SWM Seeks Sex

GO TO ONLINE DATING SERVICES, FIND EVERYTHING BUT LOVE

In one regard, at least, I'm probably a lot like you: I'm usually happy to come across photos of beautiful, naked lesbians. On this particular evening, however, while surfing the web, beautiful, naked lesbians are a distraction. Now, I have a lot in common with lesbians. For instance, we both really like to have sex with women. I have a good idea what lesbians like to do and why, because I like it, too. Sometimes I'm not in the mood to eat ice cream, or to be nice to strangers, but I can usually make time for beautiful, naked lesbians.

But tonight--and this is unusual for my web use--I'm not scouting for porn. I'm looking for a beautiful, smart, heterosexual woman who is single, lives in or at least near New York, and might want to date me. Last spring, my good friend Sean, a tall, exuberant songwriter, joined two online dating services. He regularly went on three dates a day, scheduling them like errands or job interviews, while I mocked him for his desperate antics. Then I saw the girlfriend he'd met online, a rosy young opera singer who looks like an ingenue from a Chekhov story. Suddenly, desperation didn't seem so awful.

And in a way, I am desperate. In a few months I'll turn 40, and though I haven't lost any hair or gained any weight, and strangers often think I'm at least 10 years younger, the change in age is a problem. Women look at bachelors over 40 the way men regard nuns: lost causes. I've had long relationships, as long as four and a half years. I've had short relationships, as short as, well, one night. But I'm still single and still trying to find someone to love.

In New York, where three out of every four people are single, that should be as easy as hailing a cab. According to the latest census, there are 113.7 women to every 100 men in New York. And when you factor in a disproportionate number of gay men, there are likely five straight women for every four straight men. This is the greatest North American city to live in if you like beautiful, smart, stylish women whose breasts aren't elevated by silicone, a distinction that rules out LA and Miami.

Yet, for New Yorkers, relationships lag in priority behind work, exercise, shopping, reading the newspaper and learning Swedish. A local dermatologist recently spent $3000 on a magazine ad to search for a wife and offered a $200,000 bounty for the right match. Though he was reportedly deluged with offers, he remains single, maybe because he still lives with his 91-year-old mom. If a rich doctor can't hook up, what are my odds?

My search begins at Love on the Web (loveontheweb.net), which, thanks to loose standards, is one of the few sites where you can see nude pictures for free. After a few visits, I notice a puzzling disparity: The straight women are plain, and the lesbians are gorgeous. In my experience, lesbians usually look like the Indigo Girls. So I'm suspicious, not only of the photos but also of the bios posted by Gabriela (future plans: "eat pussy the rest of my life"), Sweetlove (the first thing people notice about her: "my sweet ass") and Monique71 ("I love to be raped"). Women don't talk like this--not even lesbians. The only people who talk like this are men who go online pretending to be lesbians to solicit nude photos of other lesbians, who may or may not also be guys. I suspect that many of the Love on the Web ads are frauds. And yet, I still write to Tori, a bisexual securities analyst who loves to give head and posts two close-up photos of her sweet ass. Until she writes back, I won't believe she exists.

When discouragement visits, I usually call a friend for consolation. Well, first I drink a large glass of bourbon, then I call a friend. In this case, I phone Sean, who'd prospered online. He advises me to persevere and says he got responses from only about 10 percent of the 140 women he contacted. The ratio seems pitifully low, and I'm confident my percentage will be higher. He also advises skepticism. "Read the ads carefully, especially how they describe their body type. Anything other than 'thin' is a warning. 'Athletic' means 'fat.' 'Shapely' means 'fat.' If they don't mention an age, they're 45."

So I sign up for JDate (jdate.com), a Jewish singles network founded in 1997 that claims 200,000 members. As I submit a photo to run alongside my bio, I decide to distinguish myself with sarcasm:

Me: Age--39 but looks 29. Freelance writer, which is not a euphemism for "unemployed" or "indigent," thanks. Ivy League grad (one of the eight real Ivys, not a fake one). A medically certified 5'10". Fit (my best time for a half marathon is 1:42:02). Things I like more than most people do: running, reading, blue cheese, any record by Brian Eno, tennis, my friends. Things I like less than most people do: Friends, Seinfeld, or nearly any other TV sitcom, inarticulateness, littering and pleated pants.

