Gabe, 25

What do you do?
I'm a builder. I'm in construction and run my own company. I also work for a corporation. So I have two jobs.

Do you get any dates that way?
No. If anything, I'm pretty tired after work. It takes a good amount of energy to go out after doing all that labor. That's not the type of job where girls jump at you unless they're into hands that are like leather.

But it is kind of a sexy thing — a guy who's good with his hands. So how do you meet dates?
I'm pretty good with going up to girls and introducing myself. I like girls who are shorter than me — so anything shorter than six feet tall. [laughs] Athletic build. I like a girl who likes to stay active and do sports. She's got to like music, have a sense of humor, and be able to keep up when we go out. You don't want to go home at 11:30 at night, you know?

How about the last great relationship you were in? What was she like, and what was awesome about it?
The last great relationship I was in ended a year and a half ago. It was a great relationship because we were very independent; we could do our own thing, but when the weekend came around, we went out, had dinner. We were able to enjoy our own lives and our lives together. So that really helped out because absence really makes the heart grow fonder. You don't want to smother anybody.

What happened? How come it didn't work out?
I guess we were a little too different. There was an age difference of ten years. I was twenty-two, and she was thirty-two. We dated until I was twenty-four.

What was it like being with an older woman?
Great! In addition to kind of an increased libido, she was smart. Cultured. She knows a lot about music. I like to take care of a girl, but she's not someone that needed to be taken care of; she's very independent, she's very smart. She made five times as much as I did — she was in finance. She definitely could take care of herself, but I still took her out to dinner and bought her nice things, you know.

How did you feel about the fact that she was making a lot more money? Some guys get really intimidated.
It never bothered me. I never felt that I had to show her how big my car was or how much money I made. Money didn't really mean anything because she could pay for her own dinner, and I could pay for my own dinner. If anything, it worked out for the better. The relationship didn't rely on one person like a lot of people kind of want now. A lot of guys are intimidated by a girl who makes more than them, because guys want to feel superior and be able to pay for everything. I think that's bullshit.

What was it like with this woman sexually? You said she had an increased libido.
Great. We had sex probably four times a week. Everything was good. I don't know if it had something to do with age or anything like that.

Any crazy hookup stories?
I actually met my ex at Burning Man. My friend brought me, and my future girlfriend had gone for the past three years. We saw each other, and it was a love-at-first-sight type of thing. We were immediately attracted to each other. We both knew right away that we were good for each other. Coincidentally, she lived three blocks away from my brother's apartment in Brooklyn. I said, "That's it; as soon as I get home, I'm taking you out to dinner." And she said, "How about I make you dinner?" So she made me dinner the first night, and I made margaritas. And that was the first night that we kissed. She made me dinner — it was nice! There wasn't any sex until two months later — not even two months later. But I waited patiently. We might not have had sex, but we did other things.

Do you have any crazy exes?
I have one crazy ex from college. She's as Looney Tunes as Daffy Duck. She was a vegetarian nutbag who criticized everything I did. She had too much of a control issue with the relationship and always wanted time together and never let me have time with my friends. When I did have time with my friends, she tried to associate it with something bad. "Oh, you're going out with your friends and drinking!" "Oh, you're going out with your friends and smoking pot!" She never saw that me and my friends were going to the gym. Or me and my friends were going out to dinner. It was some of the best sex ever, but it wasn't worth it in the end.

Megan, 21

What do you do?
Right now, I'm just going to school. I think I'm going to transfer to a culinary institute though.

What's your relationship status?
I'm in a relationship. It's long-distance, unfortunately, but I've been with him for a little over a year. It's been long-distance the whole time we've been going out. He's about an hour and a half away. But I see him every weekend, pretty much. And we talk constantly. Actually, we met because my sister was dating his brother. She just thought that we would get along famously, and we did. It's just one of those things.

So is that weird that your sister [Jamie, also interviewed] and her ex are not together, but you're with her ex's brother?
We weren't conflicted with it at all because we always did our own thing, and it wound up working.

What does your boyfriend do?
He works at a car dealership. I mean, we're both so young, we really don't know what we want to do yet. He's possibly willing to move down here. But I don't like the area that I'm in now, and I do like it better up by him... so if anything, we would be moving farther north together. Yeah, we do want to move in with each other. [Jamie: "Her boyfriend has a kid too."]

