Dating Script for the New York City Metropolitan Area Single

Install app.

Swipe left. Swipe left. Ooh! Swipe right. Left. Left. Right. Right. Right. Left. Left. Right. Left. Right.

Why am I not getting matches? I’m a catch. Surely.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Come on.

No.

Left.

Well, maybe I can settle.

Right. Right.

Match!

“I am from Bulgaria looking for a husband. Please send me $400 through Paypal.”

Unmatch.

Left. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Ugh.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Match!

Send flirtatious opening line based on hasty yet astute study of profile.

Nothing back.

Left. Right. Right. Right.

Match!

Take more time with flirtatious opening line based on hasty yet astute study of profile so as to stand out from other singles who are using the same opening line for all matches. Don’t be a fuckboi.

Engage in banter with dating prospect for approximately six quick rounds.

Suggest meeting in person. Make the prospect alluring. Pay highly specific compliments on qualities that other prospects won’t notice to stand out and close the deal.

Date scheduled. Exchange numbers.

Engage in modest banter by text off the app.

More swiping to play the field.

Left. Left. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Match!

Engage in more banter. Schedule date with second match to combat feelings of nervousness and insecurity, which must not be present during the date. Engage in modest banter by text off the app.

Take break. Live life.

Engage in modest banter with second prospect to combat nervous feelings as you are on the way to first date.

More swiping.

Left. Left. Right. Right. Right. Left. Right.

Arrive early at bar. Liquid courage.

Date arrives.

Early compliments to take pressure of date. You will almost never receive compliments back. In 65% of the cases, your date will show almost no interest in your life, no matter how interesting it is. So work yourself up in advance to ensure that you are confident and prepared to take the inevitable hit.

Begin questions. Be witty and charismatic to the best of your ability. Don’t talk about yourself too much. Ask questions of her. Show that you are a listener. Interlard with compliments and light and respectful touching to let her know you are interested and to see if she responds. Make offers to help out in bits of your date’s life. I mean, you can be as sincere as you want. You probably won’t be seeing your date again in about a month anyway.

Ignore buzzing from phone in pocket from second dating prospect. You can respond to her later, where you will go through the same damn process again and feel your hopes sink as dependably as it will happen here.

Become ashamed and self-aware that you are probably telling the same stories to your date, only because you know that your date probably isn’t interested in you for the long haul and, like you, at the very least, just wants to get intimate. Shame dissipates once you realize that your date is also telling the same stories and you are both here for the same reasons. You are both “looking for a relationship,” but not really. This is really just a pretext for sex, which you hope will be good.

If the date is not going well, politely thank date and leave with class. Let time pass before sending text reading “It was nice meeting you but I don’t think it was a match. Best of luck.” Sometimes you will think that the date is going well and you will be the one who receives this message. This is because your date also has a second prospect awaiting her and she has concluded that the “new” is better than the “old” and we are all hopelessly ensnared within the paradox of choice, the quest for the ideal that gets in the way of really knowing anybody. But at least we have lots of sex with different people along the way.

If the date is going well, go in for the kiss.

If you are making out with your date, respectfully suggest a nightcap or to show something at your apartment that reflects your interests. Engage in loud and amorous passion that you will probably both forget about in a few weeks. Don’t be selfish. Be sure your date has an orgasm. Always practice consent.

72% of singles in the New York City metropolitan area are “one and done” types. Both men and women. It is possible that you are not, but your date probably is. You may graduate to “friends with benefits,” especially if the sex is good, which will help take the edge off as you date and search in futility for someone who you can “be in a relationship” with. You may at least have someone to hook up with on a regular basis to allay loneliness.

Swipe left. Right. Right. Left. Right.

Match. See previous documentation for procedure.

Go on date with second prospect.

Just before date with second prospect, you will receive a text from first prospect paying you a backhanded compliment and saying that you are not a match. Said text will cause date with second prospect to backfire.

Uninstall app.

Drink heavily.

Commiserate with single friends.

Remind married and coupled friends how lucky they are and communicate just how hard it is to be single.

