Memoirs of Internet Dating

If you are one of the many people out there who are trying to find love via internet dating, then you are guaranteed, at some point in time during your journey, to experience some rather embarrassing moments – whether you are at the receiving end or not depends on you. When students contact me asking for advice on how to make sure a first date is successful, I offer the following responses:

1) Try to drink something other than what you normally do. This may sound like a strange suggestion since you have just met a very nice person on the internet and you want to make a good impression on your first date. This is a wise choice because if you don’t like what you are drinking, you will tend to drink slowly and, consequently, avoid drinking too much.

2) Sometimes people tend to get carried away in the moment. Although enthusiasm and spontaneity are qualities that a man admires in a woman, he does not take kindly to watching his date be friendly with another man. Consider you are trying to make a good first impression so you want all your attention to be on him. Therefore, even if your favorite rock star walks up to the bar, begins to talk to you and leans over for a good-bye kiss as he’s leaving, you should fight the urge to comply and simply back away. Or, go for the kiss and expect not to see your date again (unless, of course, they happen to have a great sense of humor or get a kiss of their own from another member of the band!)

3) Ladies nowadays think they have to keep up with the latest fashions. There are times when this is not the wisest choice, it doesn’t matter how good your friend says you look in it. Let us start with considering what is in style and whether it would be flattering to your figure. Keep in mind, you want to make a stunning entrance so that this first date becomes a second, so you might want to avoid wearing anything too tight and/or revealing as it would make you appear desperate. Unless your profile pictures are on the provocative side, if you want a second date, try not to go overboard. Your date doesn’t want every other person in the room hungrily looking at you to where they are afraid to go to the restroom for fear of you being snatched up while they’re gone.

4) This last piece of advice is very important and should be strictly adhered to – avoid taking anyone you are meeting for the first time to your favorite hangout spot! This is a double edged sword that should be avoided at all costs. On a good date, it can turn into sitting around the table telling embarrassing stories about all the times you’ve gotten drunk. On a bad date, it turns into them never letting you forget the night you brought in that person you met on the internet for your first date and they threw up all over the pool table. Enough said.

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had it drilled into my head from the time I was old enough to understand the spoken language that first impressions are very important. That said, it stands to reason that if you make a poor first impression, people will always remember you as that person who did whatever it was that earned you the attention in the first place. If you are lucky, it is something that you can look at later and laugh without cringing at how utterly ridiculous you felt at the moment – if you’re lucky.

I’ve had experiences where I’ve been able to do all three: simply laugh because it was funny; simply cringe because of what it was; and/or both laugh and cringe because it was very strange but nonetheless amusing in a sad, sick sort of way…….but now I’m getting ahead of myself. Let us start with the fact that I’ve discovered it’s a good idea not to consume too much alcohol on a first date – just makes things so much easier and less likely to where you’ll end up cringing in the morning.

The first such date that comes to mind was when I was celebrating my 50th birthday. My actual birthday fell on a Friday and so I decided to make it a weekend of fun. One of the fun activities was to take my date with me to see Bill Cosby. I had just met the man the week before but since I make it a habit of buying an extra ticket to every show I go so that I can always just pick a friend to drag along with me, I was able to take him as my date. So, we meet at Hardrock and decide to go have dinner at a Mexican restaurant which is wonderful because I love Mexican food.

We have a couple of drinks (tequila is my liquor of choice so I was truly in heaven at a bar which had a selection of no less than 47 different types of tequila and actually carried my favorite brand!) as we eat dinner. We are having the most pleasant of conversations and really hitting it off. He suggests that we stay at Hardrock for a while after the show but I tell him that I’ve got tickets to see Marilyn Manson that evening and the first look of “wait? What?” runs across his face…..

We finish dinner and go find our seats to prepare for the show. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always considered Bill Cosby to be one of the funniest stand up comedians and was really looking forward to this show. My date buys us each one more drink and we prepare to be entertained. Well, wouldn’t you know it? His birthday is right about the same time as mine so his subject matter is what it’s like to turn old and his examples of how your body changes were so hilarious, before you knew it, I’d managed to wet my pants. Needless to say I never heard from that young man again. Alas.