You: Sherilyn Fenn with a master's in semiotics. Failing that: funny, patient, kind, smart, beautiful, sexy, adventurous and active, but not meek or passive--docility is for dogs, not women.

I search the JDate database, enter the age range I prefer and a few other parameters, and for the next few hours browse 500 bios. I don't like patchouli, yoga or people who tape Oprah, so I devise a few rules. (1) Anyone who uses the term soul mate is disqualified. (2) Anyone who posts a photo with her cat is disqualified. (3) Anyone who uses the word spirituality in a positive way is disqualified. Out of 500 I find 15 who are gorgeous and don't seem inappropriately fond of cats. Taking Sean's advice to keep the introductory e-mails brief, I send each a note that begins, "I found your bio intriguing," and try to elicit a response.

Two hours later, I get a form rejection note from Abby (at various times, I do or do not change identifying details about women, depending entirely on whether or not they pissed me off), a 30-year-old jewelry designer who looks like Christy Turlington: "I read your profile, and I don't think we'd make a good fit." My consolation: She likes New Age music, which is the musical version of the term soul mate. A week later, none of the original 15 has written back. This calls for more bourbon.

To increase my odds, I sign up for two more websites: Match.com (match.com), where "you can date, relate and find your soul mate among the web's largest community of discriminating, eligible singles," and Matchmaker (matchmaker.com), "the most entertaining place to meet new people." I don't want a soul mate. I don't want entertainment. I just want someone to answer my goddamn e-mail.

Earlier this year, Match.com claimed to be registering nearly 11,000 new members every day. Online dating, which was estimated as a billion-dollar business in 1998, is projected to gross $1.5 billion by 2003. But the singles-bar paradigm still applies: The men outnumber the women, constituting anywhere from 51 percent to 70 percent of memberships, depending on which study you believe. (One survey also showed that 63 percent of users have sex with someone they met online, 25 percent lie about their age, marital status or appearance and three percent marry.) So most women sit on a metaphorical bar stool, waiting and choosing the best candidates. For example: In her bio, a Match member who mentions she's a part-time model says she gets up to 100 e-mails a day.

Each site has a different design: Matchmaker is harder to navigate than Match, where each ad has a short headline. A few catch my eye: Yes, all of my body parts are real, triple-x girl ("X-citing, X-quisite and X-otic," it turns out), Bikini wax anyone? and Idrive-Topless, who owns a convertible and does look cute, though in one photo she was nuzzling two cats.

Some people post photos, others don't, but each writes a bio that strives to demonstrate intelligence and wit and uniqueness, though everyone ends up sounding blandly identical, a vague synthesis of opposites: "I like the city and the country, Republicans and Democrats, vanilla and chocolate." I read the cheery phrase "I love to laugh" so many times, it makes me want to strangle a kitten.

But there are a few people willing to distinguish their bios with obnoxious candor. "Do you belong to any organizations, clubs, teams or special interest groups?" asks the Matchmaker questionnaire, to which one spendthrift answers Bloomingdale's. "You'll need a strong family upbringing, integrity and financial wealth, too," Krishka writes bluntly. "Extra points if you have a convertible (or chauffeur) for road-tripping." A thin, elegant singer on the site wants to find a lawyer, doctor or musician who is tall and has a full head of hair and a great body. "However, if you are totally horrific-looking yet are insanely nice, fun, friendly and superrich, we'll see what can develop." Reading bios is like stealing people's diaries. I can spend hours browsing them.

