Adventures on JDate

So against my better judgement I agreed to sign up for JDate. Yes, my sister and one of my best friends from college both met their husbands there, but (a) I don't think I care that much about marrying anyone Jewish, and (b) my job takes so much out of me that I have even less tolerance for BS than usual. And God, there is a lot of BS.

For the billionth time since I moved to New York to take this horrendous job, I have to ask myself: Why do I not trust my gut?

First I made the mistake of checking the box indicating that I speak some Russian, so I had to tweak my profile to explain that I am not, in fact, from the bridebasket of Europe. I still get emails from every Russian or Slav in the New York area and beyond, plus various suitors whose conversational gambits include: "So what do you know about Hungarian Jews?"

On the phone the other night with another guy (a Canadian living in New York) I got grilled like a hot marriage prospect – or, given his reaction, a rather cold one. The guy clearly has issues, though: He told me he carried on watching Sex and the City "even after my fiancée left" and proceeded to ask me which two characters I was most like. I'd already told him via email that if he was looking for a TOTAL SWEETHEART (something he had, capital letters too, at least four times in his profile), I probably wasn't his girl, and yet he berated me for describing myself (I played along with his stupid game) for not being more of a Charlotte.

I get emails from 69-year-old men with 3 kids living in Los Angeles. And lots and lots of emails from men who are 5'6" and 5'7" (sorry, but no). Emails from men who are separated (sorry, I've lived through BN2's divorce and I'm not doing it again), and men who have kids living with them (ditto). Of the some 50 people who've emailed, I genuinely want to have a conversation – never mind an actual date – with exactly none of them. I think it's because they're all jaded, too – they send lists of questions, or generic emails, or just: "Emails are a waste of time. Send me your phone number."

Ugh.

The other night I logged on to delete my profile only to receive a request for an IM chat. Usually I decline but I was mildly curious about this guy, especially because he was in Zurich. I mean, yes if I'd met him already and was mad about him, but not under these circumstances. It was 5:30 am there, so I wrote: What are you doing up? And he wrote back: Dreaming of you.

I had to log off before I could even end my membership.

And so I got an email from a guy whose profile includes photos of himself with various celebrities. He says something about ignoring the celebrities in the photos, that that's his job, but um, then why post them? I respond to his email because he's 5'11", roughly the right age, and seems vaguely literate (hello, scraping the bottom of the barrel) and he writes back to tell me he's been to England to film with Duran Duran. I haven't told him about my own celebrity past, and frankly, I'm not at all interested in his (name-dropping) celebrity present. Plus he mixes up your and you're.

Today's email is from a 50-year-old man whose profile picture shows him blowing a bubble with his gum. Be still my beating heart.