The Numbers Game

2 Orders of Garlic Fries:
$15.00

2 Beers:
$14.00

Cab Fare To and From SBC Park:
$26.00

Amount Foolishly Paid to Unscrupulous Homeless Guy for Counterfeit Tickets to Game:
$40.00


Number of Future Dates I'll Get, After Five Hours of Me Bitching About How Expensive 'This Dating Thing' Is And--to top it all off--Having Garlic Breath All Night:
None.


Dating.

Everybody's doing it.

Well, at least all those people who aren't already married; and all those people who aren't already blissfully courting their soulmate; and all those people who already found their soulmate but, in a fit of selfishness and/or myopia, let her slip away, and ultimately into the arms of some dork who sends her flowers after every date, and who doesn't curse as much as you did, and who is willing to talk 'marriage' after only three dinners with your ex-soulmate.

Like I said, everybody's doing it. Everyone except, it seems, me.

Well, it's about damn time I throw my tattered hat into the ring!

The grapevine recently informed me that one of my exes (in addition to Living In Texas) has re-entered the dating scene. This did not come as a huge shock to me, and I wish her the best of luck (not really-- I wish utter failure upon her dating endeavors, and secretly hope she someday comes crawling back to me), but hearing this news was definitely a wake-up call for me to, well, wake up and shower and apply moisturizer and go talk to the opposite sex.

But where do I begin?

Bars? Easy enough, but that means I will have to become one of the most despised and castigated forms of life on earth: That Guy. That Guy who goes to bars only to meet chicks. That Guy of whom we've always made fun... I might escort a girl to a bar, or spend the entire night at a bar to avoid spending it with Conan O'Brien (again!), but I never actually meet girls at bars. That's not my style. I cannot be That Guy!

Church? Not exactly. If you piled up all the luggage that Southwest Airlines loses at Midway Airport in one day (i.e.: tons), you would still not equal the amount of baggage that some of these "church girls" carry with them. All girls, whether affiliated with bars or churches, have the same unseemly loads of issues, the only difference being that "bar girls" don't bring Guilt and Shame along to breakfast in the morning.
Besides, I've been blackballed out of most church-dating circles anyway...

So what is left, but that new standby: online dating.

Before you say, "Paul, stop, don't do it! You'll do fine in the real-life dating world! You have a job! You're halfway cute, and (perhaps most importantly) you don't even have a computer at home!" please realize that I've already considered these possible deterrents and found them to be mere speedbumps on my (Information) Superhighway To Love.

Granted, my 680-square-foot rat hole is sorely lacking in the area of 1990s-era technological advances (no internet connection), but besides that, I think I posses all of the requisite qualities for entry into the 2005 Dallas Singles Scene:
I have a steady job (if by "steady" you mean that if I don't show up at work for a week, my co-workers begin asking about me on Thursday afternoon), and I am relatively good-looking (relative to, perhaps, the group of homeless men who congregate outside the downtown library every night, or relative to the cast of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome), and I know a few jokes. What more could a lonely, computer-savvy woman want? Why should I not give it a try??

I have absolutely nothing left to lose (except for my dignity; maybe $80 for dinner and cocktails; and a streak of celibate nights that is now numbering in the high 3-figures).

Dating, in a big city like Dallas, is essentially a numbers game. And just look at the numbers; they don't lie: On a good night ("good" meaning "no pimples"), I could make the rounds at The Old Monk or Cuba Libre and swap small talk with seven or eight girls. By contrast, in 2004 alone, 25 million women cruised the internet looking for love, lust, or just an electronic pen pal (any of which beats Conan O'Brien any day). Of course, I fully expect that 90% of these 25 million women are logging on from China, and are chained to a sewing machine, and thus, are not very date-able. But that still leaves me with considerably more than my 7 or 8 girls from Henderson Avenue.

I'm not a betting man, but with odds that good, I had to test my luck.

First, I registered with perhaps the best-known online dating service, match.com. This company bills itself as the "proven leader" in the industry. What exactly they're claiming leadership in is not clear: are they the leader in facilitating the most pre-arranged, unattached, semi-random sexual encounters among singles ages 21-45?? If so, is that something to brag about? Are they the leader in marriages resulting from their cyber-help (with today's divorce rate holding steady at 50%, could anyone really claim to lead in that area)? Or, maybe I'm wrong, and match.com's marriages--that are founded on a completely anonymous computer survey and 15-year-old Glamourshots--are inherently more successful than those of the "general population" (Mormon sunday school-arranged marriages notwithstanding, of course).

Next, I tried eharmony.com, a service that claims to be responsible for "more marriages than any other" online hookup service. After spending 1,430 hours on their website, I found this claim unfathomable: their much-hyped "32-point Personality Profile" is supposed to find the perfect match for me, presumably by asking thousands of probing questions about everything from past relationships (go ahead, I love bringing up that subject) to "List 20 Things That Make You Happy." 20 things?!?! Should this question have depressed me?? I thought about it for an hour, and I could only come up with three (the San Antonio Spurs, the new Glade Extra Outlet scented oil, and avocados); find a match for that!

Now almost suicidal, I tried one more: Okcupid.com. These guys boast that their formula for finding you a mate was "designed by Harvard math scholars." Wow! Say no more, I'm sold! I may be new to this singles thing, but the first guy I run to when I need dating advice has not always been a math scholar.

Now that I'm registered and official, all I can do is sit back and wait for the offers to start pouring in. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Or, perhaps we can skip all of this nonsense and head straight for the altar: If you or somebody you know is Asian, and skilled in the art of making 40 Banana Republic shirts in one hour, reply today.