The End of Dating

Hey.

So, it's six in the morning, and I'd been steeling myself for what came next for about a week.  Auditioning the experience in my mind.  Running the simulations.

Logged on, saw my earnest, unblinking face staring back at me.  The same picture thousands of poor women have seen over the years.

I sighed.  I've been sighing far too goddamn much these days. 

Scrambled for the next step, pushing back all other dissenting voices in my head. It was time. I had no business hanging on, lying to myself.  Had a good run, earned some strange stories, but it's not my path.

Deleted my OkCupid profile.

You know how there's satellites out in orbit right now which are little more than snippets of the human experience?  They transmit audio broadcasts in hopes that some highly advanced life out in the inky void will hear them, and respond.

That's what online dating sites were for me.

Plenty of Fish felt like when you donate blood and then stagger over to a buffet restaurant.  Peering at the steam trays, sweating. Each individual cuisine fuzzy, muted, soggy.  But you're so hungry, you're shaking. Of course you have your fill. Nothing has a flavor. Just calories.

Match.com reminded me of an over-eager grandmother who reaallly wanted to see you married before she bought the farm.  Stringing together tenuous reasons for people to interact with one another.  "Oh, look -she's the oldest child - AND YOU'RE THE OLDEST CHILD.  Talk to her!  You should talk to her. Just talk to her and invite her to coffee.  It's just coffee. She likes card games, too!"  None of the women I met on Match.com I'd describe as "fun".  All dauntingly beautiful, all very serious. All slightly concerned about the direction of my life and artistic ramblings.  Most drank heavily.

I never did Eharmony, but friends swore by it, and it brought them together.  Seemed like a site you'd do if you were religious and wanted to be married.  So I skipped it.

All of this led me to my long-term trials with Okcupid.  I could spend hours on Okcupid stories (from the behavioral psychologist in Brooklyn who really seemed fun and interesting and then stood me up on the first date and whom I'm not entirely uncertain did so just to run sample data on how people handle rejection -side note, I was outwardly calm and collected - to the spirited thirty-two minute discussion I had with a OkCupid computer programmer on the subway to the FIVE women from New Jersey who bailed on me at the last minute due to mental health issues/having to make an Odyssean journey into Manhattan because NJ is far from everywhere  - second side note - DON'T DATE PEOPLE IN NJ UNLESS YOU LIVE THERE)
All the women I met on OkCupid seemed much, much more bohemian and worldly than me.  They'd seen at least twenty countries.  Spoke four languages.  Climbed mountains.  Did time in the Peace Corp. Had parties where they wore fake moustaches.

And, without fail, not a single person whom  I contacted directly on OkCupid contacted me back.  It was always the aggressive, playful women who saw through whatever sad attempt of being clever I was trying that week and wrote me.  And, much of the dates I did with OkCupid women were me being open-minded, exploring beyond my preconceived notions of what I normally considered "attractive".   The discrepancy between picture and reality when it came to online dating was the widest in OkCupid land.


But it's done now.

Let me tell you a story.

When I was about ten or eleven, I begged my father for a pet hamster.  I had already lost two hamsters, and my father was understandably reserved about spending the money on another one. He agreed to let me have another pet if I took sole responsibility and if I fed the hamster and cleaned the cage.

And I was dutiful at first.  Poured the cedar chips with a steady hand.  Refilled the water tank.  Stocked the food pellets.  But then I grew careless, and I just forgot.  For weeks. My father observed from a distance, watching that hamster wither and die. As an adult, I can't even imagine how tough that had to be, to teach me a lesson and not jump in there. Watching your child disappoint you, day following day.

The lesson came.  I finally began to smell that old, familiar odor. Death's a sickly sweet, bitter smell. Ran to the cage.  His body was pressed tight like cardboard.  Eyes black and pupils split. Fur greasy and runny.

My father came to my side, shovel and newspaper in hand. I sobbed, took them and headed outside.

I had work to do.

After that moment, I was de facto member of the household in charge of burying other kid's pets. While my brother and sister would cry over the loss of their beloved animal, I'd be in the back yard, hacking at the white birch tree's gnarled and ravenous roots, looking for a small space to stow their animal.

Haven't owned a pet since.