The Love Shack

Well, I did it, I went speed dating. After a year or so of declaring my desire to date, of flirting casually with match.com, and of writing down that dating would be a goal of mine, I went speed dating. Of course, it took free tickets and a charity event for me to get off my ass but who cares right?

Over the course of three hours, I met twenty plus some eligible bachelorettes. For the most part they were all lovely and very easy to talk to. During my first four minute date, I was super sweaty because the room was unseasonably warm. I wondered if my counter-part, the female #19, noticed. I wasn't particularly nervous but I wasn't super comfortable (yet) either.

I had dressed in my best white t-shirt, worn some non-jeans pants, and generally prepared to "change my life" as the dry erase board declared in blue ink. I had seen Dann do his speed dating thing a few times and knew what to expect. As I surveyed the crowd with Chris and Irwin by my side, we commented on the lack of prospects.

Technically, this was to be a speed dating event for over a hundred people. Three age groups, with forty or so people in each -- we were in the twenty three to thirty five group I think. The large office space was crowded with all manner of people, many of them older(-looking) and futtering around, and I would have felt way out of place if I didn't know that everyone else felt way out of place too.

Chris and I were slated to be right after one another. I thought we would initially play it cool and not acknowledge that we knew each other, but through the course of the night, it became a topic of conversation. I would gesture over to Chris in mid-conversation with some girl ("Oh that's my friend, give him a hard time), and on breaks we huddled together. At station number three, halfway through the event, we even sat together and talked to the same girl due to irregularities in the seating. We made good tag team partners, and our new idea is to have speed dating in pairs. It's a little less awkward.

For the most part, I had a blast during the entire experience. It's funny how even as you talk and conversate, you have this part of your brain that is processing -- at high speed -- if you could potentially go on a real date with this person. "Hum, is she attractive? Would we have anything in common? Is she sending any vibes back?" I watched this Science of Sex thing recently and they studied speed dating. Their conclusion was that you couldn't tell if a girl was interested in a guy by watching them during an event, but you could semi-tell by watching the guy. So I knew not to expect any "real" positive or negative vibes. Girls automatically chat and flirt when put into close proximity with guys and reading their signals indicates nothing.

I wanted to avoid the "Where are you from? How long have you lived here? What do you do?" questions as much as possible. I tried to let my natural curiosity take over and just ask other things. My two most generic questions were "So have you done this before?" and "Do you think it sucks that the girls have to sit here the whole time while the guys move around?" I used those when I had nothing else to say. Surprisingly, there wasn't much dead air with any of the women. I guess people come to these events ready to talk.

Overall, I felt the conversations were way too short. I have a tendency to listen before I talk so I found myself asking too many questions and not giving enough answers. There would be times when the bell would ring and we both would realize I said nothing about myself. There would be times I wanted to know more about some particular topic ("So tell me about glass blowing") but should have probably pushed the conversation to learn more about them.

Then again, speed dating is pretty much all about attraction. You can't learn that much about anyone in four minutes, so as we said afterwards, we could have easily selected "yes" or "no" without the talking portion. In fact, Dann said he's heard of speed dating events where there isn't any talking allowed. Just sitting there and looking at each other. How's that for uncomfortable? Dann did say that this type of non-verbal speed dating resulted in more post-event make outs.

The event got really draining for the women and a few of them started leaving. There were less women then men so they didn't get any breaks while we were fortunate enough to have rests every once in awhile. During those times, I would go hang out with Victor (he was on hand, dressed up in a blazer, and helping out), take a break for cookies or juice, and generally escape the forced conversation. I can imagine how tiring it would have been to not have those breaks so I can't really fault the women for leaving. Apparently one couple decided they liked each other so much that they decided to ditch the event altogether and just leave as a pair. True love indeed.

Out of the nearly twenty five women, I said "yes" to six. There were apparently two girls that Dann said were really cool and were semi-coworkers of his, but he cruelly ended the event before Chris and I could rotate in to them. And I thought he was our friend. There was one girl there I thought was really pretty, number nine, but there was no way in high hell she would have matched with me. I marked "yes" because I'm an optimist though.

Will I go speed dating again? Sure! Because I'd like to change my life in four minutes and next time around I'm going to drag George so we can gossip afterwards.