I’ve been divorced for a while and have dabbled in the field of Internet Dating off and on for over seven years now. During that time, I’ve had my number of first dates. Some of those have been very memorable and led to a second date. Others have been what some of my friends would consider total disasters. I always just look at a first date as an excuse to get out of the house, meet someone new and possibly discover a new place to eat! I have a friend who always laughs when I say that. She claims that it takes a special type of person to find something positive out of some of the situations I’ve had arise on my date(s) (see my book Memoirs of Internet Dating for more on this subject).

That said, let me share with you one of the most embarrassing first dates I can remember. There was this gentleman who definitely got my attention by the picture on his profile. He was sitting back on his Harley (leaning on what some would call a padded “sissy bar” but I prefer to refer to it as a “proper Queen seat”), his feet up on the handle bar, cowboy hat tilted over his head, leather vest open and arms crossed over his chest and a Cheschire Cat smile with amazing blue eyes.

I was drawn to him from the get-go. His voice had a slightly southern accent (go figure) and that was just icing on the cake. I wanted to make a good first impression on this guy. Hence, I called up my girlfriend who dates Cowboys all the time and inquired as to what to wear. She lent me one of her shirts, which I admit was rather pretty, but she wears a large and I am a small. It was low cut and I felt a bit nervous but she assured me she’d never had a problem with it. Thus, off I went with the borrowed shirt to meet this tremendously nice guy with the great southern accent and the gorgeous Harley.

We get to the restaurant, exchange pleasantries and the entire time I keep looking into his beautiful blue eyes, listening to his voice and then we are shown to our table. We proceed to sit down, are handed our menus, etc. I decide what I’m going to have for dinner. As I’m looking at the menu, I look down and notice that my shirt was dropping down a little too far and I was, for all practical purposes, flashing anyone who may have walked by. So, having brought a safety pin with me in case this happened, I attempt to excuse myself to the restroom. As I’m getting up from the table, my boot gets tangled on the tablecloth, I fall forward into my date’s lap and my breast to drop right into his face for inspection.

Upon return to the table, I made a joke of it by saying that now he knew they were real!!! Yeah – that was a definitely a night to remember!!!!

The internet can be a blessing and a curse. In my opinion, one of the reasons it can be a curse is because, through the game of Internet Dating, it feeds off some people’s deep rooted need to be loved. Sometimes, this desire for love leads people to make decisions that are not the wisest choice(s) pertaining to their safety. I believe that people should attempt to listen to their “inner voice” – that part people refer to as their “intuition” and/or their “gut feeling”. I have always tried to listen to my sixth sense as I like to call it but sometimes I can be stubborn.

One example of a time when I took a while too long to listen to my inner voice was when a guy asked me out after work. At the time, I was working as a bartender and this guy came in every Sunday afternoon to watch the football games on the large screens and we would talk during the times when work got slow. We established a friendship over a two month period of “seeing” each other. Then, one Sunday I got off work early and he asked me to sit at the bar to watch the game and talk without my having to work.

I was informed that was against company policy, so we went down the mall to another sports bar and proceeded to have a couple of drinks. He then suggested that we go shoot pool at a place that was not so “loud”. Since I love to shoot pool, this we begin to make plans on where we’re going to meet and he suggests we simply carpool. There’s a little voice in the back of my head that’s quietly saying “that’s not such a hot idea. You don’t really know this guy from Adam.” But it was Sunday, I had just gotten off work, was feeling nicely buzzed and enjoying his company so I chose to ignore the voice at that particular moment.

So, we get into his car and proceed to take off towards a pool hall about a mile from where we were. Next thing I know, he’s turning to get onto the expressway. I ask him where he’s going and he says over to South Beach because he knows a place there that’s really nice and the music is pleasant. I figure I’m on the highway so not much I can do now. Turns out we can’t find the pool place and I ask to be taken back to my car and leave this for another night.

As we’re getting close to where my car is, he begins to head in the opposite direction. I then really hear my voice saying “hello? Anyone home? Where are we going?” When he wouldn’t stop and turn the car around and I noticed he had begun to slow down to turn down a very dark, secluded street, I simply thought to myself “okay, enough!” and threw off my seat belt, “crossed” myself, opened the door and proceeded to roll myself out of the car. All I heard from behind me was “Holy Crap – she’s PSYCHO!!!” I walked to my car and apologized to my sixth sense for having ignored it.