Just got invited to a friend’s party. Lucky me, he’s co-hosting with a guy I went on an awkward date with. (One of these things is not like the other: New Balance gym shoes, backpack, dinner at an upscale restaurant.)

Anyway, things with J. are good. Just booked tickets to spend 10 days over Christmas with his very cool family.

Q: How did I get on the mass mailing list of a recruiter?

A: Went on a date with him half a year ago. Eyeroll.

My friend told me a story a few months back. I wish I could remember all the glorious details, but suffice it to say that:

In college, a guy asked her out.

At the restaurant, she ordered an entree and a beverage.

He simply ordered a glass of milk. He then proceeded to retrieve a baggie of cereal and a ceramic bowl from his backpack.

So, I’m on a site that’s a combination of dating and social networking. Once I started dating J., though, I changed my status to “seeing someone.”

Some guys still hit on me, having missed that label. So I also updated the first line of my profile to explain in no uncertain terms that I was happily in a relationship.

Some guys still hit on me, having merely glanced at my pictures. So I also took down all the pictures except one that does little more than blurrily confirm I’m humanoid.

And today, I get this email:

WOW!! Thank God i finally contacted you.. I have been looking at your profile for hours and had to register so as to contact you. You look gorgeous and younger than your age. I admit the fact that you are adorable!!.. why are you still single? I would like to know more about you if you don’t mind. You can reach me directly and tell me more about yourself at [email address].
You can also chat with me directly online via yahoo [username]

wisdom

Ugh. Moron.

A guy I dated for a couple weeks last year just sent me this endearing message:

I had a naughty dream about u the other night – thought u might want to know haha : )

Just another reminder how very lucky I am to be with J, who is too good to be true, yet continues to exist nonetheless. My black swan!

Here’s an outline of some guy’s email to me:

• “I don’t see anything particularly useful, novel, or challenging about [your perspective on the world].”
• The author of one of your favorite books is  “an overeducated windbag whose columns have to be counted among the most tepidly prosaic work the New York Times has ever printed.”
• One of your favorite movies “isn’t half as clever as it’s assumed to be.”
• Another favorite author, Vonnegut, “didn’t do anything in Slaughterhouse V that Joseph Heller didn’t do backwards, forwards and sideways six times better in Catch-22.
• “Still…I’m probably one of a very few people you’re likely to encounter who can actually keep up with you.”

For added irony, his profile says he’s looking for a girl who exhibits “self-awareness.”

<3

Some dude writes:

OK so I know [this] is a dating site and there is absolutely no way to know if we would really hit it off or even get along as friends for more than a half hour but the thing is I really find your taste and smell and touch and mind very – appealing. In my imagination, of course, since you don’t really exist yet, corporeally, at least not in the verifiable psycho-sexual sense, where I would have to deal with your childhood trauma and your need for security….

Oh shit, there I go again. No wonder I don’t have a girlfriend.

I also think you are much less ugly than the other women on this site. In fact I’ve dated women that are 10 times uglier than you.

Therefore I want to walk with you through the threshold of a mysterious small town junk store where we hunt for old rusty tools, carnival attractions, bones crutches and bugs, ancient musical instruments, old science equipment, Confederate money, National Geographics, mechanical store displays with one working arm and one broken…

not the frou-frou kind of place owned by a nice little old lady with well-lit aisles and walls hung with doilies and framed quilt pictures and shelves full of tea sets and tchotchkes and stacks of odd china pieces carefully culled from the attics and pantries of rural back roads WWII-era homes to be an exemplary lesson on how to go through life with no scratches or chips or even visible paint-fading on the side facing the living-room window for 30 years. I’m talking about the kind of river-dank and gloomy store run by a perilously cranky old guy who acquires stuff off farmers and hobos and outsider artists and retired machinists with one finger missing. A man who won’t let you buy something if he doesn’t like you, and he usually doesn’t unless you are nearly as demented as he is, and you aren’t and it’s a good thing too.

Please consider meeting me for lunch, next time you are in SF instead of just in my mind.

Ever do any acting? I’d love to hear you sing and watch you dance. Even if you are terrible… oh, before I forget, please consider checking out my art. Then fall in love with me. It’s on the link below. I already think you are amazing. Totally amazing.

Sorry if I left some things out. Skipped a few steps… I do that. You’ll forgive me eventually, since you are amazing.

xo
Frank

One of my favorite questions when corresponding with someone I haven’t met yet is “what’s your hidden talent?” I think it’s a fun question, but it also elicits sleazy answers like this:

Maybe that would be for you to discover with me

That feels inappropriate and socially retarded coming from someone I don’t know. I’m inclined to drop this guy like a hot potato. Am I being too judgmental here?

Some dude writes me an email:

i’m 50. but i don’t feel a day over 30.

Worth a try, right?

On a first date tonight, I totally wipe out–hand and knees on the floor–as I walk back from the bathroom.

My eyes fly to my date. Is he going to thing I’m a drunk? Oh God, let him not think I’m a drunk.

He is completely absorbed in his iPhone. Clueless.

Thank you, Steve Jobs. Thank you.