It's a small world, after all

It's an inevitability that you're going to run into people you know all the time in New York City. There are certain spots, popular bars, brunch places, or gyms, that there will be surefire encounters whether you want them or not (and correspondingly look hot or like a hot mess). One place however you don't necessarily expect to chance upon random people you know, or at least I didn't, is in the online dating arena. I would think there'd be a much higher likelihood of this on a dating site like jdate (which there probably is) because clearly you're dealing with a smaller number of people with a common theme. But for a general dating site open to the public at large, aka match or okcupid, it's astonishing how quickly the seemingly vast pool of men turns out to be actually quite small. 

When you boil it down to the elements involved it makes sense. You're entering criteria that are going to match you based on location, preferences, eduction, interests, etc. so it's not that far fetched that someone you grew up with might turn out similarly to you. But considering how large NYC is, it's still a little crazy and unnerving to have those unexpected encounters....and I've had my share. 

The first embarrassing experience I had with an online dating acquaintance was with a guy I went to summer camp with. His picture popped up as one of my matches and when I clicked on him, the initials of his screename confirmed my suspicions that he was indeed the same guy. I had a crush on this guy when I was twelve and his pics still seemed cute, so I figured I'd make light of the situation and send him a friendly/awkward "hello, we went to summer camp together for 8 years" message. A few days (weeks, months, years, still waiting!) went by and he never returned my message, and I had my first brush with online dating induced blushing. He clearly knew who I was and rather than be courteous and act like a normal human he chose to ignore me. My thicker skin began to grow after that. 

The next incident also involved summer camp (go figure). I was out with this guy and we weren't particularly hitting it off, we didn't have much to talk about and the date was dragging like a wet bag of hammers. UNTIL we figured out that from the years 1994-1999 we went to the same New Hampshire sleepaway camp! Then we laughed and reminisced for a good solid fifteen minutes about color war, and jello wrestling, and the seven people we knew in common. Then it fell quiet again and we ended the date and didn't schedule a second one. It would've been nice had we felt a rapport thought, what a story for the grandkids!

I also saw a guy on the site that I was friendly with in college but decided not to message due to incident #1, but ended up seeing him at an apartment party a week later in the city anyway. I was sure to bring it up with him after I was sufficiently liquored up, whereupon we laughed nervously with each other for a brief few moments, then split in opposite directions. I had no shame at all in the situation, but apparently disgrace was cast upon his name with the very mention of online dating. How dare thy bring up what goes on in the imaginary world of the interwebz! 

Then there's the guy who messages you, seems cute and nice, you get to talkin' and realize that he probably runs in similar social scenes as you. So talkin' leads to stalkin' during which you enter his screename into facebook to see if anything pops up, or his work stats into google and try to figure out anything you can about him pre-date, just to be in the know. This is only when you have time and energy enough to care (as of late I have not, but I will admit I have played this game in the past). It's actually pretty fun because all you really have to go off of is their first name, screename and a few scattered bits of information. It's like you're a real life private eye, cracking the enigmatic mysteries of online dating! The trick with this scenario (and it's happened to me more than once) is to never let on about the pre-date stalking. If they want to bring up the fact that you have 3 mutual (probably irrelevant) facebook friends on your first date, then that's their prerogative. But it's in no way well advised to a) be the first one to admit you already knew that or b) admit you already knew that at all (even if he blurts it out first - retain the power!), because while you may think it's cute that he took the initiative to get to know all about you before date one, he may very well think you're a total creep (which you kind of are, but aren't we all?) 

The most recent encounter of this kind was a message I got a few days ago telling me that I looked awfully familiar and asking me if we had a one night stand at some point? At first I was appalled, then curious, then I clicked and the truth was revealed. He was my best friends ex-boyfriend, and no we didn't have that one night stand, it was a joke. So I guess the lesson here kids is in the real world or in the make believe internet one, there's no escaping the many familiar faces of your past. 

But you can't see my face, how can you tell I've got the eyes of a lunatic?!

It's been a while since I recounted the many trials and tribulations of online dating. To be honest, I eased off of it for a bit because there's so much garbage you have to wade through to get to anything (sorry, anyone) semi-decent that it can seem downright daunting. That's not to be said that there are no diamonds in the rough (there are diamonds in the rough, right? so help me god there better be diamonds!). BUT there's a lot of just plain old roughhh. When I first started blogging way back in the day (aka 6 months ago) I posted some AWESOME examples of shocking introductory messages I received, and I thought now would be as good a time as any to post a round 2 of horrific-men take heed please do not send these type of messages-messages, because no, unfortunately they didn't stop. I'll let these gems speak for themselves this time, because you're probably mentally annotating the same way I would anyway.

