Looking for one that’s just right…
***Hawaiian would like to warn his readers that this post contains content intended for an adult audience, and may not be suitable for young children, social conservatives, or graduates of Liberty University.***
So it’s probably no surprise to most of you that nearly all of the fish I’ve thrown back in the dating pool for the last few years have been caught in online wells. Believe it or not, I’m actually quite shy in groups of people despite looking more like a bouncer than a club kid, and since I don’t really drink and I can look at profiles during commercial breaks(because we’ve established that I don’t have TiVo), going to bars with the hope of meeting someone worth meeting seems really inefficient, frankly. Of course, I can dismiss a bar filled with 50 guys who spent their weekend doing meth a bit more quickly than I can get through 50 profiles of guys whose pictures predate their PNP days, but when given the option, I’m going to argue for whatever form of effiency allows me to be a homebody.
Which is precisely how I started watching my latest soon-to-be-convicted pleasure, Log In For Love. This new TLC show follows women on both coasts as they navigate the seas of online dating, and in more than one case, I’d say their ships are sinking. I’m also not entirely sure that any of them have lifeboats.
In fairness, I think these women could really use some coaches to get them through this territory. There are things they don’t seem to understand about cyberspace… things that gay men seemed to have figured out a long, long time ago. Like, for example, men will add at least 2″ to any bodily measurement they post(except their waists), and if they don’t post any number at all, you probably don’t want to know. They also advertise themselves at the age they feel on the inside, or the age their stylist tells them they look, or the age of their skin in days since their last chemical peel.(Let’s hope that last one is actually gay-specific)
They also lie about what they do, or are so vague that they might as well be lying. “Banker” can actually mean “bank teller”. “Consultant” can actually mean “IT Guy”. And “writer” almost always means “waiter”. Doctors call themselves “medical professionals” to avoid the dates after their prescription pads, and nurses call themselves “medical professionals” in order to attract the dates looking for prescription pads. And apparently, for those who don’t know, being a pre-school teacher is in fact a white collar profession. Who knew?
Also, “I have no children” can actually mean “I do not have custody at this time.” “I’m looking for a long term relationship” should be followed by the invisible caveat “but not on here.” And “I’m an ass man” actually means he never plans to look at your face during sex. Slowly but surely, the ladies who’ve logged in for love are all learning these lessons.
And needless to say, these are all very difficult and occasionally painful lessons to learn, and if these women had a Hawaiian-style handbook to get them through the tough times, they might not spend so much time overtanning, asking their sisters for approval on men they’ve only known for a week who might be “The One,” and getting French-tipped manicures. (I really, really don’t like the French tip.)
And yet, despite all of my bad experiences, I still manage to be surprised by the men I catch by using the Net. Just this past weekend, in fact, I was surprised twice. Twice. In one weekend. And I don’t think I’d call either of them particularly good surprises.
Take, for example, my Saturday coffee date with a banker roughly my age. An actual banker. With an actual bank. He was funny on the phone. Friendly. Slight southern accent. Has a dog, lives alone, and perhaps has a questionable relationship with Jaegermeister, but all in all, there was potential. Or so I thought.
To be clear, I’m pretty open about a lot of things. Lined up, the last few men I’ve dated look like a Benetton ad, and they vary in both size and shape. They are consistently one thing, however, and that’s not small. I don’t like small men. I can deal with short, and I can deal with lean, but I can’t deal with them both on the same body. I feel like I might break men built that way, and the last thing I need to encounter in the bedroom is anything that says “Fragile… Handle With Care.” And this guy… well, this guy was actually tiny. Tiny. TINY. Even his head was so small that the earpieces of his sunglasses were at least an inch too long, and that’s not a measurement where I’m adding any additional length. And after I got one look at his Nicole Richie-sized thigh next to my own “I can’t even buy jeans because of these” leg, I knew that the banker and I were definitely not going to be a good fit.
Of course, there’s more than one way to be a bad fit, as I was also reminded this weekend.
So for a couple of weeks now, this Israeli guy has been hounding me to go out with him. Online, of course. And not that I’ve seen him in person, but in pics he’s a bit more rugged than I’m used to. His hypermasculine features apparently cross a line that I didn’t know was there. It’s almost a Ron Moss/Don Swayze sort of thing. He’s been incredibly sweet, however, and so I was pretty sure there was more to him than meets the eye… until he decided to show it to me on his webcam.
Call me a naive to the ways of the mainland, but is it not fair to assume that if someone wants you to view their webcam while they’re still at work, that the MPRB wouldn’t give this anything worse than a PG-13, even on a bad day? I didn’t realize just how casual Fridays had gotten until he grinned at me on the cam, leaned back, and fished what can only be called a monstrous Anacobra out of his pants. It waved at me briefly as though hypnotized before he moved back in front of the cam and grinned broadly while typing “This is what happens to my body when I think about you.”
Needless to say, that’s pretty much as close as I need to get to things to know that that particular Papa Bear and I just aren’t going to fit.
Lesson for the ladies of Log In For Love?
Don’t go out with a man if he can’t save the after-dinner show in his pants until after dinner. And hat size is way more important than you think.