Chapter Sixty Five; R.I.P. Match.com

Well, that was fun.

After blogging last week about my resolve to jump back into dating land and even give this online thing a concerted effort I am forced to report . . .

Icksnay on the atchdotcommay.

If you live in my area and heard a scream pierce the night from the historic district, yeah, that was me.

Why? Oh . . . you really want to know the details?

(Pause for dramatic effect).

Okay fine. As usual, let my misery entertain you.

Let me put it this way: I think calling this site “Match.com” is majorly misleading. Possibly the epitome of false advertising. I think they would do better to come up with something more accurate like:

BoulevardofBrokenDreams.com

IStillLiveWithMyParents.com

HaveEnoughBaggagefor2People.com

Or, my personal favorite:

MyBadIThoughtThiswasaSexSiteCanUSendmeNakedPhotos.com

Yeah.

Oooh. So fun. I just love being 36 and single.

Welcome to my hell.

If you are living the kind of life where online dating is not something you have done or are pretty certain you never will do (i.e. you are either happily married or a third world sheepherder with no internet access) let me take you on a crash course of the world that is digital dating:

Step One: Fill out a profile.

This basically involves completing a form with the basics: gender, status (divorced, never married), if you do or do not have children, where you live . . . etc. You are also asked to pick from a host of “traits” that you find desirable in a mate. Call me crazy but I put down things like tall, dark and handsome. (I have NOT been single long enough to put down short, fat, and hideous, cut me some idealistic slack.) I tried to find the section where I could select things like “heir to a retail fortune” or “5,000 square foot lake home” but those weren’t any of the options provided.

Damn.

Step Two: Post Pictures

I am proud of myself in regard to this aspect. I was honest. I put ten recent pictures of my mug out there and yeah, none of them were taken of me on day five of the flu, but I still think they were absolutely representative of Audra the real deal.

I did all that, hit “activate” and hence began two weeks of utter weirdness.

I started off cruising for dudes by clicking through a database of men in my preferred age range (I chose 29 to 39. Kind of narrow but I can hardly handle that I am in shouting distance of 40 myself, so to imagine myself saying, “This is my boyfriend and he is 40-something” was just too much for me. Shudder.)

So there I was. Clicking through pictures and squinting at my screen.

Two minutes in I am pondering how I have never before noticed that all the men in this part of the country are 40 pounds overweight, never take a picture without a baseball hat on their (balding?) melon, and that the online scene obviously appeals most strongly to the goatee-sporting sect. So much for the testosterone buffet I had been anticipating. Instead it looked like a sampling of guys from the beer garden at a stock car race.

In the rare instance I happened upon someone who met my bare minimum/totally shallow criteria (What? I’m the only woman out there who wants to date an Abercrombie model?) I would check out his profile only to discover that rarely did any of those men write more than four sentences. (I, of course, had written a bio that could be entered into a short story contest it was so damn long.)

Hence began an interesting two weeks.

The bulk of the correspondence I received amounted to digital grunting along the lines of, “Me Tarzan. You Jane.”

Hmm. The only thing truly getting hit on a lot was my delete button.

And, sad but true, most of the guys who did send thoughtful notes I just could not see myself ever cultivating anything deeper than a friendship with. And guess what? This made me feel bad. Yes it did. I felt so shallow, and feeling shallow is not fun. It was like I had stripped off the outer layer of a dimension of life I really did not want to see.

People were vulnerable. People were lonely. And I knew I wasn’t the one who could help them.

It was depressing. And overwhelming

You try getting twenty emails a day from forlorn desperate single men and see how it makes you feel?

Exactly.

The entire experience was one of the most unfun things I have ever done.

At the end of just a few weeks, after sifting through a mountain of meaningless web winks and slimy (or sad) emails I uncovered about four guys who seemed relatively intriguing. Even though I’d never even met them the impression they’d left was one of intelligence as well as emotional and physical health. Oh and okay, they didn’t appear to be short, bald and hideous either (guilty as charged.)

I tucked their personal email addresses under one arm and sprinted out of this virtual labyrinth of baggage and broken dreams.

In other words I deactivated my profile.

So at this point who knows where I am going or what I am doing. In short order I may determine that the online version of these guys was not a realistic sampling of reality and quickly toss the entire online blind dating deal aside.

And then? Well, I am back at single square one.

Oh well.

At least my neighbors won't have to worry about any more late night screaming resonating from next door.