Try to “meet people organically” — that is, the way we used to meet before the dating apps. Rediscover, much to your horror, that dating apps have created a social construct where strangers aren’t as fond of flirting in person as they used to be. You will come to see that “meeting people organically” is more of a nostalgic idea rather than a widespread practice, as antediluvian as making mix tapes on cassette or using a Walkman in an age in which our phones can play and download damn near everything.

Once you have rebounded from the malaise and despair generated by the experience with your two failed dating prospects and once you have seen that “meeting organically” doesn’t really work anymore, and once some ridiculously optimistic faith in romance has returned, reinstall dating app.

Carry out subroutine again.

Try not to think that you are on a hamster wheel. Even though we all are. Try to sustain some belief that you will find a meaningful relationship. Try not to get angry at friends who, remarking upon your many fine qualities, ask you, “Why are you still single?” Yes, they mean well. But they aren’t aware of the script.

Date someone for two weeks.

Date someone for two days.

Date someone for a month if you’re lucky.

And so forth.

Die alone.

1.5. Dissociation (The Gray Area)

Greg Sutton, a fidgety young man who is a little too fixated on selling himself, sees his psychiatrist for the first time in months, hoping to find answers about his lost childhood and how to get back the woman he loves. But his own quick fix solution to his problems is not quite what the psychiatrist had in mind. (Running time: 5 minutes)

Written and directed by Edward Champion

CAST:
Greg: Charlie Harrington
Emma: Colette Thomas

Edited by Edward Champion
Foley: Edward Champion
Art: id-iom (CC)

Special thanks to Sacha Arnold, Austin Beach, Jason Boog, Christopher Byrd, Claudia Berenice Garza, Jen Halbert, Gabriella Jiminez, Pete Lutz, John Osborne, Rina Patel, Michael Saldate, Paul Sating, Marc Stein, Georgette Thompson, Jack Ward, and many others I may have inadvertently forgotten for their invaluable help, feedback, kindness, inspiration, and support during the production of this episode.

Some Ruminations on Modern Romance

Sometimes it takes only two words, uttered by someone very kind at the right place at the right time, to keep you soaring for days. There is nothing wrong with giving or receiving affection or coveting a loose ledger that is never in need of an audit. It is the gamble we all take as we stumble upon the fine intuitive glue that keeps the heart pumping in a ferociously stable place and that fills the spirit with newfound signposts to paths uncharted and untried. There is always the risk of heartbreak, but it is overshadowed by salacious quips and dancing eyes and exchanged smiles, the discovery of bright lively flora blossoming inside another soul, the enchanting unknowingness of it all.

Once the poker faces of our best selves dissolve over a few glasses of malbec, we learn of forgotten cards buried up our sleeves. The stagecraft is intuitive and vaguely mystical, transcending optical illusion, undetectable by the smartest Broadway crowd. A good pair of magicians understands that they can bring down any house through a shared glance or a sotto voce declaration or the slightest brush of fingers on a windy stage. Good living theater is all about the magic that arrives out of nowhere when no one, not even the featured players, is looking.

In recent years, we’ve abandoned our late night telephone conversations for flirty evocative texts that careen across the 4G matrix well past the midnight hour, circumventing the long established rule of never calling another after ten. But maybe we confine our expressions to words because we crave shared physicality more than ever before, perhaps because it is more easily consummated than at any other time in human history. The phones are parked in our pockets and our purses in the early stages of whatever counts for current courtship, intimating that we are occupying some private shared territory that will never be intruded upon. Dating, like show business, is all about showing up.

We sometimes succumb to cliches, but we can still be surprised by someone else even when we are exhausted. This is the magic and the fluidity of romance. The jittery excitement of meeting someone new or deepening something that seems to be tottering happily along a thrilling edge can turn a seemingly collected and rational mind into a visceral thunderball, prone to wild whims and daring moves that were never staked out on the syllabus.

