Hate Date

Every time I start dating someone new, I get déjà vu. Why does this feel so familiar? Oh right, because I date the same brooding artists over and over again. I like them skinny and sensitive, the more introverted, the better. What’s that? You can’t make eye contact and seem gay? Get inside me!

But enough is enough. It’s 2012, I’m approaching 30, and it’s time to take a risk. I’ll always be attracted to an ethereal wisp but I need something new. I decided to do an experiment. I would go on a dating site, find someone who is the complete opposite of my type, and go out with him. It could turn out as the worst date of my life or the best “how did you two meet?” story in history. Either way, this kind of flimsy premise works in every single rom-com so obviously it is going to work for me.

If you are not familiar with OKCupid (don’t lie), next to every profile picture there are three percentages. The numbers represent the likelihood of that person being a match, friend, or enemy. The enemy number is fascinating. What do you mean this person is 15% my enemy? What constitutes an enemy, anyway? According to dictionary.com, it is “a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another.” So, I’m basically going to go on a date with my stepmom. Awesome.

As I started browsing guys, all the profiles that came up had very low enemy ratings. I couldn’t find anyone with more than eight percent. Logically, that’s how a dating site works. It tries to match you up with people who share your values and opinions. That is what most people want. But for this project, savvy computer programming was an obstacle. To circumvent this, I had to create a fake profile that reflected the opposite of how I really feel. Below is a small sample of questions I answered falsely:

Do you believe homosexuality is a sin? Yes. 
Do you think creationism should be taught alongside evolution in schools? Yes.
Do you like having intellectual conversations? No.
Would you rather be considered weird or normal? Normal.
How important is religion in your life? Very important.

After filling in the answers, the computer did its voodoo and brought up my matches. Hot tip: Turns out that men who think homosexuality is a sin are FRIGHTENING. The majority of profile pics would have made excellent mug shots. Lots of meaty faces, dead eyes, and spiky hair. If you are wildly attracted to Fred Durst, this is your demo. On the whole, the dudes were conservative, working in finance, and living outside of New York City (Jersey and Long Island were repping hard).

One guy had a profile picture that was just a close-up of a comically huge arm muscle. Under the “What I’m looking for in a woman” category he wrote “a nice rack. lol” This gave me pause. Am I going to get date-raped by a “very religious” guy just to get an interesting story for a magazine? I had to scale back my enemy percentage to the 50-60% range because above that, the guys were too intimidating. That immediately eliminated the next candidate, StraightNasty#1.

After collecting ten names of guys who seemed friendly enough, I logged back into my real profile and started asking them out. This is the message I sent out: “Hi there, my name is Rose. I'm trying a little personal experiment to go on dates with people outside of my normal type. I want to mix it up. I think I've maxed out on brooding, emo artists. I think I'm ready to hang out with someone fun. Let me know if you wanna get a drink sometime.”

Weeks went by and I didn’t hear back from a single person. It was kind of an ego blow, but finally, a buff ex-Marine with a goatee responded. He wrote, “Ciao bella. You know that's funny that you said that because I'm pretty tired of dating 'my type' also. Rose, you actually sound like fun and a drink should definitely be in the works ;).” I immediately wrote him back and then he never responded again. In plain terms, I got rejected by a guy with a GOATEE! By far my lowest moment of 2012. This whole process of getting dissed by jocks was getting tiring. What is this, high school? I wanted to write back to all of them, “I don’t even WANT to go out with you anyway, this is a fucking experiment!” But at that same time, I understand, I’m not their type, just like they aren’t mine. Just to give you an idea of what I look like, imagine Pamela Anderson but Jewish, pale, small-chested, and a hipster. Basically, a bro-ner killer.

Finally, after another week of white noise, right as I was about to give up on the whole project, I got a response from a nice, cute Catholic boy. Mike (fake name) was handsome, sweet, and obviously open-minded. We decided to meet at a piano bar near my house.

The night of the date I was excited and nervous. I wasn’t sure what to wear. What would make me look like a tan volleyball player who was popular in high school? NOTHING, that is impossible. I just had to go as myself. So I put on a short vintage dress, some red lipstick, messed up my shaggy brown hair, and ran out of the house.

I recognized Mike as soon as he walked into the bar. He had big arms, big hands, and a wide, handsome face. He was 100% Irish Catholic and there were a lot of cops in his family. He was definitely sexy in this “I would get in an unnecessary bar fight” kind of way. Nothing androgynous about him. We ordered drinks along gender stereotypes: he got a stout beer and I got a vodka spritz thing.

Here is how the conversation went:

Me: What do you do for a living?
Him: I work in real estate and write for a sports blog.
[Long silence]
Me: [Deciding not to follow up on that] Where did you grow up?
Him: Long Island.
Me: How many brothers do you have?
Him: Frat brothers or actual brothers?
Me: Are you serious?

The date was off to a rocky start but after a couple more drinks we both loosened up a lot. He was really polite and asked me a lot of questions and was a very engaged listener. I was impressed with how open he was to meeting someone totally different, to learning about me. He seemed like a genuinely good guy. We covered the usual first date topics: family, jobs, places we wanted to travel. It was starting felt like a real date.

As we continued drinking things got a lot flirtier and sillier, we shared some food and started laughing at dumb jokes. I was finding excuses to touch his arm and by the time the check arrived, I was wasted. He paid the check (zing) and we stumbled out of the bar. Wandering into McCarren Park we decided to “hang out” on a bench for a while. Suddenly, all our differences—religious, political, sartorial—became irrelevant, the point was we were both hornly (horny + lonely).

I am not going to give you the gory details but I will leave you with this; I might be preggs and the baby is going to have a huge fucking head. Sike! It didn’t go that far. I don’t have real sparks with Mike, I’m positive that without adventure juice (four strong cocktails) nothing would have happened. This experiment is finished in the formal sense, but I hope I’m always challenging myself to be open to new people. Finding romance is tough but it’s impossible if you are looking for some idealized image in your head. I really think I’ve changed my…oh dang….I think that barista with a rat tail is looking at me. Is he looking? Anyway, like I said, I feel like I’ve really changed and…Shit, he’s coming over here, gotta go.

@rosesurnow