done now.)
- Note to unemployed fellows: It’s not wrong to be laid-off or in-between jobs, just be a smart conversationalist and don’t ask a girl what she does if you have nothing great to report yourself. Avoid the topic as much as humanly possible. Best foot forward, men!
5. As my friend and I were exchanging notes, two Indian guys jump up, literally between our faces, attempting to interrupt and start a conversation. We take two steps aside and continue talking. They jump up between us (freakishly close once again), clearly intending to scare us. I proceed to give them my best look of disgust as we walk away to the other side of the room.
6. Change location, change luck. Continue deep conversation with my friend. Really enjoying catching up with her at this point. I know this defeats the purpose of a singles mixer event, but who - SHIT! Indian guys pop up between us again, interrupting our thoughts and my happy space.
7. Really short Asian guys start lurking behind us but are too scared to approach. Nothing happens and they slink away, defeated.
8. Awkward Asian guy approaches by lurking behind us (what is with that technique anyway?), and then tries to introduce himself. But we’re leaving (honestly!). He slinks away, defeated. Or so we think…
9. Five minutes later, awkward Asian guy returns with his drunk broken-English-speaking Korean friend. He asks us what our names are, proceeds to find our semi-matching names highly amusing as we roll our eyes and laugh AT him (not with him), continues to make a fool out of his drunken self even though we are practically speaking to him with our backs turned.
In short, the three things lacking from my first single mixer experience: personal space, comfort zones, and eye candy.
BUT, the silver lining was the very friendly and quite intuitive, curly-haired young man who successfully got my other friend’s number at the end of the night. He, much to every man in the room’s dismay, spent the majority of the night surrounded by us three girls. I hope he feels like a winner.
Just to end on a nice note, I will commend everyone tonight for even having the courage to (a) go to something as scary as a singles mixer, and (b) approach girls. Keep on truckin’, because everyone deserves some love……… Just not necessarily from me.
