I never heard from him again, but I didn't care. In the chick-lit novel I was crafting in my mind, I was the fuck-'em-all girl who didn't follow the rules. If I didn't try to date, or deliberately sabotaged the process, I couldn't fail. None of my friends would know how terrified I was of interacting with guys. Because I didn't measure up to my friends in terms of attractiveness, I believed that fucking was the only way to keep myself on the same page.
When I graduated, I kept my circle of female friends from college, worked with all women and lived with two female roommates. It was hard not to objectify men when I only interacted with them as hookups. Going out on weekends, not knowing where I would wake up, made me feel adventurous. I loved everything associated with fucking — the danger, the uncertainty, a story to tell the girls. Occasionally, a guy would ask for my number. I'd let the message go to voicemail, then delete it after playing it aloud for my friends.
Sometimes, I would go on actual dates, usually with a friend of a friend, always with a sense of obligation. Actual dating — being picked up at my apartment, going to a restaurant that was never quite right, trading life stories — seemed so banal. With each date, I felt the stakes get higher. Fucking on the first date meant he wouldn't call again, so I wouldn't have to veer from my well-rehearsed script.
"I can't believe it just took one beer to make you come home with me!" one guy said the next morning with a mix of amazement and self-congratulation. I just smiled. We hooked up every Saturday or Sunday for a few months, but we were never dating. Instead, I would end up at his apartment after midnight, usually when one or both of us were drunk. We would sleep together, then have a rambling conversation about our lives, which didn't intersect anywhere except his bed. When one of these late-night discussions revealed that he was actively dating other girls, I was surprised by how upset I became.
My friend Melissa, who conducts her dates with unflinching rigidity (she won't even stay for a drink with a guy if she doesn't see a three-date-minimum potential), was appalled at my haphazard approach to men.
"You're not supposed to sleep with them right away!" she said, as if explaining something revelatory. "They 'll never be interested in you." That wasn't the point. I hadn't wanted them to be interested in me. I didn't want to worry about their opinions. Instead, I wanted to call the shots until a guy came along who would totally and effortlessly understand me. I hated how much my casual-hookup guy had become that ideal in my mind. For the first time in my life, I admitted to myself that I was actually seeking a relationship.
Which was exactly what my friends had been seeking that whole time, reading He's Just Not That Into You and sending covert text messages to decipher their dates' behavior. When a friend successfully navigated the first few dates — the point when sex and weird tics were discussed — I'd feel a small tug of betrayal. I signed up for a bunch of dating sites and begrudgingly promised myself I wouldn't fuck on a first date. I tried to see the bright side of going out with the guys whose responses flooded my inbox: it was something to dress up for, an excuse to live outside my $15-an-hour, post-collegiate budget, something to talk about the next day. Still, I hated how a guy would insist on walking me back to my apartment, when I knew I could always get there, by myself, at any time of the night. I hated when they called the next day and I would feel obligated to call them back, and I would feel anxious whenever I saw one of their e-mails. Unlike hooking up, dating — and actively seeking a long-term connection — made me feel trapped.
It was only when I'd dissect the evening with friends that I would again feel empowered and fun instead of lonely, awkward and panicked. I gave each date a nickname — a guy with questionable hygiene became Furry-Teeth Guy, the pseudo-musician became Mr. Glam Folk Rocker, and the hippie activist who lived with six roommates in a loft with bedrooms separated by office dividers became the I Heart Brooklyn Boy. Naming my dates, then excoriating them, made me feel a sense of control: yes, I hadn't found anyone, but there was something glaringly wrong with everyone.
One night, I invited a few friends to stop at a bar where I was on a first date. I wanted them to see the live version of what I would always recap, and I had no qualms about using him as a prop. The guy was an aspiring actor and bartender in his mid-twenties. When I flirtatiously asked him what his favorite drink was, he said Sex on the Beach and asked if I'd heard of it.
The next day, my friends laid into me. "At one point, you were making out with him, then you would turn to me, tell me howlame he was and roll your eyes," Melissa said, exasperated. "I don't know what to do with you."
At that point, I didn't know what to do with me, either. Presented with a vapid date, I could chalk the evening up to disappointment, or I could turn it into an experience. Of course, I chose the latter. Making out wasn't fucking, but at least it made me feel something. It turned me back into the imperious single girl who was above dating and didn't need to impress a man.
Still, pushing a date to the height of theatricality more than once proves that, ultimately, I am terrified. I really shouldn't be allowed to have an online-dating profile. I know it's time to grow up, stop being hypercritical and just enter the dating pool, with its abundant clichˇs and absolute disappointments. And I'm trying. But it's hard to know where to begin. Pop culture has made wacky, convoluted attempts to meet men seem like a staple of the twentysomething single girl's life — so much that my therapist once recommended I borrow my parents' dog from New Jersey for a day and bring it in the park for use as a conversation starter.
While I haven't resorted to crossing state lines with my parent's sixty-pound labradoodle, I have agreed to tag along with Melissa to one of her speed-dating events. I initiate conversations with guys at my triathlon-training sessions. Sometimes, I even return phone calls. For the past few months, every date has ended in front of my building. But still, in the back of my mind, I have my imaginary laugh track cued, and I'm just waiting for some sort of zany encounter that will put me face to face with my own Mr. Big — a successful (and easily labeled) guy who will rescue me from my self-imposed, single-girl-about-town dramedy.
©2007 JL Scott and hooksexup.com