I thought I had churned over the ethical implications of this blog enough before we started the project. Like other any blogger who puts personal information on the internet, I knew risks existed. After all, oversharing on the internet has already forced a huge shake-up in how we think about things like privacy and manners, one that is still very much ongoing.
But now I’ve met a real live girl that I actually like, and there could be more to follow. Considering these match girls are real people who could potentially be hurt if they learned the truth, is it really ok for our little funhouse to include them without their permission? And if one of the girls actually works out and dates me seriously, she’ll eventually have to read this blog. How will she react when she does? Best case is exasperation mixed with grudging admiration, but I wouln’t blame her for being furious with me.
I’m feeling the full brunt of the Macbeth dilemma, with no way to extricate myself from a previous rash decision. Being honest with Ellen now will get me nowhere, except possibly slapped in the face if she’s the dramatic type. Nope, I’ve got no choice but to try to see the whole thing through and hope for the best, since, as the Scot says, “Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
Time to put my own conscience back on the shelf where it’s been gathering dust since 1999. There’s no better option than to see where things go with the girls and let sleeping blogs lie.
Bloody, bold and resolute!
P.S. Even though you voted for me to keep Ellen dangling like the participle in the above blog entry (can you spot it?) I decided to text her anyways this morning. I do like her, after all.
My original plan of going to the bar alone, hovering tableside in the groucho marx mask and typing furiously away on a laptop was foiled early on. All it takes is one stroll down a new york city sidewalk, to realize there’s barely room for actual people to move, never mind an actual person with an actual oversized, laptop bag stuffed with disguises. So with resignation, I tucked a tiny note pad and pen into my back pocket, as my friend Duffy and I ventured out for some surrogate dating.
The plan: Christian and Ellen are to meet at a bar called the Auction House at 8:30pm.
What actually happened: I arrive at the bar at 8:20pm. A life-sized tootsie roll smoking on the front stoop informs me that it’s closed for a private Halloween party. Well done, Christian. Haven’t you ever heard of calling in advance for reservations??
There’s still 10 minutes till date-time, and Ellen will be early, that’s just the kind of girl she is. On the one hand, I don’t want to loiter and blow our cover. On the other hand, I am dying to see her up close. I pull up her match photo on my cell phone, “Isn’t she beautiful?” I say, “And she rates herself as average… She’s beautiful and she doesn’t even know it which is even more beautiful…” I am swooning so hard- like a girl at the window eagerly awaiting her prom date- that I barely notice when Duffy punches me square in the arm. “What?” I look up from my phone and there she is; my prom date in dark jeans, a khaki jacket, and gold hoop earrings, looking even more beautiful in person than she does in her mini match.com picture…
She walks past us without a second look, and I assuage my disappointment by reminding myself that we haven’t actually met, and she isn’t actually my date.
When Christian finally arrives to find the original bar closed, we follow the couple into Cavatappo, the city’s tiniest wine bar (see diagram below), narrow enough for easy listening and mirrored walls perfect for secret spying. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.
“She really is beautiful,” Duffy says, staring at Ellen’s reflection in the mirror. “And the back of Christian’s head looks good too… I’m so glad he’s cut his hair. Remember that awful haircut he had in college?”
Despite the fact that I gave him that awful haircut, Duffy is right. The back of Christian really does look good; dark jeans, light blue button down, and a pair of shoes that out-fancy anything I’ve got in my closet. And his head has vastly improved since he put the moratorium on my drunken haircuts. As I listen to him tell stories of his travels, books he’s read, the off-beat wine experiments he conducts, and how his big-time writing-job has evolved at the expense of his passion for creative writing, it’s clear that while I brought Ellen here, it is Christian who is really making the magic happen.
Ellen pulls something out of her purse and places it on the table. 3 packages of pastilles chocolates wrapped in a red bow. I gasp. “Those are my favorite chocolates!!” I shriek with envy. But tonight they are “Christian’s favorites” and Ellen was thoughtful enough to remember that- a fact that “Christian” wrote in one of the match emails very early on… “Look at her” Duffy coos. “She really likes him!” And it’s obvious; she does.
As the date continues, Duffy and I head out to the patio where we can giggle properly over this wild success. Shortly thereafter I see through the window Ellen grab her jacket. I panic. I can’t believe she’s leaving! After weeks of corresponding, I’m just not ready to let her go. I want to say hello, I want to ask her about her movie. I want to listen to her quiet laugh and eat those chocolates with her over red wine.