It becomes easier to listen and glisten and kiss and even miss out. It becomes easier to be courteous even when the date is disastrous. It becomes easier to be honest about whatever it is you truly want. The only requirements for enjoying yourself amid a series of pleasures and mishaps are curiosity and a zest for life. And when someone emerges from the ever rotating throng who is gentle with your ventricles and willing to accept your totality, it can shoot you across the moon in ways that no cosmonaut can mimic.

It will never go the same way. This is the first thing you learn. You are more of a catch than you know. This is the second thing you learn. But there are more important lessons following these obvious revelations.

We learn of our resilience. We learn how many chances we give to other souls. We learn, even the skeptics and the bitter cynics among us, that we allow more idealism in our lives than we are willing to acknowledge. We even learn somehow to be comfortably alone during the breaks. There are patterns, but there are also deviations.

It does not matter how many there are. Equations are meaningless in this journey. There is no need to scribble gibberish upon the theoretical chalkboard of your mind. Some grand soul will emerge, even if for a brief time, if you have the courage and fortitude to go the distance.

Love Transformer

Love and Sex with Robots
David Levy
HarperCollins, 334 pages, $24.95

Review by Erin O’Brien

Let’s start with the RealDolls.

Actually, it’s not the dolls I want to dwell on, but the men who own them. I spent untold hours conversing on an online forum set up specifically for sex doll owners while researching this article. The human aspect of the sex doll fetish/hobby has stuck with me ever since that piece ran almost a year ago. The love doll phenomenon might seem banal at first blush, but I found it to be complex and surprising at every turn.

Sex is the most popular doll activity, but owners also dress the dolls, talk to them, kiss them, and purchase lingerie and perfume for them. They pose and photograph the dolls. They name them and often imbue them with fantasy personalities. Some men even present themselves on The Doll Forum as their doll. As I struggled to understand it all, one of the forum members asked me if I love my car. That stopped me. My Mini Cooper is compact and responsive and never takes more than it needs. I want to emulate it at every turn. Do I love it? I practically deify it. And it’s not the only object that is more to me than the sum of its parts. My iPod is not only a jewel, but also a valued companion on my endless walks. I am free to enjoy those affairs without fear of persecution, but the rules are different for men who enjoy love dolls. Most owners are terrified of being outed.

Doll owners constantly discuss advances in doll technology. They want convenience features such as removable sex organs that can be easily cleaned but stay put during critical moments. They want their dolls to talk and move. They pine for fully functional “gynoids” that they can be programmed to accommodate any sexual proclivity. Forum discussions wax and wane with excitement and disappointment, depending upon how close technology is to making their dreams come true. While on the forum, doll owners evoked my sympathy, empathy and antipathy — as well as my fascination. So when I heard about David Levy’s book Love and Sex with Robots, it piqued my interest.

“Accepting that huge technological advances will be achieved by around 2050,” claims Levy in the book’s introduction, ” … Love and sex with robots on a grand scale is inevitable.”

From day one, my world was filled with technology. My father designed and built machinery. My degree is in electrical engineering. I respect milling machines, I remember the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, and I consider my laptop to be an attractive accessory that complements who I am. I agreed with Levy’s assertions about our advances in AI and computer technology. And yes, the human fascination with automata is boundless. It starts early too. Every kid is transfixed by a window display of animated Christmas elves no matter how repetitive and mechanical their movement. I know I was. I still am.

From this starting point and through three hundred odd pages of text, Levy’s premise could surely convince me to fall in love — and maybe even marry — a robot.

I’m just a love machine

Early in the book, Levy says he will not detail the mechanics behind the robot frontier. This immediately felt like a cheat to me and put a big chink in Levy’s credibility. The emulation of the human hand, lips, and tongue seem like important components to address when pondering lovebot technology. Yet Levy does not address such issues. No matter how hard I tried, the cunning engineer in me couldn’t stop worrying about design. A lovebot will require a heating system. (RealDoll owners often use an electric blanket.) Will the user manually lubricate the robot for sex or will it have a system with refillable reservoirs? Something along the lines of windshield washer fluid? That robot kid in AI got bested by a mouthful of spinach, but he did fine even after he fell in a pool. This is more than I can say about my cell phone. I eat a falafel sandwich to stay powered up. What will fuel a lovebot? How long will the rechargeable battery last? Coitus interruptus because of a drained battery would be a real drag. Sort of like having to put your cool road trip on hold for a few hours in Shamrock, Texas while the electric car juices up.

