A Good Man is Hard to Catch
One of my favourite misleading phrases in this life is, “there are plenty of fish in the sea.” Because when you single out all those fish that are gay, you are left with a sea closer to the size of a lake. And when you subtract the fish from that lake that are not married or plagued by abandonment issues, you are left with a school big enough to fill a pond. And once you think you have thrown back every fish that small body of water has to catch, you find yourself sitting up late Wednesday night with a glass of red in one hand and a computer mouse in the other thinking maybe… just maybe… I missed one.
Anyone who says "there are plenty of fish in the sea" has obviously never gone fishing before.
Last night I polished my fishing rod for another round and signed up for “Plentyoffish.com” in hopes this time I might actually catch a man. After swearing off internet-dating for the rest of my life, it appears it only took three weeks this time before I relapsed. Creating a profile, I took a sip from my wine and thought “here we go again.” Except unlike my previous experience on Manhunt, this registration process was much different.
For starters, whereas Manhunt wanted to know the shape and size of my erect penis, POF asked if I wanted to have children or not.
Filling out the rest of the questionnaire, I found that, even though the information POF wanted to know may have been less incriminating than the infamous gay hook-up site, it was by no means less revealing.
This was most definitely the case when I had to answer the question: “Do you drink?” Ask me if I’m into water-sports or fisting and I can give you an answer no problem … no. But don’t ask me if I enjoy the occasional alcohol beverage or six. Dropping down the box to see the list of choices I had to respond with, I was devastated to find the following were my four options:
Prefer not to say
No
Socially
Often (>3 times/week)
Obviously the correct answer was “5. Whenever, wherever” but that number was missing from the list. So here is how the other answers translated:
Prefer not to say = “I am a raging alcoholic who is unavailable to meet you for a date between 8:00 and 9:00 each night because of my AA meeting.”
No = “Please, if you think my drinking problem is bad then I guess I shouldn’t mention my addictions to coke and over-the-counter cough medicine.”
Socially = “If by socially you mean alone in my bedroom, then yes.”
Often (>3 times/week) = “I am obviously mentally ill, because no one in their right mind would pick this answer.”
Taking another sip from my wine, I was left with no other choice but 3, “socially.” And then moving down to the next question, just when I thought I was passed the hard part, the cruel masterminds behind POF delivered me an upper-cut to the jaw with: “Do you smoke?”
Living on the West Coast, if you have ever had a cigarette in your life, you are automatically required to lie when answering this question; because otherwise you are guaranteed never to get a date. In Vancouver, if someone finds out that you have had the occasional cigarette, they will not only refuse to rent to you, they will also walk on the other side of the street just to stay more than twenty feet away. Now don’t get me wrong, I think “Do you smoke?” is a totally valid question to ask, and I will not argue the importance of its response when searching for a mate. However, I do believe that in some people’s cases, answering the question requires much more than a simple yes or no.
Anyways, I must cut myself off here because I need to get some playwriting done before the sun goes down. However, in the next post I will let you know all about the essay-writing competition that each person's profile description is apparently entered into.
