Adrift in the Big City, Two Recent Grads Turn to JDate

Steve courts Sarah. Image by Toby Shaw.

Unto the Breach

Jordan

Yes, little college boys, I will spin you a yarn that’ll curl your Jew-hairs even curlier. Come and gather round the ol’ Bonfire of my Dignity and hear this tale of woe.

You, young man… know any young ladies round here I can meet by pretending that I’m still in school? Because upon graduating, you will experience the new tingly sensation of Loneliness. Lost-ness. Confused-om. You will be a babe in the woods, aimless, desperate in your quest to wood the babes.

An internet will-o’-the-wisp will whisper: “I’m here to be your sagely guide. Trust me. I’ll get you laid. I AM JDATE.”

“But I made a great success at the university with my niche appeal,” you say…

Still you’ve found the city to be a cold, cruel, place. Your metaphors start to mix. You long for a companion in this hot jungle of despair. Your mama didn’t tell you there’d be days like this.

Meanwhile, all your pals are telling you that JDate is the greatest aphrodisiac since Jewish Leadership Sleepaway Camp. And you see that they’ve been getting some action. So your browser starts to wander.

Steve

I had never been too concerned about dating. In college, everyone goes to the same parties, everyone lives nearby, everyone is the same age, and everyone is on Facebook. Small talk is easy - there are mutual friends, shared professors, shared majors. A date was a $30 dinner at the local Italian restaurant with a girl you had drunkenly professed attraction to the weekend before. It wasn’t a way to meet people.

In the big city, things are different. Friends from school are scattered. Work friends are older. Dates can be arranged, but it’s complicated. For the first time, income is a factor. Sure, the girls in your Environmental Science class might like the fact that you want to work for a non-profit that investigates the practical use of green energy in matzoh production, but city girls aren’t impressed when your measly salary affords you the windowless half of a studio apartment in inaccessible Greenpoint.

After 12 months of schmoozing at parties, meeting friends-of-friends-of-friends, and fewer phone numbers to show for it than corners on Haman’s hat, the idea of dating while sitting in my underwear half-watching Sunday afternoon football with a Sega Genesis controller in my hand began to sound more and more appealing. I didn’t think of it as a desperate grasp at human contact in the big, lonely city. Rather, it was a thought exercise: What happens if I put a few pictures of myself online, write several vague yet intriguing sentences about my interests, and put it on a website full of Jewish woman seeking mates?

I wrote up a profile one Sunday afternoon, following some guidelines gleaned from my pre-sign-up browsing: make your job sound cooler than it actually is (I’m not a production accountant, I “make films and TV shows”), and always go for the giggle (ideal first date? “Skydiving”). After uploading some choice Facebook photos, I headed out.

I returned that evening to find I had piqued a certain amount of interest on the interwebs. Sure, all I saw of these women was a low-res picture and some indistinct phrases of personal description, but they wanted to talk to me! That’s how it went for the first couple weeks; with little effort on my part, I was flirted with, hotlisted, and chatted at by the femmes of JDate.

Jordan

I am one of those JDate cases you don’t often hear about: a complete suck-cess story.

I expected it to go differently. I thought I’d be afloat in a proverbial online Dead Sea, doing the breast stroke. I am such a nice young man. Your Momaleh would love me. Thick glasses and schnozz, soft bed of curls, that unique mix of scrawny and nasal, limited athleticism but refined sports knowledge, usurious mentality and a neatly circumcised member.

And yet, I did not go on any JDates. I did get sleazily instant messaged a few times. It made me feel like a piece of gefilte fish. And these girls weren’t even cute! When God spun the dreidel, they got “Nun.”

Steve

Dating through JDate is like having your mother act as a matchmaker, constantly asking when she’ll start seeing some grandkids. After signing up, I began receiving emails several times a week presenting me with half a dozen “matches” and requesting I check out their profiles and tell the site if any of them caught my interest. Occasionally I would receive an email asking me (insert your own Jewish mother’s voice here), “What are you waiting for?” Other emails advise, “Now, go on. Make it happen!” There is something in this mix of aggressive nudging and guilt-laying that seems quintessentially Jewish.

If JDate is nothing else, it is efficient. Within two weeks of signing up I had dates with five different JWomen. I quickly learned that some people take JDate more seriously than others. The first woman I dated told me she had looked at every (every!) guy on JDate in the New York area and had chosen me as one of the five she would meet. Holy matzo ball soup, Batman!

After a few weeks, finding ourselves unsatisfied with our dates (or lack thereof), we roommates decided to take things to the next level. Like many dating sites, JDate.com frequently hosts real-world parties, strange affairs where the virtual meets the actual, where strangers used to interacting through “Flirt messages” trade bon mots in some downtown club. We thought that a trip one of these shindigs would help us to cope with the impersonality of the online JDate format. So, late one November evening, we arrived at a JDate-hosted “70’s Sci-Fi Extravaganza” at the Manhattan nightclub Cielo. We came in futuristic coats, Jordy-from-Star-Trek sunglasses, and carrying a colorful water/laser gun. As we entered, we were somewhat surprised to find no one else in costume, no one else under the age of 30, and no one else drunk.

If you didn’t already notice, awkward and uncomfortable are our middle names (I forget who has which name), so being 20 years younger than many of the party-goers was not a problem for us. But c’mon, a 70’s Sci-Fi themed party, and no one in costume!

We did a lap. The club consisted of a large square room with a bar on one side, a DJ booth on the opposite, and a lowered dance floor in the middle. The dance floor was occupied by two small groups of woman dancing to music that can only be described as “nostalgic.” Around the perimeter of the dance floor, men watched and sipped their drinks. We approached two men and struck up conversation. Our talk revolved around the differences between JDate and other dating websites. The men informed us that lavalife girls just want to FUCK, which is helpful.

The DJ played Jewish interpretations of popular songs (“Hanukkah Hey Ya!,” among others). It was hard to believe that it was already 10:00 when the music stopped and the dance floor cleared. Must be a school night! It was like having Mom turn off the TV right when Leno comes on.

Drunk, discouraged, and still dressed like club kids at a Battlestar Galactica convention, we headed back home to Brooklyn. Maybe JDate wasn’t the answer, after all. Sure, it can be a decent tool, if you act sensibly. Still, it did little to ease our yearning for our bygone days on campus.

College kids, make your moves. Like the Romans say, Carpe Di-Emily, Sarah, and Rachel while they’re still around. Or become friends with them. That’s allowed. Later on, college pals will be your best facilitators. The best dating network we’ve found is meeting a friend of a friend at a novelty cocktail party.

Our JDate profiles remain up, but they don’t get the attention that our online surrogate mothers wish they did. After a brief foray into internet dating, we decided that it’s not for us. We like our women like our morning coffee: three-dimensional.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.