| The End of the Affair |
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| Written by Miriam Felton-Dansky | |||||
| Tuesday, 30 March 2004 | |||||
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A Spell on Jdate Leaves Much to be Desired Fourteen years ago, I won my fourth grade citywide spelling bee. For this accomplishment I was given a dictionary that weighed nearly as much as I did, with which I could pursue my desire to spell more words correctly—and I’ve never looked back. Unfortunately, I haven’t been nearly as successful at everything I’ve tried, and this year—having been significant other-less nearly continuously from the fourth grade on—I finally got a lucky break: the cyberdating boom. As online dating lost its stigma of desperation and became what all the cool kids were doing, I thought I could finally stop spending money in bars, quit pretending to like parties, and meet someone by doing what I like best: reading and writing. I’m no good at taking things slowly, but I really wanted it to work out with online dating. So I shopped around. I wrote profiles for Nerve and Friendster, artfully arranging my commas and quotation marks, constructing an identity out of my favorite food (carrot cake), favorite book (Pale Fire), and favorite activities (construction-site gazing, long walks to New Jersey). I rebelled against multiple choice questions and eschewed capital letters altogether. And I had some success: my profile attracted like-minded Nerve and Friendster boys who wrote me stories of their UFO sightings, quoted Mayakovsky and the Pixies, and drew me pictures of Amish buggies fashioned entirely of parentheses and periods (with an all-caps H-O-R-S-E at one end). But chemistry on the page, I discovered, has sadly little to do with face-to-face reality, and great e-mailing creates even less incentive to face a potentially flat encounter. Each effort was more disappointing. Lengthy, intense correspondence led up to the moment where I ordered a cosmopolitan, he ordered a diet Coke, and we looked at each other in dismay. Brief but witty flirtations culminated in dates who told me, over e-mail, that I had "unforgettable eyes," then once they had me in person proceeded to ogle photographs of their twin cats, uploaded onto their cell phones. Writing clever messages is all very well, but I needed to find someone who held up in person. In search of someone committed to a real live relationship, I turned to JDate.com. JDate—the place where literate, successful Jewish singles log on to find kindred spirits—had lots of potential. It was the dating site of marriage and babies, not one-night stands. The site that is not just a virtual noisy bar but an ideology, a chance to change the world and find a boyfriend all at once. "JDate's mission," boasts its "About" page, "is to help strengthen the Jewish community and insure precious Jewish traditions are carried on for many generations to come by providing a globally accessible community where Jewish singles…can find friendship or romance." JDaters, no doubt, would be committed to forming true relationships, and I asked around to be sure: "I've had some success," a male JDater in his mid-twenties tells me. "In fact, one of my very good fraids was a lady killer on this site - the consumate player - and even HE mat his solemate. He's head over heals for this girl he met on JDate to the exclusion of his thick black-book. It was something to see - him meeting his destiny. When I'm around them you can feel the electricity between them. I want them." A success story in which someone had fallen head over heals [sic] for their new solemate [sic]: in one fell swoop, JDate introduced me to two entirely foreign concepts—atrocious spelling and the possibility of meeting a soul mate. And so, at the end of my digital rope, I decided to give it a chance. The first requirement for JDate-hood is to set up a profile. And, in contrast to the touchy-feely questions that other dating sites are partial to ("what’s under your bed?" "describe your most humbling moment"), the folks at JDate don’t mince words. The profile got right down to business, asking about my salary, college major, and body type. And, because I would apparently want to meet someone whose Jewish "needs" match my own, I was asked, in detail, about my heritage (Ashkenazic, Sephardic, or "other"), my shul-going habits ("I go to synagogue often"; "I go to synagogue on high holy days only";) and my level of kashrut (unfortunately there was no place to check off "not kosher but vegetarian and won’t eat shellfish; once, in a fit of Orthodoxy, kashered parents’ kitchen while they were at work; have always wondered why fish but not chicken is parve"). I tried desperately to inject some glimmer of personality into the "essay questions," but even they are subject to approval by the mysterious "Customer Care" staff before they can be posted for all to see. With no boxes left to fill, no preferences left to express, I approved my profile, eager to meet my soulmate and build a future for my community in the process. The Son Who Didn’t Know How To Ask And then I met (or "mat") the other JDaters. They sent me messages: 74 of them, all unsolicited, within a few short weeks on the site. They sent me "teases": prepackaged lines that say things like "Hey, I like your profile. Let me know if you like mine." They instant-messaged me: within seconds of logging onto my account, my screen was bombarded by strangers sporting names