Maybe the "e" stands for "extraneous"? or "expensive"?

Over the Fourth of July, eHarmony.com offered a free communication weekend. I had tried eHarmony in the past and not had any success, but free is a very good price so I figured I didn’t have anything to lose except a few hours of my time.

I went and logged into my long since abandoned account. It took me a few tries to guess the password, but I finally got in. The account was so old that it was full of “matches” dating back several years. Actually, the last time I think I had logged in was on a previous “free weekend” maybe a couple of years ago. So, the first thing I had to do was delete the old matches, or “close communication” as they call it, so that there would be room for new ones.

Some of the old matches had already been closed by the guy involved because I hadn’t been “responsive” – and I don’t blame them. That’s absolutely true. You can’t be more unresponsive then not logging in at all.

Some of the matches I closed were with men who were no longer even on eHarmony. Their profiles had been completely deleted. So, there I didn’t feel any guilt about deleting them out of my inbox either.

But over 30 matches were just sitting there, untouched, never opened by him or me. What does that say about all of this business? Who are all of these men who may have been ideally matched to me on over 300 points of compatibility (or whatever the commercials say)? Who are they and why do they bother to sign up for the website if they’re not going to participate and try to meet someone? Although, to be fair, anyone could ask the same question about me.

My central reason for giving up on eHarmony is that, in my opinion, they don’t bother to actually pay attention to what I’m looking for in a man. The “matches” are generally nonsense. I’m usually ready to “close communication” with someone before the communication has ever started based solely on something that’s revealed in their initial description of themselves.

For example, I’ve specifically noted how tall I am and that I want to meet somebody taller than me. Yet I’m repeatedly matched with people like Dale a 5’8” CPA, who is probably a nice enough guy. But in my experience, guys lie about how tall they are. And if he says he’s 5’8”, he’s probably more like 5’7” and that’s going to put him over an inch shorter than me in flats. And maybe this makes me a hight-est, but if eHarmony can claim to find perfect matches for people, then shouldn’t they at least be able to match me with somebody at least 5’10” or hopefully taller?

Other matches I received over the Fourth of July weekend were just as easily dismissed, such as somebody named Marcel. I wondered if he was the monkey-haired “Top Chef” contestant (who does live in Las Vegas) or just the monkey from “Friends”? Anyway, he listed “Ayn Rand” as one of the major influences on his life so I had to delete him right away.

I was alerted to most of the matches eHarmony came up with by a series of emails with pithy subject lines.

Email 1 encouraged me to “Meet Paul and find out about his favorite activities.”
But Paul had “closed communication” with me before I even had a chance to see his profile. He was probably short and knew I was going to delete him anyway.

Email 2 cheered me on to “Meet William and see if you find a spark.”
But I knew there would be no spark when I saw that William had written that he loves working out and physical fitness and going to the gym about five times in just his basic introduction. In addition, William lives part-time in San Bernadino which does not sound appealing. Plus, he wrote: “I LOVE ALTERNATIVE MUSIC!” in all capital letters. You know, just so he made sure nobody missed that all important part of his personality.

Email 3 announced “Meet Joe: he could be what you’ve been looking for.”
However, Joe is only 5’9” and loves U2. Nope. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Email 4 read “Meet Bret and discover what you have in common.”
Well, Bret and I did have a couple of things in common. We both love roller coasters and amusement parks. On the other hand, Bret loves NASCAR and believes “in treating a woman the way she should be treated,” which, as a feminist, I know is code for “I’m a jerk who doesn’t like women to own their own houses or have had more sexual partners than me.” So, it was clear we were never going to ride a roller coaster together.

Email 5 simply said “Find out more about your new match” without specifying a name.
This could have meant either Ken or Andrew who I was matched with on the site but had not received specific emails about. It didn’t matter since they were both headed for the “closed” file. You see, Ken said that the “Five People you Meet in Heaven” was “a great, inspirational book.” So, he clearly has no sense of irony. And Andrew wrote: “I love Broadway show tunes. Ha ha. J/K.” And anyone who jokes that way about Broadway show tunes has got to be a homophobic asshole.

Email 6 told me that I had received a “photo share nudge” from somebody named “Stephen” but I couldn’t locate where to respond to it on the website. I also couldn’t find anyone named “Stephen” anywhere in my inbox.

