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Help Wanted

A modern girl's guide to finding love in Cleveland

By Rebecca Meiser 

It's 7 p.m., and I'm standing near the hostess at Stir Crazy in Legacy Village, checking my cell for text messages. This takes little time, as I have no messages. The hostess, a teenager with oversized buttons pinned to her T-shirt, is busy adding names to the waiting list. She asks for the third time if my date is on his way.

For the third time I say, "Yes, of course my date is on his way," though I don't know for certain. The only thing I do know is that his name is Sam -- or is it Josh? Shit! He's 36 years old, 5 foot 11, with brown hair and blue eyes.

At 7:15, a man vaguely fitting the description appears. His hair -- or rather the little that's left -- is indeed brown. He looks older than 36, and his refrigerator-white skin seems as if it's spent years inside a windowless office. His hands are stuffed deep in his ski jacket. He looks as nervous as I feel.

"Becky?" he says.

"Josh?" I ask.

"No," he says. "Sam."

"Oops." I mumble an apology, muttering something about my nonexistent brother named Josh.

As we're whisked to our table, Sam unveils a Ziploc bag filled with tiny red capsules and pops them like Tic Tacs.

"Is everything OK?" I ask tentatively.

"I'm fine," he says. There's an uncomfortable pause. "I'm just a little bit worried that I might be catching something. I need to go see my doctor."

Great. An unattractive man who's likely an avian-flu carrier. I run to the bathroom and drench my hands in antibacterial soap. My eyes stray to the mirror. Well, at least my hair looks good.

When I get back, Sam starts complaining about all the awful dates he's been on in Cleveland. How there are no good-looking single women left in the state. How he might have to move to New York to find someone even slightly attractive. "You know?" he asks.

I grit my teeth and look at my faux Cartier watch.

My matchmaker is, like, so fired.

Since I moved to Cleveland, my boss has been concerned about my love life -- or lack thereof. He has five kids and believes I'll never be content until I find a nice strapping male -- preferably a Swede who owns an ice-fishing shack -- to have lots of babies with.

Still, he's sympathetic to my plight. "You know, Becky," he said to me one day, "I really feel for you. It's much harder to find a good-looking man than a good-looking woman. Men are such ugly-looking creatures. If I were a woman, I think I'd have to be a lesbian."

He left me to ponder these enlightening words as he went for a smoke.

The truth is, I'm extraordinarily picky. I go on a lot of first dates, but find many reasons to forgo second ones.

There was the guy who kept mixing up the spelling of "their" and "there" in his e-mails. As a former fifth-grade spelling-bee champion who still has the ribbons displayed over her desk, I decided we would never match.

There was the guy with the bushy, mammalian eyebrows. They twitched and danced when he talked. I stopped returning his calls. My hairstylist totally understood.

There was the guy who sent me half a dozen roses after a date. Too . . . um . . . okay, so I was clearly searching here for a reason to avoid him. But the roses were pink.

Of course, I'm not perfect. I try and fail to lose the same five pounds, which make my thighs look like Coast Guard-approved flotation devices. My apartment looks like it's inhabited by a drunken platoon from the Portuguese army. I speak fluent Valley Girl. No one understands a word I say. They just nod and smile.

Being narcissistic, I'm attracted to guys who are, well, like me. Since there aren't very many fast-talking 5-foot-2 Valley Guys who enjoy chocolate martinis and the word "like," this doesn't, like, work very well. My longest relationship was with my Pilates instructor, whom I saw three times a week at Bally's. But in October, she up and left me, saying that she needed to find a "real job" and get "closer to her family." Clearly, she was missing the main point: me. What about my needs? My wants? My abs?

As my quarter-life crisis approached, I decided to get some assistance. Since my personal matchmaker (i.e., my mother) lives in New Jersey, and all her potential choices tend to be guys I hated in high school, I decided to try some local dating services.

They say money can't buy love. But when it's on the company tab, it can't hurt to try.

eHarmony
When I first told people of my quest, everyone -- and by that I mean my sister, my best friend, Stacy, and USA Today -- advised me to sign up for eHarmony.com. The site, founded by this creepy guy named Dr. Neil Clark Warren, uses a complex mathematical formula based on scientific and psychological research. Instead of traditional dating sites, where you arrange dates yourself, eHarmony tells you who it believes to be your best match. Warren boasts that his service leads to more marriages than any other online outlet, which is why he charges $59.95 for a one-month membership.

Before I sign up, Stacy warns me to take eHarmony's 463-question relationship survey seriously. My future husband, she says, is predicated on how truthfully I answer questions like "Based on a scale of 1-7, how self-aware do you consider yourself?"

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