like "AryehNYC1", all of whom wanted to know what I was up to and got insulted if I didn’t treat them like old buddies ("Hey! Where dja go? We were talking!"). But nowhere in any of the messages did I see any glimmer of a soulmate—or even any evidence that my potential suitors had read my profile. Sample opening line: "I came across your profile and decided to e-mail you." If the guy was feeling really verbose, he’d tell me whether he took home a decent salary and which neighborhood he took it home to. Gone were the lit-crit nerds and the indie-rock boys. Gone were the quirky late-night message artists who would put an hour into their communiqué to me, sight unseen. Here were guys who wanted to make sure we were on the same page as far as career and housing—and then might send me a full paragraph. Case in point: Michael. Michael lives in Brooklyn. He either has blue sneakers, or he approves of the fact that I do. He either has lived in Massachusetts or he approves of the fact that I am from Massachusetts. I don’t remember. Michael and I exchanged at least ten messages, and maybe closer to 20. But I don’t remember a thing about Michael, because his e-mails were completely content-free. Yet when—imagining he was as bored as I was—I ignored his messages, he would frantically send another; his most recent message to me said, "I’m still here. Surprised?" Michael had nothing else to say to me. But somehow he seemed to think that if he kept finding things we "had in common" (Brooklyn! We both live in Brooklyn!), there would be a relationship in the making. But matching up vital stats made sense—after all, I’d entered the digital territory of long-term commitment. What made less sense was that the vital stats were almost never accompanied by a well-crafted sentence. "My profile is pretty bland, but I would consider myself an interesting person," wrote one suitor seductively. Another approached me with a message that read, in full, "hey...how's it going??? can we talk sometime???" A third introduced himself with a flattering anecdote: "My best friend Bryan call[ed] me and told me that there is a girl who is really hot who thought I was cute. Only problem here was that he has withheld this information from me for over a year and a half. I threatened to come to his house, chop up his body and scatter the remains across the country." Yet JDate lays claim to the best and brightest of the Jewish community: "The majority of JDate.com members," explains the Web site, "have a professional degree and an average income exceeding $60,000/year." In informal interviews, fellow JDaters confirm that the site is geared toward the educated, high-income Jewish singles market; one friend even told me that non-Jewish men use the site to find well-educated women. The Wicked Son To be fair, I did receive a few witty, intelligent messages, by far the best of which came from Jacob Cohen. Unlike most of the guys I corresponded with, I still don’t know where Jacob lives or what he does for a living, but also unlike any of the other guys, I know that he and I have common ground. Jacob theorized about the symbolic significance of the fact that New Jersey roads don’t allow for left turns. Jacob taught me the term J.B.A.–which stands for Just Barely Adequate–an acronym one might employ to describe, for example, a sandwich ordered without tomatoes which was mistakenly prepared with tomatoes (such a sandwich, Jacob said, might be explained by saying, tersely, "tomatoes, J.B.A."). We had just gotten to the point where he was beginning to ask me, say, my last name and where I work, and I was beginning to hope he might suggest a date, when Jacob Cohen was sucked away from me, back into cyberspace, never to return. My last e-mail to him went unanswered; perhaps he had met his beshert somewhere else on JDate (and found me only J.B.A.). Jacob Cohen was the exception, intellectually, that proved the rule. But a dating service that promises intelligence binds its clientele to high standards, and the men I met were well aware of my scrutiny. "Many of the women on here are looking for the perfect 6 foot, doctor/inverstment banker, who's never been married, and is charming," complained one mid-twenties male, adding, "(which you know is fairly rare with MDs and MBAs)." If my fellow JDaters weren’t, as I’d assumed they would be, well-educated "inverstment bankers," were my expectations of the site as a whole off-base? Here I was looking for a monogamous relationship by being as promiscuous—at least on paper—as possible, carrying on internet "relationships" with ten guys at once. Was that whole saving-the-Jewish-people thing just for show? I queried various men who had written to me. "When looking for a woman who is jewish, you need a good jewish online dating site and jdate, I think, is the best one out there," one prospect told me astutely. Another interviewee offered further analysis: "[I chose JDate] because I am interested in marrying a jew. That is exceedingly important to me. While I am not that observant, I am spiritual and have a deep love of our faith. That, and the girls on j-date, in my expereince, are increadibly uninhibited." Indeed, JDate men aren’t looking for girls in glasses to take home to mom; they want party girls. Male profiles overwhelmingly request women who are "relaxed," "independent," and "fun-loving"; one told me, "I am looking for a fun girl who knows how to party, loves road trips and the country, and if you can drive stick or