• wow i gotta say that ur drop dead gorgeous!! heyy have u ever had a fantasy of making love to a complete stranger?? :)  

• Hey there! Since you're a paralegal, you most likely thought of this already. However, as an attorney, I feel obligated to advise you to add some kind of a disclaimer to your profile...I suggest something like this: WARNING: Prolonged exposure to the photographs in this profile may cause sudden heart failure and/or death in men. Advice of physician strongly recommended prior to viewing. Profile author expressly waives any and all liability occasioned from use of content and under no circumstances will be liable for injury, property damage or other casualty loss. All other rights are reserved.

• After a rigorously brief overview of your profile, I wanted to let you know I have already married and divorced you in my mind. Thanks for all the wonderful imaginary memories... you will always have a special place in my heart. your ex-hubby, Alex

• Hey Dork: it took me 2 hours to come up with this message.

• Listen all I could think of when I first saw your profile was how bad I wanted to get in your pants, but then I see you are a fan of MGMT and Jay-Z and I'm like hmm. You know that feeling when you're thinking ah this has to be too good to be true? Well this is one of those moments but I gotta ask do you cook too?!! later hermosa ojos :)

• you know what, you make think my friend Joe would love you.

• Hello angel, wow what cloud did you fall off of? Your mother must be beautiful. My name is james, but my friends call me Jimmy. I think you and I could make beautiful music together, and I would treat you like the beautiful classy, woman that you are. Check out my profile, and drop me a line if you're interested. Take care and stay beautiful.

•  I like your hair. I'm unemployed and up for anything! Check me out.

• So I was looking through all these ads here on the internet thinking to myself “Look at all the poor, desperate, lonely women…” and then I saw your ad and thought to myself “Hey, here’s a poor, desperate, lonely woman that’s actually CUTE…” so I thought I’d write and see if you’re as interesting on the inside as you are in this picture…”

• Hello. Wink. Sorry, something in my eye. You seem cool. How do you do? Do you like tacos?

• You could kill somebody with a smile like that...Just imagine. I'm driving down I-87, looking at my cell phone....like ya do....and that smile comes up...where am i? what's happening? It's a minute before I even realize I'm in a fender bender...Maybe you should think more about the danger that smile puts me in and the commuting public in. A) I don't have a car. B) I would never go on the internet while driving in case you thought I was a total lunatic.

• Hello. You are very pretty. Um.....I don't know anything about women. Would you mind if I asked you a few sincere questions that only an utterly clueless male could conceive in the hope that you answer in a sisterly, brutally honest way? Thanks!

• I live in SoHo, right by Channel... and Dash   

• Is your brunette friend single?

clairvoyance or poppycock?

The other night I attended a charity event where they were offering free psychic readings. I've only had "energy" work done in the past, so most of my psychic knowledge has come from tales of friends' readings. During my freshman year of college, a friend's mom got her fortune read and warned my friend that she'd definitely be pregnant by our senior year, Not a particularly fun message for a mother or my friend to hear, and alas it didn't come to pass. Who's to say that's because she wasn't extra careful due to the warning - another "the chicken or the egg scenario." A different friend in college got her fortune read in Salem at Halloween-time. She plunked down $60 buckaroos hoping to hear the whole enchilada of her destiny but instead the psychic started yammering on and on about her beautiful her necklace was, guessed where she got it (she guessed wrong), and my friend demanded her money back mid-session. 

Needless to say I was somewhat intrigued, but clearly dubious of the whole psychic phenomenon. However, if you're gonna go ahead and offer me a free psychic reading I'm gonna take it (hell, if you're gonna offer me a free pretty-much-anything I'm gonna take it. This is why supermarkets with free bakery samples are my favorite places on earth). The psychic at the charity event was an elderly British woman, or perhaps an American with a fake British accent to make her seem more legit. 

I sat down at her table and she started laying the tarot cards down in front of me. The first card she put down had to do with relationships and apparently it was clouded by a big question mark. She couldn't be sure if the relationship was the romantic type or work type, but either way it wasn't looking good. As she continued to lay down cards she kept telling me cryptic messages like "this looks messy, or you know what I'm talking about but I don't want to spell it out for you here, because we're at a formal event (wink wink)." By golly woman spell it out for me! No I really don't know what you're talking about and you're really starting to freak me out. How bad could it be that you can't say it out loud? Most of what she said made semi-sense but I think the same reading could've been loosely applied to anyone with a pulse. 

