One, Two, Three...Date!

Speed dating is like musical chairs for desperate singles. But seeing as it’s been a rough year in my love life, I decided to give it a whirl. The sponsor of my foray was the First Year Social Committee. The locale: Annenberg hall. Look out, men, I thought.

In the heterosexual version of speed dating, opposite genders sit on opposite sides of the table. Each pair has 2 minutes to decide if the other possesses qualities suitable in a partner. Then the buzzer signals the end of one mating season, and the beginning of another. The row of girls moves over one seat to try to impress the new man she sits in front of. Assembly-line dating for busy Harvard students.

Well, that’s how they prayed it would work. They had even planned to have a table for gay freshpeople. But the FYSC should have known that anyone—gay, straight, whatever—have better taste than to participate in speed dating, even if it was featured in an episode of “Sex and the City.”

The event’s location should have been my first clue that I could not swipe my way into romance. So I arrived in Annenberg exactly at three, thinking that my promptness would be looked favorably upon by guys in the event of any future dates. But as I looked around there were no strapping young men to be found, only Dining Service workers wiping down the tables.

Then I saw Ann R. Riley ’07, the FYSC rep in charge of the event. She was really excited to see me because I was the only person there. I think she was lonely, too.

She told me that 15 people had signed up and that there were more males expected to attend than females. The first good news of the day. But as the minutes of the clock (and my biological clock) ticked on, there were no men in sight and Annie and I resigned ourselves to small-talk.

At 3:30 I decided that my sense of self-worth had taken a thorough trouncing, so I got up to leave. As I headed toward the elevator I saw an Adonis in jeans, his rippling muscles bursting through his t-shirt. Ok, that’s an overstatement, but he was male. And he was at speed dating also, which has to be a comment on his attainability—the number one trait I look for in a man. He said he had some friends who were waiting downstairs, too timid to enter the competitive speed dating scene first.

Annie was really happy to finally see some intergender interaction. Because Annie is on the social committee, she is better versed in the subtleties of courtship, so she decided that we should all play the Dating Game. But, in the version of the dating game that I’ve watched on TV the girl always leaves with one of the bachelors. I asked the guys questions and they made up phony answers to try to outdo each other’s smashing wit. The strained chicanery was finally over when one of the guys announced that he had a 4 p.m. class to be at. We all left awkwardly, without any indication that we’d ever be seeing each other again. At the end of the dating game I played in Annenberg, I did not leave with a man, or my dignity. I guess that means I lost.