match dot bomb

Some people have good luck with Internet dating. Take Crispin’s fellow philosophy professor, Glen, a Woody Allen type with a dangling ankh earring and the eyebrows of a cocker spaniel. He was the first person I ever knew who went on Match.com, and he was engaged to the girl he met there before the year was out.

My best friend Sandye also had a happy online love story. Though she hadn’t had a decent long-term boyfriend since the Carter administration, she had found Mr. Wright—his real name—on Nerve.com. It only took a few months, and there he was: intelligent, responsible, good-looking, and fun, a sixtyish writer and editor with a sexy Virginia accent. She lived in Brooklyn, he on the northern tip of Manhattan; they might never have met otherwise.

In Baltimore, my new friends Martha and Dan had met on Match. Though Martha had been on the hunt longer than Sandye, her process sounded efficient. She had a First Date outfit, a list of First Date restaurants, and clear criteria that determined the advance to Second Date and beyond. The system was obviously a success since it resulted in her meeting Dan, a kind, laid-back, and patient man. After several years, the two were now moving in together, along with the children of their first marriages.

There were others, of course—they were everywhere. I was introduced to a couple in Washington, D.C., who’d met on Salon.com when she was working as a wire-service reporter in Trinidad, he as a business consultant in LA. After two months of e-mails and phone calls, he flew four thousand miles for their first date. Not long after, they were married.

Surely it was time to start my free trial.

Meanwhile, there seemed to be other possibilities. Ken, the real estate agent who had found me my house in Baltimore and was now a good friend, had some ideas for me. He went over them one chilly night as he and Jane and I soaked in the disco hot tub in his backyard. Jane was having an easy transition from the farm to city living; she adored her school, and the cookie-bearing Julianne who lived down the block was her new best friend. Being able to walk everywhere—the school, the library, the bagel shop, the post office, Ken’s hot tub—was very exciting for a little girl who had never gone on foot past her own mailbox.

As the underwater lights rotated from pink to green to blue, Ken enumerated the fellows he had in mind. One was a colleague in his real estate office, maybe a little old for me. Another was a guy named Jack he had known since childhood. Jack was super good-looking, he said, and really nice. Having recently broken up with his wife, he was having Ken take him around to look at bachelor pads. He probably wouldn’t be available very long, I imagined, so I urged Ken to get to work.

Then we moved on to his love life, which had been rather depressing since his Colombian boyfriend José was deported a year before. I thought Ken should move on, but Jane, the nine-year-old romantic, favored long-distance love. She was also in favor of long-distance hate: Part of her enthusiasm for our life in Baltimore was the relief of its having ended the terrible situation between her father and me. Now I was calm and happy; he was sober and sane. The very few times she ever again heard us raise our voices to each other, she burst into panicky tears.

One weekend when Sandye was visiting from Brooklyn with her daughter Ava, we sent the girls overnight to Crispin’s, and went out for a night on the town with one of my grad students, a party expert in thigh-high boots. I’d asked her to give us a tour of the places she would go to meet a man. We started at a little nook in her neighborhood. It was three deep at the bar, where I was quickly drawn into conversation by a paunchy, watery-eyed ex–Coast Guard captain.

After a while, Sandye touched my elbow. “Excuse me,” she said to my dull new friend, “I need to borrow her.” Sandye, it turned out, had been chatting with a guy who looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model, not the twenty-something kind but the seasoned thirties/forties type. He had forest-green eyes, white teeth, and sandy blond hair—if you’d seen him on Match.com, you would have been sure the person was using a fake picture.

Even more unbelievably, he turned out to be a molecular biologist working on a cure for cancer. This was one of the first things I learned when Sandye shoved me onto the stool beside him and left us to get to know each other. (Though his business card looked legitimate, I Googled him as soon as I got home. There I found his paper on highly specific cytotoxic effects on mammalian cells seen protease-resistant immunotoxins, which I planned to read just as soon as I had a minute.)

