(Originally appeared in Death + Taxes Magazine, August, 2008)

In an attempt to save money amidst a career change at the age of 24, I decided to move back in with my parents for a year. 

At first I denied the reality of the situation: Following the example of the stunted Nick Swardson character who sleeps in a Corvette bed in Grandma’s Boy, I casually referred to Mom and Dad as “my roommates.” But my parents, being the loving, concerned, shamelessly overbearing providers that they are, were all too accommodating. And I do mean too accommodating. It wasn’t long before the mysterious scents of “fresh rain” and “ocean breeze” emanating from my clothes began to irk me. I felt I had lost my sense of independence. 

My creative drive was next to go, as the environment was anathema to introspective thought. Try to find artistic inspiration in the home-office-doubling-as-guest-room of your parents’ cramped New York City apartment—I dare you. Go ahead, light some candles or some incense—no amount of Feng Shui is going to negate the fact that you’re sleeping on the same foldout you gave up to Uncle Dougie last week. 

And of course, with all potentially legitimate relationships buckling under the pressure of hanging only at one place (hers), and random late night hook-ups proving too awkward for all parties involved, the Live-At-Home-24-Year-Old has only one other “manual” option for a source of affection. That is, when it’s possible to drown out the sound of your mother chatting on the phone with your grandma about curtain fabric or the difficulties of menopause. 

Yes, I had reached an all-time personal low. 

One especially enthralling Saturday night, I was in the guest room surfing the web for some hardcore amateur porn on my parents’ Stone Age iMac. Just as this prehistoric relic finally began to cough up a single pixilated graphic which resembled the beginnings of a tittie, in walks my Mom with a magazine and her latest cheese and cracker sampler. Hands up, pants down, and dignity nowhere to be found, I quickly struggled to close the browser window featuring the half-tit as my mother launched into the latest in a long line of self-betterment schemes she’d cooked up for me. 

It was in this desperate state that I chose to accept her mission: to ask out one of the hot single bachelorettes in the first annual “Date Our Friends” Valentine’s Day issue of Time Out New York. Apparently, the writers and editors at the publication had decided to whore off their friends and expose them (via photo and a short bio) to the entire population of drooling, sex-crazed deviants in Manhattan. 

So on a particularly pathetic Sunday, less than 72 hours before Valentine’s Day, one of those deviants emailed “Cheri,” as we’ll call her, at her special TONY man-eater address: 

————————- 

From: Ethan Fixell 
Date: Sunday, February 11, 2007 3:25 PM
To: Cheri TimeOut 
Subject: Stuff. 

So I mean, im sure by this point you’ve received like, 300 thousand bajillion of these emails… 

But here’s one more. 

My mom goes, “Ethan, I have a girl for you. She’s perfect. She’s your age, she’s beautiful, she’s creative, and she’s from Brooklyn.”

I broke up with my last girlfriend 3 months ago and apparently now my mom thinks she’s Yente the Matchmaker. I’m like, “Ma, you’re not setting me up with another one of Dad’s secretaries.”

She goes, “No, this one is from a magazine.”

“Awesome,” I’m thinking. “My mother bought me an Asian mail-order bride.”

But then she goes on to explain the whole deal, and after opening to the spread in TONY, i couldn’t really argue with her any longer. Because let’s face it, you’re cute. 

And if that weren’t enough incentive to drop you a line, my mom offered to pay my next month’s cell phone bill if you write me back. 

So at the very least, if you could help me out with that…. 

-ethan 

—————— 

Whatever, I’d done it. Sent. I had nothing to lose. If she did happen to write back, my phone bill would be paid for and I’d go out on a sweet date. If not, I’d be relieved for the simple fact that I would have to pay the bill—a twisted manipulation I had cleverly created to avoid failure altogether. By imagining that last bastion of adult responsibility—the only remaining utility bill in my own name—snuffed out by the asphyxiating love of my mother, not hearing back from Cheri didn’t seem so bad after all. 

But hear back from her, I did. 

