The 15 Minute Dating Blog

by Rachel Tornheim

At first, he was faceless. That’s how new to this he was. Where his face should have been, there was only a blue rectangle, void except for a message informing me that his profile was being approved by Customer Care. I silently wished him luck - I was still bitter about this Customer Care character nixing my bikini pic, which was clearly no more inappropriate than the many shirtless pictures of guys they let through. Not to mention the fact that they had taken liberties with my essay, deleting the line in which I mentioned that one of my nicknames is “The Grammar Nazi” - can’t they tell the difference between ethnic insensitivity and grammatical fanaticism?

Back to our faceless friend. His existence had been brought to my attention on a Friday evening in April, while I was sitting in my apartment, diligently scrolling through the faces (or lack thereof) of the men who had viewed my profile since my last perusal. In addition to his pictures, Customer Service still had his essays in their clutches, so all I could see were his answers to the multiple choice questions. Based on a quick skim of those, he seemed fine, but who could tell? I moved on to the next profile, not expecting to give this fellow another thought.

A few minutes later, I was trying to decide whether a cutish medical student from Brooklyn deserved a reciprocal flirt when a gong-like sound alerted me that someone wanted to IM with me. It was Mr. Faceless. I half smiled, not sure whether I should view his attempt to start a conversation with me before his pictures and essay were up as cocky, naive, or some contradictory and perhaps endearing combination. I debated for a moment whether or not to accept his invitation, then decided to him a chance. What did I have to lose?

I was pleased to observe that he had a good grasp of spelling grammar, and that he came across as educated, a suspicion that was confirmed when he mentioned that he had gone to Yale. Aha, so he was smart, motivated, and probably not a slacker. But there was still the matter of the picture. “Could you email me a pic?” I typed into the IM window. Good thing I’m not shy about these things. “Sure,” came the response, “what’s your email?” I smiled, noting the correct spelling of “your,” then tapped in my email address. I stared intently at my email inbox, index finger on the mouse button, ready to click as soon as I saw the “(1)” that would indicate that his email had arrived. There it was! I pounced and quickly opened the picture. Yay, he was cute! No longer faceless, he smiled out of a spring day at school with impossibly perfect teeth, looking preppy in a grey t-shirt and shades. Excellent. We chatted for a bit longer, then said goodnight.

The next evening, I returned from dinner with friends to find that he had sent me a short note. In my response, I nonchalantly (well, not really, but I intended for it to come off that way) mentioned that I didn’t have any specific plans for that evening, and just as I had hoped, he suggested that we meet up. It’s so much easier when they take the hints. I tried on several outfits before settling on an ensemble that was eye-catching without being too revealing, then struck out for my date.

After some initial confusion over location (who knew there were two Starbucks in Union Square?), we found each other. He was tall, dressed in a stylish dress shirt and jeans, boyish. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling, and his smile looked just like the one in the picture - his teeth were so straight, I almost wondered if they were fake. We took our coffees outside and sat on a bench, half facing each other. He asked question after question, considering each answer before asking the next one. I was surprised at how much he seemed to really want to get to know me, to understand me.

After an hour or so, noticing that I was clearly cold (turns out that short blue skirt, while cute, was perhaps not the best choice for the brisk April evening), and when I nodded, he offered to walk me home. Normally, I would have been apprehensive about letting a guy I’d just met know where I lived, but I felt like I could trust him. We tossed our empty cups and started toward my building. As we stood at a curb waiting for the light to change, he looked down at me, shivering in the night air, then put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him. As though it had a mind of its own, my arm snaked around his waist and squeezed back.

I knew I’d see him again.

About the author: Rachel Tornheim lives in NYC, where she works as a management consultant by day, and moonlights as a freelance writer and personal online dating assistant. When she’s not helping her clients run their businesses, put their thoughts into words, and find true love, Rachel can be found kicking ass at Scrabble, twirling at a swing dance, or mooching off other people’s dogs in a dog run.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 8:25 am and is filed under Happily Ever After. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.