Let’s see…Video Games.

The first thing that comes to mind is that divine being up in the sky, eating nachos, and fondling the joystick that’s fucking with my life. It presses one button and a fuse blows in my apartment. It presses another button and my Metrocard says “please swipe again in this turnstile, “ only after I keel over in pain and can’t have babies. I wrote a play about this whole conspiracy theory, only I’m not really good at writing dialog.

The second thing I think of is Burgertime. Then the Smurf game, where I set it on the easiest level for two years because I always had to win. Then I think about my Playstation console that got stolen. Let me take a moment to repress.

Then I think about a roller skating party, where everyone wears roller skates and just shows up at a regular bar. Not that it has anything to do with video games, but because I just think that’s a really good idea and I want to write it down before I forget.

But when it comes down to it, I think of the modern day video game called internet dating. Like Mario (or Luigi) you find yourself constantly searching for your proverbial princess. You deal with a ton of drama that you either avoid by jumping over or you trounce upon it. But when you think you find the princess you realize you’re in the wrong castle and it’s the wrong princess and the whole adventure you just experienced was just an enormous waste of time and energy.

It all started the day I became single after a year and a half….

“You know last time we broke up I slept with another girl, “ he told me as we were a midst our second and final break up.

“No shit!” I exclaimed excitedly and then continued to pursue other information. “Who? Where did you meet her? What did you guys do…”

He told me the details as I realized that I really didn’t care that he slept with someone else, that I didn’t feel he was anything more than my best friend at this point. It was kind of sad to realize after I devoted a year and a half to the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I mean, I thought he was the best thing that’s ever happened to me but I also once thought that about macaroni and cheese.

He told me he met her through an online personal ad, which sometime in the past year and a half crossed the line between a really desperate move, and a really logical device created to expedite the whole dating process. My curiosity was peaked and I decided it would be a good move to jump right back onto the dating wagon. So I pointed my browser to Nerve.com, filled out a profile, uploaded a picture and in less than a day got contacted.

The way the shit works is that it’s free to fill out a profile and search for some ass, but if you actually want to contact someone, you have to buy credits. The credits themselves aren’t a ton of money, they just want you to buy them in bulk. The least you can spend is $25 for like 25 credits. But if somebody takes the initiative and contacts you, it’s free to write them back. Then there’s the whole collect call, where you can contact them for free and send them a prefabricated message to let them know you’re interested, and it’s up to them if they want to shell out a credit.

Then there’s the whole Instant Gratifier, which is their version of instant message. These are pretty hilarious… most are from guys who are just totally horny and are all about the booty call. On more than one occasion, this message popped up on my screen.

Hi,

Saw you online and your profile caught my attention.

Just had my date cancelled for tonight. I have a reservation at a great place for dinner and now need a last minute date.

So are you spontaneous, fun. Looking to go out and spend a great saturday night?

If interested lets talk and who knows tonight could still be great. Let me know.

me.

At least he wanted to buy me dinner, most of these got right to the “Wanna do it?”. But what is he --a car salesman? – all prepared with his own personal prefabricated message to send out to the prospective fuck of his choice? What a tool.

I mean who wants to deal with guys like this, but I’m pretending to be an investigative reporter who needs to sacrifice my integrity for the sake of journalism. So I met dude #1 – I’ll call him Zelda.

Zelda was a game that seemed cool, I mean the commercial for it was all fun and wacky and stuff. But when I attempted to play it, I found out it was way too deep with a shit-load of philosophical baggage. Even attempting to play it ends up being really annoying. (This is called foreshadowing.)

So Zelda asked me out for a drink. It was all happening too fast and I already had plans for the evening so I declined.

But let me digress for a second to tell you about the night in question-- such a Thank-God-I’m-single night. I’m not sure if it was the drugs, alcohol or horniness in the air but I got hit on by two guys who I’ve been friends with for a couple of years, One, who is totally hot. He kept on putting his arm around me and joking how I’m on the rebound. I screamed at him in front of many people, “Stop trying to hook-up with me!” -- completely alienating him from me.

I thought he was way too hot and I have major issues with hot guys… I can’t seem to take them seriously. I’m not sure if it’s a self-esteem thing, or the fact that I think they know they’re hot shit and deserve to know their place in society. Or I think about every hot guy I obsessed about during my teenage years… to them I was a total object of rejection.