What's that like, when your boyfriend has a kid?
I'm not judgmental. It happens. It was a one-time thing, them getting together. She kept the baby, and out of nowhere, she was like, "Oh, hey, I did have your child." It's not something that I would leave him for, because at least he owned up to it. My boyfriend is twenty-one, and the baby is turning, I think — a couple of months old? I told him that I wasn't going to have a part in raising the baby. I don't want to be a mother figure towards her. I want to be a friend figure towards her. He's a good dad, as far as I'm concerned. And the mother — they're just friends. They were never intimate except for that one time.

So she has custody of the baby girl?
Yes, because after that happened, she didn't talk to him anymore. I figured it was one of those things where the girl was like, "I'm lonely." And some people have that complex where they need a child to fill that void. My boyfriend happened to be the pawn! [laughs]

You don't think it's too intense a situation to deal with?
Not at all. I mean, life has obstacles. I think I've been through enough as a person and as a young adult.

Do you have any dealbreakers?
Cheating! Cheating and lying. Any sort of distrust, I will walk away immediately.

How would you compare what it's like here to where you're from in Jersey, in terms of dating?
It's kind of rednecky where I grew up [laughs]. I'm from Northern New Jersey; it's very woodsy. As far as here, everyone seems very social. That's how I would describe it.

Do you have a type that you gravitate towards?
Genuine — as hard as those are to come by.

Max, 26

So you said you just got out of a relationship?
Yeah, I just got out of a year-long relationship. She was in DC, I live in New York. It was just difficult. I work in the restaurant industry as well as doing marketing. Meeting each weekend was tough, and we already were distant. She's not moving back to New York for at least a year...

So it sounds like you're the one who broke it off, no?
It was mutual in the end. I think she brought some of the issues to the table that maybe neither of us wanted to talk about at first. She was having trouble dealing with the distance and everything, but talking about that made me think of stuff that I'd wanted to say but didn't really have the balls to say. It ended up being mutual. We're on good terms now.

How did you meet her?
I met her a year ago at a friend's birthday party, very randomly. It was late. I wasn't even going to go out after my restaurant shift, but I ended up going out to Queens. She was in from DC for her friend's birthday. And we met, and things were pretty good.

What attracted you to her?
She just had a unique look about her. Dark skin with freckles. Her ethnicities were various. She was very fiesty. Kind of a little crazy. Smart. She opened up my horizons — I mean, I'm Italian, and most of my friends' parents are immigrants; it's close-knit, and I'm in somewhat of a small circle of people I could date. I just clicked instantly with her, and I liked the vibe about her.

Would you say that you have a type?
Actually, this ex-girlfriend was small, Irish, black, and Navajo Indian. She had curly, auburn hair with freckles. And I dated a girl who was six inches taller than me and half-Italian and half-German. So I can't really say I have a type.

So you said you work in the restaurant industry. Do you meet a lot of girls that way?
My restaurant, unfortunately, doesn't have the best crowd. It's a somewhat older crowd. And we don't have many female waitresses. If I were working downtown, I'm sure I would meet a lot more. The restaurant industry is like an incestuous pool of intermingling. Everybody dates the other bartenders, the other servers within the restaurant industry — or even within the restaurant you work at.

Do you have any good hookup stories?
Not ones I'm proud of. I hooked up behind a bar, a couple of girls' bathrooms out in bars, with the manager of the place I used to work at back in college. I used to get a little crazy back in my younger days. Not that I'm that old now, ladies!

You said you hooked up with your boss?
Yeah, we had a little fling at the store I worked at. It was exciting. It wasn't supposed to be happening. You're not supposed to do that.

These days, are you on the prowl? Are you looking for someone?
My heart's a little somber right now. I just broke up, like, two weeks ago with this girl. So I'm just dealing with everything that's going on. I'm not really looking, and I'm trying to get my career going. And if I find someone new or if she and I reconnect when things are a little calmer... We're very different, but we get along very well, and I hope that, when distance isn't a problem anymore, then maybe we can get back together. And if not, well, hustle and make that money in 2012!

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