In eight years of divorce, I’ve browsed thousands of profiles and met dozens and dozens of women through various dating sites like match.com, salon.com, chemistry.com, eHarmony, and craigslist, making me a bit of an internet dating expert. First dates covered a range of activities, including meeting for coffee, cocktails, hiking, cycling, dinner, museums, and even the occasional booty call. A very small number of these meetings actually led to second dates. And how many turned into real relationships? One. That’s right, ONE. Online dating does not work!
Whew, felt good to get that off my chest. For the record, I’ve had five serious long-term girlfriends since my divorce, and way too much in-between-relationship time. Besides the girlfriend I met online, I met three through friends (a few blind dates and a handful of parties), and one through everyday life.
The internet may be a useful tool for meeting random people, but as Malcolm Gladwell explains in Blink, chemistry is something felt, not thought about and articulated in checkboxes and paragraphs of online prose.
I must be a slow learner. Which is great news for you as I have plenty of good* online dating stories to tell. (*where good means: juicy, interesting, provocative, shocking, thrilling, jaw dropping, mind numbing, titillating, insane, crazy, sexy, stupid, and just plain bad.) For some reason, I’m compelled to start with this one…
Sati and I met on chemistry.com, which is to say, “world-renowned biological anthropologist” Dr. Helen Fisher’s algorithmic calculations of our personality profiles considered us to be a great match. Sati and I exchanged emails, then a phone call, then decided to meet in Palo Alto outside Mills The Florist. The summer evening was balmy, and Sati wore a white sundress that contrasted beautifully with her black hair and dark skin. (If anyone cares, I wore nice jeans, an untucked short-sleeve shirt, and black Kenneth Cole’s. Typical guy attire.)
I suggested cocktails at Zibibbo, an upscale restaurant that was nearby.
“I don’t drink alcohol,” Sati said. “Tea, perhaps?”
Oh, boy. Certainly a cocktail or glass of wine lends itself to a more relaxed first-date conversation than caffeinated (or, God forbid, herbal) tea. I’m a man who likes his martini shaken. And I don’t like drinking alone. That Sati doesn’t drink alcohol was Strike One against her.
We opted for a walk, then sat together on a park bench and watched children having fun on a play structure. Sati became dreamy eyed. “You know, David, it’s so great how chemistry.com matched us up. It’s like an arranged marriage, except we both had some input as to who we want to meet. And I must say, you’re much more handsome than any man my parents would have picked for me, had I stayed in India.”
Yikes! We’re not twenty minutes into our first date, and she’s already talking about our marriage potential? Strike Two!
Dinner was in a funky Mediterranean café, and Sati suggested we order a few plates and share, family style. Fine by me, I was in kabob heaven. “Do you want lamb, chicken, or beef?” I asked.
“I’m a vegetarian,” she said.
Ugh. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the eating choices of other people. But my kids and I like meat – lemon chicken, cajun chicken, chicken and dumplings, BBQ ribs, bacon on Saturday mornings, Santa Maria style tri-tip, thuringer sausage from Dittmer’s, In-n-Out burgers (double-double for me, flying dutchman for my son, animal style for my daughter), forty garlic-clove lamb, etc. etc. etc.!
At this point, I could draw only one conclusion. Strike Three! You’re out! This date is over.
But after dinner as I walked her towards her car, Sati grabbed my hand and snuggled her body close. “You know what I’d really like tonight?” she asked. “I’d like you to tuck me into bed.”
Ding ding ding ding!!! HOME RUN!!! If that’s not an invitation for a booty call, I don’t know what is.
Now, you may wonder why I would consider a booty call with Sati if I felt there was no relationship potential. Women will forever be asking men that question. And maybe I’ll get into it in a future blog post. For now, suffice to say I took her up on her proposition.
Her flat was small and spartan, in a hippie-ish apartment community. In her bedroom was her computer, the very device on which she received her chemistry.com communications. Our communications. She excused herself to the bathroom to change for bed, and I wondered if I should undress now or when she returned. (At that point, I recalled a scene from Jerry Maguire when Renee Zellweger comes out of the bathroom ready for sex, only to find Tom Cruise creepily posing in his underwear – and I kept my clothes on.)
Sati came out wearing long pajamas. Decidedly not sexy. But hey, maybe that’s her style, her comfort level when entertaining a man. Helping her take the pajamas off would be part of the fun. But she climbed right into bed and pulled the covers up tight. “Okay, David. Tuck me in.”
I’ll make a long story short – tuck her in is all I did. Presumably, more would happen on our wedding night. It was probably for the best. I’m a big believer that sex on a first date is not a good way to start a relationship. But a three-strike evening is not a good way to start out, either. Despite future phone call protestations by her that “we have to work through problems like any other couple,” and “communication is the key,” we never had a second date.
I wonder if Dr. Helen Fisher would consider adjusting her matchmaking computations to better account for booze, meat, and booty. Or maybe I should just let my mom set me up.
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