Kitchen sink salad and WTF online dating
I just opened a guy's profile, and this was the first sentence:
"I'm intelligent, THISISWHEREISTOPREADINGHOLYSHIT
Men! Try to come up with something that is in no way a version of "you're as comfortable in a T-shirt and jeans as a cocktail dress," and for God's sake don't use the phrase "partner in crime"!! Why would you post a single photograph, and why would that photograph be you in all camo hunting gear? Why would you lean against a motorcycle? Why a photo of you at the firing range? Are you looking for a woman or ANOTHER MAN TO SHOOT GUNS AND RACE BIKES WITH?
Not that I haven't done both myself. I've shot rifles and shotguns and raced scooters through Bali and Southeast Asia. But I'm looking for someone who's not DUDING OUT IN HIS PHOTOS.
Then there's this guy: "I guess because I'm southern, I would like a woman who knows how to cook; even though, we may eat out. Sometimes, its cool to be romantic and relax and just eat in. it would be interesting to see how creative you could be."
In case it wasn't clear, in a DATING PROFILE in the BAY AREA in 2016 a man wrote: "I would love to see how creative you could be in COOKING ME DINNER."
But don't worry. He doesn't need you to be smart while you're COOKING HIM DINNER: "I would like an educated woman, not necessarily formally educated, but capable of carrying on a conversation about something other than entertainment (not necessarily politics either)"
Just shut up and COOK ME DINNER.
Then, this guy. He breaks my fucking heart: "I just wanted to. have someone to love and someone to hold cherish appreciate all wonderful things I love fishing and I love to camp I love the Lord I am a GOD FEARING man and I am in the Vallejo California area in search for a true love I need romance in my life it is so Precious till every moment is appreciated"
I would write that man into a short story as the fucking hero.
Basically, online dating involves me drinking alone and alternately screaming at my laptop or crying. I will say this: Obviously I'm online dating because, at 39, things have not worked out so well for me! And I'm sure my profile could use a little help. I'm definitely one of those people who has picture trouble.
To wit: Remember that Facebook thing (or maybe it was MySpace -- it's been a while), where you uploaded a picture of yourself to a website, and it did facial recognition and returned a photo of the celebrity you looked the most like? For months, my friends' profile pictures were pictures of, for example, Ryan Phillippe or Jennifer Garner. You know who I got? You know who I fucking got?
Peter Sellers.
So I'm not exactly being bombarded with requests from men to cook them dinner.
I eat some version of this salad pretty much every day. This particular salad has:
1/2 cup cannellini beans
3 TB feta, crumbled (Belgian tastes the best)
5-6 shitake mushrooms, sliced
1/2 avocado, sliced
1/4 large yellow heirloom tomato, sliced (large so you can have more heirloom tomato later, obviously)
1/4 cucumber, peeled and sliced
chopped parsley
chopped Castelvetrano olives (I'd like to point out I have actually been to Castelvetrano, Sicily, where one of my closest friends and her sister and I got lost in a rented Fiat Panda and looped around and around this medieval town, passing the same group of old Italian men sitting on cobblestones in lawn chairs before we somehow got slingshotted out and back onto the highway.)
I carried those hand-painted bowls back from Taormina, and I wash them the way I might wash a baby someday: gently, with love, and so as not to drop them on the floor. Every lunch hour when I work from home, I drizzle this or a similar bowl full of goodness with olive oil, salt, and pepper, pour a glass of wine, and slowly, luxuriously, appreciate every second I am not yoked to a man who would not be able to appreciate this salad's creativity. Because you know shitake mushrooms are too "creative" for that guy.