^I try to make this face as often as possible. If you see me on the street or a random cul-de-sac and I'm my countenance looks NOTHING like this, please, be sure to ask me, "What's wrong?"^
With Valentine's Day falling on a Friday this year, work and life's other drudgeries are less likely to interfere with romantic dinners, smooching, heavy petting, a little bit of the “horizontal wink-wink,” a hasty reexamination of Position #128 in this month's copy of Cosmopolitan by the lady while her man chugs a liter of Gatorade, and the cuddling that comes afterward if you know what's good for you. Valentine's Day polarizes couples and their single counterparts, and when V.D. can be properly celebrated on a night set aside for fun, single people like me are sure to conclude that our freedom to do anything we want is overrated.
In an effort to defeat that freedom and, you know, not feel quite as lonely, I explored some online dating sites. And since I'm unsure of which one would suit me best, I decided to inspect a bunch of them. Now, my knack for research is substandard and I'm fine with acting like I am without common sense for the sake of maybe getting a laugh, so just between you and me: some of the following websites don't really relate to dating.
In the name of love, please try to make sense of it all as I chronicle the storybook beginnings and instant tragedies of online dating.
Ancestry: Here I got off to start so rough I had to abandon my plan to search in alphabetical order. Look, I know customs might be different in other, more—shall we say—southern parts of the country, but there's no way I'm going to try to hook up with one of my relatives. Case closed! (Side-note: Shortly after I wrote this, somebody gave me the scoop on Ancestry.com, and it turns out, they actually provide this amazing service that informs people of their heritage and family trees. In truth, this website achieves something much better than finding out you've got a really good-looking cousin.)
Dates: There might be a more relevant dating site that includes the basic word “Dates,” but all I could find here was the online promotion and sale of dates—as in that weird fruit nobody likes.
Christian Mingle: Terrible. Why would I want to mingle with a bunch of dudes named 'Christian'?
E-Harmony: Maybe I got the wrong impression, but since “E” is common slang for Ecstasy, an illegal amphetamine that I'd rather avoid, I gathered that this site's devotion to matchmaking Ecstasy-users doesn't appeal to me. Honestly, choking down three pills just so you can stumble-dance with a psychotic hippie at a String Cheese Incident show is definitely not worth risking all that brain damage.
Black People Meet: While I do qualify as somebody with an interest in meeting people, apparently there was another stipulation that I couldn't fulfill. There must have been SOME reason why blackpeoplemeet.com rejected me, but it remains a mystery to me...I just can't put my white finger on it.
More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.