Ellen walks out first, then Christian. I stand up to face them. It’s now or never.
“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but did you go to Boston College?” I ask Christian. His face blanks and goes absolutely pale. He musters a nod and seems to be signaling “I’m going to kill you” with the squint in his eyes, but in the midst of my adrenaline rush, I decide to ignore it.
“I think you were in my philosophy class freshman year, with Professor Bollert, maybe?”
“Uh, yeah.” he says without even opening his mouth, the sound just eeks through a clenched jaw.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to be rude,” I turn and offer my hand to Ellen. “I’m Marissa nice to meet you.” She doesn’t seem at all put off by the way I’ve accosted her date. Instead she smiles.
“I’m Ellen.” I fight the urge to say, ‘I know.’ Then I remember Christian, who by this point seems to be on the cusp on an aneurism. Reluctantly, I let go of Ellen’s hand and realize I need to get him out of the situation fast or we’re going to blow the whole thing.
“Ah you don’t remember me do you?” I say, letting him off the hook.
“No.” he says firmly, and they start to walk away. I can barely believe that after weeks of trading stories, those 10 seconds of Ellen were all I got. Like everything beautiful, it passes so quickly.
“By the way,” I yell after them, “I love those chocolates. I grew up on those!” Ellen and Christian turn back to face me, and I’m glad for one last opportunity to see her face. I catch her eye and smile.
“Well, they’re all mine,” Christian yells back, as he takes Ellen’s arm and they walk off down the street.
“The term ‘big things’ can mean many, um, things. As long as they’re big, that is.” -One of the weirdest bloggers ever, no relation to de Bergerac
So Big Things: I went on a date with Ellen last night. but it wasn’t live blogged as we had promised. Sorry Internets!! I know you were all looking forward to it just like a little boy who’s been promised that his unreliable divorced dad will come to his big soccer game and looks forward to the game, thinking this will finally be the time his dad can see him play and be proud of him, then carries the team by scoring three goals only to find out his dad had something “last minute” come up and couldn’t make it OR SO I’VE BEEN TOLD!
But rest assured, blogosphere, Marissa de Bergerac was never far from my side, discreetly taking notes and trying not to stare too much.
A little bit unnerving: Ellen was already smitten with me/Marissa even before we met in person. The reams – and I do mean reams - of correspondance with MdB leading up to our date had Ellen crushing on MdB big time - cue my flood of guilt and generally weird feelings about the whole ruse. Still, it was undeniably refreshing to spend time with someone who was genuinely excited about meeting me, instead of the usual “You have 120 minutes to prove you’re not a loser and complete waste of my time” vibe most of the match girls broadcast.
She made a very strong impression: sweet, good-looking and a good conversationalist. For whatever reason, it stuck out that she called me by my first name more than most people do, as in “Christian, why is that stranger trying to eavesdrop on our conversation?” She also presented me with chocolates tied up in a little bow! I was equally charmed and weirded out by this. MdB will reveal more on why this happened later this afternoon.
Even though we were at a wine bar, Ellen ordered a beer, unmistakeably signaling that she was an a self-assured, independent thinker unafraid of bold and unconventional choices, at least according to the deluge of overanalysis from a certain adjacent table Ellen unknowingly triggered with her choice of beverage. Even though I scoffed at MdB’s interpretation, later events would prove her correct. Everyone gets lucky sometimes.
Other highlights: we later adjourned to a nearby piano bar and she sang me a song! Good voice, too. I was mentally penciling her in to sing with me playing the piano (not without more guilt though, as the ex and I did quite a bit of this in the old days). Also, on a bathroom break I had a quick phone call conversation with a breathless MdB, spewing advice like a 13-year-old at a slumber party.
But by Jove, MdB, you’ve done it! As promised, you’ve found a cool girl that I will definitely see again.
After the date, Marissa clamored for me to text Ellen right away saying what a great time I had, we should go out again, and other sops of feminine reassurance. All wrong, I argued. Sure, women say they want to be called/texted right away, but women are emotional creatures. Their prostrations to the contrary, deep down they long for the sturm und drang of not hearing from a love interest for a few days.