Nonetheless, there were drawbacks—or at this early phase in my dating career, I thought there were. The list was as follows: One, I didn’t love his preppy look, a starched, blue-and-white pin-striped Ralph Lauren shirt tucked into blue jeans. Two, he talked a lot about how he loved living in the country and how he hated the city. (I was in the middle of the opposite conversion.) Three, he told me that he didn’t get along with men because they are all such jerks; he only liked to hang out with women. Being the mother of sons, I argued this point. It seemed suspicious, anyway, to dislike one’s whole gender.

Fortunately, there were a few positives to weigh against these turnoffs. For example, he was a dog person, and was clearly crazy about his teenage daughter. He was intelligent, well-spoken, and, as noted, super-cute. Young, but maybe not too young, because at least at that moment, he seemed very interested in me.

In the glow of his close attention, I told him a lot about myself. I described my books, my marriages, my children, my job. I told him I was thinking of going online to find dates, and asked him if he knew about that. A little, he said.

I asked if he thought I should lie about my age, since I didn’t know if most men would include women of fifty in their search criteria.

“You should never lie about anything,” he told me.

Soon our blue-jeaned knees were touching, as were our elbows on the bar, and then all of a sudden he leaned over and started kissing me. And I kissed back.

Then, just as suddenly, it was too much. Too fast, too weird a setting, too important a thing to be happening in these circumstances. I pulled away, leapt up from the stool, and said, “Sorry—I have to go.”

“Really?” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Well . . . we were going to go dancing,” I said uncertainly, then with more conviction. “At that bar on the top floor of the Belvedere Hotel. You could come with us. . . .”

“Oh, I’m not much of a dancer,” he said. “Why don’t you and your friends go have fun. I’m about to head home anyway.”

“Okay, if you’re sure,” I said. “We’ll e-mail. Right?”

“Yes,” he said. “Don’t worry. I understand.”

I kissed him once more, lightly, on his scratchy, clean-smelling cheek.

“What happened?” the girls wanted to know when we got out on the sidewalk. “Are you crazy or what?”

“I don’t know! I guess—well, it was my first kiss, and it just scared me all of a sudden. It didn’t feel right.”

“What’s your problem, exactly?” Sandye asked. “Is it that he speaks English? That he bought you a drink? Maybe we can find you a homeless guy out here on the street.”

Over the next couple of days I kept looking at the business card on my desk and wondering if I should write to Mr. Underwear Model Biologist, and if so, what I should say. Sunday morning, he beat me to it. “Sorry if I was a little forward with you,” he wrote. “I don’t get out very often.”

This e-mail kicked in a delayed response to his charms. I wrote a long reply, describing the rest of our night on the town and apologizing for my behavior. However, after that he was always busy—getting lattes, going to the gym, doing things with his daughter, curing cancer. The next and only other time I saw his face, it was on Match.com. The time had come; I had put up my profile.

My profile was fine-tuned with the help of Sandye and Mr. Wright, Martha and Dan, and the Underwear Model Biologist himself, who had morphed from prospect to mentor. He helped me choose my pictures, hone my headline, and explained that not answering certain questions was not the same as lying. It was probably better than scaring people off with visions of an atheist chain smoker with a houseful of runny-nosed brats.

TripleEarth

Sassy, sensual, and smart.

50-year-old woman

Baltimore, Maryland, United States

seeking men 40–57

Relationships: Divorced

Have kids: No answer

Want kids: No answer

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Body type: Slender

Height: 5’4” (163 cms)

Religion: No answer

Smoke: No answer

Drink: Social drinker

for fun:

I love to eat, drink, and be merry. Talk, walk, and play Scrabble. Dance. Go to the beach. Go out to dinner. Laugh. Make you laugh. Listen. Tell stories. Hear stories. Go to the movies. Have adventures. Travel. Kiss.

my job:

I’m an author and I teach creative writing to grad students. I have an advice column in a women’s magazine.

