Farewell to the NYC dating scene

A final farewell to the dating game in New York

03 October 2007

The wedding of the author’s wing-woman

That is where Alison came in. She was my first real American friend and also became my dating wing-woman. Like a military wing-man, she was always there at my side. In times of dating trouble, she helped me to avoid turbulent danger zones and alerted me when it was time to bail out from a messy relationship.

So it was with mixed emotions that I opened her wedding invitation last week. Weddings are wonderful, but there are some that seem to take on deeper significance than others and some that make you a little pensive. Since moving back to London in 2005, and now married, I think that I have probably been living vicariously through Alison’s NYC dating dilemmas. I am not quite ready for the mundanity of a life where all friends either seem to be married or in committed relationships. Dating is a bizarre ritual at the best of times, and no place on earth provides the parade of freaks and geeks in the way that America does, and no city in the world provides the constant stream of dating horror stories that New York City does.

My first dating horror story was an internet one: Ed was smaller than he had looked in his web-profile photograph. Alison had specifically warned me that in the world of online dating, if a man lists his height as being 5ft 10in or anything below, then you have to take at least three inches off the height listed. Ed had said that he was 5ft 7in. He was mistaken. His first question (accusation?) to me as I walked into the SoHo bar was, ‘How tall are you? You said that you were 5ft 5in! You’re taller.’

‘It’s the heels,’ I explained nervously, getting an odd vibe. ‘Well,’ he replied, looking me slowly up and down, ‘at least you carry yourself well.’ Being English, I could not think of any way to leave without appearing rude. His profile said that he was a ‘self-employed entrepreneur’, so I asked him about his work. ‘How open-minded are you?’ he asked. What kind of question was that? Open-minded enough to be on a date with you, I thought to myself, but said instead, ‘Pretty open-minded I think, why?’