In a place as showy as Los Angeles, the most amazing thing about Internet dating is how un-amazing it is.
I've been Internet dating off and on — mostly off (way off) — for years. In a city with so many colorful characters, it's remarkable how many Internet dates have ended with the assessment, "Nice person, no chemistry." It's especially unbelievable when you consider that a person's photo and profile may seem attractive, their emails and/or phone calls substantiate the attraction, and when you meet them in person, you don't have enough chemistry between the two of you to melt an ice cube. Over and over and over again. This not only makes for a demoralizing personal life, but if you're a writer, it's damned hard to find material.
Undaunted, however, I have a few tales.
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In the old days, the late 90s, AOL had a dating site that was free. You didn't even need to have a profile up to contact people on the site. I got a glimpse of how small Los Angeles was when, on a date with one woman I met on AOL Personals, she politely informed me that on the same day I had sent an introductory email to her, I'd sent a similar one to a girlfriend of hers. After two dates, she told me that she'd decided to work things out with her ex-boyfriend. I regret not asking her to put in a good word for me with her girlfriend.
Possibly the worst date I ever went on was an AOL date. Things were already pretty tepid when my date's pager went off in the middle of dinner. "Chad?" she said. "Why's he paging me?"
And she whipped out her cell phone right there at the table and called him. She told him how excited she was to hear from him, but would have to call him back because she was in the middle of dinner. Then she hung up and told me how thrilled she was to hear from him, seeing as how it had been so long since they'd seen each other. I'd like to say that it was the AOL Personals' commune-like sensibility that encouraged her to be so flighty in the middle of the dinner I was buying her, but more likely, she was just a twit.
I eventually upgraded to a real dating site, whereupon my experiences became more unreal. Take the attractive, funny, single, childless woman in her early 30s who asked to meet me for a drink a couple of years ago. We met and hit it off right away, whereupon she admitted that she was not single and childless, but, in fact, separated with a toddler. She married young, had found out recently that her husband had cheated on her, and was now playing the field because she didn't have the chance to do so when she was younger, but wasn't sure if she was going to leave her husband or not. She added that she wasn't going to sleep with me because she had integrity.
On another Internet date around the same time, a woman met me for drinks at 7:00 one night. When she got her bailout call — the call you set up with a friend where, upon receiving it, you can use it to concoct an excuse to leave early — at 7:10, she pretended to be surprised that her cell phone was ringing. She continued with the date, during which she made introductory chitchat by asking me how well endowed I was. When I called her a few days later and happened to mention her overt interest in sex, she was confused as to why I would make such a presumption.
I take solace that I'm not alone in these misadventures. In fact, some of them can have a dark side. One friend of mine began Internet dating last year by striking up a phone and email relationship with guy from Utah who'd contacted her. To her, he was just a man to talk to as she found her Internet dating sea legs, even though he tried to get her to come out there for an in-person meeting. After a couple of months, during which time she started real dating with men here, "Utah McDaddy" emailed her one day to say that he may be going away for a year to a year-and-a-half. When she called him to ask what he meant, he confessed that he'd actually done time for statutory rape, and had recently violated parole by crossing state lines. She doesn't talk to him anymore.
My friend Sally, the magnet for celebrities, was contacted by a former child TV star. She said they've become pals because he's a nice guy, in spite of the fact that he occasionally calls her to ask her to go away with him for a weekend bacchanalia.
A septuagenarian woman who's been Internet dating for a while had a discouraging episode with a sixty-something man. He waited until their third date to tell her that he was not only HIV-positive but also gay, and he was wondering if she could help him convert to heterosexuality.
One guy said he went on an Internet date and the woman showed up with her therapist. (The man told the story to another woman on an Internet date, who then told it to me on an Internet date.)
But, again, it is the overwhelming dullness that is perhaps the most amazing thing about Internet dating. When I went around soliciting others' stories, the ones above weren't just the best ones, they were the only ones. The rest of their stories were non-stories: nice person, no chemistry. And in the great Ponzi scheme that is Los Angeles, you never get the sense that you'll never find the right person here. It is a never-ending casting session where no one seems right for the part. After looking at the profile pages for a little while, everyone looks the same. The more coffee dates you have, the less you want to have them. But since there is no deadline, the only thing stopping you from continuing to look is your tolerance for boredom.
Or your quota for material.
L.A. Nuts is a weekly look at the cast of characters that make up this city.
