the post-game show

Around 3 p.m. this afternoon, I confessed to you that I was a little nervous about the whole speed dating thing. Two train rides, fourteen guys and three gin and tonics later, the nerves are gone, alcohol and honesty have set in and I'm ready to give you the full and unadulterated scoop on Adventures In Speed Dating.

The guys in attendance tonight were definitely a mixed bag -- there were Indians, Russians, Americans and even a Scot. There was a Lithuanian guy who seemed very nice but stared at me the way I imagine Charles Manson stared at Sharon Tate and her friends before they were all brutally massacred. And then there was the Sri Lankan doctor who talked with his eyes closed and continuously wiped at a large, gleaming bubble of snot hanging from his right nostril.

But then there were the winners of the bunch, like the guy who I talked to on my second "date" who I know virtually nothing about, mostly because we got into such a good conversation about the pros and cons of Pitchfork that I forgot to ask him how old he was or even what he does for a living. (Luckily for me, early in the night I'd made friends with the gals sitting next to me at the bar, and my friend Abha filled me in on his vitals during our next break.)

The one thing I realized quickly into the game was that each one of these dates would either be the longest or the shortest five minutes of my life. With Charles Manson, I was grasping for straws. He answered every question in three syllables and never asked me anything. And with Cutie McMusical, I couldn't even get his vitals. And then there was the five minute stretch in which I was left alone, because there were only 14 guys to match up with 15 girls -- let's not even go into how that exacerbates my aforementioned musical chairs fear -- during which I was chatted up by the guy running the event, who would've been super cute had it not been for the shadowy hair lining his upper lip like a dirty milk mustache.

At the end of the night, I wrote five guys down on my preferred matches list. The first was Cutie McMusical, the next was an internal medicine doctor who wants to work with old folks, then the Scottish boy, then a cute-but-awkward blond-headed boy who thought he went to college in the south, but actually went to college in Virginia (I quickly corrected him), then an Indian guy whose vital information is literally lost on me now, he made such an impact, and finally a Colombian guy named Alejandro. I mention Alejandro by name mostly because he deserves it, for all of his very serious effort. He hung around, chatted me up, bought me a drink and even displayed feelings of anguish when I said I had to leave because I had to work the next morning.

So we shall see what names land in my inbox tomorrow. Only the mutual matches will be e-mailed to me, so I'll never know who might've loved me and lost, but I will definitely know who hardcore dissed me. What you need to know now is that Vlad from Uzbekistan -- who told me the reason he came to America was to meet blonds named Elizabeth -- was very intrigued with the blogging, and wanted to be sure that I said only good things about him. As he left me to go on to his next date, he said particularly that I should mention his ten-inch you know. For the record, he did not say "you know."

You can recap with the full play-by-play on Twitter, and look for the full dish on all my matches tomorrow!

cheers,
elizabeth