my education:

BA, Brown University, 1978; MFA, Brooklyn College, 1983.

favorite hot spots:

Austin, New Orleans, Mexico, France, Montreal, the Caribbean, and my hometown of Asbury Park, New Jersey.

favorite things:

I love books and talking about books. I love Prince, Neil Young, the Talking Heads, the Dead, Lou Reed. I don’t watch TV much but can get into a football game. Breakfast tacos. Cocktails. Not together. Usually.

last read:

Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Lorrie Moore, Tony Hoagland, Michael Chabon, J. D. Salinger, Garcia Marquez, Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers. Also the Sunday Times and The New Yorker.

my pets:

I am a dog lover.

about my life and what I’m looking for:

I’m a very real, very open person with energy and passion to spare. I love to laugh, and I can see the lighter side of almost any situation—an ability I’ve had plenty of chances to hone over the years. A super-loyal friend and companion, I still am very connected to many of those I’ve crossed paths with in this life. My sons are in college and my ex has our daughter on weekends, so I have some time on my hands. I need someone to show me my new neighborhood.

about me:

Hair: Dark brown

Eyes: Blue

Exercise: Exercise 3 to 4 times per week

Politics: Very Liberal

Sign: Taurus

Pets I have: Dogs

Pets I like: Birds, cats, exotic pets, fish, horses, other

As soon as I posted my profile, I started hearing from prospective suitors. Some wanted to “challange” me to a game of “Scrable.” Others were more romantic: “marion, I am going to be up front with you. I want to become your man in life. I am not kidding. So what do i have to do to date you and start hangout with you for fun. so please talk to me marion. I could be yours.”

Unfortunately, the forty- to fifty-seven-year-old age group seemed to be full of seventy-year-olds. Hair was rare. Guts were expansive. Complexions were pasty or suspiciously rosy, and spelling was surely a lost art. I learned to scout the background of the self-taken cell-phone photographs for the rigging: In Baltimore, the sailboat is everything.

Even after ruling out the grammar abusers and other nonstarters, including the three people on Earth who don’t enjoy walking on the beach, I found myself skittish. Just being over fifty seemed to have reduced the pool to a puddle, and a scary part of it was composed of twenty-one-year-old perverts. The screen names alone—Passion4U and SuperGrande and BBQRavensMan—scared me off. I was easily spooked by phrases like “Christian/Catholic,” and “I’ll tell you later.”

But people were skittish about me, too. Several times, after I’d told a man I was a writer and he’d looked at my website and read my life story, he would stop writing to me altogether. It might have been my résumé. It might have been AIDS or atheism or Jane. Still, I found myself unable to withhold the information. I was already such a public person that withholding details seemed coy. I couldn’t grasp the fine line between advertising and self-exposure.

The first man I made a date to meet had many good points. He was not only an excellent speller, he was a doctor. He had graduated from Brown the year before I got there. He was a dog lover who lived just a few blocks away. Before we met in person, he wiped the floor with me in a game of online Scrabble, playing words like hm and feal (both legit, as it turned out). It was hard to set up a meeting due to his professional responsibilities, golf games, and stringent TV-watching schedule, but we did finally manage to schedule an 8:00 a.m. breakfast before his Sunday tee time, at a restaurant down the block.

My pal Martha chose my outfit for the occasion—actually, Martha supplied the outfit, since she had all that retired First Date wear. She gave me a pair of hip-huggers, a wide leather belt, and a soft, heather cashmere sweater. Dressed as Martha, I strolled into Miss Shirley’s and found the man I’ll call Uncle Norm.

Though Uncle Norm was only six years older than me, my first impression was that he was from a different generation. He reminded me so much of my parents’ friends, the funny, amiable Jewish golfers I had grown up with—i.e., old people—that I panicked immediately at the thought of us as a couple. Within moments of sitting down I had enthusiastically blurted, “Oh, we can be friends!”