As I was getting up from the table, a little shaken, her last words to me were that I've been a "naughty girl." Is that really appropriate (or necessary) psychic talk? My friend got her's read too, and was also a little more worried about the status of her life and relationship than before she sat down. It got me thinking about a few things. First, I wanted to tell this high and mighty Brit that I think her line of work is rubbish. Second, how much of our lives are self-fulfilling prophecies where we hear what we want to hear and then make that happen. Let's say my friend heard the psychic say she would have problems with her boyfriend and then picked a fight with her boyfriend, is that because it was going to happen anyway, or because the psychic got in her head. Finally, even if there is some truth to knowing part of my future, I'm not sure I want to. Where is the fun in that, really? 

The Unsettling Uncertainties of Your....

Your 20's is a time filled with change, growth, and a lot of "holy shits, what am I doing with my life!?" Since college, any time I've gotten comfortable with a city, country, job, apartment, guy, or what have you, a huge curveball gets launched my way and I'm forced to re-think and re-evaluate everything. There's a lot to be said for the uber exciting feeling of not knowing what's coming next, where you'll end up or how. But that excitement is inevitably accompanied by a hint of fear, anxiety, and the dread of knowing that there will be many (many) steps that come between now and who I'll be when I'm "all grown up."

In the last couple weeks change has snuck up on me, tackled me, and is forcing me to face it head on, again...and I don't feel ready...again. But that's just the way the beast operates, because it's never easy and never going to feel easy - and that might just be the point. You learn, adapt, deal with it and hopefully come out the other side a better person for having done so.

So thus begins the next phase of my life. Luckily, being in my 20's with very few external obligations affords me the awesome possibility to experiment, stumble, and literally do anything or go anywhere. Will I be living in Thailand, Brazil, or Costa Rica in a few months? Possibly. Will I be working in New York City at my dream job? Hopefully. Will I be happy I was made to take a closer look at my life, shift things around, shake things up, squirm in discomfort, but ultimately be one step closer to ME? Absofuckinglutely. 

But a BILLION reasons you should...

text-plexities

Text messaging has turned into a fine-tuned art form with too many critics holding varying standards. Especially when it comes to texting members of the opposite (or same) sex you might be interested in. It's rather ridiculous how much thought goes into those 2 sentences that are created to appear as though no thought was put into them at all. I used to think it was just a thing that girls did, mulling over phrasing, timing, use of emoticons - or lack thereof, until I was recently with a male friend who was asking me all the same questions. And so, without further ado, I present the many intricacies of the modern day text:

How long do you have to wait to send a text message to someone you like? Do you bite the bullet and send the first text or hold out in a text standoff to see who blinks first? Do you have to wait the corresponding amount of time to reply as they did? Since he waited 3.5 hours should I wait 4? Or can I just reply after a half hour cause clearly we both know I read the text the second I heard the buzz of my phone. WHY do people wait so long to respond? To make it seem like they're cool/too busy doing other awesome things? I know they're not, they're just annoying, really.

Do you have to be clever/witty/funny or can you just say what you mean and mean what you say? I hate the pressure when text flirting to try to say something totally original and charming to make them fall a little bit more in love with you. Especially since half the time the advice and one-liners are coming from girlfriends sitting around at brunch discussing the best comeback lines for 45 minutes before pressing send. It's usually not coming directly from the person you're corresponding with, so why the charade?

Use of emoticons/punctuation is a HUGE area of debate. Depending on who you ask there are certain uses that are cute, and others that would make someone cancel their date and delete said persons phone number instantly. I know girls who would send smiley faces, but would be repulsed if they received them. I personally enjoy the use of exclamation points! Others find it annoying. Some ladies would dump a guy for using LOL or hehehe, as those aren't deemed "manly." As I was writing one of these texts recently, I used a comma in the middle of a sentence. I showed it to my friend for approval before pressing send. She looked at it for a minute, dissatisfied, even mildly disgusted. I asked her what was wrong with it and she told me point blank, "that comma's all wrong, try a dash." She entered the dash, and sure enough, BOOM! Her face lit up with excitement, that's it! Press send!

The funny thing is there are no rights and wrongs in the art of the text, just personal (sometimes very strong) preferences. So just go with your gut, because in the end, the use of a comma vs. a dash isn't going to make or break the relationship. And if it does, so help you god.