AUDITIONS
I have quit the personals. Because I have some weird sense that the very idea of having a personals ad is a strike against a normal relationship. With myself.
Like everybody else, I am not a matrix of liked/disliked movies, music, and foods. Out of all of the people I'm attracted to, I doubt any of them would make it past a preliminary screening, because as much as they have qualities that I like, they have lots of qualities that I don't. Beyond that, I wouldn't even begin to figure out if they're attractive because of their looks or their personalities. Most of the time it's personality. And, because nobody is a matrix of their likes/dislikes, how would I expect to know this about somebody without some other information.
Of course, the main way to figure out if you like somebody's personality is a face-to-face meeting, but the last time I met with somebody from the personals, he was creepy and wouldn't shut up about orchids, his AMAZING TRANSLATIONS OF RIMBAUD, his deep deep respect for Kerouac as a technically brilliant writer (barf), and orchids once again. And he told me about a billion times that I was prettier than my picture, which, you're right, is a nice thing to say, but it started to seem like the only thing he could say, and sounded suspiciously stagey. Also, he tried to kiss me goodnight and I turned my cheek. And he wanted to drive me home, but sorry, NO WAY. I met a friend for coffee and told her half-jokingly that I would probably have an e-mail from him waiting when I got home. Which I did, by the way, and he included PICTURES OF HIMSELF WITH THE ORCHIDS. And a screen shot of his AMAZING RIMBAUD TRANSLATION. To which I replied, "Sorry, I didn't feel it, but thanks for an interesting evening." To which he replied twice (twice!) that it made no sense to go on another date if I wasn't into it. Twice! As if I hadn't already called the whole thing off! At least I got a poem out of it, my favorite from last semester.
So, in the aftermath of that particular weirdness, I stopped replying to anybody's messages. But I still checked my little personals thing a lot, just to see how many people viewed my profile, or winked at me, or whatever. I was some kind of approval vampire feeding on the false internet attention. So I deleted it a few weeks ago, because the whole thing seemed too ridiculous and sad to continue. Partly because I don't care to read another description of somebody's dream girl that runs like this: "I'm looking for an intelligent woman, somebody who does something creative with her life, funny, interesting, please be in shape." That's me, except for the shape part. We all know what that means. It may as well read, "no fatties." It's even worse when they lament their terrible luck in not meeting this amazing woman yet. And I realized that I didn't actually want to meet any of these people, but I did want to know how many of them found my one picture attractive. Which is gross and troubling to me.
I've gone cold turkey. I have no anonymous internet sources of physical approval. I think it's better this way, because the whole evaluative mess of the personals is too much for me.
But I am never going to give up the missed connections. Those are my soap operas, okay? I have to go because Blind Date is on TV!
I have quit the personals. Because I have some weird sense that the very idea of having a personals ad is a strike against a normal relationship. With myself.
Like everybody else, I am not a matrix of liked/disliked movies, music, and foods. Out of all of the people I'm attracted to, I doubt any of them would make it past a preliminary screening, because as much as they have qualities that I like, they have lots of qualities that I don't. Beyond that, I wouldn't even begin to figure out if they're attractive because of their looks or their personalities. Most of the time it's personality. And, because nobody is a matrix of their likes/dislikes, how would I expect to know this about somebody without some other information.
Of course, the main way to figure out if you like somebody's personality is a face-to-face meeting, but the last time I met with somebody from the personals, he was creepy and wouldn't shut up about orchids, his AMAZING TRANSLATIONS OF RIMBAUD, his deep deep respect for Kerouac as a technically brilliant writer (barf), and orchids once again. And he told me about a billion times that I was prettier than my picture, which, you're right, is a nice thing to say, but it started to seem like the only thing he could say, and sounded suspiciously stagey. Also, he tried to kiss me goodnight and I turned my cheek. And he wanted to drive me home, but sorry, NO WAY. I met a friend for coffee and told her half-jokingly that I would probably have an e-mail from him waiting when I got home. Which I did, by the way, and he included PICTURES OF HIMSELF WITH THE ORCHIDS. And a screen shot of his AMAZING RIMBAUD TRANSLATION. To which I replied, "Sorry, I didn't feel it, but thanks for an interesting evening." To which he replied twice (twice!) that it made no sense to go on another date if I wasn't into it. Twice! As if I hadn't already called the whole thing off! At least I got a poem out of it, my favorite from last semester.
So, in the aftermath of that particular weirdness, I stopped replying to anybody's messages. But I still checked my little personals thing a lot, just to see how many people viewed my profile, or winked at me, or whatever. I was some kind of approval vampire feeding on the false internet attention. So I deleted it a few weeks ago, because the whole thing seemed too ridiculous and sad to continue. Partly because I don't care to read another description of somebody's dream girl that runs like this: "I'm looking for an intelligent woman, somebody who does something creative with her life, funny, interesting, please be in shape." That's me, except for the shape part. We all know what that means. It may as well read, "no fatties." It's even worse when they lament their terrible luck in not meeting this amazing woman yet. And I realized that I didn't actually want to meet any of these people, but I did want to know how many of them found my one picture attractive. Which is gross and troubling to me.
I've gone cold turkey. I have no anonymous internet sources of physical approval. I think it's better this way, because the whole evaluative mess of the personals is too much for me.
But I am never going to give up the missed connections. Those are my soap operas, okay? I have to go because Blind Date is on TV!