The second guy was old and rich and married and I’m not ready to go down that road of my newfound single status. Enough said.

Suddenly it was last call. Me and a few friends ended up at some bar in the west village. There we saw “Dudley, “ this dude who I’ve known for a couple of years, the friend of a friend sort. I wasn’t sure what happened next. My friend went in the men’s room with him, came out and said, “We’re going to Dudley’s place.”

So we walked a few blocks to his pad and for the third time that night I was told how hot I was.

I was like “Why is everyone making fun of me tonight?”

So we’re at his pad, hanging out for about a half hour. I go to the bathroom and when I walk out, my two “friends” are on their way out the door.

“You guys getting a cab to Brooklyn?” I inquired

“No.” They respond and shut the door behind them.

It didn’t occur to me till the next day that I was totally pimped out by a certain guy (who knows who he is and should realize that paybacks a bitch.) So I kind of hooked up with Dudley by default. It was about 6am at this point and I was shit-faced and needed a place to crash. So my first rebound hook up consisted of me trying to sleep, and this dude I had nothing in common with dry-humping my back. And of course word got out I never came home that night.

The next day I was taking a road trip up to Providence with my friend’s band. We generally like to play car games on road trips, so they decided to engage in a round of “Guess who B.A. hooked up with last night?” They guessed it before we even hit the BQE.

But even after the whole hook up hangover that lasted until 5am Sunday morning, I realized it was a good time. I tend to enjoy the spontaneity of going out and not knowing what’s gonna happen as opposed to the whole internet dating agenda… you know, Nerve.com playing god and such and having a good idea of what you’re getting into. Plus the fact most people lie their faces off over email and you never know who’s a total psycho.

So it took me a week before I decided to meet Zelda. I was totally skeptical because he lived really close to me and I would have to worry about avoiding him. But since Zelda was an engineer and I’m recruiting engineers for the recording studio I work at, I was encouraged to “Take one for the team”

I met Zelda at a local bar and we hit it off OK. He had an accent, which sucks. I’m not racist or anything it’s just I have a really short attention span and it’s hard for me to pay attention when someone is speaking perfect English – If I have to devote too much energy to try to understand what they’re saying, I tend to look elsewhere. Hey look! There’s a balloon…

(3 hours later) But anyway, I thought Zelda was nice at first. But after hours of time in his presence, I began to tap into the pushy egomaniac that he was. He took himself way to seriously and never even heard of the Flaming Lips! I kept trying to end the date but he wouldn’t have any of that. The next day, we went to the studio so he can check out the equipment, but I was so fed up with his bullshit at the point, I couldn’t even look at him. And yes, I do see him around and hide my face in my coat, hat, or I cross the street.

The next day I updated my profile to read: “The following need not apply: Ego-maniacs, pretentious fucks, frat boys, republicans, those who take themselves too seriously, and guys who have never heard of the flaming lips.” I also put in that I’m an investigative reporter and am doing an expose on the internet dating scene.

I didn’t get any responses.

A few days later, I updated my profile once more and deleted the comment about the expose on the internet dating scene. My mailbox began filling up with boys showing off their Flaming Lip know-how. One guy contacted me and said he was all that need not applied and still wanted to meet me because I put “Rock and Roll advocate” as my occupation and he “enjoys classic rock.” He thought we could work through our differences by not discussing politics. Now I don’t tend to discuss politics in general but the only republicans I get along with are my parents because they gave me life – and I still constantly give them shit for voting Bush.

So Dude #2 – or Q-bert contacted me and I could tell from his profile that he was a lot of fun – or at least perpetrated like he was a lot of fun. After various emails back and forth, I found out he was a graffiti boy. Bonus. I hung out with a bunch of graffiti boys in college and developed crushes on just about all of them up until graduation day, but when he asked for my digits. I told him 1-900-MIX-A-LOT. Even the fact he’s a graffiti boy, doesn’t make up for the fact I met him online. There’s just this stigma…

Dude # 3 I’ll call Donkey Kong. Because he was throwing all these barrels of obscure uber-wit and SAT words at me and I was too hung over to deal. I told him I was dying my hair green and he never responded.

In the midst of this experiment, I also found myself obsessed with the “missed connection” section of Craig’s list. For those of you not in the know, this is like the online (not to mention FREE) version of the back page of the Village Voice. Ever since I moved into NYC, I have always found myself checking it to see if anybody wanted but never had the balls to approach me.

