My Encounter with Jabba the Hut

by Jack Parkinson.

Online dating seems to be shedding its taboo status in recent years; people are completely shameless in their pursuit of happiness. Advertisements for Match.com and the like are saturating television screens across the country. Despite the boom in online dating, there must be some experiences that put people off it forever. And yes, there are, one of which happened to myself in the mid winter of 2006, at the tender age of 18.

MySpace had been a cultural phenomenon, the first social networking website to accumulate an astronomical number of members. I had just signed up, and within a few days I had been added by a delightful looking creature. She added me, as she “liked my pictures”. The only picture I had of her however was the small thumbnail that graced her profile screen, and a very elegant picture it was: brunette, shocking blue eyes and a voluptuous curvature of the lips; this picture alone was justification for talking to her.

Over the course of a year we chatted online and still this was the only picture that kept me going. Our conversation was healthy, and we very much enjoyed each other’s digital company. There does however come a time when this alone is not sufficient, and the next step needed to be taken.

She invited me to her house, a very forward invitation I know, but I accepted. Winter can be a very lonely time for a young single man; this effectively quashed any negative thoughts that arose from my conscience. I had never met this girl before in my life, or even heard her voice. Unluckily for me, my shameless desperation succeeded.

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Slow it down, Plissken. You’re overloading the power plant!

by Elizabeth Fournier.

In walked Van, wearing a beret, looking squeaky clean behind the ears, and ready to deliver something or another.

“Why don’t you come out of the shadows? What do you really look like? You’re afraid of something, aren’t you?”

Why did this sound so familiar? Where had I heard this before? I thought for a few minutes and finally twigged to it. He just quoted from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance verbatim. I smiled vaguely and felt the heavy burden of knowing we had an entire meal ahead of us.

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Is She the One?

by Ritesh Manglani.

I am a 28 male oftware engineer from Gujarat, India. It was recently when I gave in for marriage after resisting it for years and my parents started searching a girl for me, and as expected within a few weeks they fixed my meeting with this girl who was, according to my parents, a good wife material. My parents were really impressed with her and they were repeatedly saying “the girl is very beautiful” but is it just the beauty you look for in your life partner? I knew there is a lot more one wants. So like any other educated, wise man I decided to spend some time with this girl to know her better and then take the most important decision of my life.

People who don’t know much about Indian culture and the way matrimonial things work here. Here is some insight. It is being considered taboo if you are above 25-26 and still single (however this trend is changing these days thanks to the youngsters like me). We still have a system of arrange marriages, our family looks for the suitable boy/girl, once they find someone appropriate, they usually fix the meeting of potential bride-groom and leave the final decision to them but some families don’t even allow boy and girl to meet before marriage, and the family only takes the final decision.

I could just thank the god as my family falls in former one. People from western countries may find it absurd but that’s the way things work here.

After plenty of efforts, my dad managed to get one hour of time from the girl’s family. Being a rebel I protested as I knew one hour would not be enough but eventually my parents convinced me and I decided to just go with the flow, as somewhere back in mind I knew that I always have an option of saying “No” for the marriage after meeting.

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The Case of the Misplaced Kiss

by Caron.

As a transfer student at the University of Minnesota, I was always looking for ways to make new friends. I decided to take a Tae Kwon Do class where I could meet people while also tucking a new skill under my belt.

One of my girlfriends in another class of mine urged me to say hello to her friend “Bob.” I decided to wait until we were sparring each other so as not to seem to eager.

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GETTING THE BUM’S RUSH

by Anonymous.

The date was going pretty well thus far. My partner had not yet screamed at the sight of me and run off into the night (always a good first indicator) and here we were, moving on to our second venue of the evening.

I had one problem: this girl was a Christian. The reason this was a problem was twofold. One, she was highly unlikely to let me get my hands on her sumptuously gigantic breasts at the end of the evening, no matter how well I thought the situation was progressing; and two, she didn’t drink alcohol.

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Red Eyed Monster

by Patricia Pazsint.