"I am very picky about the men I date," warns Emerald. "You need to be able to change a lightbulb, hang a picture and be handy around the house. I shouldn't have to teach you everything. She doesn't want a boyfriend, she wants a contractor. Thank God she didn't write me back. Others are quite specific: "Must have good teeth and wear decent shoes. Must know who die Smiths and the Cure are." Also: "No liars, cheaters, short or bald men. No on-call doctors. Someone who owns matching sheets, someone I don't have to support." And an actress says this about her ideal date: "For starters, I'd like the man in my life to be straight. If you've spent much time with actresses, you know that request is not as ridiculous as it might seem." Finally, a standard I can live up to.

One Monday morning, I find five messages in my Matchmaker mailbox, each from an older woman. "You truly are adorable. I'm probably too old for (continued on page 159)SWM(continued from page 78) you," writes a bubbly 44-year-old teacher whose bio crows, "I love to laugh." Not just too old, but also divorced and the mother of too many kids. A hypnotist with a witchy, Brazilian sexuality writes to say I'm "intriguing and adorable." Her bio mentions martial arts, Jewish mysticism and several other spiritual interests. "The more I positively impact my personal electromagnetic field through mind-body-spirit disciplines, the more I radiate love and sharing." I don't like radiation any more than I like cats, so I write her a polite rejection note.

The girls I like don't like me. The girls who like me, I don't like. It's like being 15 again.

Many of my correspondents comment sarcastically on my haircut, a thick shag that makes me look like Keith Richards in his matted heroin haze or Warren Beatty in Shampoo. On JDate, Pam says, "Are you the guy from circa 1975?" On Matchmaker, a woman who says she reminds people of Janeane Garofalo asks, "Where did you get hold of Robert Klein's headshot?" "I was thinking your haircut was so bad and so That Seventies Show, but I read your profile and it made me laugh," says an actress who has had parts on Party of Five and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. (I know this because I checked her out on Google, research I conduct before all my dates.) "Don't take any of this the wrong way. I'm actually trying to give you a compliment." Sadly, it's the sweetest thing anyone's said to me online in a while.

If I contact a woman and she doesn't reply, I move on. But the women are more persistent. One writes me from Match, and when I don't reply, she writes me again from JDate. "Wow," reads the subject line of an introductory e-mail from BrainyGirl, who likes art films and writes, "I cry at everything." When I don't reply, she sends two more notes the next day: "So, here you have a woman with all the qualities on your laundry list, and still no response from you. What gives?"

Back on JDate, I write to five more hotties and finally get my first real response: Rachel, a tall architect, snarls, "Since you're a writer, I'm disappointed you couldn't come up with a more original introductory line, especially when other women on JDate have said you used the same line with them. Get with it. How intrigued can you be with multiple women?"

As if my 0-for-20 streak on JDate weren't bad enough, now I have to worry about an underground information network tracing my come-ons like the CIA. One afternoon, I have lunch with Daisy, a stacked, pink-flushed acupuncturist in a sleeveless, unbuttoned sundress who says Matchmaker also has a surreptitious newsletter in which women exchange information about unsavory members. On the advice of Sean's girlfriend, I change my JDate bio to make it less caustic. For good measure, I also change my answer to the income question, from "none of your business" to "over $100,000." I need every advantage I can muster.

One day I read that Daily Candy, a website for fashion obsessives, is auctioning off a personal ad. Here's a chance to reach thousands of women who don't mind spending $50 every three weeks on a Brazilian bikini wax. First I have to win the eBay auction, which seems unlikely when my cable modem fails a few minutes before the auction ends. Finally, after a frantic service call to tech support, I reset the modem, log on to eBay and get into a last-minute bidding war. With two seconds left in the auction, my $550 bid wins.

I compose an ad plotted to seduce stylish knockouts: "Dasher looking for Vixen. If I was a sample sale, you'd show up early," it begins. Over the next week, my mailbox fills up with about 60 entries. Several women write to say they already have boyfriends, but they wish me luck. Three are blank. One, coincidentally, is from a good friend's sister. Just to prove that everything you've heard about New Yorkers is true, another writes to correct my grammar.

