I cancelled my eHarmony subscription today.  If the people I was matched with are my soulmates, I’d rather be alone.  I just can’t see myself dating someone who is 5′6″ and lives in Parsipanny, New Jersey.  I’m still on okcupid and nerve personals, but I’m going to take myself off of okcupid because it’s kinda lame.  This leaves me with the boys on nerve.  Which, rephrased, leaves me with basically nothing.  I’ve decided the online dating thing just doesn’t work for me.  If I’m making my decision based on someone’s photo, they have to be hot.  If I meet someone in person, they pretty much just have to be into me.

I’m going to look into other avenues for finding men.  The one that’s been the most successful thus far is what I lovingly refer to as “manhunting”.  Note: this is not to be confused with one of my favorite websites manhunt.com.  Manhunting is really just going out with a purpose.  Yes, the name is a little stupid, but setting clear, simple goals really does help and I can’t thinking of a simpler way to phrase going out to find a man than manhunting.  Here are the rules: First, we limit it to three girls.  Four girls is too intimidating for a guy to approach and two leaves one without anyone to talk to if the other is getting her flirt on.  Second, we plan our barhopping route based on where we think men are and only stay at a place as long as the hunting is good.  It doesn’t matter if you know the bartender or if you ran into someone you haven’t seen in awhile, if there are no men, we move on.  Third, it is a successful evening if one of us gets a man and we all help each other achieve that goal.  There isn’t any cattiness about one of us finding someone to flirt with while the others are chatting up his weird, hairy and ugly friends.  We’ve do this every couple of weeks and have a 100% success rate.

Speed dating is another avenue I’m willing to pursue, but I really want a girlfriend to come with me.  I feel like I should do this if only for the subsequent blog post(s) it would produce.

I was watching that wretched show “Millionaire Matchmaker’ on Bravo yesterday and the woman had some interesting ideas.  She said to go to electronics expos and comic book/sci-fi events.  According to her, it’s not just nerds that go to these things.  Men with any disposable income like to buy themselves toys so if you choose selectively, you might find a winner.  Interesting.  Not quite sure I’m ready to scope out Comic-Con for a boyfriend…yet.

Any other ideas?  Anyone up for a little speed dating?

I’m not old.  I’m 27.  I’m also not a baby either and fear that I’ve officially stepped over the “grown up” line that I’ve been toeing for the past couple of years.  Last night, I was out on a date with eHarmony guy and we had the past relationships talk.  Usually, my six year relationship and subsequent faux “divorce” totally trumps everyone.  Not last night.  Right after I tell my story, he tells his.  Muthaf*cker is DIVORCED and HAS A KID!!!  I took the news like a champ because I’m not really into him and was already 5 glasses of wine into the evening.  Thinking about it this morning I realized that regardless of the fact that he should have told me sooner, I am now at an age where it’s totally reasonable for people to be divorced.  I am at the age where I can date a man my age who is a divorcee.  The kid thing is scandalous and is the deal breaker, but there’ve always been people in my age group with kids.  Divorce seems like a whole other animal.  I am now at the age where someone I date had enough time to date someone else, fall in love, get married, fall out of love, go through the motions of a messy breakup AND deal with lawyers.   Chances are his whole relationship was probably shorter than mine, but there’s something so grown up about getting a divorce and having a kid.  Oh, and I’m not the only one this has happened to this week.  My friend started dating a guy and found out he was divorced too!  I hate to say it guys, but…we’re getting old.  Wait, not old - growing up.

So, I had my first eHarmony date last night.  It went well.  I was weirdly nervous at first.  My hands were shaking for like the first 10 minutes.  That always happens when I speak in public but I hide my hands and no one ever notices, but it’s hard to hide the shakes when you are drinking a martini.  Other than that, I brought my A game.  He seems alright.  By the end of the second Ketel One martini I thought he was cute enough and he gave good conversation.  Well travelled, seems to have a good job, full head of hair, dishwasher.  Oh!  And he smokes when he drinks so that’s a huge plus, for me.  By the end of the third drink I found out he was a good kisser.  I also found out he’s seen every episode of Sex & the City.  The gay man inside me swooned for that in a serious way.  By the end of the fourth, he asked me out again.  The cons: he’s allergic to cats, has a roommate and eats a lot of meat.  I was trying to be a lady therefore didn’t do my signature crotch grab to guage the size of the goods.  I guess we’ll have to see.  Keep you posted.

A few months ago I decided I was going to try eHarmony after the holidays.  I have a friend who does it and actually meets fun people, well, fun people for her.  She gets all these investment bankers and traders who shop at Barney’s and hang out at the hottest clubs.  That’s a pretty good fit for her.  I tend prefer my guys a little less buttoned up but I’m sick of meeting “artists” or “writers” (aka waiters and temps) at bars in Williamsburg so I’m going to give this eHarmony thing a try to see if I can meet a cool guy somewhere inbetween stock broker and just plain broke.

Anyway, I’m filling out the profile thing now because I heard that if you do it and don’t sign up they’ll send you some discounts.  Plus, you get to see some of your matches and it helps with my whole not-doing-work-at-work pastime.  This questionnaire has hundreds of questions, mostly picking things out on a scale of one to seven with a few open ended ones.  I’m having such a hard time answering these things.  One of them was “Name the three things you are MOST thankful for”.  My response to this one took me and my top gay about 45 minutes to answers because I want to be truthful but when you don’t know me some of the stuff that comes out of my mouth doesn’t make sense.  Were I to answer this question truthfully, I would say:

1. Puppies
2. Homosexuals, specifically male homosexuals
3. DVR

If you know me, it makes so much sense.  I DO love puppies.  They turn my cold, black heart into a warm, gooey s’more.  And I DO love homosexuals.  My life without gay men would be unimaginable.  And, well, I’ve often been heard referring to my DVR as my boyfriend.  That said, if you don’t know me I sound like a fat chick with a bobblehead kitten collection.  So how did I respond?

1. It sounds generic, but I’m thankful for my mom and my close friends.
2. I’m thankful for being healthy and happy.
3. DVR

That sounds much more normal, right?  It also doesn’t sound like that took two people 45 minutes to come up with.

The question that just popped up is “What are you passionate about?”  This is gonna take me like 3 days to finish.  Off the top of my head, here’s what I am really, actually passionate about:

I am passionate about pop music, specifically Britney Spears; drinking wine and smoking cigarettes; gay men and their preferred brand of lubricant; Gossip Girl; men with large penises; men with accents; men with puppies; the zoo; Mexican food; wearing the color royal blue; not cleaning my apartment; Ambien and Xanax; Robert Pattinson; gossip blogs; ordering french fries at fancy restaurants; good tequila; dancing with gay men; dancing with black men; reading; and, finally, having fantastic hair.

That girl sounds like a train wreck!  A fun, hella cool train wreck you would love to have as a friend, but deffo not someone you would choose to date based on reading that.  Aight, I’m gonna go attempt to sound like a normal person now.  Wish me luck!

UPDATE:  Here’s what I ended up writing.  It actually only took me like half an hour.

I’m passionate about having fun.  Life should be something to enjoy and not just trudge through.  I work to live – not live to work.  My friends are very important to me.  The people you surround yourself with make all the difference so why not put a little extra effort into keeping the good ones around.  On a less philosophical note, you could also say I’m passionate about celebrity gossip, ordering French fries at fancy restaurants and paying the extra couple of bucks for the good scotch.