Metro Pulse/Gamut/Hazards in Dating

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The reason they call it blind

by Jeanne McDonald

The blind date is an institution as old as history itself. Consider Adam and Eve. Theirs was the ultimate blind date. God created Adam, fashioned Eve from one of Adam's ribs, then left them alone in a garden, complete strangers with no shared history to fill in conversation gaps. No wonder Eve got friendly with the snake.

From that momentous beginning, blind dating has expanded to arranged marriages, personal ads, dating services, and high-priced prostitution. Even women's liberation, which gave females permission to venture where only men had gone before, couldn't stamp it out.

Judging by the number of personal ads in the daily paper (and this esteemed weekly), blind dating is alive and well in Knoxville. Somebody must be having good luck, because every Saturday, an entire page is filled with ads from lonely men and women looking for romance or friendship. Who goes on blind dates? Well, lots of people, at least once anyway, especially the recently divorced and the never-married. I myself thought I was through with the anxiety-ridden ritual of dating, when suddenly, in middle age, I found myself divorced. I wasn't ready to give up on men just because the husband I had met—on a blind date—had skipped out.

But what were my choices? Hearing the news of my break-up, married men sidled up to me and whispered furtively, "Let's have lunch." Leftovers from broken marriages or creatures of dubious sexual orientation proposed dinner or a movie, but you can invent a death in the family only once with the same person, and then you have to add the guilt of lying to the frustration of a limited selection. Thus, when the available pool of acceptable suitors has been exhausted, you have to resort to blind dates.

All of the blind dates I've been on—yes, all—have been disastrous. A well-meaning friend set me up with another writer, who arranged to meet me at a restaurant and left me waiting in the foyer while he finished a leisurely drink at the bar. When he saw fit to recognize me—I'd be wearing a blue dress, I'd told him—he spent the rest of the evening pumping me for information about how he might get his stories published and whether I could get him hooked up with my agent. Another horrendous blind date occurred at the same restaurant (Wasn't I learning anything?), where a grammar-impaired forty-something guy kept complaining to me about how young girls kept pursuing him. "Why do you think that is?" he whined. The answer came immediately to mind—"Because you're so immature?"—but the best I could do was tell him not to bother walking me to my car.

Remember the scene in When Harry Met Sally where Carrie Fisher and her new husband wake up and thank God they don't have to date anymore? Yet, how else are you going to meet new people? Once, a man who had claimed to be my friend for 10 years set me up with a guy he described as tall, athletic, handsome, and intelligent. On the pre-date call, the man sounded nice, though so excited by the prospect of our proposed meeting that he seemed, well, slightly desperate. I should have picked up on those vibes.

I dressed in a sexy black dress and my highest heels, which elevated me to almost six feet, then opened the door to a guy who was a good foot and a half shorter than I am. "I'm not changing my shoes," I muttered to myself as I went for my coat. Now, don't misunderstand me: Some of my favorite men are short, but this one whined about his stature, or lack thereof, all evening, ruining what might otherwise have been interesting conversation, because, okay, he actually was intelligent.

During my post-divorce period, I blindly dated them all—the judgmental ex-cleric who criticized every aspect of my life and then asked me why I hadn't told him I loved him; the sweet but frugal entrepreneur who took me to a restaurant where he had two-meals-for-the-price-of-one school coupons; the handsome but unstable engineer who treated me to a Chinese meal, then stared at me as I was chewing a mouthful of lo mein and whispered ominously, "Would you agree that eating is primarily the disgusting act of forcing food down our throats?"

Despite all that negative history and now content in a happy second marriage, I find that the idea of blind dating still intrigues me. I still hang onto the romantic illusion that storybook endings are actually possible for somebody out there. And then one day I found a way to experience blind dating without actually having to endure the agony of it.

It was a dark and rainy day. I had fixed a bowl of soup for lunch and turned on the TV to catch the noon news, when, skipping through the channels, I came across a program called Blind Date, a show in which two previously unacquainted people are introduced and sent out on a date, followed by a television crew who film everything that occurs, even actual physical confrontations of the most distasteful sort. Though there's sometimes a rare suitable match, most of these dates fail miserably, with one or both of the participants—usually the rejectee—bad-mouthing the rejector. But I'm addicted. I keep watching, waiting to see whether one of these couples will actually fall in love at first sight and live happily ever after.

