Rule #1

A few years ago, I went on a few dates with a guy that I later dubbed “Vulture.” This really had very little to do with his personality and more to do with his posture. He had a particularly long neck and appalling posture that left his shoulders arching up and somewhat forward. He was the closest thing I’ve seen to a living cartoon character.

Posture aside, Vulture was excessively boring and unwilling to go beyond the three-block radius surrounding his house.

We went on exactly two dates, at which point I told him I didn’t want to see him again.

Unfortunately, this led Vulture to do the most interesting thing he’d done during our brief encounter: he excessively called/texted to verbally abuse me.

Apparently calling me a plethora of colorful names was the key to getting me to go out with him again. Among other things, he told me that we had a deep, personal connection and that we had a future together but if I wanted to be a whore instead, that was fine with him.

I think deep, personal connections might consist of a little more than a conversation about my favorite movie and why he likes salami.

This is when I developed Rule #1 for dating. (And no, it’s not cardio.) It’s the rule of the Google Voice.

Google, in their infinite wisdom, made it so not only can you make calls and text people from one of their numbers, but you can block people. Therefore, instead of having to delete 15 text messages and avoid roughly 25 phone calls, I could have just blocked vulture!

Eventually he gave up, so I didn’t need to change my number, but some people are more tenacious. While it might seem a bit overly cautious, there are just some times when you really don’t want to hear anymore.

Lesson learned: Don’t judge someone based on appearance, judge them based on how crazy they are. And then block their texts.

Apprehension

For the past week, my Facebook feed has been cluttered with the fallout of breakups. For several days I could practically hear REM crooning “Everybody Hurts” when I checked my page. It seems as though mating season is over and in its wake is a smattering of broken hearts. Some of my friends have handled their breakups with a grace that I envy. (I’m not exactly sane during a breakup.) Some . . . not so much.

In the midst of this dating carnage, I was asked out on a date for the first time in close to a year. And I’m not excited to go.

This is perhaps the only legitimate date request I’ve received from my recent foray into JDate. The rest were either scared off by me only being only half Jewish or they sent me an email already naming our children. Introduction emails seem like a strange place for family planning. Maybe that’s just me.

But this guy seems to be intelligent, eloquent and polite. And as my colleague put it, “He’s really cute! You never go out with cute guys!”

(What, the albino was very attractive for someone without pigment!)

So why am I not excited?

Perhaps it’s watching the online massacre of relationship bliss. Except I don’t think I’m that empathetic. More likely, it’s because the vast majority of my first dates with people I’ve met over the Internet have ended in disaster. In fact, I can’t recall the last time an online date led to a second date.

I am such an optimist.

Maybe it’s time to forget where everyone else is in their life and forget about those bad dates. Well, maybe not forget. I could use my Fibonacci theory instead. Time to move forward to what could very well be a perfectly nice date.

Or a really awesome blog post. We shall see.

Lesson learned: If you’ve been whining about never meeting guys who can spell, and then one who can asks you out, stop whining and go on the date.

That’s What She Said

Over the weekend I received an email from a friend telling me about his recent online dating experience.

“Just had the online date from hell. You need to talk me down on Monday. I should have had enough drinks by then…”

I can sympathize. While I’ve only dated men, I have heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that online dating in general is just plain annoying—for everyone. Women can be just as crazy, if not more so, than men.

For example, a few weekends ago I was out with a group of guy friends and one of them spied an attractive girl at the bar. She was tall, blond and cute. Being the lone female in the pack, I went to go start up a conversation and perhaps introduce her to my friend. I’m not a terribly good wingman, but I have helped others in the past.

We started chatting about the music that was playing, and within 15 minutes I learned:

• Where she was born
• Where she works
• That she has a boyfriend
• Where her boyfriend works
• How she feels about their relationship
• How long they’ve been together
• What she got him for his birthday
• What she thinks about their sex life
• Should she move to St. Lois with him
• What her dog thinks of him
• How long her boyfriend has been on a business trip
• That she misses him SO much that she might die
• And that she’s perpetually on a heavy-duty dose of Xanax (and how much she pays for that prescription)

She was into sharing apparently.

I think I managed to say three words during this conversation and then hedged away slowly, lest I wake the Xanax suppressed crazy that was underneath.

Is this what some women are like when they first meet someone? None of what she told me was particularly bad and would have been appropriate to tell me if we were friends, but she had just met me. What would she have said to my friend if she had been single and he hadn’t seen the look on my face and run in the other direction? Perhaps she would have been more reserved. Perhaps not.

(And as a side note: crazy pants here has a boyfriend? And I’m still single?)

It could be that as a culture, we’ve lost certain sensibilities that make us tolerable to each other in an initial introduction. I can’t see going on a first date in say . . .  1912 and hearing “U wanna go get some waaaangs? They only twenny fie cents tuh-day.”  Likewise, I doubt any woman at that time would say “Oh my God, that girl over there, she like, totally needs to get her eyebrows waxed. Buy me a drink, something fruity, let’s get f*cked up.”

Lesson learned: We’re all a little bit insane. It’s just finding the tolerable insane that’s the hard part.