Having argued ourselves to an impasse, we leave it to you, ’sphere.
Last night I went on a moderately successful date with Annie the Lady Doctor, subject of a large crush from Marissa. “She’s so funny and quick on email,” MdB gushed to me last week.
“How do you know she’s quick?” I asked. ” For all you know, she could be spending hours writing, polishing and anguishing over how to be funny…like someone else I can think of.”
Match is not a Showcase Showdown. Let’s repeat that: Match is not a Showcase Showdown. What implications does that have for the would-be romancer? It means he isn’t force to throw away one bird in hand for another sight-unseen. Instead, he can bide his time, preserve his options and see what develops.
Things went pretty well last night. Thanks to a wrinkle in the young lady’s schedule, it ended up being a dinner date – gasp! Oddly, it took 15 minutes or so for us to warm up to each other but then she started growing on me as the evening progressed. She was definitely shyer in person than her bold, sassy profile would suggest – but I bet if she has an online confessional blog somewhere on the webs she’s probably saying the same about me. Maybe not using the word sassy.
I expected to be bothered by Annie the Lady Doctor’s short stature, but she carried her 5′2″ well and I thought she was pretty cute. Since I share her “former overachiever adjusting to life as a more or less average person” neurosis, we had a lot to talk about. Bottom line, Annie was an intelligent, kind and charming young lady – and those don’t grow on trees! So I’ll certainly consider her a promising candidate, but if it doesn’t work out I’m sure Marissa will be ready to swoop in on her.
Back before this blogging experiment began, Christian went on what he dubbed “The Matchathon:” a four-dates-in-three-days haze that severely taxed his stamina, patience, wallet and ability to metabolize alcohol.
The Matchathon was simply too much dating crammed into too small a space. Even the system of notecards Christian devised to track personal details couldn’t keep the girls from running together in his head (although he managed not mix up any of their names – no mean feat!)
Left with nothing but a low-grade hangover and a bunch of numbers to delete from his phone, Christian decided to shelve the Matchathon concept as hopelessly flawed.
Yet, because he is a hopeless romantic and a poor scheduler, Christian will give the Matchathon one more shot this week, with dates each night leading up to Thursday’s live blogging extravaganza. There he will try to tune out the sight of de Bergerac in her trench coat and felt hat typing away furiously on the laptop.
Dear Christian!
I need help!!! Your match.com inbox is out of control, I’m drowning in a sea of virtual women, and it’s unclear whether or not I’ll make it out alive! Afterall, a girl can only tread water for so long.
You have about 6 new winks. Pixley’s still waiting for me to confirm which night works best for drinks. Annie emailed her digits and wants to go out TONIGHT (which I know you’re not aware of, since you don’t have internet unless you’re at work). Ellen wants me to CALL her!! And though I was sure the email I sent to CinderellaGirl which said “so all i get is a sentence that says ‘so all i get is a wink?’ you can do better than that.” was surely going to be a turnoff, she’s fired back an email that actually contains more than 22 words. Right now, I don’t know if I have the literary fortitude to drum up a 22+ word response… These women are so highly communicative, and they all want me to pay attention to them all at the same time. Fake-dating has me so worn out, I just want to pay attention to a nap.
So Christian, I beg you. Get a damn internet connection in your apartment so you can start emailing these girls on the regular, or I’m going to have to go into your profile and make you far less desirable.
seriously. i mean it.
MdB
With a date – a dinner date, no less – scheduled with Ellen for next week, I hit the Match site to review the reams – and I do mans reams - of correspondence MDB has written to her in preparation.
But along the way, a cute profile pic caught my eye. Even though Marissa was supposed to be at the controls of my Match Profile, surely one little wink at one little blond joint couldn’t possibly do any harm, could it? Eh, I thought, what the heck. Odds are she won’t even respond. Or maybe she will.
so all i get is a wink? you can do better than that.
Contemplated response:
Normally, I would also consider the wink to be the holla of the coward and/or unimaginative, but it’s just that I’m running this blogging experiment where I let someone else impersonate me on match, so I wanted to make my hello to you as discreet as possible so as not to tip my co-conspirator to my illicit use of my own match account.
Instincts honed over thousands of interactions with the fairer sex tell me she might not respond well to that approach. Fortunately, I have a blogging partner who likes nothing more than e-romancing the ladies. Over to you, Marissa.
