I have a blog on myspace. I post about twice a week and anyone who reads the blog on a regular basis knows a lot about me. I post about my life as a single 30 something woman in Manhattan. Sometimes I blog about a date I went on, other times I vent about my overbearing mother who wants to know every detail about my love life and still other times I simply express whatever is on my mind at the time. As a result of writing my blog, I met a new “friend”. He took an interest in my blog and would send me email messages commenting about the content, asking for more details etc. I was pretty flattered that he enjoyed my blog so much that I starting writing back to him and, as a result, we formed a bit of a friendship. Eventually he asked for my phone number and, after a few telephone conversations, whether I wanted to meet. I must confess that I was a bit hesitant to meet him. I felt like he “knew” me so well because, from reading my blog, he was privy to my personal thoughts and feelings. He read about “bad” dates I had been on and already knew what I have liked/disliked about other guys I’ve dated. He knew about certain insecurities of mine that I shared in my blogs – things other guys would not know on a first date. I felt a bit of pressure to make him like me as much in person as he did from my blogs, as well as pressure to like him in person since I had already spent so much time communicating with him via email and over the phone. Not to mention that he had to take a long train ride to meet me in the city and I wondered if he would consider me worth the distance he had traveled. Finally, while he has a picture posted on his myspace page, it is difficult to tell what he looks like and, let’s face it, physical attraction is way important. I wondered if I was just better off keeping this guy as an anonymous email buddy rather than taking that next step. On the other hand, I was kind of excited to meet someone who knew so much about me and seemed so interested in getting to know me better. In the past year or so, I have been working hard on taking more risks in my life and just “going with the flow” without thinking so much. In keeping with this mindset, I decided to just meet the guy and see what happened. (I even got a bikini wax in case the date went REALLY well.) We went out last night and needless to say, it was a disaster. I obviously can’t post about it on myspace since I don’t want him to read it, but feel the need to blog about it just the same.

His train was coming in to Penn Station and we decided to meet there because he is not that familiar with New York City. I was disappointed as soon as I saw him. Not only was I not attracted to him, I was a bit repulsed. I feel horrible about that but he looked nothing like his picture – he was heavier and had pretty bad skin and just looked dorky. To make matters worse, the first thing he said to me was “does my eye look red?” and pointed out his left eye which was, in fact, very red from his contact. Then he started playing with his contact, telling me that he is blind in the other eye which makes it even more vital that his left eye (the red one) function at full capacity. I thought to myself “this is going to be a long night” but decided to try to make the most of it. Although I was pretty certain a romantic relationship would not develop, we had some interesting email exchanges/telephone conversations and I hoped the night wouldn’t be THAT bad. I smiled and asked him where we were going and he told me that he made an 8:30 reservation at a Brazilian Churrasca restaurant (the kind where they bring around different types of meat). As it was currently only 7:00, my optimistic spirit took a rapid nose dive. We had to first kill an entire hour and half before we could even start dinner! I suggested we start walking to the area of the restaurant and stop at a bar for a drink. The walk to the restaurant took about 20 minutes during which time he complained about the cold, coughed constantly and was just otherwise “awkward”. I could tell he was trying really hard to impress me and I attempted to feel flattered rather than annoyed. I suggested that we stop at Houston’s for a drink as it was only a block away from the restaurant. Although our conversation at the bar was interesting at times, I couldn’t help but notice that his behavior seemed to be guided by information shared in my blogs. For example, I mentioned in a blog that one guy I went out with avoided eye contact and it turned me off. Seemingly out of nowhere, myspace guy told me that, if it looked like he was avoiding eye contact, it was probably because he was blind in one eye which made it difficult to focus. I thought (but didn’t say) “uh, thanks for telling me”. I mentioned in another blog that I hated when guys talked about their ex girlfriends on first dates. On the few occasions that he brought up an ex girlfriend or his ex fiancé, he prefaced it with “sorry to bring this up”. Finally, I mentioned in one blog that I had a really fun time on a first date with this guy who engaged me in silly conversation about sex with sitcom stars. It was a harmless conversation as to whether I would rather have sex with Ponch or John from Chips, Zach or Slater from Saved By The Bell etc. and it was just fun. Myspace guy tried to engage me in silly conversation as well, but he chose bodily functions as the subject matter and it just didn’t work. I like a guy to do things that make me smile or impress me naturally; not because he read about my preferences in my blog. He was so transparent and it was a turnoff. After the one drink, it was time for dinner (finally!) so we made our way the block to the restaurant. Myspace guy was very awkward at dinner and his manners left something to be desired. He had read that the lamb chops at this particular restaurant were really good but that sometimes you had to specifically request that they bring them around. He asked one of the waiters if we could try the lamb chops. The waiter told us that the lamb chops would follow but, rather than wait patiently, myspace guy asked about the status of the lamb chops two more times. Also, whenever a waiter asked if we wanted a particular type of meat that we had tried already, rather than politely decline, myspace guy would say “no. we tried this already”. Finally, after biting into a piece of sausage that had clearly just come out of the oven, he spit it out of his mouth because it was too hot. Even if I was attracted to the guy, I would be embarrassed to take him out with my friends, family or, God forbid, people from work. I found myself checking out every other guy in the restaurant and wishing I was with one of them instead of myspace guy.


It wasn’t even 10:00 when we finished dinner and myspace guy asked if I wanted to get a drink since it was still early. At first, I politely declined and told him that I was just too full from dinner. After further consideration, however, I felt guilty that I didn’t like him after he had traveled all this way and treated me to a pretty expensive dinner. Although I really wanted to go home, I decided to alleviate my own guilt by asking him to come back to Houstons for one more drink, my treat. I probably should have gone with my first instinct because I probably lead him on by asking him to go for a drink. In fact, myspace guy asked me if he could kiss me before we went inside the bar. I had absolutely no desire to kiss the guy so I told him that I did not feel a romantic vibe. I said that I did enjoy our “friendship” though and hoped that we could continue to be “friends”. I thought he was ok with that, however, at the end of the night, when I kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for the night, he asked me if I wanted to do it again sometime. In response to my reluctant “ok”, he said “but you didn’t want me to kiss you”. I said “if we go out again, it would have to be as friends. I hope that is ok”. He said “ok” but I could tell he was disappointed as he began his walk back to Penn Station.

If this was a regular first date, I would not be so troubled by my lack of attraction for myspace guy. Chemistry is pretty rare and it is either there or it is not. This was certainly not the first time I had a blind date with someone I didn’t end up liking and it will likely not be the last. As mentioned earlier, I am just not used to having so much contact with someone prior to meeting in person and, since most guys I date do not read my blog, they are not privy to my personal thoughts, feelings and experiences. I almost felt like I “owed” myspace guy more consideration than other guys who go out with me “blind” and perhaps with lower expectations. The truth is, however, that I was under no greater obligation to like myspace guy than any other guy and should not feel guilty that it didn’t work out. I post my blog publicly and myspace guy simply chose to read it and initiate contact with me; it’s not as if I wrote it just for him. That being said, in the future, I intend to reserve myspace for writing blogs and communicating with friends. I will rely on Match.com as my online dating source from now on!