These mystifying “huge technological advances” didn’t sit well with the Los Angeles Times‘s Seth Lloyd either.

Lloyd brought his own credentials (quantum-mechanical engineering professor at MIT) to the intrinsic problems of programming computerized robots to perform even the humblest of tasks. He calls Levy on forecasting developments so far in the future that no one can refute them, calling such extrapolation a “mug’s game.” And make sure you dig his comments on Levy’s lack of literary references. Remember Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation? We thought R2D2 was adorable. And everyone drooled over Cherry 2000. Levy doesn’t mention any of them. Not even Jude Law’s silken Gigolo Joe, who would seem to embody Levy’s vision.

Levy also forecasts that lovebots will cost the equivalent of two C-notes by the middle of the century. Right now, $199 will buy you an iRobot Roomba Robot Vacuum at Target, but the only thing it sucks is dust bunnies and pet hair. Sure, the Roomba may go down in price. Electronics generally do. Mechanical devices do not. Build them cheap and, well, is anybody out there still driving a Yugo?

You make me feel like a natural woman

From Sex and Love with Robots:

Anyone who has doubts that women will find it appealing or even possible to receive the most incredible, amazing, fantastic orgasms, courtesy of sexual robots, should think again. Think vibrators.

Did someone say vibrator?

The Cone Vibrator boasts 16 settings courtesy of a 3,000-rpm motor and is fueled by three C-sized batteries. The smooth medical-grade silicone surface is easy to clean and comfortable to (ahem) interact with. And believe me, set this baby in the center of the bed and it stays put no matter how enthusiastic that interaction gets. It costs about a hundred bucks.

Purrr.

I love my ridiculous toys. But the idea of a life-sized male sex doll does nothing for me. Sure, a toy delivers satisfaction. But it is just a toy. It has nothing to do with men or lovemaking. (Well, maybe as an accessory. I mean, insinuate yourself on the cone and your entire upper body is free to … um … oh, never mind.)

Why? It has to do with the essence of our subtle physiological yin and yang: that swirling vortex wherein you find the quest for a woman’s climax, fear of impotence, a lover’s thrill at the sight of a swelling erection on a man he or she wishes to arouse and the sense of failure a flaccid member evokes in the same situation. The lie of a woman’s faked orgasm and the intensity of pleasure between two people exchanging undiluted desire.

That said, the vagina has more wiggle room than the penis. Erica Jong called the fairer genitalia an “all-weather” organ, suitable for use anytime as long as a bottle of lubricant is in arm’s reach. The passive nature of the vagina makes it easier for a heterosexual man to suspend disbelief and engage in activities such as prostitution and doll play. Not so with the penis. The Viagra discussion notwithstanding, arousal must produce a man’s erection, which silently proclaims, you are sexy and desirable to me. It is an honest organic response, not the proper execution of computer programming. An erection imparts affirmation that a phallus will never evoke.

As a heterosexual woman, I don’t think I’m alone in my indifference to the male sex robots of the future or the male dolls of today, but I’m not sure. Although Abyss, the manufacturer of RealDoll, sent me droves of info when I asked about their product, they didn’t respond to my numerous queries about how many “Charlie” male dolls they’ve sold. I’ve read that it’s only about a dozen.

Levy is completely at odds with this topic. In one sentence he proclaims that vibrator love means robot love. In the next breath, he admits that, unlike men, women do not buy love dolls.

Why not? Although breadwinning men with gleaming teeth and pompadours stiff with Brylcreem can have their RealDolls and eat them too, the cake of Levy’s argument asserts that women probably just can’t afford “Charlie” at $7,000. He admits that this probably isn’t the only reason, but it’s the only one he cites.

An angry red blush bloomed on my neck as I digested this factoid, but I must agree: $7,000 is a lot of money to pay for the privilege of lying beneath 100 pounds of inert silicone.

