Michelle's House of Horrors

Just because you feel, hollow inside it’s real
I’m gonna put something in you
Make the devil feel surprised
–Mazzy Star/All Your Sisters

If someone has filled out their online dating profile in their own words and answered a representative sample of the entertainingly intrusive questions you can get a little bit of an idea of what their personality might be like. Are they funny, or intellectually oriented, are they bitter about something, or did they skip the whole thing and say you should just email them and ask questions? Did they say they are tired of women never answering their messages so you will have to write to them first?

Do they have an assortment of recent photos up? Are they clear? Have they cropped out people awkwardly? Are they nude or obviously in bed? Are they obviously much older or younger than the age their profile says they are?

Semi-related note: holy fuck there are a lot of 51 year olds who look like they are in their 60s!

Then, if someone sends you a message or responds to one of yours, how and what they write is another clue. Once you’ve exchanged enough messages to know that you can both spell and have an intact sense of humor you can get a pretty good idea of if you might find them attractive in person.

If you advance to talking on the phone, you know if you like how they sound and if they like the way you laugh.

If they are willing to keep up the texting/messaging until you manage to schedule a meeting, you can get into some astoundingly hair raisingly candid chats about sex, movies, politics, books, food, wine and anything else you might consider important.

In my two rounds of online dating, I have determined what guys thought about strap ons and which one of us they should be used on. I recommended reading to someone who was interested in bondage. I discussed in graphic detail exactly what weird sorts of things I enjoy in out out of bed. I heard about rape fantasy, role playing, group sex, polyamory, bisexuality and spanking. I politely declined a date with a cross dresser because I prefer to be the only woman on a date. I learned that those intrusive OKCupid questions are the best thing about the site.

You don’t think you need to know how someone feels about gun ownership, book burning and anal sex before your first date? Why not? It is such a freeing thing to know that someone is a little kinky and politically liberal before a date. Wouldn’t you rather know that they think birth control is immoral before you go out?

Typically these are issues you really just wouldn’t talk about to someone you just met in a bar. Or at church.

I want to make everyone I know answer the OKCupid questions. Suddenly it is vitally important for me to know who thinks the life of one American is worth more than several foreign nationals. Who thinks that the Earth is bigger than the Sun.

Are there a lot of men I would never go out with in a million years? Of course. I was talking to a guy about it tonight, and I said “if you put 100 random men in a room, I might think 10 or 15 are attractive. Maybe a third of those 10-15 would also like me. If I actually interacted with them, I might be willing to have sex with one or two. I think online dating is about the same.”

Then we compared notes and I learned there are probably as many pictures of women holding up fish as there are men, but there are also a lot of pictures of women with guns. I don’t think I have seen any men with guns.

It’s imperfect in the same way dealing with people always is. You’re still dealing with people.

Overall, though, I am enjoying it.

I think I will go answer some more embarrassing questions!

The other night I had a dream that I was playing Words With Friends with someone, and he was scoring hundreds of points at a time. His words were just random strings of words that went clear across the board. They contained multiple X,Z,Q combinations. They were longer than any word anyone could possibly come up with.

And it never even occurred to me that he was cheating.

Cheating because he hacked the game, cheating because he was taking advantage of some sort of break in his copy of the game? Who knows. But I didn’t even consider it an option.

In the dream, I told another Words friend about it, and he said “Are you kidding? How do you think he would be doing it? He’s cheating!” Still. It was hard for me to digest that someone would do that. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it.

Mostly because it’s a game. What does it do for you if you win by cheating? You know you didn’t really win. Does that matter to people who cheat? I’ve always wondered.

Then I wondered what it says about me that I couldn’t admit to myself that someone was cheating even though it was obvious. Total trust. Is that because I knew he wouldn’t do anything wrong or because I was in denial?
There is really not much that is worse than learning you can’t trust someone you care about. Even if they’re just cheating at a game.

Then my friend asked if I could do the same thing. I tried and found that I could.

And I woke up just as I was trying to decide if the rules of the game were now different because the game itself was broken.

Because at that point the question was really what the rules are once there aren’t any rules any more. Are you smart to take advantage of the break in the game or is that unethical?

I was glad I woke up.

That was way too much thinking to do during a dream.