Good night JDate

This week, I received an email from my mother titled "I canceled your Jdate subscription." She writes:

"now you can use the website to browse only. hope you are not upset but you did not seem too excited about j date and I dont want to continue to pay for it. hope you are not brokenhearted but you will have to find fodder for your blog elsewhere."

Mom was pissed at Jdate for their auto renewal policy. Apparently they'd been charging her for the last several months without her okay. Her interactions with customer service were not pleasant and involved requesting to speak to managerial level staff. A few weeks ago, I submitted a writing sample to a Jdate blog competition on the theme of my mother's undying support and encouragement of my meeting strange Jewish men from the Internet. If the billing department ever takes lunch with the blog department, and they get to discussing my case, my nose will grow to a perfectly big size for Jdate. If I was still a member.

Though I used a lot of negative terminology to describe my experience with the site over the last few months, and was not sad to see my relationship with this particular web product expire, there was one mentionable casualty as a result of this event. The day before my mother ended my membership, I was contacted by a man displaying potential. But that happens to me like 10 times a day on OkCupid. So no great loss.

As for meeting men who are specifically Jewish, I am going to Israel next week on an organized group trip. Ten days on a sweaty bus with 30 of them, may have me running scared back into the arms of lapsed Catholics.

Consider this post the sounding of an alarm

I have lost my magic touch in picking decent strangers to meet in bars. For whatever reason, be it desperation, poor judgment, or coincidental fluke, I have had a string of regrettable dates of late. I've grown so lackadaisical in my choices for companions that instead of enjoyable nights on the town, I am again and again engaged in trying social situations.

A dating solider wounded psychologically, I question my will to continue putting myself through these battles.

When you know in the first moment your date will not meet the industry standard definition of success, why is that moment not the appropriate moment to cut out?

Admittedly, I can be confused for stretches of five to ten minutes at a time regarding what I feel about the evening I am having and the person I am with. I don’t know what is the way to be, and what is the thing to say. When I do finally manage to cut out, I do so without deft. I suffer empathetic pangs of grief for my companions victimized by the mixed signals I know I am so capable of giving.

At least I think I might feel bad.

No, no, it's okay, I'd rather get mugged and raped

When your date offers to walk you home and you forcefully decline, preferring to take your chances with the bad guys in the street, you are on an awful date. The extent of tonight's awfulness was particularly disappointing because this man, living less than a football field's length away from my home, possessed extraordinary geographic convenience that appeals very much to the extraordinarily lazy like myself. Also tonight's awfulness makes me more and more sure that those times when one does find something that is pretty good, that that is pretty great, and one should be pretty careful not to let those somethings slip through the cracks.

Meal Plan

I realized I have been finding myself most attracted to the online profiles of those who cook either “passionately” or professionally, or some combination thereof. Through personal experience I learned that dating a cook has some major benefits. Basically I just want a man to feed me. My pal L. and I learned at the Museum of Sex that this desire, when taken to an extreme, is a documented fetish.


Well hopefully I won’t get to that point. My desire to remain thin and beautiful trumps any desire to be fed. Perhaps I should convince myself I would really like a drill sergeant or plastic surgeon boyfriend.

There are a lot of kitchen workers in New York City but the special variety I take notice of are those who according to some parental standard, are “wasting” the bachelor’s degree they attained from a reputable four-year accredited university. They are the type to game the system and use their unemployment benefits toward world travel that they cloak under the banner of “culinary research.” They are taking well-shot photos of the food they make, and posting them to social networking sites, ripe for public commentary. They are ceaselessly describing the details of the ingredients and techniques used in the meals’ preparation to anyone who will listen to them at the dinner parties they throw to which I am invited.

There's no place like home (page)

Saturday I went on a surprise date with a person met without the aid of computer technology. It was a surprise even to me, the inviter because only at the last crucial moment did I have the gumption to do the inviting. I nearly aborted mission when I realized I had to ask this guy to hang out with me in front of an audience called my coworkers. I assume my fellowship of Census administrative clerks knew what was going on since I’ve never invited anyone anywhere during the two arduous weeks since my return to office life. Also I think they were all witness to the hearts floating out of my head all day.

In any case, the young man accepted and we spent the afternoon and evening together. Since our match potential was not quantified by a percentage system on a dating website, we were left to discover our compatibility on our own over the course of the afternoon. It had all the elements of a romantic encounter. In a park we drank gin out of Styrofoam cups and spontaneously recited a Robert Frost poem at sunset. Despite ample opportunity, he didn’t even go so far as to touch my kneecap or anything. Meeting people in real life is hard. I am going to retreat to my online operations where everything makes sense…

Why is a first date different from all other nights?

What I’ve offered my readers has been altogether a too-gloomy treatment of dating. I am a hedonist. I am obviously enjoying myself. For those who saw my calendar, they know it was a busy week for Club Online Dating. Three human males. One weekend. Sounds like a tag line for a romantic comedy film I would like to be the protagonist of.

One date that was supposed to go down this week was with a guy who is notable on a few fronts. We spotted and wrote each other simultaneously. In real life or online, if you are a romantic, that’s the stuff. Also, this happened five weeks ago, and we still have never met in real life. Considering I’ve met 13 people in 18 weeks, that is a rather long prelude. All this aside, I have been made suddenly disinterested by him. Was it something he said? Why yes. He casually suggested that we meet for the first time on my couch to watch a movie and eat Chinese food.

For this I present to you, Two Questions for first dates.

Why is a first date different from all other nights?

Why on the first date do we wait at least a few hours before inviting people from the Internet to our home?
Why on the first date do we prefer conversation over audiovidual entertainment?

Loyal readers may remember the cataloguing of situations I have put myself in that were potentially dangerous. Something about those instances did not give me the heebie-jeebies. I remember an article my mom read once 10 years ago that said heebie-jeebies are a good thing to pay attention to because it is connected to our survival instincts.

And now a new feature:

Dating Hint of the Day: do not say in your profile you are good at making sarcastic remarks. This is sincerely a sure sign you are not.