After Jane died, suddenly I was “available,” which meant, ready or not, I was eligible to date again, to get back into the pool, to enter the New York meat market. I hadn’t liked dating rituals when I was in my twenties. A decade later, I was scared to death of them.
I soon found out that dating in New York was more complicated than ever, and maybe even more desperate. Meeting somebody in a bar had never made a lot of sense to me—not unless your dream person was potentially an alcoholic. I liked the movie You’ve Got Mail, but I didn’t honestly believe I would find true love in a bookstore.
So, of course, I did something worse. This was so dumb.
I walked into the East Side offices of a dating service called It’s Just Lunch. I don’t know why but this move seemed completely rational to me, or at least harmless.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As I entered the office, I was thinking, This isn’t desperate. I’m not pathetic. This isn’t creepy. It’s just lunch.
A woman who said she was a partner gave me a longish questionnaire to fill out. I was supposed to complete it right there in the office. So I started in and was trying to be as honest as I could possibly be. And hopeful. Positive.
But I found I didn’t have answers for some of the rather vaguely worded questions.
So I sheepishly approached the executive who had given me the questionnaire. I told her my problem—my problem, not a problem with their questionnaire.
I think I was being nice. I just wanted to be honest about answering the questions.
But the partner got angry with me. And, yes, this really happened. She told me to leave. “Right now. You can go.”
I walked back out on the street, which was crowded, lots of honking horns, city buses doing their bus-exhaust thing, and I couldn’t believe what had just happened.
I’d just been shot down—by a dating service.