Plenty Of Fish Roundup

After the breakup, I was feeling particularly lonely and just plain bored. My friend Dana suggested that I check out Plenty Of Fish, a free online dating site, if only to give me a quick boost in self-esteem (apparently if you are a female that is even remotely attractive, you will get about a million e-mails a day. And boy, was she right!). Also, a name like Plenty Of Fish sounds so optimistic … maybe there are plenty of fish in the sea, after all!

Um, after months of crazy men writing me, I’m certain there are plenty of fish in the sea. Plenty of busted, missing fins, a little bit crazy, possibly sex offender, fish in the sea. And maybe a few good ones, but I haven’t run across that many of those. Here’s a quick round up of my experiences so far:

Dumb Hot Guy: This guy was friggin’ hot. Like model hot. Like we would have beautiful babies together hot. We talked back and forth for a couple of weeks, and e-mail after e-mail got worse and worse. His e-mails were mind numbingly boring, and he hardly knew how to use punctuation, never mind the fact that he could not figure out the difference between “want” and “went.” As in, he would say “I want to the store.” So, what did I do? I decided writing must not be his forte. I gave him my number so we could talk on the phone. Yeah, he was that hot (or maybe I was that bored). This conversation was one of the very worst conversations I’ve had in my entire life. He must have felt it too, because we haven’t talked since. Looks can only get you so far.

Tanked Guy: This guy seemed pretty normal, and was cute enough. However, every time we talked, he would tell me about how “tanked” he got the night before. Nothing says soul mate like a possible alcoholic. One night, he called me a half dozen times until 3 a.m., presumably drunk. Finally I had to text him and tell him to stop calling me. I had totally written this guy off, until a few weeks later, I got a call from him. He started apologizing for not talking with me in a while – someone really close to him had just died. He asked if I wanted to meet up for a drink. I felt bad for him, and figured why not? Armed with promises of free drinks, I convinced my sister and a friend to tag along on a doomed trip to the Fan.

Not until I met him at the bar did I realize that the funeral for the person who had just died was the following day. And like his entire family was at the bar, drinking and mourning before the funeral. Talk about a weird situation. Not only that, but Tanked Guy took me to the side to get to know me better. He seemed pretty drunk, and kept bringing up politics. I had a sense that he was a crazy conservative (and I’m a crazy liberal), so I kept steering away from the conversation. But, he kept on bringing it right back. Finally I just gave it to him straight: I’m a liberal. A bleeding heart, unapologetic liberal. After I revealed this information, he said, and I quote, “The minute I heard you were a liberal, I was done.” I so much wanted to say, “The minute I learned you were a raging alcoholic, I was done,” but I figured I should leave well enough alone. After all, I was outnumbered by his large group of family members that had taken over the bar. I wished him luck at the funeral and never spoke with him again.

Guy With a Kid (But Not Really): I started talking to this one guy who seemed pretty normal. He was funny, smart in his e-mails and I actually got to the point where I would look forward to seeing a response from him. But then, he decides to make his big revelation: He has a 12-year-old kid. I wrote him back and was obviously a little wary of this (I am AWFUL with kids, and have no interest in learning on a 12-year-old), and he replied, “Don’t worry about the kid. He’s hardly ever around, and not a big part of my life.” Now, that’s a winner. I want to marry and have LOTS of kids with this guy!

!!! Guy: This guy is super fun, and is maybe one of the most positive people I’ve ever talked with. Almost too positive. Like he can find the silver lining in a mass murder. And, he is pretty excessive in his use of exclamation points. But I haven’t written this one off yet – he’s pretty cute and seems to have his stuff together, so we’ll see. Being that I’m maybe one of the most negative people out there, perhaps we can balance each other out. This one might end up in a meeting, so stay tuned.  

Raúl: Raúl was one of the first guys I talked with on Plenty Of Fish. He wrote me first, and his profile indicated that he was looking for someone who liked to be active, and enjoyed camping, biking and hiking. Um, definitely not me. But, we continued talking, even after I shared that about the most active thing I do is ab exercises on a ball in my living room while watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians. He was the first person I’ve ever met from online dating, and we met, you guessed it, at Uno’s. Oh, and don’t let the name fool you – this guy is as white as they come and is an aspiring redneck. I agreed to call him Raúl on the blog, on the condition that he would stop being shady. Can you see this isn’t going anywhere good fast? There’s far too much to say about Raúl to fit on this blog post, so keep reading for a recap later – but for a teaser, this is a fun one, and includes a concussion, purposefully farting on a date, game playing, some clingy female behavior and a hilarious guy.  

Have you tried online dating? What do you think, should I give Guy With a Kid (But Not Really) a shot? Is there any amount of hotness that makes it OK that a guy can’t write in a complete sentence?