The True Adventures of Jamey on Match.com

I love being single.

Really, I love it. I have all this time to do whatever I want with whomever I want. I don’t have to spend all this time getting to know a woman and all the calling and expectations and dates…I love the complete freedom.

That being said, I still gravitate towards finding a woman. I simply can’t help it. I find myself doing this naturally, instinctively.

So last night I decided to see what’s out there. From the comfort of my own home, of course.

I went to Match.com.

It’s okay to look, right? So I try to search the site for local hot women who like dorky board games and cats. But right away, Match tells me I have to sign up–just my name, e-mail, a few little things.

I enter that information and try to go back to my search. But Match tells me that if I want to find people who “match” well with me, I need to fill out a profile. No cost, just a few minutes. No big deal.

So I fill out this extensive profile. Page after page of questions–some multiple choice, some long answer. It was like the SATs all over again. I think I passed.

This is my primary photo on Match.com. Should I have included one with more skin?

While Match is approving my profile and profile photos (they have to make sure that I’m not crazy and that my photo doesn’t have a penis in it), I’m finally able to look around the site a bit. It’s actually somewhat complex. There are all these different ways to match with people–you can click “SingledOut” or “Daily 5″ and immediately get five great matches (the two buttons are different somehow, but I can’t figure out how).

Then there’s this concept called “winking.” If you find someone who intrigues you, you can “wink” at them for free. You have to pay to subscribe to Match to actually e-mail someone. So instead, you wink, which is the equivalent of walking up to someone at a bar, tapping them on the shoulder, and running away while giggling to yourself.

That’s right up my alley, so I immediately winked at about five girls.

I woke up this morning to find that a few of them had winked back. Intriguing, I thought. I still didn’t want to pay for this online dating thing, so I contemplated winking back again. Luckily I searched Google for “Match.com winking etiquette” and saved myself the embarrassment of winking at the same girl multiple times. My street cred would have been ruined.

Now, here is where Match is particularly tricky. At one point this morning, I got an e-mail from someone on Match. But the message nor their photo were included–you have to subscribe to get that information.

How brilliant is that? The mystery! The intrigue! The woman could be super hot or laugh-out-loud hilarious or a foot massage specialist or a cat whisperer. She could be anyone! How could you not subscribe to find out who she is?!

I will say that I felt a little icky doing this. Although I was paying a third party, I still felt like I was paying to talk to a woman. Which felt a little weird.

And just like that, I was in. I’m officially a 3-month subscriber to match. Go check out my profile. Not knowing any better, I used my real name. My full name. I think I’ll just marry the first woman who figures out that she can just Google me and contact me directly instead of paying to e-mail me through Match.

Daily Quickie: I had saved up a huge back of recycled cans and paper, so I lugged it down to the recycling bin today. There’s one right outside my building. Unfortunately, it’s right next to the dumpster, and I, being tired, tossed the whole bag into the dumpster. I realized a split second too late that I had just killed the environment. I wasn’t in the mood to crawl in a dumpster, so I just left it there. What would you have done?