But most of the girls wriggle for attention like beauty queen contestants. One ad exec sends an elaborate poem. When I ask for a photo, she forwards a softcore picture of Carmen Electra. We meet; she looks more like Bette Midler. "I didn't think that kind of flamboyant wit was possible for a heterosexual guy," writes a newspaper columnist who has always ignored me at cocktail parties. A stockbroker writes, "I like to ski it steep and deep," which I assume is some kind of metaphor. I even get an out-of-town response: Pearl, who says she's "beautiful both inside and out" and adds, "I love to smile" (what, you got something against laughing?) offers to fly from Los Angeles to meet me. Then she sends a photo. Imagine Drew Carey wearing Patricia Field drag.

"I admit I was intrigued, and I'd like to learn more about you," writes Sandra, a TV producer who describes herself as sexy and witty, "with true inner and outer beauty." The moment Sandra arrives for dinner, I wonder how much time she'd spent retouching her photo. In the middle of discussing baseball she dares me to name her favorite Yankee, then adds, "You won't guess. You're not that smart." No, nor was I interested enough to remember her answer.

For a few weeks, I have lots of drink dates: with Alexandra, a daring blonde socialite with a trust fund, with Laura, a goofy, red-lipped teacher who writes the next day to suggest I go on a date with her sister, and with Margie, who sent me a gorgeous photo of her naked, tattooed back. (I forward it to Sean, who replies, "It gave me a chubby.") When we meet for a late drink, Margie--a tiny, precocious, bisexual 21-year-old with lots of piercings--says a bunch of her friends liked my Daily Candy ad. When several tell her they would have answered it, Margie adds, "If only he weren't so old." The pain is assuaged by liberal applications of her tongue stud sometime after midnight.

One day, my stockbroker puts me in touch with a divorced colleague who'd recently joined the Right Stuff (right stuffdating.com), a dating service that's exclusively for graduates of Ivy League and other "select" colleges. He raves about all of the "consistently powerful, extraordinary women" he's met there. Finally, I can reap an advantage from having cheated on my SATs. After submitting a copy of my diploma as the mandatory "proof of your graduate status," I browse brief bios of about 650 New York members. A book author and healer. A lawyer who enjoys "yummy brunches." A blonde attorney, "very attractive, loves to laugh." (I'll bring my hand puppets.) A head-turning blonde looking for a "successful, generous man to captivate and keep me." In these 30-word teaser capsules, at least half use the vague word attractive.

Where other sites have a flat monthly or quarterly fee for unlimited use, the Right Stuff charges a moderate $70 for a six-month membership, then $3.10 each time you want to see the full profile of a member. There's a slot-machine effect at work: Very quickly, I spend more than $100 on profiles, most of which do not have photos.

In addition to the expense and aggravation, the Right Stuff is badly designed and difficult to navigate. I phone for customer support, leave two messages over the span of two weeks and get no reply. Finally, I e-mail Dawne, the site proprietress, who replies, "I am so sorry, but I have been overwhelmed by the changes that were made to the website." Her e-mail is full of misspellings--pretty funny for a woman whose site caters to the well educated.

Here, I can't even see photos of the women who reject me. "Honestly, you just aren't my type," replies an MBA named Anne. "I'm very into clean-cut guys, and your hairstyle just doesn't fall into that category." I have only one Right Stuff date, with a pale fiction editor who volunteers a similar dislike of the site: "It seems like a rip-off," she says, sighing, and adds some ad hominem comments about Dawne.

When I complain about the site and the lack of customer service, Dawne responds by canceling my membership. "Your rudeness bordered on rage," she writes. Instead of enjoying the service, "you spent your time insulting me and raging at me." These accusations surprise me. I thought I'd been pretty kind about her crummy, rapacious site.

After five weeks on JDate, I am batting 1-for-29, the kind of average that gets people sent to the minor leagues. Average age of the women I write to: 26. Average age of the women who write to me: 35. Then, on my 30th JDate try, I get something worse than rejection: a psychodate.