Email 7 had the most self-complimentary tone to it. “Meet Scott: We’ve matched you on the important areas of life.”
Besides the fact that EHarmony was using an awkward prepositional phrase in this subject line, it turned out to be the closest to a successful match that its algorithms of compatibility had made. I actually chose the “start communication” option for Scott because the only questionable thing in his initial profile is that the book he claimed to have read most recently was “The Prince” by Machiavelli.

But then, just as quickly as the free weekend had begun, it ended. But the day afterwards, I received an email that said “Scott has requested communication from you.” Dutifully, I logged into EHarmony and answered Scott’s questions. I then clicked to submit my answers and was taken to a sales page telling me that I could not communicate with Scott – or anyone else for that matter – unless I coughed up my credit card number.

So, then I had to wonder to myself: was Scott worth the $59.95 it would cost for 30 days of eHarmony? Was a man who had recently read Machiavelli worth $59.95? Or is the question really: is any man worth $59.95? And is that really any way to begin a relationship? Wouldn’t I always be calculating if I had gotten $59.95 out of it? An iced tea here, a lunch there, perhaps a cocktail or a shared bottle of wine? At what point would I stop assessing the value of our interaction. And, of course, this is all assuming that I’d ever meet anyone through eHarmony, be it Scott or somebody else, who I wanted to meet in person at all.

No, I decided, I could never spend $59.95 to continue communication with Scott or anyone else for that matter.

Besides, he was probably lying about his height anyway.

Girls' Night Out

Recently, I was invited to attend something called “Girls’ Night Out.” It was one local hotel/casino’s attempt to boost public relations by bringing local female writers into the property so that we might be enticed to write about it. They gave us a complimentary night on the town – or night at the hotel, more accurately. The package included a room for the night, wine and heavy hors d'oeuvres at their steak house, a private behind the scenes tour of the property, a private session with their flair bartenders and VIP tickets to a concert including a meet and great with the artists.

I’m not going to publicly denounce the property for this event. I think it was a pretty good idea and they let me bring a friend and we had a good time. There are definitely worse ways to spend a Saturday night. And believe me I know. I’ve experienced some pretty terrible Saturday nights in my life.

But what I did find interesting was that they felt the need to make the event gender. Here are a few of the particularly annoying stereotypes I encountered.


Stereotype #1: Women drink Chardonnay
When we arrived for our wine and hors d’oeuvres reception at the steak house, they had about 30 glasses of wine pre-poured for us. Now I could go into how I feel about pre-poured wine in the first place (Excuse me! I’d like to see the bottle!), but it’s even worse when 20 of those thirty glasses were chardonnay. Honestly, if you’re going to pour white wine, couldn’t it be a sauvignon blanc or a pinot gris or something? The assumption that women like cheap chardonnay is ridiculous.


Stereotype #2: Women like posing for group pictures
Even before the rowdy shots of women plastered all over social networking sites, there was this idea that women like to get together and pose for pictures. They ask waiters to get shots of them when they’re in restaurants. They take pictures together in their outfits before they go out for a night on the town. Or do they? Do they really?

Actually, I know quite a number of women who hate to get their picture taken at all. So when the organizer of this event made all of the women gather together for a group shot, I said – loud enough for everyone to hear me – “is this really necessary?” I hung back and mumbled and groaned as everyone else was handing over their cameras – “Take one with mine!” “You just press that little button over there!” The idea of taking photos was so far from my mind that I hadn’t even brought a camera with me. In the end, I was coerced into joining the photo, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit.


Stereotype #3: Women are always looking for new and ingenious ways to shave their legs
It was nice for the hotel to put together gift bags for us. They left them in our rooms and they were full of things that women supposedly enjoy, specifically, a lot of lotion. Which is also something that Buffalo Bill in the Silence of the Lambs liked a lot, but we don’t need to get into that.

One of the things in the gift bag was the “Smooth Away” hair removal system as seen on TV. And, honestly, I couldn’t give it away. Neither my friend nor I wanted anything to do with this scary thing. Really, the fact that inventors think that women are looking for more ways to rip hair out of their skin is ridiculous. Shaving (and sometimes waxing) works just fine. Thank you very much. I don’t need your so called “easy, safe and painless” thing. Because there is no way it could possibly be “easy, safe and painless.” And, by the way, making it pink isn’t fooling anybody.


