The illusive art of dating

Another relationship failed. And I find myself in a swanky apartment in a downtown metropolis with a bunch of free time and a handful of awesome friends, most of whom have someone to share their lives with and occupy most of their time. What’s a girl to do?

BLOG!

I spent my long weekend cleaning my apartment from top to bottom. Most of my friends went camping, but I insisted on staying in and cleaning house, literally. I got out my cleaners and got up on a step ladder and down on my hands and knees. I put all of his belongings in a green garbage bag (i’ll never throw it out, it will stay in the closet until he decides to come retreive it. I’m not that mean.) and all of the stuffed animals he gave me in another. My roommate suggested I give it to goodwill, a great idea, when I’m ready. I put all of the romantic gifts he gave me in a box. I ignored his insulting break up texts and focused my attention on laundry and a glass of wine. My entire body broke out in hives, from stress or from cleaner, I’m not sure. I realized the things I’m looking forward to now that I’m single. 

Tonight, I logged in to an old friend, Plenty of Fish. I had perused it a month before, as I felt that things were falling apart, but I wasn’t ready to make any moves. Tonight, I created a new profile. A rough draft, at best, with three smiling pictures. I received immediate responses from a dozen men. Turns out I am rusty at this. My mind kept repeating rule # _______, the one about not talking for too long before someone asks you for a date. Trying to stay on track, I gave my phone number out to a young man after just a few messages. I may have a stalker. He called me right away and asked me questions like “what do you look for in a guy” 

Urgh. I hate doing this! Why am I doing this again?

So there we have it. My seguay back into dating. I’m looking forward to lots of douchery this time around.

Having re-immersed myself in this project as much as possible - which at the moment is about 2 hours a week as I don’t have home Internet access - I am not generating the response I have been hoping for.

I have received a few pathetic messages, most of which are in broken English, only two of which I found remotely interesting.

The first consisted of two words; “marry me!” which implored me to tell the gentleman that he was by far my most interesting message of the day. Upon my prompt to entertain me, he regurgitated some stereotypically ridiculous sentence about how he’s sure he could entertain me but how he did not want to sound like a pervert.

Sigh.

The second consisted of a guy who seems genuinely nice insisting that he really would just like to take me out on a date, not try to get me drunk and have a one night stand.

This made me chuckle. The level of his insistence led me to believe that either;

a) He is actually just trying to get me drunk and have a one night stand. (This would not phase me really, I have it fully within my power to stay sober and later mock his feeble pick-up attempts on the Internet to tens of strangers)

b) He is often accused of this by women he tries to woo on plenty of fish. (This amuses me because most of them are just whores that try to give off the illusion of being chaste in order to trick a guy into thinking that they are special and he should keep them around)

This being said, my year old profile is not generating the response that I had been hoping for. This leads me to believe that either my profile is out of date, that the fact that I cannot stand one hundred percent behind it right now is somehow cosmically evident, or that this metropolis has a different market that I need to gear myself towards. I’m going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. Time to pull up my socks and recreate myself one more time….

When I started this project I expected to gain a few things - confidence, life experience, new writing skills, perhaps even notoriety from my peers. Some how I ended up with what I least expected - a boyfriend.

Over the last 9 months, I’ve had a few friends inquire as to why I wasn’t writing anymore, and I gave them several excuses, but quite frankly none of them were true. The truth is, I’ve been too embarrassed by my actions to write about them, After a trip home, some encouragement from a supporter, and much reflection on my behalf, I decided to do it anyways I’m not the only person to ever act like a stupid girl.

Fortunately for me, I will not have to bore you with the details of the conclusion of my so-called relationship. Before I could make it to the Internet cafe to write this all down, the relationship met it’s demise. I have been a single lady for just over two weeks, and it feels phenomenal.

Today, as I re-activated my plenty of fish account, a strange sensation swept over me. It was this mixture of insecurity and dread. Oh god, I have to meet a bunch of horny losers again. Am I the same person I was last year? This profile that I wrote doesn’t seem to describe me. They are the words of a cocky attractive person, not me!

I have a feeling it’s going to take a while to get back that confident person who I used to be. I miss her. I didn’t realize how much my bad relationship was taking out of me.

I have decided, upon encouragement from a friend, to re-enter the wonderful world of date-blogging.

Stay tuned for updates…

I must apologize for my lack of posts as of late, September just about killed me, but I have many exciting adventures to regail you with! Look forward to reading more next week!

perfectlyperplexed:

What’s not to love? I wish I met her requirements so I could go on a date with her. Best of luck BZLadylots. http://www.plentyoffish.com/viewprofile.aspx?profile_id=21657653.

I affectionately refer to my closest girlfriends as my “skank sistas”.

This pet name evolved from a mantra that I used to tell my girlfriends,

“Whores do it for money, sluts do it for beer, skanks do it for fun.”

Our mantra caught on. I told anyone who would listen that us girls were “taking back the word”. One day, a friend dropped me off, and upon exiting the vehicle I exclaimed in a most booming voice from the passenger side of the vehicle, “Thanks for the ride, SKANK!” much to the horror of the elderly lady across the street.

My dating guru was the first one to point out the phenomena in a way that was rational and real. Although my friends and I had been “taking back the word” for some time by calling each other a previously shameful name in a non-threatening, even endearing way, she clarified the idea. Women have a tendency to be catty, to try to tear each other down in an effort to actualize their own supremacy. What if women, instead of tearing each other down, realized that by building each other up, we will all get to the top. We can help each other when the conditions are poor. If women could support each other we could all be queen-skanks!

I was out with one of my best skanks the other day, a 22 year old woman who is quite independent and shares many of my idiosincracies. We were out at a club that we would never dream of going into if it wasn’t a co-worker’s 19th bday. There were horny guys everywhere, and two of them took quite a liking to us. I couldn’t be bothered with them, but my skank thought they were absolutely adorable. I had shared my dating project with her, but it was only when I heard the words come out of her mouth that I realized this blog is not purely narcissistic.

“We CAN’T hang out tomorrow, we have plans! And we have plans all weekend too! If you want to take us out to lunch next week that will be fine. Have you been to ‘raw’, the trendy new place downtown? You can take us to lunch there, if you care to do so. Here is my number. We are taking a cab home now.”

The word is spreading. Us skanks are demanding us some serious respect.