When I write to her, Layna June e-mails me a short message: "Can you IM me? Doesn't that sound so sexual?" She also sends me a photo from her brother's bar mitzvah; she's wearing a tight, blood-red dress and posing with a Cher impersonator. Either that, or Cher has been making personal appearances at Long Island bar mitzvahs.

One night, while I'm on vacation at a beach house about 90 miles east of New York City, Layna June and I exchange a few instant messages. She says I have "kind of a Beck look," a rare positive reference to my hair. She mentions that she's submissive. She asks when we can meet. As soon as possible, I think. Just a few hours after our first phone call, she arrives at my house.

And she's splendid: a thick-lipped brunette with more curves than the Indy 500. We balance ourselves on a hammock under the night sky and spend an hour touching and kissing. She mentions that she likes to be spanked. We move inside.

On the phone, she'd mentioned two relevant details. First, that she was broke--though, instead of taking a $10 train or a $24 bus, she hires a car and driver for $200 (plus a $40 tip) and charges it to her father, announcing, "He can afford it." She does not have a penny anywhere in her tight jeans, and she's hoarding the last cigarette in her pack. Second, she mentioned that she takes Prozac for an obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder. She's done everything but give me her psychopharmacologist's beeper number, but I'm undeterred for one simple reason: Psychochicks do it better.

Prozac inhibits orgasms, which I view as a kind of challenge. By midnight, my tongue is exhausted, but I've succeeded in making my guest feel welcome. At this point, she mentions that she doesn't actually like intercourse, and drops off to sleep without reciprocation. Subtract the sex from psychosex, and what are you left with? Exactly.

The next morning, disappointment turns into melodrama. She's spending lots of time on her cell phone, her voice rising with each call. Her sister, scheduled for a "medical procedure" that day, hasn't shown at the hospital, and their mother is alarmed. After a while, Layna June apologizes for the theatrics and explains that her sister, once institutionalized for a suicide attempt, was scheduled for an abortion and, after declaring "I don't want to live," has ditched the hospital and disappeared. She sits in the yard, making calls, while I read inside. Although we'd planned on two nights together, after dinner I drive her to her friend's posh rental three towns away, and we part quickly. We've gone from desire to disdain, the full cycle of a sour relationship, in only 18 hours. And I haven't gotten laid. She's the bossiest submissive I've ever met.

With my JDate batting average at 2-for-30, I decide to retire from the site.

Until I joined Nerve (nerve.com), I was unfamiliar with genital stretching. Most sites offer comforting, flowery language about romance and commitment, to chase away the horror and shame that naturally result from looking for love on the Internet. Reading the Nerve personals is like eavesdropping at a downtown bar: lots of pop culture references, sexual innuendo, showoff wit and a flood of sarcasm. For instance, I don't think VictoriaSecret is sincere when she writes, "I want someone who knows how to say Hard Rock Cafe in a whole bunch of languages. No ethnics please. I like men who are outta control, so incontinence is a big plus!"

Unlike most other sites, Nerve allows explicit photos, like the Forties-style nude chiaroscuro shot submitted by Lindy, a fleshy 22-year-old bisexual. Last books she read: The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and The Mammoth Book of Murder. Favorite movie sex scene: from The Night Porter. Her bio also mentions anal beads, fisting, spanking, bondage and discipline, pussy and cock worship and her vibrator. Oh, and cats. Even kinky sex adventurers need a domestic animal companion.

I don't get a response from the beautiful Canadian expat who talks about underwear and shoes, specifies that she likes being dominated and wants a man who will discuss Acheulean tool traditions and behavioral endocrinology with her. I get a note from Marcy, a massage therapist in her late 30s whose bio mentions Pablo Neruda and two cats. I don't reply.

I have lunch with a classy, stylish, accomplished fine-art photographer looking for "someone who enjoys giving and receiving pleasure--long, sustained pleasure." Our lunch lasts two hours, though I don't think that's the kind of sustained pleasure she has in mind. "I liked your ad. Would love to hear more. Check out mine and drop me a line," writes a dark, moody-looking girl whose bio mentions her therapist and Sylvia Plath. I write back but get no reply.

