About three years ago I broke up with a long-term girlfriend and my friends introduced me to the concept of online dating.
I was very hesitant at the start. I didn’t know who was going to be online, or whether it was safe. But I’m generally pretty impulsive and spontaneous, so I figured: Let’s give it a try and see what happens.
I signed up for this site called OkCupid. It was all the rage in New York. You’re asked to write a self-summary and answer a bunch of questions about yourself to create a profile.
The questions can make you stop and think.
Like: Would you rather have good things happen to you in life or interesting things?
Or: If you find out that your partner has slept with 14 or more people, is that too many?
Then, OkCupid matches you and a date based on your answers to the same questions. There’s a greater likelihood that your match will be accurate if you answer more questions. I answered 50, and the girl I was paired with was estimated to be a 90 percent match.
I reached out to her. She replied. You can see each other’s pictures. She looked interesting. We decided to meet.
My first online date was a walk in Central Park. It was a really nice spring day. She looked just like she did in her pictures. I was attracted to her physically, but when we started talking there wasn’t much of a spark.
But this story is not about that girl. It’s about the next.
After the first date ended with no chemistry whatsoever, I thought: Hey, I’m not giving up on this. Let me try again.
The next person I spoke to on OkCupid was one of the most beautiful people I’d seen on the site.
And not only was she really attractive . . . but she reached out to me. Which is not the norm. That’s kind of refreshing, I thought.
I noticed in one of her pictures that she had a tattoo. A tiger on her arm. I’m not a huge fan of tattoos, but on her it worked. This girl looked like a celebrity. Long wavy hair. Brunette. With a tiger tattooed on her arm.
Now this, I thought, is kind of cool. But relatively early on in the process a few red flags popped up. As we went back and forth, there were some grammatical mistakes in her texts. She’d replace an s with a z. Spelled the word has as haz. But she was beautiful, so I made an exception.
Finally, we decided to meet up. She lived outside New York City, so we arranged to meet at Penn Station on a Saturday night.
As I’m waiting, we touch base on cellphone. I’m at the northwest corner of 34th and 8th, I tell her. “Oh, I see you,” she says. “I’ll come over.” She taps me on the shoulder and . . . she looks absolutely nothing like her picture – and not in a good way. The only constant was the tiger tattoo.
I was taken aback for a second. But, whatever. She had taken the train in. Let’s go on with the date.
The plan was to go for drinks nearby. But 30 seconds into the conversation, she says: “Do you want to just go back to your place?”
In my head I hear: ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!
But for some reason, I can’t straight up say no. And I make up the weirdest excuse. The line I use is: “I can’t go back to my apartment because my roommate is very religious and he’s having a church gathering . . . So we can’t go back to my apartment . . . ever."
What an idiot, I’m thinking. Who would ever say something like that? But I don’t want to just send her back home. She’s going to feel bad if she doesn’t get a date out of it.
Maybe the right answer isn’t to get drinks. Maybe, I’m thinking, it’s to watch a movie instead. You know, in a theater you don’t have to talk that much, and both people feel like they got a date out of it.
So we walk towards a movie theater near Times Square. As we’re walking, she takes this giant mirror from her bag and she starts looking at herself. “Oh, my God,” she says. “I can’t believe my hair is such a mess.” No, it’s not a mess, I tell her. Yes, it is, she says, and she takes my hand and begins stroking her hair with it . . .
* * *
We get to the theater and I text one of my friends who knows what’s going on.
“This is the most hilarious date ever.”
I hope it’s going okay, he texts me back. If not, let me know if you want me to fake an emergency.
The previews haven’t even started in this dark movie theater when she says: “I’ll bet you have really hairy legs.”
I’m a hairy person in general. You can tell that by looking at my face. So it was a reasonable guess. But then she says, “Can you roll up your pants so I can see your legs?”
So I’m in a dark movie theater with this girl who wants to see my leg hair.
No, I tell her, that’s not going to happen. I turn to the movie and stop engaging. There’s no popcorn between us. We’re both looking straight ahead at the screen.
“Terrible date,” I text my roommate. “I’m going to need a drink afterward.”
My friends are now waiting for me at the apartment with shot glasses in hand.
Midway through the movie, the girl turns to me again. And she hits me with the best line I’ve ever heard from a girl. I can’t make this shit up. She turns to me and says: “You have the manliest eyebrows I’ve ever seen. Can I lick your eyebrows?”
I’m beginning to think she’s into me because she has a hair fetish. Hey, I am a hairy guy. But at the same time, that approach is not the best way into my heart.
“That’s not going to happen,” I say, and turn back toward the screen.
We finish the movie in silence. I’m texting my friends the whole time.
We get out of the theater and she says: “Oh, my God, Times Square is the sketchiest place I’ve ever seen. I wish I had brought my gun with me.”
At that point, it’s clear, this needs to end. I say: “I’m gonna drop you off at the train station. It was good meeting you. But I need to get back to my friends.”
We get in a cab and head back to Penn Station. We’re sitting on opposite sides of the cab. I made it pretty clear that there would be no kiss good night. I didn’t wriggle myself free. I wrenched myself free.
I’m not so sure if this qualifies as a close shave. But I just wanted to make sure that I got through the night with my eyebrows intact.
We reach Penn Station. We say goodbye. No handshake. I don’t even get up. She gets out and closes the door. Maybe that was my bad.
The driver can tell it was a date and he says to me: “Wow, no kiss?”
But all I could feel was relief. Back at the apartment, my friends are waiting for me with a bottle of vodka. I throw a shot down immediately.
She sent me a couple more texts that night.
The first was: Hey, I guess you weren’t feeling all the vibes.
Honestly, I texted back, I wasn’t feeling any vibes. You’re a nice girl but I don’t think it’s going to work.
Then, at two in the morning, another text came in bitching me out for how I conducted myself.
When a girl has taken a trip for you and wants to go back to your apartment, you shouldn’t reject her, you should laugh at her jokes, and you shouldn’t text your friends. Some of her points were completely legit. I shouldn’t text my friends on a date. But at the same time you shouldn’t ask to lick people’s eyebrows.
I just let it go, and that was the last I heard from her.
Two days later, I deleted my OkCupid account. I’ll be single for the rest of my life, I thought, if that’s the alternative.
But afterward I realized that getting drinks with my friends was fun and all, but it wasn’t the most interesting part of the evening.
Maybe OkCupid had me right. My answer to the question: Would you rather have good things happen to you in life or interesting things? was interesting things.
For a couple of months I did no online dating.
Then I saw some of the interesting people my friends were meeting online.
The online dating world has changed a lot in the two years since the night I met the woman with the tiger tattoo. Now, I’m back in.
I’ve upgraded my filter on who to talk to. And the story about the tiger tattoo makes for a great icebreaker on all my future online dates.
It also sets the bar very low. Everything after that is a win in my mind. It proves to me that even if things don’t work out, it’s the story that matters.
In fact, I’m going on an online date this evening.
Wish me luck.