a lifeguard for the dating pool

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about what it is exactly I'm looking for in a man. Partly because it's spring and nothing makes the hormones rage like the arrival of the equinox, and partly because my biological clock gets pretty loud sometimes and is lately becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. I know, I'm only 24, but work with me here -- your typical southern biological clock starts ticking at least four to five years earlier than in the rest of the country.

All this thinking has lead me to a few conclusions, the most pivotal of which being that I do not believe the man I am looking for exists in the north. Wild generalizations, I know. But the men I've met here have tended to offer the qualities I need in a very mutually exclusive way. If he likes the same types of music and tends to have the same strong interest in the arts, he probably doesn't also watch college sports or laugh at fart jokes. And if he does like college sports and laugh at fart jokes, he's probably from New Jersey.

In the south, you can find this rare breed of man. He is intelligent and educated. He likes good music. He's witty. He enjoys sports. He likes to keep up with the news. Now you do encounter something down there that you really don't get up here -- it's what I like to call the Easter Sunday Drinker phenomenon, based on an incident that took place some years ago in a bar in Nashville. I was out with my friend David and his roommate Kate at a dive near their apartment, and I was being chatted up by this very cute guy. It was after midnight on a very particular Saturday night in spring, and thus was officially Easter Sunday. I don't recall exactly how it happened, but at some point the conversation turned and it became evident that I was talking to a very religious person. You can imagine my surprise, considering that we were both half-drunk in a bar in the wee morning hours of Easter Sunday, at hearing him opine for a good few minutes on Jesus and share various cliched metaphors like "what if someone ran in front of a bus for you?", etc. It wasn't until he said something about his little spermazoas being "precious lives" that I made a run for it, but ever since then I have pointed to him as the unfortunate land mine of life in the south -- you never know when you're going to run into a perfectly cute, smart guy in a bar and have him drunkenly ask you to come to church with him.

But it's a land mine I've overstepped before, and it's one I could dodge again if necessary. The point is that up here -- at least to date -- I have yet to meet or hear of a man who really encompassed all those necessary attributes. But I've never been one to give up. I've got a laundry list of dating adventures to begin checking off, and the first one on the table is speed dating.

If you're not familiar with speed dating, it's a somewhat recent development in the lives of busy, urban professionals who simply have too much to do to chat someone up at a bar. Instead they need to be placed in a controlled environment with other people they know are both a.) single and b.) of the same sexual orientation, mingle with them for just long enough to get that crucial first impression down, and then neatly submit their feelings on each potential suitor to a web site which will electronically match the singles from there.

If it all sounds a little weird, it probably will be. And that's why I'm going to do it, and blog about all of it here. Depending on how the speed dating goes, I'll also be exploring the world of internet dating (again, lest I forget the internet dating fiasco of 2004 in which I had the pleasure of meeting Donny Drug User and Scotty McStares-At-Your-Chest-Alots). It's all for your entertainment, and to perhaps prove my little theory about northern men completely wrong. I have my doubts, but we shall see.

Stay tuned!

cheers,
elizabeth