“Well, shit,” I said, out loud, when I first saw the response in my inbox. The phone bill was on mom next month, and I was okay with that. 

Soon we were emailing, we were MySpacing, we were even IMing. And apparently, out of dozens of applicants, I was the only one to get such access: 

—————— 

Cheri (1:46:51 PM): i told you that you were the most charming email i had gotten from the time out thing
Cheri (1:46:57 PM): but really you were the only email
Ethan (1:47:08 PM): wow
Ethan (1:47:09 PM): that sucks
Ethan (1:47:25 PM): proof that im the only person who thinks youre cute
Cheri (1:47:29 PM): seriously.
Cheri (1:47:39 PM): thank god for your mom.
Ethan (1:47:42 PM): seriously.
Ethan (1:47:50 PM): welp. here’s to settling.
Cheri (1:48:27 PM): here, here.

—————— 

Cute, smart, and funny, too? I had hit the mother lode. We decided to set up a date. 

But for whatever reason, coordinating with this girl proved to be more difficult than catching the Chupacabra taking a dump. I’d call and leave a message on her greeting-less voicemail. She’d call me back two days later, just missing me by minutes. I’d email to find out she had gone away for the weekend. She’d IM me when I’d happen to be away from my desk. (Eventually she revealed that she doesn’t “believe in checking voicemails.” I let this slide, while scoring a negative tally on my Potential Girlfriend Checklist.) 

But when we did finally meet up, I was happy to see that she looked just as she did in her photos: Long, dark hair, and a killer pair of boobies. That’s all I need. And though it was not my usual thing, it didn’t hurt that she was quite exotic. “Half Lebanese,” she explained. 

From the first chardonnay (her) and Bass Ale (me) I knew this would be an enjoyable night. I felt comfortable with Cheri. She was sweet and witty, and very sociable. Secure, but not without weakness. You could tell this girl was either super hot and popular in high school—or discovered she could be super hot and popular after high school. But I detected a dash of flakiness and a pinch of high maintenance. There was never a question as to who was buying the drinks that night. 

We hung out for an hour or two, and everything went smoothly. Great, even. And I held nothing back. Embracing a schlubbiness I had found could work in my favor – I joked about living at home, about my terribly paying job, and about my recent cold streak with the ladies. She laughed the entire night. 

However, while jiving over humor is crucial, it’s not everything. In the end, we never truly clicked. I yearned for butterflies in the pit of my stomach; for an effortless listing of the same favorites and interests; for the clumsy small-talk which acknowledges that impending first kiss. But these things never came. We were missing something: that “za-za-zu,” as an ex-girlfriend of mine calls it. 

Of course, we went on with the charade, missing calls, writing hasty emails, making half-hearted plans that never quite came to fruition for various bullshit reasons…. “I’m so sorry, my best friend came into town unexpectedly.” “I got so wasted, I wasn’t able to leave Brooklyn.” Back and forth it would go. Eventually, I even used “I totally forgot we had a date.” Hey, I certainly didn’t feel any guilt—may I remind you that my cat and I are the only two living beings on Earth who have ever heard the voicemails I left for this girl? 

So, after weeks of this uninspired crap, we gradually gave up on each other altogether. I never saw Cheri again.

“Maybe this ‘George Costanza Theory’ has some holes in it after all,” I began to concede. Having hit rock bottom, openly embracing my lowly situation with an endearing shamefulness, I thought I was onto something. I believed that I had figured out how to make feeling like a loser work with chicks. But now, back at square one, without a single prospect or potential date, I just missed my confident, independent former self. You know, the self whose social life didn’t revolve around the nights Mom would be making Stove Top stuffing. 

Months of misery passed, and I floated lethargically through each day like a Quaalude addict in an after school special. Any attempts made by my well-intentioned parents to pull me out of the murky depths of my own self-pity only created further feelings of dependence, and subsequently, depression. I struggled to find purpose in even the most mundane activities (“today I’m going to buy my OWN toilet paper!”) as my renewed reliance on mom and dad rendered my fight for success and survival even more meaningless. 