Uncle Norm looked taken aback. “Well,” he said, “I guess that’s a pretty clear reaction.”

We managed to have a nice breakfast anyway, but our relationship devolved immediately into phone calls, e-mails, and online Scrabble games. Soon we dropped the calls and notes and just sent Scrabble moves back and forth. Then I invited him over one night to watch American Idol with Jane, Ken, and me. That worked well for everyone, and we settled into a spot on his TV-watching roster that we have occupied ever since. He would bring with him his cute little black-and-white dog, who was so smart he got you a tissue when you sneezed, and a Styrofoam box of healthy Asian takeout. He would usually come barging in after the show had started, still talking to a patient on his cell phone. After a while, he was talking to his new girlfriend, a yoga teacher from D.C. he had met on Match.com.

Uncle Norm disappeared from our lives completely when the American Idol season ended, but has faithfully returned each season since. “Uncle Norm!” shout Jane and Ken and I in unison when he suddenly appears with his takeout and a big pack of Twizzlers during the season opener.

It doesn’t sound so terrible now, but this first Match date shook me up. I hated walking into that restaurant, having a negative reaction, and feeling compelled to let the other person know. Moreover, I did a lousy job of it. And though Uncle Norm actually was friend material, I could see myself ending up with quite a number of unneeded new friends, dragging behind me like tin cans on a wedding car, except without the wedding or the car.

What I didn’t yet realize is that something even less pleasant could happen.

Jane and I were visiting Sandye and Mr. Wright at her place in Brooklyn one night. We were sitting around drinking bourbon and talking about my troubles after the kids had gone to bed. I told them there was no one online in Baltimore—no one. They felt I was being too picky. So I logged them into my Match account and they did some searches for me. They were too un-picky, I thought, showing me all kinds of drab-looking weirdos, where I was screening for someone more like Brad Pitt. Squinty eyes, low-hanging ball caps, dramatic overbites and underbites: None of this bothered them.

“This dude sounds like fun,” Mr. Wright said, and read aloud. “I am a Tall, Outgoing, Athletic, ‘Down-To-Earth’ Guy who would like to meet an Attractive ‘Down-To-Earth’ woman who has some similar interests as mine and enjoys making the most out of every day. I love to Travel (All 50 States, 48 National Parks, and 91 Countries so far), Road Trips, Playing All Sports! (GO Ravens/Orioles /Terps! I am Originally from Baltimore!)”

I looked over his shoulder. It was a photo of the young Matthew Broderick, I believe. Unfortunately, the capitalization and use of quotation marks alone made this candidate out of the question for me. Reading online profiles was a very unfortunate way for a writing teacher to get to know people. It was much better if they turned up plastering her basement.

“Okay, what about this Bmoreguy?” said Sandye. “He’s cute, he can spell, and he has a job!”

Hmmmm. Yes. Bmoreguy had decent pictures, including one of him jumping off a cliff into a lake that I liked a lot. His profile was literate and funny, including dialogue and sly humor. I shot him a message, he wrote back, and we eventually set up a time to meet for bagels at a corner cafe in my neighborhood. From the outset, he didn’t seem quite as enthusiastic as I was, but perhaps it was just his style.

In person, Bmoreguy resembled his pictures, which was a good start. He had brown hair and blue eyes. He wore glasses, a tweed blazer, and jeans. He was a nice size—maybe five-foot-ten, with a little extra around the middle. Not full-on teddy bear, but teddy bear lite. He talked mostly about his daughters, his big, alcoholic Irish family of origin, and his social activism, which had turned from a hobby into a full-time job, though his other career was investing. I was intrigued by that paradox. He was extremely opinionated, and hated many things most other people in town love, like the television show The Wire. According to him, it was a derivative commercial rip-off of a genuine Baltimore identity. I was interested in all this passion, although sneering and disdain were specialties of my ex-husband and still made me nervous.