are eager to learn that’s a big +." And it’s not just the JDate women that are (allegedly) "increadibly uninhibited." The most common self-description on the male profile is "laid-back." One of my prospects on his own personality: "Hey I am easy going, laid back guy who works during the week and wants to relax at night and on weekend. Let’s get naked." Naked and driving a stick shift: ‘nuff said about perpetuating precious Jewish traditions. But the JDate male’s obsession with fun, partying, and labeling themselves laid-back is no coincidence. A few weeks on the sight gave me the feeling that this tendency was actually a complicated form of denial: these men wanted to make sure I knew they were not the kind of people that their presence on JDate indicated them to be: Jewishly committed adults, ready for a long-term relationship. Obsession over self-image pervaded their interactions. "Take a look at my profile," wrote one of my admirers in his initial e-mail. "You may feel excited by what you read. That's a good sign. All you have to do is e-mail me back and we can talk some more." On the other end of the ego trip, a suitor worried, "I don’t really know what to do to make my e-mail stand out from all the other guys. Well, I’m smart. I’m a great conversationalist. Currently, I work for a Credit Union making good money as a member services representative." His profile offered a disclaimer about his perceived weight problem, described a new weight-loss initiative he was pursuing, and promised his hypothetical girlfriend results within a few months. Self-obsessed, easily insulted, highly educated, woefully moronic: the more JDate men I corresponded with, the less sense I could make of them. They didn’t adore the written word—as Jews apparently do—but they possessed advanced degrees and pulled in respectable salaries, as Jews also apparently do. They were looking for fun and relaxation, yet they sent me terse e-mails describing their vital stats, and they didn’t want to settle down with a nice Jewish girl—yet—but they were searching a marriage-and-babies dating site. Still, like a promising first date that ends in a less-than-promising first kiss, JDate deserved another chance: this time, I decided I would need to meet JDate men in the flesh. The Wise Son Most people refuse to stake a Saturday evening on anything but a sure thing, making Monday a popular night for a blind date. The first JDate I went on was on a Sunday afternoon, a less popular time but one that fills the same function. JDate #1 was pleasant, if not particularly eager to put the moves on me. he had recently spent a year traveling the world, and over coffee, we talked about the cinnamon trees in Tasmania, the weather in Mongolia, and the scaffolding that had obstructed his view of the Taj Mahal. After an hour or so, he seemed to run out of things to say, throwing in the towel by announcing that he didn’t want to keep me from my work. We parted in front of the coffee shop with a listless hug—the classic closer for an unsuccessful first date. The Simple Son Without waiting to hear from JDate #1 (I never did), I moved on to my second JDate-in-the-flesh. I met JDate #2 over Heinekens in an unheated Russian bar, where he posited a distinct theory about the Web site’s appeal while hunching in an oversized parka and abandoning me frequently for cigarette breaks in the sub-zero weather. He would rather be with a Jewish woman, he explained to me, because they understand the neurotic personality of a Jewish man. Other girls might think, when he behaves bizarrely, that there is a problem in the relationship, but—he confided—a Jewish woman would understand that it’s just his God-given neurosis rearing its head. Then he launched into an account of his revulsion to his best friend’s broken marriage. The morning after our date I received an e-mail from him that read, "I hope you got home before turning into a human popsicle. I should have driven you down the road to the train station but the idea didn't occur to me until you were half way down the block." But he was too late. Halfway down the block and two thirds of the way to being a human popsicle, I decided it was over between me and online dating. We’d had a good run of it: we had some things in common, it was certainly an ego trip, and I had given it my best shot. But relationships that start on paper tend to be better on paper; and that’s not good enough—even when it comes to the people of the book. As Groucho Marx famously theorized, most of us would rather not belong to a club that wants us as a member. It’s true: even people on JDate tend to attach a faint stigma of desperation to the site, one that other internet dating sites have managed to avoid. I run across profiles seeking women who are "not your typical JDate women," written by men who claim to be "not your typical JDate guy." And all this time I had thought I was only the outsider to JDate. Apparently, we are all outsiders to JDate; and if all outsiders, then—might as well admit it—we are all insiders too. JDate’s ethos of "Jewish continuity" didn’t look the way I’d thought it would, and its clientele didn’t live up to my vision. But in drawing us all—with our self-consciousness, our desire for "uninhibited" encounters, and, most of all, our ambivalence about everything the site stands for—JDate achieves its ultimate goal of perpetuating the Jewish community, in all of our neurotic glory.
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