Thankfully, after a full year of living at home, my buddy suggested I move out of my parents’ place into a sweet new bachelor pad he was eyeing. I had certainly saved enough money to do so, and as luck would have it, I would even happen to receive a significant raise at work in the following weeks. 

Living in my own apartment, I began to feel the effects of the change of environment almost immediately. Sure, my new “rugged” neighborhood was a far cry from the tree-lined, gentrified, baby-boomer oasis I was coming from, but it wasmine. I found relief in shopping for vegetables, in buying bread at the bakery next door, in chatting it up with Imadul, owner of the local bodega that only sold batteries and Skittles. My newfound self-reliance gave me the will to go out more and meet plenty of new people. I got back into writing, started exercising, and found myself in a much better mood overall. 

A mere four months later, I had landed a new job at a TV network I’d dreamt about working for since high school—a crowning achievement which reaffirmed that things had finally completely turned around. It was clear that the only thing to follow me from my parents’ apartment to my new address was my subscription to Time Out New York. 

And yet, despite an astounding recent dating streak, my track record was now a sloppy mess. If you were to examine a lineup of the chicks I dated in this period, it would look like a cross between the cast of Rock of Love 3 and the most recent outpatient roster of your local mental hospital: I went out with a cute ex-gymnast who gave me the keys to her apartment a week-and-a-half after I met her on the internet; an ex-con who served a year in federal prison for attempting to sell a pound of cocaine; a woman who, on our first date, informed me of the fact that her last boyfriend ran away to Washington D.C., never to speak to her again because of her “psychopathic tendencies” (her words). And my longest affair was a painfully vague two-month-stint with a coworker at a previous job who once got mad at me for trying to hold an umbrella over her in the pouring rain because she said it would make her feel “indebted.” 

I mean, What. The Fuck. 

But to be fair, not all of them were nuts. Some were just slightly less engaging than a lobotomized Paris Hilton. One girl, a Jewish Ivy league graduate with an amazing job and huge bombs, couldn’t carry a conversation. I’ve made better small talk with paper. I like to refer to this one as “The Red Chair in a Red Room.” 

Needless to say, I was still not satisfied in my hunt for a viable girlfriend. While everything else had improved since The Great Depression of 2007 had concluded half a year earlier, my love life was still struggling to recover. So obviously, upon arriving home from an evening cut short by a prissy blind date exclaiming “Oh, no….We don’t do‘cheers,’” in response to my friendly attempt to clink glasses, the 2008 Valentine’s Day edition of TONY was a welcomed surprise in my mailbox. 

When I first examined the magazine, scouring the “Date Our Friends” section for hot, sane babes in my age range, I somehow skipped right over Amanda’s page. It wasn’t until a week later, casually flipping through the latest issue while on the crapper (the only place I ever read Time Out New York, of course) that I came across her profile: 

—————— 

Amanda, 24
Manhattan, television production and programming
Says Amanda: “The sensitive at heart should be wary of what’s been called my off-color sense of humor. Nerdiness doesn’t shame me (I’ve been known to watch Discovery Channel marathons). I also have a penchant for dining out.”
Says Craig, music assistant: “Amanda’s babe factor and mondo brain can be intimidating, but she’s a sucker for laughter, offending squares and staying out late.”
tonysingles.amanda@gmail.com 

—————— 

Not only was she far and away the most attractive female of the bunch, but her description screamed “You’ve met your match!” I could hear angels singing: They were calling for the Don Juan of E-Courting to suit up and take action once again. Only this time, I was armed with a new lease on life, and a huge pair of balls to go with it.

—————— 

From: Ethan Fixell 
Date: Sunday, February 10, 2008 4:21 PM
To: tonysingles amanda 
Subject: 


The funny thing is that I first flipped through the new TONY issue about a week ago.  And I remember seeing the whole “date-us” section and being like, “Of COURSE everyone is busted…” 

Which I guess is why I was so surprised when I realized, a week later, that I missed a page with a cute chick on it.  But before reading the caption below, I was totally thinking, “well, she probably hates all my favorite channels, or listens to Christian rock, or…eats puppies or something.” 

