Blind dating nightmares move to the digital age

The date was set for Saturday afternoon at Taco del Sol since my date, “Jeremy,” mentioned that he “had a serious budget.” I arrived early out of sheer nervousness. I scanned the room quickly for anyone who might look like a 28-year-old social worker and realized I’d completely forgotten what Jeremy looked like. I spotted a few teenage girls, a young family or two and a guy in a red sweater with a little boy. None of them looked like my mind’s muddy image of Jeremy.

Suddenly I noticed the guy in the red sweater throw me a glance. My first reaction was, “All RIGHT, I get a smile from a cute stranger while waiting for a blind date. I rock.” But I started to panic when he picked up the kid and walked toward me.

“You’re not Chandra, are you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the little boy trying to ram his fingers into the man’s mouth.

“I’m Jeremy.”

Keep calm …… maybe the kid isn’t his, I thought.

“Hi, Jeremy. And who is this?”

“This is my son,” he said.

So this is his serious budget, I thought.

I suddenly wished I could click myself out of the situation. I didn’t want to ask Jeremy why he didn’t mention on his profile that he had a son, but dating – especially online dating – is full of such surprises. Recently out of a serious relationship, I decided to bypass the single slump in favor of the trendy option I’d never tried: the online dating service.

Although the idea of shopping for romance with the same browser that you bought your last used CD on may not be the sort of thing that inspires Danielle Steel, for many single Americans, online dating seems to be the next best thing.

Meredith Broussard, author and creator of the Web site

http://www.failedrelationships.com, recently wrote an article about dating by the numbers. Forty million Americans, or about 40 percent of the entire single population in the United States, are now dating online.

I chose to join a service offered through the Missoula Independent affiliated with the Missoula Personals dating service. The first step to engineering a romantic interlude via cyberspace is to create a profile. This is basically the online version of a personal ad, but it becomes more like a resume for a job you’re not sure you’ll accept.

When filling out your profile, your life becomes neatly compartmentalized. Religious background goes here. Click this box if you’re a nonsmoker who would sooner die than date a smoker. Please indicate the number of times you’ve been married if you’re divorced. Brave souls can enter a body type here. And it’s at about this point that you might begin to feel insignificant.
There’s no box to click to say how you’re unique from everyone else. There’s no box for how your heart got broken if it did, or what brought you to consider online dating in the first place. There’s no box I can click to tell prospective suitors that I can’t stand men who can’t form an articulate sentence, or that I count becoming my parents as a fate worse than death. There’s no box to say that I drive like a maniac, or that I could kick his ass at pool or that I still listen to the Cranberries and Portishead even though they haven’t been cool since 1996 and probably weren’t even that cool then. There’s no box for the fact that when it comes to pie, I’m very anti-a la mode, or that I’ve seen “Annie Hall” about 500 times and that, yes, I’m one of those annoying people who says my favorite lines with the characters.

But then again, if there were boxes for all that, I guess there would be no room left for mystery. And in this I guess it’s clear why Americans like online dating: in a society where convenience is king, online dating is easy and quick, and if you want it to be, it can be completely painless. You like someone, you click and you’ve just e-mailed him. You don’t like someone, it’s just another click and you never have to see or hear from him again.

Of course the initial fear when leaving your romantic fate up to the cyber gods is obvious: what if no one finds you? Apparently the odds are in your favor as a singleton. A surprising 44 percent of adult Americans are single, although there are only 86 single men for every 100 single women, Broussard says.

After just two days with my profile posted, I had the information for five potential matches conveniently waiting for my approval in my e-mail inbox. I was wondering how I had ever depended on meeting the right person at a bookstore or in the coffee line, when all of a sudden I get picky about whom I’m choosing online.

“Matt” is 45 and has never been married. After a glance over the rest of his stats, it’s easy to see why. His rap sheet says he was in the military until he was 30, is listed as a born-again Christian after a brief stint in jail and counts the National Rifle Association and a Texas militia group as two of his interests. Honesty is good, but I don’t see that working out.

