Flavor of the Week: Adventures in Human Windowshopping

My three-year relationship was like a Rush album: overly complex, far too long and punctuated by soul-robbing wails. After his crap was out of my apartment—and I spent the requisite nights on the couch listening to The Smiths and envisioning a life of cat ownership—I did what any self-respecting single woman in New York would do. I vowed to go out with as many people as possible. I prepared to acquire a body count rivaled only by Mortal Kombat.

Cavemen used to throw a rock and whomever they hit became their mate. These days, a fistful of stones has been replaced by four or five jpegs and a highspeed Internet connection. I found myself weighing the merits of one free online dating site against the other.

OkCupid was the equivalent of wearing see-through booty shorts at a bar after 1:30 in the morning. Although it was apparent that I could easily get laid, it would come with a mandatory loss of self-respect. The majority of the site’s dating pool appeared to be bridge-andtunnelers, couples looking for a third party to complete their game of bedroom Jenga and exhibitionists (I clicked through several profiles that were nothing but cock without words, which was oddly comforting in its candor). With profile responses like “I’m alwayz bein fly ’n hanging out” and a veritable onslaught of text shorthand in place of actual vocabulary skills, it was only a matter of minutes on OkC before the desperation of the site cramped my carousing.

Nerve was smarter, albeit with its own aura of abjection. While the “u r hott!!1!” contingent appeared to be entirely weeded out, the pretentious references to Anna Karenina and Bergman films made me want to staple my vagina shut. But some of the profiles were adorably snarky, with requisite questions tailored to the salacious. Since my natural instinct to be a tightwad will always override my desire to be a slut, I could only access grainy thumbnail photographs of the parties in question, leading to a somewhat challenging game of dating Russian roulette.

As I began to spasmodically doggy-paddle my way into the online singles’ pool, I wasn’t surprised when things got off to a somewhat calamitous start. It began with a cyberorchestrated meet-up with the textile-designing waiter who drank a bathtub’s worth of ouzo, insulted the waitress in Greek and repeatedly left to roll cigarettes outside. Next was the ice-climbing paralegal with a balding, gray Jewfro who sent his sandwich back in a nearly histrionic panic, only to be assured by the chef that, yes, it was tempeh. When I let the conversation lapse into awkward silence, I thought he’d get the message. Instead he leaned across the table and wiggled his eyebrows like two caterpillars grooving to a Neil Diamond record. “You’re cute,” he said—and winked. I contemplated coating myself in ground chuck and made my departure.

Next was the theater director who resembled Sloth from The Goonies, an unfortunate fact that was almost enough to convince me that I should part with the photograph-enlarging $9.99 a month. He called me “bro” halfway through the date and spent the rest of the time apologizing. Then there was the journalist who weighed roughly 35 pounds more than he did in his photographs. And the furniture builder whose voice was so highpitched, he made Lisa Simpson sound like Ian Curtis. There was a lesbian who had bedbugs, a detail that repelled me more than any STD or STI confession ever could have. One by one they came, and I left. A maladroit hug, a handshake or a dodged kiss on the cheek.

My cynicism hardened to a laser-like focus. “Average” body type meant he had a spare tire made of IPAs and Gruyere. If bars and brews were mentioned, he had a drinking problem. If she mentioned

cuddling, she was needy. Any photograph that showed him in a hat meant he was balding. Worse, any photograph that showed another girl’s body strategically cropped out indicated a complete lack of tact and baggage tantamount to that of an airport carousel. I became more scrupulous and acerbic than a judge on a reality show. Looking at the profiles began to exhaust me. Masturbation and a lifetime of halving every recipe seemed far less excruciating.

I let most of the correspondence fizzle out, opting only to respond to emails that displayed an excessive amount of intrigue and a mastery of grammar well-beyond non-abbreviated language. A scant handful of gentlemen made the cut, one simply because he’d sent me a message while in Norway for work. I decided to meet him for coffee, choosing a well-lit location in the middle of the day. By this point a cafe at 2 p.m. was about as adventurous as I was going to get.

The thing with Internet dating is this:

There’s an unspoken assumption that the other person is damaged in some way. It’s understood that any attractive, talented, well-mannered human being would be able to find a warm body to share their bed without the need for

Internet intervention. I hadn’t realized that I had subconsciously predicated this mindset, until I saw a 6-foot-3, well-built stunner of a guy begin to approach my table. I wasn’t prepared for this. All of the self-righteous, overly judgmental power I’d built up after several weeks of rejecting men like I was some sort of Heidi Klum clone vanished. He was hilarious, intellectually intimidating, with a job that sounded riveting. Not to mention that his smile turned me into a 14-year-old girl in thomas pitilli front of a cardboard cutout of Justin Bieber. What the hell?

I hadn’t signed up for a fully actualized human being whom I couldn’t condescend to in my head. I stuttered. I blushed. I basically made a fool of myself in a wholly unflattering way. Zooey Deschanel would never play me in my biopic.

But that coffee date with the urban Adonis taught me something. I hadn’t been looking for a relationship—or even a fling—online. I’d been looking for my self-esteem, for the ability to instantly reject anybody based on little more than false pretenses and rash damnation hinged upon arbitrary characteristics.

What’s more, I didn’t think I was such hot shit either. My own perception of my used goods was something to be repaired simply by a string of horrid dates, and the unspoken belief that I thought I’d meet somebody right for me in real life—not on the computer. I’d indulged in some human window-shopping, but, in reality, I had never expected to find anything that I’d commit to buy.

Ainsley Drew is a New York-based copywriter and euphemism enthusiast whose work has been featured in The Rumpus, Curve Magazine and The Morning News. The author of the blog Jerk Ethic, she hopes to one day be a notorious literary celebrity with her name in tabloids.