Since people know they'll never see one another again, there's a fair amount of rudeness in online dating. A Matchmaker date who imports fabric from Italy and lists her faults as "too smart and too witty" twice breaks dates at the last minute, then offers to buy me a drink in apology. Our date is unremarkable. For most of it, I wonder whether I'm staring at her overbite. When the check comes, she doesn't make a move to pay.

The search for love is exasperating, time-consuming, exhausting and depressing. Through persistence, my dating pace escalates to as many as three per day. The details of these dates blur together. At times, when I feel a connection with a beautiful girl, or make out against a brick wall with someone I've just met, excitement balances the distress of constant rejection. I have an afternoon iced coffee with a blonde, pig-tailed dominatrix who's planning a line of exercise videos called Slavercise, with submissives kissing her shoes while doing push-ups. I share morning crepes with a trim and elegant psychotherapist who tells me about her est training and mentions that she likes Ayn Rand's Fountainhead only because "the sex scenes are so hot."

But mostly, I meet women for drinks. The gabby founder of a beauty website wears black pants and a ruffled open blouse, with her cleavage set on stun. She downs three drinks in two hours and starts to slur a little, so when she says, "I'm an S corp," I think she's said, "I'm an escort." Em, a Southern belle stockbroker who looks like a buttery version of Juliana Margulies, meets me for mojitos and recounts a legacy of bad online dates: the doctor who lured her to his apartment on the pretense of showing her a great new club and cried when she tried to leave; the guy who stormed out of a bar after 30 minutes, convinced she wasn't listening to him; and the indie film producer who begged to be her slave and paid her $50 for each insulting e-mail she sent him. "Oh," she adds as a waitress brings our fifth round of mojitos, "I let him clean my bathroom, too."

I've been dating in New York. I've seen rudeness, deceit, insanity, beauty, desperation, passion and a lot of miniskirts. I've dated a college junior the day after having drinks with a woman twice her age. I've spent around $2000, met only one woman who bought me a drink and had half a dozen second dates.

It's inevitable that feelings get hurt. The fiction editor, one of my favorite dates, doesn't respond to my invitation for a second date. More than a month after my Daily Candy personal ad, I get an angry e-mail lecture from a woman whose note and photo I'd ignored. "The women who write to you deserve more respect. You provide them with a mini fantasy and request their letters and photos. The least you can do is write them back and say, 'No, thank you.' You should know that your actions are rude." Whether it's more rude to say directly, "I don't find you attractive," or just signify it through silence, I can't say. Both messages have been delivered to me, at least weekly since I began dating online, and neither was pleasant.

At times, it seems every single person in New York is dating online (and a lot of the married ones, too, at least on Nerve). One night I'm out having a glass of wine with Barbara, a dancer with a ready exhibitionist streak and the tautest 42-year-old body I've ever touched. We quickly discover two coincidences: Her grandfather had my last name, and in college, she had a one-night stand with one of my best friends from high school. "I Googled you," I admit. "I Googled you, too!" she answers. Soon, she's sitting in my lap.

From the next table, a guy with shaggy hair and glasses says, "Excuse me, did I hear you say Matchmaker?" Amazingly, he's also on a Matchmaker first date, with a private investigator. We push our tables together, and she amuses us with the story of her only other online date, with a Yale-educated lawyer who insisted she pick him up at his apartment, then announced, when they sat down in a restaurant, "I'm a bit short on cash this month. Can you get dinner?"

It was, she says with a shake of her head and a hardy sip of her vodka tonic, one of the worst nights of her life. It made her want to leave Matchmaker. But here she was, out on another date, having a good time.

After a few more drinks, I went home with Barbara. And Lizzie went home with her shaggy-haired date. Both couples seemed pretty content. Possibilities had been planted. So how come the shaggy-haired guy e-mailed Barbara the next day and asked her out?