Oh no you didn'

With regards to ill suited strangers making contact with fellow members on dating websites, a famous online date blogger once asked, "Are there mystical forces at play here, encouraging these military men en masse to contact a left-wing Jew who makes exclusively weird remarks in her profile?"

I now present you with a more urban example of the what-the-f-are-you-thinking factor with regards to misplaced interest in me. A man who is hoping "chill wit" me this coming Friday lists the following as his interests:

1. GOD
2. MY FAMILY
3. MY [CENSORED] BROTHAZ
4. MY FRIENDZ
5. GIRLZ
6. MY SPLIFF

(The censored portion was a combination of letters and numbers that I can only conclude are the identity of a fraternity or gang.)

Truth be told, I am also a fan of 2, 4, 5, and 6, though I suspect our shared interest in these topics would not keep a conversation, were it to take place, afloat.

My! People come and go so quickly here

Alas, some of the dreamboats with whom I had engaging correspondence with several weeks prior, and/or shared mutual winks with, have vanished into thin air. I click on their username, gaze longingly at our over 90% compatibility statistics posted still before my eyes, and am only met with a cruelly cheerful message from OkCupid:

"Sorry, We don’t have a user by that name! Now would be a great time to see who's online and send a random user a nice note."

Curses upon the ephemeral nature of usage of Internet dating websites amongst the dreamboat community!

Up up and away

I spent my weekend apartment hunting in my almost new city, New York City. Given the extraordinarily low ratio of people I’ve made out with: people at-large, relative to my current city, you may imagine an aspect of refreshing newness in every breath for me there. I have to say that despite the odds in the bigness of the Big Apple, I ran into several such friends. No stress, there are charms in these encounters as well.

I still don't have an apartment.

Despite the results generated by the poll I conducted a bit ago, I have changed the nature of my Internet dating practices these past few weeks. (Sorry by the way for the ultimately undemocratic nature of the vote) I am engaged in exclusively electronic correspondence with New York residents and look forward to resuming my online romantic pursuits “offline” (as they refer in this online world, to the world that is real.) Seriously though, Internet dating is fun much of the time, and it is with some regret that I’m on a (self-imposed notwithstanding) vacation from it. The psychoanalysts among you will interpret this vacation perhaps as proof that I am not just online dating for the purposes of writing a blog. Sigh, you’ve caught me red-handed.

This blog is so vain, it probably knows that I'm blogging about it

The reading from the blog at The Fridge DC last night went off without a hitch. No one booed me and I even got some laughs of the appropriately timed variety. The problem with letting me get on a stage though is that it winds me up and makes me attention hungry. Today I wore a miniskirt with pantyhose and took a long walk through the ice and snow. Given the recent conditions, female human legs were an unanticipated sight, especially shocking for those who don’t have access to this kind of thing at home. Attention hunger aside, the sum verbalization of non-creepy appreciation for my exposure was a testament to the public service nature of my deed.

Speaking of public service, I apologize to those readers who liken my reportage from the front-lines of the online dating battlefield to the work of NPR, as this post has very little to do with the appointed topic of the blog, but is rather largely self-referential commentary on the rising success of the blog.

Spreading Valentine Cheer to zip codes in Brooklyn

I changed my location on OkCupid to reflect my soon-to-be home, Brooklyn. To my great joy I am no longer getting messages from do-gooders, but rather from peeps with good 'dos. And en masse because I must be appearing a lot in some fresh meat filters. Thank you to OkCupid for pulling me back from the ledge on this St. Valentines Day.

Fans, if you’d like to hear me speak on the subjects covered in this blog, I am doing so tonight at the art space known as The Fridge, in Eastern Market. Rear Alley - 516 8th Street SE. The show begins at 8 pm with the adorable duo, The Sweater Set performing. There’s a $10 cover, a chocolate fountain, and a cash bar.

Casual encounters

My date with the young man Thursday night was a satisfactory experience. While I love a good debate, on dates I like conversations to be like "yes, yes, yes, I agree that Woody Allen's wife being his daughter is a non-issue," etc. for three hours. That is what occurred.

