Friday, May 15, 2009

Dispatches from the Dating Trenches: the online dating profile I'd write if I had any balls at all (and wanted to attract, well, actually, no one)

Let's start here:
  • Do not show interest in me if you've clicked the radio button next to the word "conservative." I will look at your political alliance before I look at your pictures. And I will dismiss you, no matter how cute you are, if you vote Republican. It's not that I think all such folks were necessarily birthed from the devil's own anus, per sé. It's just that the combativeness-as-erotic-charge model of relationship has long since lost its sparkle for me. And you shouldn't doubt that I will fight with you if your values don't align with my essential secular humanist ones.
  • I'm an introverted, irascible bitch. I am not well-moderated. No one has ever called me "laid-back." I am obsessive and the hamster in my head runs his wheel expressly to keep me awake most nights. I'm intense and neurotic. I laugh easily, but I tend to think my own jokes are more hilarious than yours. I am actually fairly kind and if I like you enough, I can even be warm. But I'm what some might call "complicated." If you're looking for an easy, pleasant, cheerful girl, she ain't me.
  • I do not like groups composed of more than 4 people. I do not like parties. If you promote your capacity as a flibbertigibbet, I'll probably go hide under my bed and not come out until I've stood you up for our first date.
  • If your profile says,
    "I'm a laid-back guy looking for a girl who looks just as great in a cocktail dress and heels as she does in jeans and a baseball cap,"
    I'll consider it reason sufficient to blow you off immediately. Firstly, "cocktail dress?" You know you mean "slutwear"-- which I will wear on occasion, but I'd rather you'd just call a spade a spade. And you'll never, ever catch me in a baseball cap. Hat-hair with normal hair is one thing. Hat-hair with the crazy Jew mess I've got going on is something else entirely. But more importantly, dear catamarans from heaven! Do you have any idea how many dudes write the above sentence, verbatim, in online profiles? I can spot you a quarter. You are hereby instructed to buy an original thought with it.
  • Other grounds for immediate dismissal include proclamations of affection for any of the following:
    • Titanic
    • The Da Vinci Code, book or movie
    • Jesus Christ, your lord and savior
    • Taco Bell
    • taking me to sporting events
    • Eat, Pray, Love (No joke. I've seen it. From a dude.)
    • Hummers* (It's way worse if you actually include a photo of you and your natural-resource-wasting -small-cock-compensation-mobile. And worse still if it's just a picture of the car, with you nowhere in sight.)
    • not reading
    • Sideways
    • sexual "fidelity" in your women
  • If you can't put your prepositions in the right places in your sentences, I will laugh at you. I will not, however, go out with you.
  • If you are actually looking for a mail-order bride, you're at the wrong site. I might be a little mouthy for you.
If, however, you comprehend the fact that no adult makes it past age 25 without acquiring a few emotional duffel bags; if you have the good sense not to grow hair into assorted configurations like mullets, comb-overs or pencil-thin mustaches (unless you're John Waters, but I don't know what you'd be doing, looking for the likes of me, if you are John Waters); if you won't crowd me; if you're patient with my oddness because you're odd too; if I think you're funny based on your command of written language; if you see through this pathetically translucent spate of attitude to the lonely girl beneath all the bravado -- well, then? Then, I might berate myself a little less for asking my computer to send me my own personal dreamboat(s).

*I mean the vulgar vehicular behemoths, obviously, not blowjobs. Professing a love of blowjobs is OK with me.

7 comments:

jb said...

I'd say the Sideways and sports eliminate me, and I must have circumvented the rules. . .then again, I have a feeling I'm the reason they're up there.

brownrabbit said...

Well, that hockey game to which you dragged me that one time was NOT the best night I ever had with you. I don't drag people to stuff I know they'll hate so I'd rather no one force me to go places at which they know in advance I'll be really bored, no matter how open my mind gets. Sports are only fun if you are interested enough to learn the rules in the first place. I'm not. Therefore, I don't want to feel obligated to go. It's only fair, right?

Re: Sideways-- actually, it's just that it breaks my heart that so many men I know relate to the repugnant Giamatti character. I hate him. Want nothing to do with him. And therefore, I'm wary of men who identify with him. But you'd snuck past the goalpost (See that? A sports metaphor! Awesome!) long before that movie came out, so you're grandfathered in.

It's a good thing you and I didn't meet thru a dating site, eh?

jb said...

disclaimer . . . i would never put either of those things on a dating profile. I like sports, but that doesn't mean that I have a date that does (obviously, I hardly ever have).

Also putting movies you like on dating profiles usually just turns out bad. B/c when I hear that someone likes:

Disney movies
Titanic
Hillary Duff movies
What Women Want
Ransom
War of the Worlds
etc.


. . .well enough to put them on their dating profiles, it creeps me out.

good post, btw. i would add one for girls that is scary: when girls write they love to laugh and hang out and have fun with their friends. I know dating profiles are difficult, but Jesus, try not to come right out and admit that you have nothing to offer. Also, when you are 30 or 40 and still writing such things about yourself, it is even more pathetic.

brownrabbit said...

Hey, now-- don't knock the Hillary Duff movies TOO hard... I mean, they aren't all THAT bad...

Oh, wait... they are.

Oh, WAIT!! They're not! That one in which she plays a middle-eastern pop singer who fellates a gas pump (yes, that really happened in a movie) wasn't ALL terrible. It was all Cusack-y and shit.

jb said...

u should put it on your dating profile

brownrabbit said...

"I also enjoy both watching Hillary Duff fellate gas pumps and doing so myself."

I'm sure to snag a keeper with that!

tyler said...

Marjorie,

I read your comments on the richardroeperblog and I have written a response; in case you wanted to check it out. You have said you don't like writing those "diatribes" but I found your comments really interesting and hopefully you will check out the latest and maybe even write back.

Thanks, best,

Tyler

Also, why don't you like Sideways?

Feel free to email me directly for any reason.
tylerdobbs@earthlink.net