All the Rage #37

I actually thought this would be easy.

When I began my journey into the seamy underbelly of love--also known as the world of personal ads--part of me did it because I wanted to meet just the right person, someone I could connect with and share my passions with, blahblahblahwhoreallygivesasoaringfuckanyway. But part of me also did it because it looked so goddamn EASY. Fer chrissakes, all these lonely needy people get lumped together in this one spot, and all you have to do is call and pick out the ones you like and then go out and meet them. If you don't like them, never call again! It's like ordering pizza!

Except it's not like ordering pizza, folks. No, participating in personal ads is more like beating your head against a brick wall, except if you keep beating your head long enough, at least you'll pass out. There's no such reprieve if you plunge into personals; it's all beating and beating and beating, and when you finally notice that you're dripping blood, all you can do is smile and continue the skull-pounding, or walk away woozy.

After my last missive on my addiciton to personals, I made the wise decision to subscribe to a few online personal services, because, yeah, THAT'S exactly what my crumbling self-image needed to rebuild itself.

First, I tried out what the good people at MatchMaker.Com had to offer. Their site appealed to me out of all the myriad online dating services because their questionnaire is about three thousand pages long. It's probably easier to apply for a high-level security clearance with the CIA than it is to finish this form. It's huge, and stupid at times. For example, nonchalantly jammed between the question on race and the question on one's own looks is the casual query, "Have you had, or would you consider having a homosexual experience?"

This is the kind of information most people wouldn't share with their therapists, let alone random strangers they meet on the internet. There's also no right way to answer that question--if you're gay or bisexual, then you'll post your ad and indicate such. If you're posting as a heterosexual male or female, what will an affirmative answer prove? That you're a born swinger who's not above the occasional decadent orgy? That you're confused about your sexuality and that to date you would be to brave a potentially deadly emotional mine field? And if you post the comfortable, easy answer--"I have never considered a homosexual experience"--well, duh. That would explain why your ad seeks out members of the opposite sex.

(And in the ongoing tally of my romantic follies, don't forget to note that I had the stupidity to actually list that I would consider having a homosexual experience, if only because it's just "CONSIDERING" it, and when it comes to sex, I'll pretty much consider anything that doesn't involve searing pain in my genitals. That answer did drive away at least one potential date, who suggested that my response made her uncomfortable. For the sake of my continued success, I then changed the answer, withdrawing my freak flag from its proud perch. That didn't help much. It still didn't seem as foolish a response as the girl who posted that of all the people in history, she'd most like to have lunch with Judas Iscariot, because she'd ask him, "What were you thinking?!")

So I braved the stupid questions and endured the endless essays and posted up my ad. I then behaved very dilligently and replied to a few ads myself. My theory was that if I replied to enough ads in my patented Springer Style, I would soon be engaging in much dating activity, which I'm told is what single twentysomethings are supposed to be doing, in lieu of watching The A-Team or surfing the web.

Yeah, so that theory pretty much SUCKS. I wrote and wrote and wrote--something like ten mails were sent to prospective dates in about a two-week period--and nearly no one wrote me back. I had to E-mail one girl twice to get a response, pulling out all the clever pop culture tidbits I could summon, and she finally wrote me back, only to never write again.

I had one promising string of E-mails with a raven-haired beauty who loved The Matrix, which was enough of a character sketch to make me gaga--until she casually mentioned in her second mail that she was thinking about moving to Canada, because she had just finished a six-hour phone conversation with a boy she knows there, during which they confessed their mutual love for one another. Suddenly, she became a much less sweet prospect, and I exercised my right to never have contact with her again.

As for my ad, I did get one response. A girl from the Philippines E-mailed me in broken English just looking for a friend. I refrained from responding that I've got enough goddamn friends to shame little Jackie Paper, and that what I really need is someone with which to have much stimulating conversation and sex, though never at the same time. Instead, I politely deleted the mail and declined to respond.

It didn't take long for MatchMaker to get pretty old. It's far too much like real life to be successful. Pretty people get lots of attention and have their pick of potential suitors, while us abysmally normal folks just clutch desperately at beauty, only to have our hands slapped away like petulant children. Unlike real life, the entire affair is played out under the guilt-dodging mask of anonymity--it's much easier to walk around stepping on people you don't know than it is to crush someone you can physically see in front of you. And it's much easier to obsess about people you know only through twenty questions than it is to stare down the beady little eyes of real-time romance.

Because I'm an idiot, I didn't let any of this nonsense steer me from my course. I even went so far as to apply for another online dating service, Match.Com, which seems to be peering into some not-so-distant horrific future where people are matched into relationships based purely on math. You fill out your brief questionaire, and then they rank others on the system based on how many answers you match with their questionaires. I guess they're trying to prepare us for the time when computers will rule the planet.

Match.Com didn't work any better than MatchMaker, so now I'm back where I started, except my wallet's about thirty bucks lighter than it was before. I haven't learned much, except to come face-to-face with the same facts I'd hoped to avoid by scoring through personals: that I have to just suck up my pride and self-loathing and make some moves on real women in the real world to see any results. Only I know I can't do that, and now I can't even count on the false hopes promised by personal ads, so I guess it's back to The A-Team for me, sadly resigned to the knowledge that no matter how hard I try, I'll never be on the jazz when it comes to the ladies.