It’s possible Marissa might have just chalked up the wink to a late response from her winkathon, but I thought I should come clean to her (and to you, blogosphere!). So much for being discreet… okay, christian, so i just re-read this post… reading it from the tiny iphone screen yesterday, i didn’t quite understand what was going on… Yes, I absolutely assumed she was just one of the mass-wink recipients. there were so many i barely even remember them all (not to mention, most didn’t respond)… and while i do like your intended response, here’s my intended response:
so all i get is a sentence that says “so all i get is a wink?” you can do better than that.
“So of all the changes, which is your favorite?” I asked my good friend Tina.
She took a long look around my apartment. “The clock,” she said. “And I don’t even like the clock – I think it’s ugly.”
Four years ago (my god, has it really been that long!?) I set out to rough it, slum it, and ultimately make it in Washington, DC with nothing but two suitcases and my beloved Yamaha keyboard. In my new studio apartment, those things didn’t take up a hell of a lot of space. So I plunked myself down on the floor and lavished a huge flurry of absolutely no decorating at all on the new crib. I spent the first six months or so in that barren studio apartment with only a kitchen table, a futon and the keyboard for company.
The winter months ebbed, and Spring rolled around, the season when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of beds, bookshelves, lamps, rugs, and a lot of other things I didn’t own. Actually that’s a half-truth. I had started seeing a bird that I quite liked, and three or four dates in she was making noises about seeing my place. Quite unknowingly, she had set me off a frantic scramble to actually furnish my living space.
“Um,” I said, glancing at my unadorned white walls and utter lack of furniture, ” I don’t think this weekend will work for me.” From that moment on, I fought a delaying action with my sweetie to give myself enough time to get to deceive her into thinking I was just a normal regular person with a normal regular apartment.
Finally, I was able to get a ride to and from Ikea with some friends in their rented truck. And Reader, you can imagine the shopping spree that happened next – especially since the lady in question was due to visit me that very next day.
Deep into that night, I assembled, allen-wrenched, hammered, screwed, and did whatever it was those perplexing little Ikea stick figures were doing. I unpacked boxes my mother had mailed to me that had sat untouched for months. I populated my new Ikea frames with photographs and set them on my new Ikea shelves. I screwed a lightbulb into my new lamp. And the finishing touch? I hung that fugly clock on the wall, to give the time of day to anyone who could stand to look at it.
But the next day it was all worth it. With a dose of Ikea-assisted legerdemain, I had successfully passed myself off as a grown man when I was really just a small child fooling some of the people all of the time. So convincing was the ruse that the girl and I dated happily for a few months (though, as more sophisticated readers might have inferred by the existence of this blogging project, things didn’t ultimately work out between us).
“Why the clock, then?” I asked Tina.
“Because of all the things you added to your place, the clock is the only one that goes beyond the strictly functional. It completes the illusion that someone actually lives here.”
Past is prologue, especially with me. I remain a notorious non-unpacker. Although I recently got a bed and hung some curtains, and the very same Tina has promised to come to my rescue and help me decorate, my New York apartment still look a bit err…Spartan. The words another friend of mine said years ago about my old place ring just as true about my new pad: “If a girl ever came over and saw this place, she would laugh long and hard and then she’d turn around and leave.”
Clearly there’s a bit of work left before any match girls come over. But I’m getting closer.
Oh and if anyone out there on the upper east side has a kitchen cart they don’t want any more, I’m sure we can come to some kind of accommodation.
So today, we at Matched got our first piece of hate mail. You know you’ve really made it big when a stranger calls you a whore over the internet (and for the first time I felt a twinge of sympathy for slutty celebrities.) Turns out Jess isn’t the only one who finds this project to be morally questionable.
Moral questions aside, I remain firmly committed to Matched, and to assuage my Kantian qualms, I’ve since passed correspondence responsibilities with Ellen over to Christian so that they can both experience a bit of authenticity before the date… Which brings us to another first; I’ve secured my first date! Ellen and Christian (and yours truly Groucho Marx) will have their first live date (and my first live blog) next week- details pending. And no, resident New Yorkers, you can’t come watch.