I was mistaken, he was not fresh off the college boat, but rather still currently enrolled(!) Yet, his age and relative inexperience were not manifested in any overtly collegiate manner. Appropriately enough, I met him on the campus of my own undergraduate experience, and for our date, we had drinks at two of my youthful haunts.

While on the street, a passing stranger pointed at my Internet stranger and asked me if I love him. I told him we'd only just met. The passing stranger encouraged me to give it time. With two and a half weeks left in DC, I'm afraid the Internet stranger will be just a passing stranger too.

May-December in February

I am going on a date with a very young man this week, because despite my advancing years, the men I find attractive stay the same age. I teeter on the edge of social unacceptability with this fresh off the college boat boy of 22 years. I eye my 27th birthday cautiously.

Me now: Me soon enough:
All I can hope for is that my mental maturity dampens my interest in these nubile bodies before my physical maturity dampens their interest in me. This particular lad claims to have an old soul. Old soul is fine, so long as his blood flows young.

“You’re ruining my blog”

On the probability of rekindling lost love, one popular cinematic representation of a misogynistic singleton from early 90’s LA said to another: “Somehow they don't come back until you really don't care anymore.”

Somehow, sometimes, the beautiful babies don’t wait long enough before returning.

Inclement weather and the attendant hibernation we enter, do funny things to our romantic inclinations. There is no way that the recent loss of my motivation to meet and write about strangers from the Internet was spurred by a waning interest in the topic at hand. Dates, and the dating daters that go on them, have remained continual sources of intrigue for me since I prematurely hit puberty in 1992. The spoiler here has arrived in the form of a recent shift from Cold War to lukewarm relations with a certain someone of a once special nature.

Will someone for Christ's sake please take me on a trip to Vegas?

In three weeks I am moving to another city where online dating will still be present and said special man friend will not. As storm part II rears its ugly head, I cuddle up with my OkCupid inbox, which is incidentally, blowing up. Unless of course he reads this post and cares to comment.

Suggested comment:

"Oh wait, stop dating losers from the Internet, let’s get married one day like our psychic palm-reading friend yesterday predicted we would."

Another Important Survey

Not that my faith in online dating is strong enough that I think this is truly a legitimate concern, but suppose I met the love of my life in the next month? I’ve encountered a new set of hotties in the last few days, and if I schedule enough dates with them, it is not impossible. In addition to saying goodbye to my friends and family and home of eight years, I would also have to leave the stud muffin behind here in this city, right during the throes of our honeymoon. That would be an annoying outcome.

Which means I have a conundrum that I am going to let you the readers figure out for me.

Choose your own favorite online dating blogger’s adventure:

Does she...

A) ...Refrain from Internet dating until she is on new soil and dedicate the next few weeks to more mature activities like job applications...
B) ...Throw herself headlong into dates with absurd choices, like people who list John Mayer under “what’s in my ipod right now”...
C)...Practice status quo by arranging dates with only potentially hyper-literate dreamboats, running the risk of saying bye-bye to Woody Allen in Adrien Brody’s body...

Please vote in the comments section below my darlings.

Brief notes from my vacation

Sometimes my non-online life is compelling enough that I can go several days in a row without going on any online dates, responding to any of the notes I receive from strangers, or thinking much about the subject of meeting strangers online. Such a vacation happened this weekend. I apologize to any avid readers of the Online Dater's Club for my popularity. Having prefaced with this, I am sure you are all wondering what kind of weekend I had. I would love to tell you, but I think I would like to retain some shreds of dignity as a private citizen. Online birds and bees activity, despite its modern nature, has become ironically in my case, a celebration of the traditional date. Real life is not quite that, and this blog is a family establishment.

Speaking of real life, the two biggest fans of this blog seem to be the two ex-boyfriends with whom I socialize. I can't wait to meet the next future enthusiast of my documentation of how I fill the void in my life caused by their eventual, inevitable absence.

And on the subject of blogs, today I showed my grandfather how to set up his own. "Awwww," said the public.