Stereotype #4: Women don’t like to taste the liquor in their cocktails
At one point in the evening, we were forced to sit down at the property’s newest attraction: a flair bar. First of all, I think flair bartending in annoying. (You can even read a previous blog on the subject.) You don’t need to throw bottles around and light things on fire. Really, just pour me my drink.

Unfortunately, somebody at this flair bar was pouring drinks. Horrible drinks. The kind of drinks that people assume women like. This was called a “Raspberry Lemon Drop.” They were taking the often female ordered “Lemon Drop” martini and adding some raspberry liqueur to it. Maybe if they’d actually used Chambord it would have been kind of okay. But this drink just tasted like a glass of sugar. There was no hint of liquor in it at all. And all of the other women (sans my friend and I) were just sucking them down and cooing over how delicious they were. Yuck! I just sat there with mine in front of me, and some PR guy came over and harassed me (with a PR smile all the time) about why I wasn’t drinking it. Are you kidding me? If this had been a gathering of men they would have made real martinis or at least something with bourbon in it.


Now I like my free cocktails as much as anyone, but I refused to drink this. And I like free wine as much as anyone, but I don’t need to drink a pre-poured cheap Chardonnay. And I like a gift bag as much as anyone, but I’m not going to use your freaky hair removal system. And I don’t need to get my picture taken with a bunch of women I don’t know who do like enjoy all of these stereotypical things.

Bulwer-Lytton's Rutabaga Muffins

This year’s winner of my favorite writing contest, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, was just announced. If you’re not familiar with Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, he’s the writer who is credited with penning the infamous introductory phrase, “it was a dark and stormy night.” And the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest honors his memory by awarding a prize to the worst opening sentence of a piece of fiction. And just to clarify, these sentences are submitted humorously for the purpose of the contest; they are not from actual pieces of fiction.

Perhaps this is my favorite writing contest because it’s the only one I’ve ever won. Well, not the actual contest, but a junior version of it sponsored by the fabulous English teachers at my high school – namely Betsy James and Kris Morella. Because the contest was created (and to this day still) administered by English professors at San Jose State University (in my home town), local high school English teachers were encouraged to hold their own versions of the contest.

I don’t know that I remember the winning sentence exactly, but I’ll try to recreate it to the best of my recollection.

“’Heavens!’ cried Penelope McBaldergibbons as she realized she had burned the rutabaga muffins that she was planning on entering in the county bake-off, an annual event attended by all of the important luminaries of Nixon County where she lived and tried so desperately to earn everyone’s admiration but so rarely did as was apparent from the ruined baked goods.”

This was one of the few things I’ve ever won in my life and I’m actually terribly proud of it. But still I can’t help but be concerned that I earn money as a writer, yet the only writing contest I’ve ever won was for bad writing. But what good bad writing it was.

Young Widows' Wasteland

My friend Kristin Anderson and I have suffered similar yet different loss. I lost my boyfriend while he was serving in the Army in Baghdad four years ago. She lost her husband to suicide just a few months ago. Kristin and I hadn't spoken to each other in years, but when she suddenly found herself a widow we found that we suddenly had something very heartfelt and difficult in common. And, through our conversations, Kristin suggested that we start writing about our experiences. It turns out that there is very little, if anything, that's been published that in any way reflects the experience of being a young widow.

So, today, on the anniversary of Stan's burial, we are launching our blog: Young Widow's Wasteland. We understand that the content is not for everyone, but we hope that you might share it with someone who could benefit from knowing that she or he is not the only person suffering such a tragic loss at such a young age or at any age. Some of what we write will be sad, some will be funny and some will be frustrating. But it will all be honest and hopefully helpful in surviving our own grief as well as to others looking for friends.

A New Blog

Since 2005, I have been blogging on my MySpace site at http://blogs.myspace.com/rebeccamonkey. But recently I haven't had much interest in spending time on MySpace, so I decided that it was time to move that blog somewhere else. So, here I am.

The title of this blog comes from a private joke with myself. This summer I am celebrating ten years of living in Las Vegas. And somehow, in that decade, I have managed to avoid stripping and marriage in a city infamous for stripping and marriage. And believe me, as a professor of Women's Studies and someone who critiques popular culture, this fact never fails to both amuse and bemuse me. In a city with so many opportunities to meet men, and believe me I've met my share, I still manage to be single and clothed more often than not. My plan is to tell stories from my first decade in Vegas and share other ideas about my life and popular culture through this blog.

And here we go... the best laid plans of non-brides and men (or women)...