On the evening of October 31, 1999, I caught sight of a rather good-looking boy on my friend Katie’s driveway. We had gathered there for a Halloween party, and this attractive yet unknown male quantity was from another school. I had had my fourteenth birthday party on the previous night, during which my poor eighth grade heart had been broken in a cruelly casual way: I had invited the boy for whom I had been pining for several months, and he simply hadn’t shown up. In short, he’d never known I even existed.
The next night, I showed up on that driveway with a broken heart, a seething sense of injustice, and a shit-ton of black eyeliner.
I’d like to think that those circumstances sort of explain what happened next, but even half a lifetime later, they don’t… not quite. Looking back, I wince slightly in embarrassment, but if I’m being honest, I also experience a bemused kind of pride: my eighth grade self sure had the courage of her convictions.
Because as a way of introducing myself to the unknown boy that Halloween, I made a running start and tackled him to the ground.
And I mean that literally.
Though in the intervening fifteen years I have refined my methods a bit, I tend to think of that night as the first time I really claimed ownership of my own kind of charm, which is probably best described as a “blunt force” approach. This “charm” (if I can call it that with a straight face) and my ownership of it have not been without their own host of problems, of course. However, I think I struck upon something valuable that night; a recognition of a phenomenon with which we become more comfortable as we get older: that doing things the way everyone else does might not work for you.
My blunt force methods and I, which at times are inseparable, are often terrifying, frequently off-putting, but occasionally fascinating to the opposite sex. It is entirely possible that the full throttle, blitz approach scares off potentially very decent men, but ultimately I’ve concluded that weeding out the faint of heart is probably best for everyone if we do it early in the process. Fortunately for me, the boy whom I tackled that night fifteen years ago seemed dazed, impressed, and—miraculously—intrigued. It’s rare, but sometimes it really does work—and the results tend to be rather stunning.
I’m also aware, in a way that others might not be, that my firing a shot across someone’s bow is as much an indication of interest as it is a sign of my readiness to fight. The two are pretty much inseparable for me. After all, that is what I’m looking for in a partner: someone who doesn’t flinch, but fires back; I want a “skirmish of wit,” a scrum of romantic fission, not a soppy sonnet.
I’ve been thinking about all of this recently because while my somewhat combative (or at the very least, assertive) approach enjoys only spotty success on dry land, it’s virtually useless in the realm in which I am currently pursuing a mate. Alas, I have once again joined the ranks of the online-daters.
Heaven preserve us.
There is, naturally, an argument to be made for meeting your partner the old fashioned way (read: in person, on the hoof, so to speak). I’ve had several close encounters in real time—those fabulous little interludes of chatting with someone on the train or waiting in line for coffee—but for some reason they seldom come to fruition. At least on a dating website you’re pretty sure people aren’t just there to make small talk.
Online dating is one of those strange little anthropological funhouse mirrors, where the rules of engagement are seemingly similar but not identical to real life. Call it the “online dating standard deviation.” For instance, men who state their height at 6’2 or under may be reliably assumed to be two inches shorter than they say. I myself have developed some personal rules of engagement, which include no bathroom mirror selfies and no exotic fish as pets (don’t ask).
So here I am, sorting through the most flattering pictures I have of myself (not many) and trying to write a marginally appealing yet simultaneously true(ish) personality profile (nearly impossible). I’m finding that the tools I lack on a screen are the ones that make my in-person approach viable, as much as it ever is: there are no emoticons that signify the raising of an eyebrow, the pursing of lips, the tilting of a head, or the real life impact of a true, guns-blazing, head-on smile. It's like trying to blitz an NFL quarterback with an anemic fourth grader.
The biggest problem with online dating, in general and for me specifically, is the fact that chemistry is nearly impossible to gauge through a screen. Sure, you can mostly tell through email when someone is dumb as road tar or a screaming narcissist, but that’s only a small part of what I think of as romantic chemistry. I am a very firm believer in the idea that you can’t know if you’re really, truly attracted to someone until can smell him or her. I have had dates in the past with objectively attractive men who were perfectly good company—and zip. Nothing. Whatever it is that we seek just isn’t there, and you just have to go out on a metric crap-ton of dates to see if any of them sparks.
When I use my blunt force charm, going in hot for a cold introduction, that’s exactly what I’m looking for: a spark. And believe me, with that approach, you either spark or you don’t—and you know either way right quick. But since I can’t complement (or, I guess, temper) my assertiveness online with all of the physical and pheromone-related cues to which I have access in person, I feel like I have to sort of rein it back and try to come across as more… normal.
Which, quite frankly, feels a lot like lying. And it feels like I’m being untrue to the brave, reckless eighth grader I was.
I want to be liked for the person I actually am. I hope against hope that I’ll find someone who likes a little pushback, not to mention pixie cuts, but so far I haven’t even found enough of an online spark (I imagine a sad little asterisk) to generate the mutual interest that could lead to a date, which could lead to a real live ZAP.
Do I believe I will meet my partner online? I don’t know. Do I believe I will meet a partner at all? I don’t know that either. But I keep at it, because it’s better than doing nothing, and in spite of it all, I still hold out a little hope. In a weird way, I owe it to a very hurt fourteen-year-old girl to make this leap metaphorically, since she was the one who made it literally. And I can say with authority that she didn’t regret it.
So here we go: Omaha, Omaha—hut, hut—DATE!
