At a recent holiday party, I got into a conversation with a fabulous twenty-something girl. She mentioned that she had been having major difficulties meeting worthwile men, while many of her friends seem to be finding their one and only's. She brought up singles sites, and asked my opinion of them. While I know of people that have had decent dates and relationships with men from many of these sites, my experiences were much different.
During desolate dating deserts, I tried my share of dating sites, and outside of making one good, close friend, I came out worse than empty handed: I became scared of the male gender almost as a whole. Though I had many not so great experiences with cyber match ups, three stood out to be much more horrid than all the rest combined.
The first contender that I met up with mentioned how much he liked to travel, that he was self employed, and that he enjoyed warm pubs with cozy fireplaces. In his picture he looked like a darker complected Heath Ledger, photographed outside the breezy ruins of a British castle. What I found when I finally arrived at the "secluded pub" he invited me to was a dive bar, no fireplace, or even tables for that matter, a scrawny little guy that looked nothing like the late great Mr. Ledger, a half eaten pizza that he had so kindly been pigging out on before I even got there, and a bartender that slammed a glass of water in front of me, and never spoke to me again. Through our conversation I found out that he was UNemployed, and that he was a freestyle frisbee fanatic (that means he does tricks with frisbees, like juggling and spinning), and that he had only traveled once, to Guam, for frisbee tricks. I came to realize that the reason the bartender was ignoring me was because he was friends with my date and knew he had no money, even though I had every intention of paying for myself. It was when my date showed me his hideous homemade black acrylic nail on his pointer finger that allowed him to do tricks with his frisbee, and then peeled the nasty booger looking thing off in front of me and started playing with it on the bar that I knew I was leaving as soon as humanly possible. When he got up to smoke, I took that opportunity to escape, nonexistant bartab unpaid.
The second contender was a liar, plain and simple. I began chatting with him one night after seeing his profile, and he looked like a normal, somewhat decent guy. His picture was that of a big cuddly lumberjack kind of guy, and said he was six foot three, an aquarius, 35 years old, and his name was Justin. During our chat, I mentioned his sign, and he told me he had changed his birthday on the site because being on a dating site freaked him out. Though somewhat understandable, I found that to be a red flag. I mentioned it to one of my closest friends, and she said to check his ID when we meet. The next evening, I went to the chain restaurant that he had suggested, and waited. While waiting, a short man that looked very much like a bald hobbit came up to me and said my name. Baffled, I looked down at him, and said "yes?" It turns out it was Justin. Kind of. When we sat down I asked if I could see his ID. He nodded, but told me that he had something to tell me. He wasn't actually 35, he was 33. And his name wasn't actually Justin, it was Kendall. And the pictures on his profile were actually from some weird website where you can type in your characteristics, and it will pull pictures of people that look like you (or in this case, look nothing like you). He had lied about every single thing on his profile, but yet he expected me to take him home with me, and became beligerently angry when I left him at the restaurant. Strike two.
The final date was with an older Norwegian gentleman, well monied, once divorced with two kids, and very not my type. I realized though, that my type (younger, barely employed, gorgeous eye candy) had not been working out so well for me, so why not try this other barrel? We chatted for awhile, found each other funny, and decided to meet at an upscale restaurant in Bellevue. He was nice enough, and his interests in skiing and snowshoeing were intriquing. There wasn't any real chemistry, though I would've considered a second date with him, because at least he had been honest, treated me like a lady and seemed to have his shit together. After our date, I came home to an email from him asking me my thoughts on how it went. I told him that I thought he was nice, and that he seemed worth getting to know better, though I wasn't sure if we had chemistry at this point. He wrote me back stating that he enjoyed the date, and that I talk a lot (I will acknowledge that I have a lot to say, yes) but that my stories are funny. He then proceeded to tell me that he was looking for someone "curvy" not fat. He asked why I would lie about this, and ridiculed me for it. There are no words for how hurt I was. I had just been through one of the toughest years of my life to that point, including taking care of a terminally ill friend, dealing with health issues of my own, my friend had sent me flowers because of all the hardships I was going through and my cat ate them and died, the last man I had dated unceremoniously dumped me after meeting my family, and I had lost the one thing that I have always wanted: I had miscarried. I had put on some weight in dealing with all this, and yet had still found the courage to go out and meet someone new. Having my weight thrown at me like it was some joke I played on him broke me.
That night I went to the gym, and then to the grocery store to buy a few things, including a bottle of water. After the checker at the register scanned the bottle of VOSS, I snagged it, opened it up and gulped half of it down. He asked me if I could now speak Norwegian. I looked at him, almost in tears, still so hurt by what the Norwegian tycoon had said that I didn't want to even support the country. Then the adorable little checker started speaking in a hilarious Norwegian accent, spouting off a silly joke, and I couldn't help but smile. It turned out he was Norwegian, too. I guess my point to all this is that you don't have to find pictures of strangers with witty written things in little boxes on your computer in order to meet people. Most often that's not really them anyway. You just have to be willing to smile and say hello. I would have much rather dated the adorable checker boy that stood two inches shorter than me and works a nine to five than ever go out with the tycoon again, let alone any of the other guys that I came across on those stinkin' sites.
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