It’s been over six months since my very public foray into online dating.

As much as I’d like to report that it was a wildly successful endeavor, it seems that with online dating sites- as in life- you only get what you give, and waiting for your future boyfriend to message you while you put little to no effort in gets you basically nowhere. 

That’s not to say I didn’t have any success. I actually hung out with one guy a couple times, but he stopped texting me when I didn’t jump his bones after our second date. He may have been confused seeing as I’ve been rated more sex-driven and less pure than the average OkCupid user (see image).

I even went on some normal dates, mostly with investment bankers who don’t like to smoke pot and instead run 15 miles a day and work 70 hours a week. Of course it would never work out with a guy like that and me, but hey- a girl’s gotta’ eat. When I say “eat” I don’t literally mean “go out to dinner”- I mean drink a seemingly never-ending flow of Jack & Cokes and never have to pay for them. So I guess that’s the one thing I’ve learned about dating since the last Bunty installment: it’s basically somebody paying for you to get totally plastered in the hopes that you’ll touch their penis.

Bored of the bankers and apathetic toward OkCupid, I sought out my next romantic adventure. What I found was Speed Dating.

Remember the episode of Sex & the City where Miranda (the butchy red-headed character that nobody can stand) goes Speed Dating? She sits at a table in a restaurant with a dopey name tag on as men rotate to her – seven men in eight minutes.  Every time she tells them she’s a lawyer they become disinterested and move on to the next table, until she lies and tells one of them she’s a flight attendant. Then they end up dating / having wild monkey sex later in the episode. Score!

(I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that I just likened myself to the most undesirable character on Sex & the City, or that I just watched the episode that I’m referring to- the predominant storyline of which features the first Carrie and Aiden breakup-  and now I’m legit sitting in my bed with tears streaming uncontrollably down my face. Chicks, man.)

While my speed dating experience had a different outcome than Miranda’s, the concept was the same. It was hosted by New York Easy Dates and held at a bar called Madame X located down in the West Village. Upon first glance of the website, my coworker and I worried that we had gotten ourselves into something a bit more scandalous than your typical New York dating fare. Once we arrived the place was actually pretty chill, so we pounded a couple glasses of wine and headed upstairs to the “lounge area.” We were given name tags and told by the hosts to sit on the semen-stained crushed velvet couches while they explained the rules. [Editor’s note: I have no idea if there were semen stains on the couches.]

The women got to sit pretty while every six minutes a different guy would rotate to them. There would be time for everybody to see about 12 people, and at the end of each mini-date we were to fill out the provided forms and write whether he was a yes or no. They also stressed that at the conclusion of it all there would be plenty of time to mingle.

You’d be surprised at how hard it is to fill six minutes with a complete stranger.

After the initial “hi, how are you” handshake stuff, it was just a lot of awkward forced talking. Or maybe it was just forced for me because I wasn’t attracted to 98 percent of the men, and they all kept asking me about my day job which I kinda hate talking about: “I’m an ad trafficker. Like, I literally put the ads online… Whatever, it’s complicated.” I was also taken aback by my extreme social awkwardness. In natural group settings I’m great. But I’m also the type who can’t help but call out any elephants in the room, and sitting two feet in front of me was a big, giant, name-tag wearing elephant.

“Don’t talk about your blog, don’t talk about your blog, don’t talk about your blog,” I begged myself, but still found the word vomit uncontrollably escaping my mouth: “So I have a blog and I’m actually writing an article about speed dating. That’s why I’m here. Anyway, what do you do for fun?” Dammit, Ange! I know you don’t see a future in Jeffrey G., the swing dancer from Persia, but that doesn’t mean you should blow your cover!

Halfway through there was a break which allowed for using the bathroom, a bit of mingling, and in my case downing shots of whiskey at the bar. I think I had more of a connection with the Ecuadorian bar-back than any of my dates, and we threw back a complimentary shot together before I sat down for part two, which was basically more of the same jibber-jabbering until I thought my tongue would fall off. Then my coworker and I went out with the only attractive and seemingly normal guy there, and this tag-a-long annoying dude named Jonas M.

[You might be wondering why I’m so harshly calling out this Jonas fellow, and here’s why: not only was he kind of a dick on his date, but he also claimed to be a sommelier and made us go to this fancy ass wine bar where he proceeded to order a 40 dollar bottle of wine and stiff us with the bill. Thanks, asshole.]

As outlined by the hosts, the following day we were to go to the speed dating website and choose who we felt we had a “connection” with. If both people chose each other an automated email was sent and your contact information was exchanged. Being the narcissist that I am, I selected every person I met because- duhh- I wanted to see if they chose me, too. When I got responses from seven out of 12 people, I was feeling pretty good about myself, but my shallow sense of pride was quickly replaced with regret when they all began emailing me in broken English asking if I wanted to go on a date. God, I’m a bitch.

While my first speed dating excursion didn’t end in wedding bells and babies, or even a first date, I’m not throwing in the towel just yet.  Stay tuned until next time where I’ll be attempting an even more intensive speed dating experience: 50 dates at three minutes each.

Maybe I’ll just lie and say I’m a flight attendant.

Read Part 1 & Part 2 of “Single & the City”

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