Lately I’ve been thinking about dating. It’s a bit embarrassing to still be at this point but here I am, age 42, just kinda sorta thinking about dating. I think part of the problem is that I had a lot of serious relationships early on. From 18-24, I went from one serious partner to another, with brief breaks in between and sometimes no break at all. I was also engaged in my early thirties and nearly got married—I had a wedding dress and everything when I decided to bail on that life. I had two other relationships that were quite long and had a strong married vibe. And even when single, I always had my eye on someone. And while I still have crushes, I have no idea how to handle this part of my life. After years of being too ill to even take care of myself much less consider a life with someone, I am finally well enough to consider a real relationship but how?
I’ve been on dating sites but all in all, I’ve been on three online dates in my entire life. One became a guy I dated for nearly half a year. Another was a weird awkward one-off. The other is probably the main reason I don’t go on more online dates: I find them terrifying.
Usually the issue is I use my real name and people google me and realize I am a writer and, well, you’d be amazed how many aspiring writers there on dating apps and how badly they want you read their work and help them with their careers. A big no thanks on that.
But the horrific date than made me wary of online dating is quite a story. It was 2013 and I’d just moved back to New York after some time in New Mexico and California dealing with serious illness—a time not unlike this, except I was 35 and I had never gone on a single online date. I was crashing with my friends Jaclyn and Sahra, in their East Village apartment as I looked for an apartment, a job, and a partner. I was trying to rebuild my whole life. I had little money but I finally had my health back and my next novel was coming out in a year. It was a hopeful time. My friends encouraged me to try online dating even though they had had no luck. They recommended Tinder and I tried it for 24 hours until I was just disgusted. Then another friend Whitney was over once as we ordered food and she mentioned a now defunct dating site that targeted a very educated set. It was mostly Ivy League grads and people who went to schools like we did: Sarah Lawrence, Johns Hopkins, NYU, University of Chicago, Swarthmore, etc. Good schools, in other words. I checked it out and it looked a bit better than Tinder. I began trying my luck.
[my first online dating profile photo, 2013]
A guy—let’s call him Chris—contacted me. I was relieved after my Tinder experience of very freakish dudes aggressively asking me out. Chris was a University of Texas grad, he worked at a start-up, he had sandy blond hair and nice eyes, and mostly seemed normal. He mentioned he was working on a novel but did not link it to me being a novelist and this was refreshing. He lived in the East Village too and suggested we meet Angel’s Share, the speakeasy style “secret bar” that of course was a beloved of this former bar columnist.
We met. Chris was more handsome than in photos and charismatic. He was funny and laughed a lot, which always matters to me. We talked about our work, our health journeys, our families, all the usual stuff. I got quite drunk but he seemed mostly sober after several whiskey cocktails. He walked me home and kissed me goodbye on the cheek. It was a perfect pleasant date. When I got upstairs, I was glowing, and my friend Sahra was up and she was so delighted. “Now you can google him!”
The thing was she was a bit of a dating pro and she had encouraged me not to google before the date. It ruins things, then you have to be an actor, then there’s no natural reactions, then you look like a creep if they find out. Do it the way they used to, before the internet. Let it be blind-ish. All this made sense to me. It was hard not google but I managed it. And I truly saw no reason to dig with him—he seemed very. . .stable.
So I googled, Sahra looking over my shoulder. The first thing that came up was a travel blog.
“Oh yeah, he’s traveled a lot!” I said, remembering him talking of Southeast Asia and obscure cities in Europe and some winters in West Africa. I liked this about him.
The travel blog had a lot of photos and it seemed like in most he was with a woman, a woman of a different race from each of the different locales. A real Miss World fan, Sahra snickered but I insisted this was not weird.
“It’s good that he is, you know, probably not that racist?” I offered.
We dug more into his blog. The writing was unremarkable. His bio was everything I knew. I noticed there was a whole music section.
“That’s weird, I talked a lot about having been a music journalist and he never mentioned music,” I thought out loud.
We opened up the tab and it looked like there were a bunch of songs. None of the audio worked but there were lyrics.