I suppose I could sit on top of it.

Nah.

They’ll never get that perfect spot where shaft meets torso right. Besides that, Charlie wouldn’t fit in the box under my bed.

Even the losers

Levy is a savvy proselytizer. He appeared on the January 17 episode of The Colbert Report. When asked why people would want a lovebot, he said, “The most common reason I think at the beginning will be that there are millions of people out there in the world who for one reason or another can’t establish normal relationships with humans. They’re lonely, they’re miserable and robots, when they’re sophisticated enough, will be an excellent alternative.” When Colbert asked him if he would ever have interest in a robot, Levy responded, “No … this is for the other people.”

Okay folks, queue forms on the right. You lonely miserables–raise your hands. You guys head straight up front. The ugly guys are next. No, no. No need for you dogheads to raise your hands. We can see who you are. Just get behind the miserables. When all the pathetic losers are settled, the rest of you normal, middle-class, right-as-rain Other People have at it. As soon as I blow the whistle, let the stampede begin.

When a writer distances himself from his topic, he risks insulting his material as well as his reader. This is particularly relevant when writing about sex. If you don’t put yourself on the playing field either directly or indirectly, you come across as judgmental. To get on that field, you must put forth your assertions in the context of your reader and yourself. That is vulnerable territory–upon which Levy dares not to tread. Instead he relies heavily on studies and history in order to broach his topic. His research is thorough and interesting. Unfortunately, too often it looks backward and not forward. Catastrophically, it never looks inward.

Levy cites our pets, our Internet romances and our ongoing love affair with electronic equipment as examples of alternative human affections. So because I love my cats, I’ll marry a machine? And, yes, I have a complex relationship with my computer, but it serves mostly as a tool and a vital connection to other people. That argument led me nowhere. It’s true that people have online affairs, but in the end, it’s still something conducted in the flesh between two people.

This was the absolute scientific fact that proves humans will soon universally love and marry robots? I was still miles away.

A humanoid robot that is programmed to perform its owner’s specific wishes sounded like a new-fangled way to say hooker, trophy wife, or sex slave. The more sophisticated the electronic entity, the more cruel the electronic leash. I couldn’t see it any other way.

What I needed was a deep thought.

But it’s all in the game

Levy is an international chess champion and the author of dozens of books on artificial intelligence and computer gaming. His passion for his subject is evidenced by a long list of international credentials concerning those topics. He led a team to win the 1997 Loebner Prize (world championship for conversational computer software) and is currently the president of the International Computer Games Association. In 1968, Levi wagered that no computer would beat him at chess within the next ten years. He won that bet against his fellow AI aficionados, which garnered him considerable notability. Eleven years later, however, he was defeated by the computer program “Deep Thought,” which leads me to the heart of the trouble with Love and Sex with Robots.

This book is a commercialized version of Levy’s academic paper on the topic, for which he earned a Ph.D. The resulting scientific detachment about subjects that are not scientific–love and sex–is problematic. Although Levy’s passages about the histories of vibrators and sexdolls are wonderful, you won’t find one candid breath about the human beings behind them.

Love and Sex with Robots is screaming for eye-blinking moments such as an anecdote that a doll owner conveyed to me: he loved painting portraits but no model was patient enough for him. “A life-like doll seemed the ideal solution,” he said. “However, when she arrived, I was so taken with her realism that I automatically became fond of her.” And in an instant, this would-be Pygmalion instilled gentle poetry upon the idea of man and doll, which no longer seemed so strange.

That is how a writer must normalize a sexual subculture, by evoking the reader’s empathy over his sympathy. Exclude the anecdotal details and the droning research ends up sounding like the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon.

Levy didn’t have to go very far to find a humanizing facet for his subject. All he had to do was step from behind the scientific mask for a moment and describe his lifelong fascination with AI. I smoldered with curiosity about the tipping-point moment when he knew “Deep Thought” had the game in 1989. How did he feel? I imagine it was a thrilling culmination of anger, hatred, respect, frustration, admiration and humility–a stinging slap from a beautiful woman. Perhaps it was arousing as well as infuriating. Such disclosure would have increased the power of this book ten-fold.