Turns out, once I went for it, getting an actual date is easy and takes slightly less time than my lunch break:
- 1:09pm- new-Christian (I) suggests dinner of some sort
- 1:13pm- Ellen agrees
- 1:30pm- New-Christian says he’ll cook something up
- 1:30pm and 6 seconds- New-Christian immediately thinks better of that slang expression and explains that he will mentally cook up some ideas, and will not, in fact, be making a pot roast in his 2’ x 2’ “kitchen” on match date #1
- 1:32pm- Ellen sends the anticipated response: “LOL” along with her phone number and the offer that she will cook the first pot roast (score!)
- 2pm- I elatedly forward the correspondance to Christian, so proud of my first date
- 2:02pm- old-Christian’s responds: “wait, you committed me to a WHOLE dinner?!”
Oops. As a non-online dater myself, I didn’t realize that the first meeting is supposed to be “drinks” or getting together to watch an episode of American Idol in a bar or whatever diversion online daters have devised that lasts exactly 1 hour or less. Sorry, man, devil’s in the details.
That said, I wouldn’t change a thing even if I had known. In my opinion, new-christian is the kind of guy who’d take a quality woman out to dinner. And Ellen is a quality woman. (Annie is also a quality woman, but she’s a doctor and doesn’t have a lot of free time, so she’ll be getting a Sunday afternoon walk in the park followed by a milkshake. Pixley will be getting one round of drinks after work sometime in November. )
Now all that’s left is to put some logistics around this date: where should they go? what time? who pays? (Christian… though I’m not sure if he realizes that yet). what does he wear? what do I wear? what will they do after dinner? (As long as Christian doesn’t try to bring her back to his place for pot roast, I think we’ll be all set.)
So I had a conversation with my good friend Jess the other day, and since she’s basically been out of the loop on the match happenings, I was filling her in on the theory/the practice/ and the progress of Matched. After I wrap up an enthusiastic 17-minute spiel about the project she says, flatly; “Wow, that’s cool…”
“I know!” I say, elated, “Isn’t it just SOOOOOO cool?!”
“No, Marissa, I said “cruel.” Seriously, that’s really a terrible thing to do, don’t you think?”
So then, for the first time since the inception of this project, I actually did stop to think. (As is so often the source of all my problems, the “act-first, think-later” mentality; ending relationships and otherwise flourishing careers since 1999…)
So, now that I’m thinking again, I’m faced with some big questions; is Matched a heartless endeavor? Is the fact that it brings joy to millions* not enough to mitigate the fact that it misleads a few? Are people just a means to an end? Or an end in and of themselves? And in a world with no god, do any of these things really matter? These, by the way, are all rhetorical questions swimming through my brain. Please, no need to send your pointed critiques to my email inbox or anything…
(*Okay, maybe not millions, but a solid couple hundred daily visitors. Which, over the course of just 12 years could potentially become “millions”)
After some deep soul searching, I’ve decided that Matched. (and my conscience) are still in the clear for a few reasons; the conversations I’m having with these women have all been completely honest and representative of Christian’s life experiences/passions/history/etc. And none of the conversations have prompted the women to profess their undying love for me or anything… And besides, when Christian meets these women, he’ll either muck the thing up so badly that they never call again, or he’ll like the girl and come clean about the whole endeavor. (We’re not in the business of long-term deception here… I don’t have nearly enough time for that). So it’s decided, we’re back to being good salt-of-the-earth people.
I put my conscience back on the shelf (where it’s been gathering dust since 1999) and promptly hang up on Jess. I login to match.com to do my daily round of e-correspondences. Ellen, the writer/director (and a fellow chocolate fiend), has emailed! Sweet! I totally dig this girl, and I am really amped about her potential date with Christian. (See, in my defense, I’m talking to these girls about food, I’m a total deception-free zone!) And then it happened:
Hey Christian,
Right now I’m really into a dark organic chocolate that’s called “Endangered Species” 10% of net profits donated to endangered species. Any excuse to eat chocolate for a good cause! Also have you ever tried Mexican hot chocolate? It’s got a little bit of chili powder in it and it’s really delicious…
Anyway, I hope that you enjoy the rest of your trip, and have safe travels back. I’m going to be back on the 26th, and would love to do drinks on the 29th.
Also, I wanted to mention it before, but when we were chatting the other day you said something about a universal respect for all people- well it was refreshing to hear you say that… Not a lot of people think that way, and you just seem like a real stand-up guy.
Ellen
