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Tune in, turn on, shut up
Maybe the secret of successful dating is knowing when to zip it
BY CHRIS WRIGHT

According to the online magazine MSN Women, there is a new romantic movement abroad in the land. They call it Silent Dating. "Learn more about this mute mating game," the MSN article burbles, "the latest dating trend that’s gone global." As far as I can gather, the basic principle behind the global trend is this: two people get together in a bar or a club, where they proceed to sit in silence. You can scribble notes. You can "smile and wink to your heart’s content." But no speaking. Not a word. "So could this be the perfect antidote to your dating woes?" As someone who has endured many silent dates over the years, I don’t even know where to start with that question.

How many dating trends can one culture stand? After all, we’ve only recently been subjected to Speed Dating. How the hell is anyone supposed to forge a romantic bond in the space of a few minutes? Are we fruit flies now? Why not save even more time and have Just Not Show Up Dating? I can see the next-day’s e-mails: "Thanks for not taking me to that fabulous bar last night. I had a wonderful time not meeting you." But maybe I’m being a little harsh. I’m sure there have been speed daters who have hooked up, who have had Speed Sex and maybe even Speed Marriages, their Speed Kids graduating Speed College and then dying before the week is out.

Now that I think about it, there may even be a positive aspect to this Silent Dating thing. It couldn’t be any worse, anyway, than the last date I went on — the first and only one with this particular woman, I might add. HiI’mChrisandI’mababblingidiot was the gist of my conversation that night. Acompleteanduttermoronwhojustcannotshutup. I don’t think my date got more than three or four words in throughout the entire evening. She just sat there, shrinking further and further into her chair. Just Shoot Me Dating.

If anyone should embrace the latest dating trends, it’s me. In fact, I may even pioneer a few trends of my own. Pretentious Dating. Hostile Dating. Grating Dating. Unctuous Dating. Sloppy Drunk Dating. Pity Dating. Oh My God You’re Boring Me into a Fucking Coma Dating. If I sound a little bitter about all this, it’s because I am. See, I am currently a practitioner of the No Dating dating trend. I’ve become a master at it. I’ve gone out on seven No Date dates this week alone.

I didn’t actually choose to be a No Date dater. I blame my tongue. I’ll meet a woman I find attractive, and my conversational organ will swell up to seven times its normal size. "Blrngh da fithfupful," I’ll say. "Gnrigl thhnpfth." As I’m saying this, my sebaceous glands will kick into overdrive, making a recently waxed Mercedes out of my forehead. Meanwhile, whatever boogers happen to be in my nose at the time will peer cautiously from my nostrils, checking for fingers. Before I’ve had the time to tell the woman she has a nice bllrmph, she’s gone.

So maybe gimmicks are the way to go. Distractions. Next time I go on a date, I’m going to bring one of those noodles along, the long rubbery things you go swimming with, and hit my companion over the head with it throughout dinner. Annoying Dating. Or maybe I’ll take the Speed Dating thing to its logical conclusion: Drive-by Dating. Or Proxy Dating, in which you hire a wittier, better-looking stand-in to go out on a date for you while you stay in and watch reruns of Behind the Music. The one pitfall here, of course, is that whatever sex may arise becomes proxy too. So we’re back to square one.

The grim truth is, there is no perfect antidote to our dating woes. For many of us, first dates are and will always be nerve-jangling, self-abasing affairs. You know that you’re capable of more than a squawked "Did you take the T here tonight?" You know that you could go for weeks, months, without a booger incident and then, at the most inopportune moment, boing. You know, too, that if you could just get past those awkward first few hours everything would be okay. You could end up marrying this person, growing old together. You just need to make it through the first date in one piece. The question is, how?

Not so long ago, I decided to try a whole new dating tack. Rather than trying to impress the woman I was with, I went to great lengths to paint the worst possible picture of myself. I told her how muddled I was, how unreliable my emotions were. I warned her about my bad habits. I told her stories about women I’d disappointed, relationships I’d blown through bullheadedness and sheer stupidity. The thinking — if you could call it that — was that if we ever ended up dating in earnest, then her image of me could only get better. She’d fall for me because I was so much more than she’d ever imagined.

I never saw her again.

Which brings us back to Silent Dating. "This dating trend," the MSN Women article informs us, "is fun for gregarious types — the ones willing to throw a paper airplane and let out a non-silent guffaw — but it also works great for shrinking violets." There’s no word, however, on how well the dating technique works for blabbermouths. Maybe I should give it a try. I’m free most of next week, if anyone wants to sit opposite me smiling and winking and pointing, mute, at the booger hanging out of my nose.

Chris Wright, who really is free most of next week, can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com


Issue Date: December 5 - 11, 2003
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