But the future lovebots Levy depicts are no Deep Thought femme fatales. They are submissive Stepford Wives for the masses, programmed to meet their owner’s every whim. When I juxtaposed McRobot against the brilliant Deep Thought entity that defeated a genius, it amounted to a subcontextual insult. How would Levy respond if asked to check off the box on the order form that indicated whether he’d like his custom-built robot to let him win at chess (a) always, (b) once in a while, or (c) never?

Perhaps such pedestrian options are for the “other people.”

Electric slide

Levy devotes 27 pages to “Why people pay for sex” whereby he quietly admits that buying a mechanical companion is akin to prostitution. To his credit, there is no hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold or Pretty Woman moment. The section about why women pay for sex is one of the weakest in the book. A tidbit involving ten female johns that Levy cites from a February 1994 article of Marie Claire (UK) does little to normalize the idea of paying a man to share a bed. The johns discuss their lack of success with men, the freedom from complications and constraints that inundates relationships, and the need for companionship they cannot fulfill otherwise. He concludes the chapter by saying paid sex “can be a positive experience even though [the johns] know that their sex object has no genuine feelings of affection for them.”

I wanted to make sense of all this. So I reviewed AI while writing this essay. I watched Gigolo Joe’s love scene again and again. Who is this scene for? The woman is a teary middle-aged cliché. People with complex sexual troubles surely do not see themselves this way. They don’t need pity; they need a solution. It’s not Gigolo Joe, who is more contrived than his human counterpart. Paying for sex doesn’t make sense to most women, which is why the call for heterosexual male prostitutes is a barely audible peep. Gigolo Joe’s mechanical hard-on is a lie as well.

I detest the isn’t-it-wonderful-that-these-sad-people-have-this-option-available-to-them shtick, but that’s all Levy offers me here. Again, I needed a quotidian inroads, such as the heterosexual fiftysomething man in a strapless evening gown I discovered when conducting research for a feature on cross-dressing. “Glenda” told me that, when she leaves Glen’s rough work clothes behind and steps out in pantyhose and heels, the world treats her differently — even if she’s not all that convincing in her role. Glenda can also leave Glen’s troubles behind, such as the grief surrounding his 19-year-old daughter’s suicide.

Oh.

But at one point, Levy finally grabbed me. He chronicles the efforts of the Erotic Computation Group at MIT, which endeavors to explore modern computing, human sexuality and sex toys of the future. I sat up in attention, only to read the next paragraph, wherein Levy reveals that the group was a hoax, and was gravely disappointed.

Love and Sex with Robots represents a massive amount of work. But it fails to reveal a profound truth — something I believe is still waiting to be uncovered. I wish Levy had included some of his own secrets and desires. I wish he had gotten his hands dirty and talked to real people about real sex and fetishes. But the galvanizing details and their inherent vulnerability just aren’t here. As it is, Love and Sex with Robots feels like a date with a machine.

The Big Idea

For the past ten years I have been looking for a forum in which to express my one big idea.

I believe I have finally found that forum.

Here is the idea:

In the television show Land of the Lost, the character of Chaka (pictured above) functions as a physical manifestation of the incest taboo.

For Marshall, Will, and Holly, the choice is simple. Either continue searching for a way home, or give up and, er, found a new civilization. Chaka’s presence keeps them searching.

[what, ed, no “incest” tag?]

Quick Quickies

Margaret Drabble on Bloomsbury (via ElegVar, a Unix-like acronym I couldn’t resist)

Journalista investigates the implications of Borders’ “category management” on graphic novels.

Unusual San Francisco Architecture and The Map Room (a blog abut maps) (both via Menlo)

Defective Yeti has a heck of a forward-thinking scheme for making money off conservatives.

Slate: Should students be allowed to hook up with professors? The great irony is that the article was written by Against Love author Laura Kipnis! (via Chica)

Jonathan Yardley takes on The Reivers (which is in my bookpile). (via Sarah)