Reader, are you ready for this?
You are not, I promise you.
Chris had a dozen songs that he had penned—they had an amateur copyright tag on each—and they all seemed to be about one topic.
I am not exaggerating. Please take a deep breath:
THEY WERE ALL ABOUT DISMEMBERING WOMEN.
All of them.
About mutilating women, young and old, watching them bleed and die, cutting their pretty limbs, the works. There was one song I swear was called “Sexy Psycho.” There was another called “Beautiful Girls” and I thought this one might be different but nope, it was all about how beautiful girls would steal all your money and in the end you had to murder them.
“Oh my god,” Sahra said. “You almost want to call 911.”
I was speechless, trembling. “Maybe they are, you know, persona poems?” but who was I kidding.
This man was insane and probably dangerous and all this energy would reveal itself when it was too late, probably in a sexual context.
“Was he sort of goth?” My friend Jaclyn asked the next morning.
“No, not at all,” I said, remembering his sensible cable-knit sweater, jeans, and nice shoes. “He was almost preppy.”
“American psycho,” Jaclyn muttered.
And I realized that was kind of right. He tested me the next day wondering if I wanted to see a movie. I did not text back. I blocked his number and that was it. Goodbye, my sexy psycho.
So this story is the reason why I am scared of dating maybe. I don’t trust myself entirely. Maybe there were signs with this guy? How could he be that bad and I would have had no clue? I also realized you really do have to google people.
So here I am scrolling Hinge, flipping through Bumble, wondering if I should pull the trigger on Tinder again, and does OkCupid even exist? I think of how my brother’s friend lost his virginity to an older woman who gave him an STD and got so drunk on that one date that she vomited in his mouth during their first and last make-out. It’s scary out there.
I’ve dated steel heirs, music critics, DJs, visual artists, graphic designers, photographers, playwrights, fashion designers, philosophers, professors, one engineer, and way too many writers. They’ve been all sorts. I feel exhausted in many ways. But I guess like all things in my life, I am happy that I have stories. Just my stories on well-known writer men I’ve had flings with could make a pretty juicy book.
A Buddhist teacher I had once told me if I only put the same energy I put into romantic love as I did into my work I would be with my ideal partner. I was skeptical but maybe he had a point. Maybe this deserves time. At Thanksgiving at a friend’s I happen to sit next to a dating coach and she tells me she can already tell I put out the wrong energy and that I don’t know what I want.
“That seems, you know, pretty normal, right?” I say smiling.
“No, not at all,” she says, no smile. “There is nothing normal about creating situations where you reject love.”
“Oh no, I really do love love,” I say weakly.
She squints her eyes at me. “I can already tell,” she sighs and leaves it at that. And the end of the dinner she leaves me her card. “You probably won’t reach out,” she says.
I don’t. But I think about it a lot!
It reminds me of how a few years ago a matchmaking site contacted me on LinkedIn of all places. I somehow was checking LinkedIn! Anyway I decided to meet up with them. They specialized in setting women up with guys with real jobs. Rich guys it seemed that was code for. I went in with my usual scruffy leather jacket and jeans and this blond tan Long Island girl looked me up and down.
“That outfit is not something I would recommend on a date,” she said. “And also I would straighten your hair. Is that your usual makeup?”
I told her I wasn’t wearing makeup.
“You should,” she said bored, snapping her gum. She showed me a few photos of South Asian guys in suits. “Raj own his own company and loves sushi and salsa dancing.”
I nodded and nodded. She said they’d get in touch with me and never did.
Another time a psychic in Hollywood grilled me on this until I broke down and said, “I’m pretty sure the reason I am single these days is because I am really crazy.”
The psychic closed their eyes for a while and then opened them and smiled. “You know, you’re right.”
I tried to smile back.
“But you know, you can work on it,” she said. “I did and I’m better now.” She paused. “You know, just hide it at first.”
Reader, spring is coming and I smell hopelessness but a pretty sort of hopelessness, scenic and the stuff of good stories at least. But hey, surprise me, universe?!