I'm embarrassed to say so, but until the station changed the program's viewing time from noon to 10 p.m., I watched Blind Date every day at lunchtime. Call it voyeurism, call it a sociological study, but mostly, it boils down to amazement at what people will do and say on national television. Take Michael and Patricia on a series entitled "Dates from Hell." In the pre-date intro, Michael assures the television audience that he's not cocky, only confident. For his date with Patricia, who, unfortunately, is looking for a "spiritual guy," Michael wears a black tank top and gold chains and talks non-stop about his ex-wife and how he spent $4,000 to have her breasts enlarged. And when he announces that "Asians with big boobs are the best things on this planet," Patricia blinks. "You don't think that's the slightest bit shallow?" she asks. Michael has no clue. After all, he's confident.

Samantha, though, is more direct with her date, David. Right away, she tells him she doesn't think they're a good match. But David is relentlessly stubborn. He tries to entertain Samantha with magic tricks. He tries to impress her by saying he was once arrested for stealing a shopping cart, and what girl could resist such a heartwarming piece of information? Samantha pays him back by chatting incessantly on her cell phone. The camera follows her into the bathroom—yes, the bathroom—where she calls somebody named Gino to complain about the dismal time she's having. When she returns to their table, David, blithely ignorant, asks, "If you saw me on the street, would you be attracted to me?" Samantha finishes him off quickly and cleanly: "You are totally not my type."

Mandy is another girl who talks constantly during her blind date, and not to the date, but to people who call on her cell phone:: "Hi, Matt. Of course I remember you. We really hit it off." (Pause.) "Right?" Or "Annie! Omigod! Remember those guys we met? Like I thought they were like brothers?" Evidently, people who agree to appear on Blind Date must sign an agreement to stick out the date until the bitter end. Some of them are stoic about it, and some of them are bitter. At the end of this particular fiasco, Mandy says to her date's hastily retreating back, "Well, call me some time, okay?"

In general, whether the male gene pool for Blind Date is extremely shallow, or whether these men have been socially isolated since puberty, the women usually make a much better impression. For example, Ben takes Cyndi to a boxing club, where he casually tells her he once dated a child molester. Understandably, Cyndi flattens him with the gloves. Then he suggests a holographic photo. Because shooting the picture involves standing in close proximity to Ben, Cyndi growls to the photographer, "Do it, just do it." When Ben drops Cyndi off at her apartment, he complains that the evening was more like an execution than a date. But didn't he deserve it?

Toni utters an equally devastating assessment of her date when she swears she would rather have her eyeballs pierced than go out again with Darren, who escorts Toni to a tattoo and body piercing parlor. Toni, a good sport, gets her nose pierced, but Darren chickens out and actually acts superior about it. Then, at dinner, Darren sits without speaking, until Toni complains about his silence and heads for the bathroom. While she's gone, Darren thinks pretty hard, and when Toni returns, he's ready to talk. "So," he postulates, "if you were going to commit suicide, how would you do it?"

Let's hope the people who place personal ads in Knoxville fare better. The personals page is illustrated with photos of twenty-something couples, but in truth, the typical advertiser is well over 30, and for those who don't fudge on their ages, there's a small section for seniors, who make themselves much more accessible by suggesting a broad acceptable age group, sometimes as much as 20 years.

Loneliness can drive people to do all sorts of crazy things. A gorgeous friend of mine whose husband left her for another woman told me she once spent an entire Sunday afternoon and evening watching the same video over and over again, because she couldn't summon up the energy to get dressed and go out by herself. Get lonely enough, and even the personal ads promising a "trip to the moon" or "dancing the rapids" sound good. Some ads are exacting and specific: People are looking for "an agnostic," "a Harley guy," a "Nubian intellectual." It's probably easier to find the first two than the last, but who knows? There might be a Nubian intellectual out there who's lonely, too.

Although people have to be careful about where they meet strangers, those who place personal ads are basically just nice, lonely people looking for company. Besides demonstrating lots of bravery and determination, the personals also represent a lot of hope—an entire page of it, in seven or eight-point type. Personally, I wish blind daters luck. If more people were in love, we'd have fewer wars, fewer lawyers, and less road rage. If love is blind, and dating is blind, there's a neat positive mathematical equation to be found here, but I myself am numerically challenged. All I know is that a while back, I arranged a blind date between my beautiful step-daughter and one of my favorite male friends, and they've been happily married now for nearly three years. Against the immense odds of blind-dating averages, one out of one is a perfect score.