So basically for shits and giggles I posted a misses connection ad one Sunday afternoon. The night before I danced my ass off with some guy at a party. He looked like Mickey Dolenz and I have a thing for both Monkees and monkeys. I knew his name was Terry and that’s it. So I posted it and by Monday morning I had an email in my inbox from Terry. I could not believe that worked! We shot a few notes back and forth, then I got bored.

There were plenty more dudes who contacted me through Nerve.com and they seem like they might have been cool but I got bored with them too. I didn’t even feel up to making an effort to write them back (or thinking up clever little analogies comparing them to video game personnel.)

Don’t get me wrong it’s great to see all these notes from prospective admirers in my inbox every morning… a total ego boost. But it’s also an ego boost going to a show or party and having some guy in the flesh spark interest. And if I don’t meet someone in the flesh I just consider them robots. Don’t get me wrong, I love robots -- I even put that down under “Religion” in my profile. But if I’m going to deal with robots it’s going to be the artificial intellectual types that are made out of metal.

In the meantime, I was going out, flirting my ass off, not always hooking up but having a blast. Remembering how much fun it is to be single and independent. Being productive is what it comes down to. If I’m in a relationship, I get way to comfortable. I go home at night and sit in front of the TV with him. I spent my spare time trying to work out relationship issues… or just thinking about him. I guess I got sick of sharing half my brain and energy on someone else’s life. It may sound selfish but how am I going to amount to anything cool with the boyfriend baggage weighing me down. I think dating is fun, and I can deal with that…but game over. No need to expedite the process. No more internet dating, I like real boys better.

The end.

Well not really. Last week I got a collect call in my inbox. I usually didn’t give collect calls a second look but I was bored, so I checked out his profile and this is what I saw below a picture of a hot, hot boy. (Not the intimidating type of hot boy I spoke of earlier, but a really cute guy with a wize-ass grin on his face which constitutes hot ass in my book.)

Catchphrase:

“If you ever leave me, I’ll kill you.”

Favorite on-screen sex scene:

the strap-on scene in Gone With The Wind

The five items I can't live without:

children's laughter

pabst blue ribbon

crystal meth

flowers

kittens

Fill in the blanks:

 I is sexy; nobody is sexier.

In my bedroom, you'll find:

everyone else at the YMCA

why you should get to know me

my truely heroic intake of liquor. plus i've gotten over my ex-girlfriend. that means i'll still probably like you, no matter how much of a bitch you are.

more about who I'm looking for

a rich, beautiful, loose woman with a heart of gold who enjoys long walks through bad neighborhoods to buy me booze. P.S. !SEND CONTACT INFO! 'cause i don't spend my money on nothing but peach schnops or scatch-off lottery tickets. no shit. oh yeah, and make sure you got a picture, cause i'm shallow as hell.

You know what’s scary? I pissed my pants reading this but there’s a chance that he’s not being funny…technology, dammit – you never know how to read people. Still it was enough to make me collect call him back (I, like him refuse to spend a dime on this service.)

A few days later, the following note was in my inbox:

Re: collect call

i bought 25 fucking credits to respond to your call. shoot me an email at nothisrealemail@hotmail.com. talk to you soon, maybe.

Like I said, I originally planned to give up on all this internet dating hoopla but the fact that he actually dished out the dough after his profile specifically stated he wouldn’t made me think I should at least meet him. (Although he may have been totally full of shit.)

So we spoke on the phone a couple of times, but nothing deep. We mutually wanted to meet each other but really couldn’t pin down a date to get together for about a week. We finally decided he’d come over to watch movies on Thursday night. Our date ended with a sweet, passionate kiss…ON SATURDAY!!!

I hesitate to write anymore. I mean what can you write after a 42-hour make-out marathon? And we didn’t even get sick of each other. And I feel that anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach and I’m totally distracted. But it’s that good kind of distracted of being caught up in something that you have no idea what the future beholds – the kind of distraction overactive imaginations have a field day with. I know I’m not ready to jump into a serious relationship… I’m having way too much fun being single although I’m sure that will wear off eventually. I know there was a connection but I have no idea how he really feels or how I really feel for that matter. Oh the drama! The Drama!

Well, at this point the only thing I can hope for is that if this does turn into something, he’ll be up for lying about how we met