Since we were so close to my house, I suggested he walk me home. Then he came in. My son and his girlfriend were in the kitchen making a late breakfast. Hayes, now a junior at Georgetown, was on his way to an internship at Goldman Sachs that summer, and Bmoreguy gave him some thoughts and encouragement on that topic. He seemed completely relaxed in my house, petted my dog, and kissed me on the lips on the way out the door. I felt a little tingle.

I didn’t hear another word from him for a week. I knew he was going on a road trip with his daughters, but I also knew there were Internet connections in South Carolina. Uncoolly, I wrote several messages without hearing back, and about ten days out, I wrote the uncoolest message of all. “Is just disappearing the usual way of saying ‘I don’t think so’ in these parts? I thought I felt a little click there, but perhaps it was just the result of your having good ‘people skills.’ ”

Uncool, but it got me an answer. He agreed that I was probably just confused by his excellent people skills. “You are a very interesting woman,” he wrote, “but I didn’t respond to you carnally.”

My feelings were badly wounded by this—carnally, I kept saying to myself, feeling like a crossed-off sexless old crone, but also thinking of meat and flowers and the old movie with Ann-Margret and Art Garfunkel.

I couldn’t believe I had given a total stranger a free ticket to do this to me. I decided I was finished with Match.com. One way or the other, it was just a machine for rejection. They smacked you or you smacked them; either way it sucked. Meeting people in real life might be difficult, but it seemed much less risky.

However, I still had a few days on my one-month membership, and my thriftiness got the better of me. Jane was very interested in helping me look, but she wasn’t much better at finding gold among the geeks and grandpas than I was. I think it was hard for her to believe that people this old even had love lives. (Can you imagine helping your mother shop online for a boyfriend? What the hell is this world coming to?) Finally, an eleventh-hour search turned up an attractive screenwriter named Dogsong. Though he was ten years younger than I, everything he said he wanted in a girl was . . . me. I wrote a clever e-mail about singing dogs, urging him to check out my profile and see how perfect I was for him.

“Thanks, but I don’t think so” was all he wrote in reply.

Oh! That wasn’t good. But to make sure he was really rejecting me—me?? Really??—I wrote again. “Are you sure? Aren’t you blowing me off kind of quick?”

“No, I am not interested, and if you are so thin-skinned, you shouldn’t be on Match.com,” he replied.

Almost in tears, I had to admit that “thin-skinned” was right. One month on Match and I was practically cellophane. Any free-range Internet dickhead who took it into his head had the power to make me feel worthless. No more Dogsong for me. I went to a Leonard Cohen concert with one of my girlfriends and cried my eyes out on every song. “I’m your man,” he sang, and I sobbed so loudly that people in surrounding rows began to give me the evil eye.

By now my thirty days were up, anyway, and I turned my sights to the real world. At a party at work, I met an impoverished, unsuccessful musician with a shock of white hair and black Johnny Cash clothes. The poor man had a rough audition when he came out for a burger with me, my three kids, and Ken one afternoon—admittedly, an unusual first date. For one thing, he was extremely worried about being followed, watched, robbed, or written up in the tabloids. His address was a secret, and he did not use his real name. But other than the fact that he lived in a really bad neighborhood, we could see no reason for his paranoia. Hayes and Vince, who were home for spring break, forbade me to ever see him again, not least because their sensibilities were deeply offended by his see-through vinyl backpack. Furthermore, when I walked him to the car, he told me he had a live-in girlfriend with a shotgun.

Meanwhile, Ken still hadn’t gotten me a date—the realtor was all wrong, he’d decided, and Jack, the newly divorced hottie, was already seeing someone. Damn, Ken! To make it up to me, he took me out to Jay’s on Read, a gay piano bar I love. Honestly, I love all gay piano bars. At this one, the piano player looks remarkably like Bill Murray, and he does songs like “I Say a Little Prayer for You,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “New York, New York.” I sing my heart out, and all the old gay guys there love me much more than anyone on Match ever did, or will.