I thought I had seen it all. During my years of on-again, off-again online dating, I felt as if I had earned an honorary phD in dating psychology (or should I say a purple heart?). The upfront-leech, the alcohol-pushing leech, mama’s boy, social odd-ball, bitter misogynist, you name it, I’ve dated it. Albeit not for long.

“Tony” had seemed charming on the phone, and his Match.com profile seemed refreshingly honest. The photos were obviously scanned in, the quality of which wasn’t the best, but he had a full head of hair, warm smile, and an athletic physique. A sales manager at a high volume sales firm, he regaled me with stories of a quick ascension up the career ladder and remodeling his home no expenses spared. Having dated a career pothead in college for a year and a half whose idea of planning for the future meant having enough money left for the next stash, Tony impressed me thoroughly.

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Girl Next Door seeks Yard Worker

by Matt.

I just heard a funny story from a friend of mine that met a girl on a popular dating site. We’ll call it yardmatch.com. You’ll see why. My friend, we’ll call him Gerry, received a response to his ad on yardmatch from Cindy (not her real name). They arrange an early lunch at a romantic, yet casual little restaurant in Boston. Gerry tells me that there wasn’t any uncomfortable silence at lunch, which can sometimes happen on a first date when you find the person’s real life persona differs markedly from their online personal ad. Gerry did note, however, that Cindy kept bringing the conversation back around to yard work.

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Exes and Their Text Messages

by SGLoughlin.

“I dated a guy who was a bit of a handful. His emotional stability varied hour by hour and often swung wildly between loving euphoria and numbed depression. We broke up, got back together, broke up, got back together ad nauseam for more than a year and a half. It only recently ended when I received several text messages asking for my hand in marriage.

“Taking new course, trying somethin new. Marry me. I love u, want 2 be with u 4ever.” Sent 6/22/08 at 3:32 A.M.

My response:

“Um. How is that helpful? We can’t even talk without fighting.” Sent 6/22/08 at 9:15 A.M.

His response:

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Expelled from Match.com! How to Get Tossed Off the Popular On-line Dating Site

by Allen Smith.

Anyone who’s dipped their toes into the murky waters of the on-line dating scene will sprint away from the tide after learning that while there are plenty of fish in the sea, there are also plenty of nets. While learning about how the seamy underbelly of electronic dating is really manipulated, this investigative journalist found himself expelled from Match.com after going deep undercover into the popular Internet dating service.

I enrolled at Match.com using the pen name of “MrMarvelous” to judge the waters for myself. After blowing off an entire day’s work perusing the women within 100 miles of my zip code, seven major metropolises and all of the neighborhoods I’ve ever lived, it became readily apparent that of the 40 million single men and women who subscribe to on-line dating services, most are looking for the same thing and their profiles all read the same. So, to leverage myself against my male competitors and attract more than my fair share of the lovelier sex, I decided to create the following original member profile to flaunt my rapier wit. After all, isn’t that what women want: a man with a sense of humor?

Dating headline:
Tom Selleck Look-a-like In Search of Love

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Vodka Honey, Straight Up

by Leora Klein.(edited by Alix Strauss)

Dan sounded great on paper: Upper East Side, Fieldston, Brown undergrad, NYU Law, formerly a corporate lawyer, currently a CEO of a nonprofit that seeks to foster peace between Palestinian and Israeli children…My mother met his mother at a charity dinner. Seated next to each other, nibbling on raisin nut rolls, patiently waiting for their salad plates to be whisked away, they noticed that neither woman ate the shaved fennel. By the time the blackened sea bass was served they were dear friends. She didn’t wait for dessert to show my mother a photograph of her son, and my mother called me from the car on her way home to tell me the great news.

“She had a photograph of her son in her evening bag?”

“Actually, she had it on her cell phone, and he looked very handsome with a nice head of hair.”

“Did you inquire about his height?” I am 5’9″.

“I did and she said he was taller than her husband, and her husband was tall.”

He sounded too perfect. My mother always taught me perfect doesn’t exist.

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