Which I guess is why I was so surprised when I read your description. (TV production? Same here.) 

Anyway, if you haven’t OD’d yet on the deluge of emails you’ve probably already received by now: 

http://www.myspace.com/xxxxxxxxxxx 

Or, if you’re so over myspace, 

http://www.facebook.com/people/xxxxxxxxxxx 

-Ethan 

Oh, and can we just talk for a second about my man on page 89?  Have you seen him?  Holding up a sign that says “Top or Bottom - You Decide?” I mean, if you’re gonna drop a totally creepy line in a magazine read by hundreds of thousands of people, at least don’t fuck up the grammar. Jesus Christ. I almost want to call him and be like, “Dude. Really?” 

—————— 

She totally loved the email. (Hey, I’ve already revealed enough embarrassing shit to earn a little extra boasting at this point.) Merely a day later, she responded and suggested that we meet up for a drink sometime, to which I happily agreed. 

Now, as I’ve implied (perhaps not so subtly), I’ve been on my fair share of dates before. And I can honestly say that in all my years, I have never been on a first date—much less a blind date—that went as well as that night with Amanda did. We connected on every level. We shared the same sense of humor, the same beliefs and values, the same penchant for awful TV. We laughed and agreed with one another as if we had known each other for years. And I could have sworn I could actually see the physical attraction between us in the form of fiery bolts of electricity traveling from my eyes to hers. She eventually even admitted that out of the hundred-plus bachelors to reply to her ad, I was the only one she chose to meet up with. 

….Well, except for some random douchebag ex-coworker of hers who, realizing the grave mistake he made in never asking such a rad chick out, decided to reconnect after seeing the magazine….But fuck him—he doesn’t count. 

I was the only total stranger to pull off the impossible, creating a date with a super cool babe out of thin air. I was the champion. I had mini-Vince Vaughn on my shoulder, crowing “Who’s the big winner here tonight at the casino? Huh? Ethan, that’s who. Ethan’s the big winner. Ethan wins!” I was on the best date of my life, and finally, nothing could stop me. 

But, although it may be the veritable video-Bible of male self-confidence, even Swingers can lead a man astray. Because as amazingly as Vince and I had thought the evening had gone, when Amanda finally replied, three days later, to my email enquiring about a second date, she let me know that she had started to see someone else. You guessed it: the very douchebag ex-coworker who needed a magazine to tell him my dream girl was worth dating. 

And the worst part was that she was so graceful about it. She wrote gentle, beautifully written phrases such as “I would feel disingenuous if I said yes to dinner.” She made charming apologies to cover her embarrassment over not calling: “Sorry….but if I were to try to say this over the phone, I would fuck it all up and start bumbling like Hugh Grant at the pivotal moment of a romantic comedy.” And she even closed with one our many inside jokes, invoking the name of a bizarre children’s show we both loved, signing, “Sincerely, Yo Gabba Gabba.” 

Goddammit, Amanda, at least let me take satisfaction in hating you for dumping me. 

Alas, even with all the proper ingredients—a new job, a new apartment, and a renewed sense of confidence among other things—I had failed again in securing a magazine-order girlfriend. Yet ironically, it wasn’t by my choice this time. How the hell did Ethan The Stud end up with an even crappier ending than Ethan the Dud? At least now I knew that even when everything else is aces, rejection is still as much of a bitch as ever. 

I did learn another thing, too: that attempting to snag a date through a massively distributed publication will turn out the way you’d expect it to. No matter what your social status, responding to such a widespread personal ad will inevitably end in failure. If not right away, and if not for the incredibly obvious reasons, then eventually. 

But you know what? I sure did come pretty close to breaking the laws of the universe. Twice. And that’s enough to keep my spirits up until the next Valentine’s Day edition of Time Out New York.