“If you were an ice cream, which flavour would you be and why?”
I’m sitting at a small table in the Alleycatz Jazz Bar. Across from me is Andre, as the nametag on the front of his shirt indicates, and he is my sixth date of the night. Because this is a speed-dating event, we only have four minutes to get acquainted before he has to move on to the woman sitting at the table next to mine.
But instead of trying to gauge our compatibility in such a short amount of time, I’m focused on coming up with a witty response as to why I would want to be a human tub of Ben and Jerry’s. I can’t think of anything, so I decide to go with a generic response.
“I guess I would be something chocolatey,” I tell Andre. “Then everyone would love me and I would feel like the most popular girl in high school.”
I was hoping that this response would elicit a smile. It does not. Andre very seriously writes “chocolate” next to my name on the match card that each person received before the dating began.
“You like chocolate ice cream?” he asks. “I like pistachio.” “Yeah, lots of people love pistachio,” I reply, wondering how long this conversation is going to last. “But I don’t really like nuts.”
He looks disappointed. I decide it’s probably a good idea to change the subject.
“So, Andre, what do you do?” I ask.
“I work in the finance department of an ice cream company,” he answers. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a long four minutes.
The reason that I found myself discussing the intricacies of the ice cream business at a speed-dating event is due largely to a conversation that I had with a friend of mine several weeks earlier. We met for coffee and, in due course, she asked if I was seeing anyone. “Not right now,” I replied. “I’m trying to focus on my studies without any distractions. I want to get into grad school.”
She made a face. “That’s pretty depressing, Brigit,” she said. “You’re twenty-one. Live a little, or you’re going to wind up as a cat lady.”
A few days later, in the interest of both living a little and preventing myself from becoming a feline-obsessed spinster, I agreed to write an article on speed dating for the Valentine’s Day issue of The Varsity. I figured that I had nothing to lose. I wasn’t fixated on finding a boyfriend, but if by some chance I met my soulmate at this event, I certainly wouldn’t complain. At the very least, it might be nice to find someone to make plans with on Valentine’s Day. I may or may not have spent last February 14 sitting at home in my pyjamas, sulking over a recent breakup, and eating macaroni out of a pot.
Soon after I walked into Alleycatz on the night of the event, however, I began to question whether my decision to speed-date was a wise one. It’s quite strange to be in a room where everyone is there for the express purpose of scoping out a potential partner. I felt like I was watching the painful sexual dynamics of high school being re-enacted by adults. Women stood together in groups, laughing too loudly and trying to look at ease, while the more gutsy men approached them and attempted to strike up a conversation. As I made my way over to the registration table, a group of guys standing nearby very conspicuously ran their eyes from my head to my feet.
“Ugh,” I thought. “This place is such a meat market.”
Feeling uncomfortable, I sat down in a corner of the bar, waiting for the dating to start. It did not begin promisingly.
“So, what makes you a good candidate to be my girlfriend?” asked Jonathan, my first date of the evening. I raised my eyebrows. “Is this a job interview?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not good at this. I don’t know what questions to ask you. I just graduated from engineering school, which is why I’m at speed dating in the first place.” I laughed and he seemed encouraged. With both of us now at ease, we passed the next few minutes debating the merits of various shows on the Food Network.
In fact, most of the guys I met were very pleasant, and as time went on and everyone became more relaxed, I found that I was actually having fun.
I had some genuinely interesting conversations that night, albeit short ones. I spoke to a former CBC broadcaster about the state of modern journalism, discussed Mordecai Richler with a physicist, and met an electrical engineer from Colombia who teaches salsa dancing on the weekends.
Of course, when the conversation slackened, four minutes felt like a very long time.
“I like racist jokes,” said Michael, my twenty-fifth and last date of the evening.
“Pardon me?” I reply, thinking that I misheard him.
“I like racist jokes,” he said again. “Any race is off limits.”
“You mean no race is off limits?”
“Oh, yeah. No race.”
I couldn’t think of a response that would salvage the next few minutes of the date. The rapport was dead.
Despite the fact that my last date was quashed by a bit of mild racism, for the most part, I had a good time speed-dating. I met some nice guys, and because you only spend a few minutes with each person, awkward and dull conversations are relatively bearable. That said, it’s difficult to make a real connection with anyone when you go through twenty-five dates in under three hours. By the end of the night, I realized that I was not really willing to go out with someone I ultimately know nothing about. For a more romantically adventurous person than myself, however, speed-dating is probably a fun way to get back into the dating game. At the very least, it might prompt you to reflect on one of life’s more profound questions: if faced with the choice, what ice cream flavour would you be?
