On online dating

I first tried online dating a few years ago when I was in law school and all the boys I knew were 10 to 15 years younger than me. I just wanted the chance to meet men of a more appropriate age. The online thing worked in the sense that I went on actual dates, once even more than one with the same person. But it did not work in the sense that most of the men I met online seemed painfully ordinary, a couple were extremely dull, and I was certain that several of them were not, in fact, single (I only went out with one of those). Within a couple of months, I got bored with the whole thing and stopped playing.


4 nights ago, on a whim, I registered on a Czech dating site. I got frustrated looking at the site’s dumb profile questions, like “Do you shave your legs?” and “Is the condition of a man’s teeth important to you?” but luckily you don’t have to answer all of the questions to get into the action. I hadn’t realised this was going to happen, but as soon as I submitted my registration, my profile went straight to the top of the online list and the messages started coming in.

I was only on for about an hour but it was very interesting.

I got an offer from a young man in Plzeň who said that he would come over anytime for no-strings sex at my convenience and at no charge. He does parties too. There were a couple of other emails proposing just sex, but that is not what I am after. I am a girl and I hang out in bars - finding sex has never been the problem. I have determined that my actual problem lies in finding an interesting man who is not an emotional retard. Nothing against emotional retards, you understand, many in my own close social circle are emotional retards. Yes, including me. Anyway, that is why I have gone online.

I met an Italian man that could barely write in Czech or English so who knows what he was hoping for. Poor thing must be horribly lonely.

A couple of men were very predictable in their approaches.
“Would it be presumptuous of me to ask you for English lessons?”
“Well, yes, actually it would.”
As if I would register on a dating site so I could teach English to men who are too cheap to pay for teachers.

One guy sent me an opening message that said nothing except, “Do you like Zappa?” Well, at least he hadn’t asked for English lessons. Another man wrote to me in English, which was rather sweet.

And there was this other guy whose user name was a character out of a Kurt Vonnegut book so we had something to really talk about straight away. We exchanged photographs. Neither of us was disappointed so we continued to chat. I have already determined that he is age appropriate and literate, and I think it is fair to assume that he is heterosexual, but of course I don’t know if he is actually single.

Online dating seems to have a lot of advantages. You can chat to several people at once, you can shut someone out as soon as they start to annoy or bore you, and you don’t even have to brush your hair or put on make-up.

I think I’ll go back tonight.