“Michael” is 24, has never been married and says he hates movies with subtitles. And in his profile photo, he is flexing his arms as if my imagination will plug in the biceps just as easily as his apparently has. No thanks.

“John” is a 34-year-old widower and therefore too risky. She may have been a tough act to follow, and that’s too much pressure.
“Will” is 27, extremely attractive, and wants to go to law school. Sounds good at first, but he says he deplores women who drink and prefers to date a moderate conservative who is “looking to settle down.” I’m almost tempted to answer this one just to mess with him.

Then there is “Jeremy.” He’s 28 years old, never been married, plays bass in a band for fun and has a degree in social work.
Bingo.

I opened my cell phone, called the personals number and dialed the five-digit security code on Jeremy’s response e-mail. These calls are $1.99 per minute, so I decided to keep it to the basics and leave him the shortest message I could. So, naturally, the exact opposite of what I thought would happen, happened: He answered.

After a brief explanation of my afternoon call and how I actually didn’t have his cell number but that I’d been redirected to his cell via the service, we got down to business in the usual date speak.

“So, anyway, I just wanted to call and have a voice to put to the name,” I said.

Translation: I went out on a limb and called. Please reward me by saying you want my number.

“Why don’t we meet?” Jeremy asked.  “Do you want to meet?”

Translation: I’m tempted, but not desperate, so act like you want to meet me.

“I don’t know. Do you want to meet?”

Translation: I’ve reverted to the conversation skills of a second-grader because I’m nervous.

“I don’t know. Tell you what,” he said. “Let me go home tonight and look at your profile and I’ll call you back if I think we should.”

Translation: I want to see your picture to figure out if you’re a dog before we go any further.

I gave him my phone number and wondered if I shouldn’t answer a few more responses just in case Jeremy fell through. But he called me back later that night before I got the chance. This time he was much more friendly and seemed comfortable.
Apparently the photo I posted hit a chord somewhere. We agreed to meet in Missoula since he lived in Polson and had to visit a friend in Missoula that weekend anyway.

After a few awkward minutes of conversation over mission burritos, ignoring the kid, I finally got up the courage to ask the looming question.

“So it says on your profile you’ve never been married,” I said.

“No, never been married,” Jeremy said, leaning toward me and away from the boy. “His mom’s kind of a bee-otch, you know?”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “So you raise him on your own?”

“Oh, god, no,” he said with a laugh. “No, he’s with her most of the time in Polson or with my mother. But I like to bring him on the dates. It’s good for him.”

Yes, what an example to set, I thought.

“Do you really think it’s good for him?” I said, suddenly noticing the kid hadn’t actually made a sound the entire time we’d been talking, which seemed unusual for a 2-year-old.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “This way when I meet her I’ll be able to say he was there.”

“Her?” I said.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “Don’t you believe in ‘the one’? If there’s going to be one for me she has to be for him, too.”

“I guess it never hurts to be honest,” I said.

“Well, everybody uses everything they have. My buddy used to bring his ferret on dates to show he liked animals,” Jeremy said.

Right. So bringing your toddler son on a date is now the equivalent of bringing a pet to function as a chick magnet. I was a little more than disappointed in the possibility that Jeremy was using his son as a weapon of ambush. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being played here.

I decided I couldn’t risk it, and when we’d finished I told Jeremy I wasn’t looking for anything that serious. He said he understood and wished me luck.

When I got home, my e-mail inbox was again replenished. Chuck, Jared and Shawn all wanted to meet me. I clicked them out of my e-mail and closed my profile on the dating Web site. I guess it’s fine to shop online for “the one,” but I couldn’t shop for the crackle of a good conversation or that one spontaneous moment when you meet the guy in the coffee line who drives like a maniac, still likes the Cranberries and doesn’t need a code to get your phone number.