It's scary writing about my personal life. I don't know what it feels like to read these posts, but writing them can be frighteningly uncomfortable. It's one thing to be blunt, or confrontational, but to be totally naked in front of anonymous audience, confessing the most vulnerable details of my life makes me woozy some nights. It would be so easy to mislead. To not have to reconcile with my less appealing qualities and histories. Discrete omissions and a few contorting adjectives could thoroughly reshape any story. I have lots of unattractive qualities, but none make me feel more vulnerable than the way I try and pick up on a woman.
I'm not embarrassed about any general approach or specific habit, but there's a lurking fear that whatever I'm doing is ridiculous on some level. Approaching strangers with nothing more than a hazy attraction necessitates a genial reduction of one's persona to the lowest common denominator. Dating people online exacerbates this because you lose all the physical and aural context, leaving nothing but the docket of come-ons. How do you communicate attraction to a stranger without sounding like an exaggeration of your truer self?
The truth might well be the deeper image of self is fatuous. I might imagine myself a caring and generous person of relative intelligence with a deviant sense of fun, but can it really be true if I present like a nebbish slimeball in a leisure suit in real life?
I'm generally much more comfortable talking to people in real life than I am coming up with quippy emails to women who are only slightly more than silhouettes flickering across a computer screen. Thankfully Hooksexup saves all the messages I've written. Here are some of the first e-mails I've sent to some women who I've felt some twinge of interest in. Can that really be what I sound like? Is that really me in all those glib words of innuendo and platitudes? Look at all those elliptical dots…
- "Don't hold this against me, but I have no idea what a behavior analyst is. Sounds deep…. You have a beautiful smile."
- "heyo, is that a socially adept way of starting an email? I wonder… so tell me more about your electronic dictionary, it sounds fantastic."
- "You're reading Tolstoy and I just finished reading Dostoevsky. What a coincedence… All of which is a roundabout way of saying, hi. I think I like you (or at least your cleverly crafted profile)."
- "What's the nerdiest strategy game you've been playing lately? I think you're much prettier than Shelly Duvall"
- "Jungian feminist theory is like a second language to me. Total coincedence! Anyway, I think you're pretty. Just wanted to say hi"
- "You have nice taste in goggles. I don't speak Spanish but yo quiero una aventura."
Previous Posts:
Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog
Date Machine: Rate My Politics
High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies
Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux
Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN
Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings
Love Machine: What Work Is
Sex Machine: Sleeping Naked
Love Machine: Breaking Up in a Text Message
Date Night: The F U Date
Sex Machine: Shave My Bush
Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating
Date Machine: The Celebrity You Most Resemble
Sex Machine: I Kissed A Boy
Vote Machine: No Gay People Can't
Sex Machine: Let's Have an Orgy
Sex Machine: My First STD
Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV
Love Machine: Let's Make Babies
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines
Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner
Date Machine: Don't Make Poopy in the Office
Hooksexup Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty
Crying In Public: Some Corner in Brooklyn