003 – Carter Signs Up

Carter was signing up from work.

He had carefully weighed which would be worse – getting busted by the people he worked with or his roommate Derek. His workmates might rip on him for a little while but eventually his embarrassment at signing up for this dating site – DatesOrMates.com – would be forgotten and replaced with someone else’s gaffe or mistake. Besides, worst case scenario, he could always get another job. Finding another apartment was out of the question.

He instinctively scanned the vacinity around his office to make sure no one was looking. When he was sure that the coast was clear, he reread the question that had given him such a shock.

How many times per week do you prefer to have sex?

Were they serious? Do they really match up people based on that?

He glanced down aprehensively at his crotch, surveying his clothes along the way.

His v-neck sweater was corporate issue – proudly displaying the green and block logo embroidered on the dark blue fabric. He generally preferred wearing the coroporate sweater as opposed to a suit and tie, the only other alternative according to the employee handbook that he keps in his top left desk drawer.

Taking another sip of his morning Dr. Pepper, he wished the answer wasn’t multiple choice and instead he could write a few lines to explain. With the right woman, he would explain, the sky was the limit. In a bad relationship, though, things quickly went south.

The elusive definition of the right woman was the chief reason he had resorted to signing up on this site. Did such a definition or a woman how met it actually exist? There was the girlfriend in college. A very attractive anthropology major who quickly realized that she could do much better than Carter. She was the closest he’d come to love – he in love with her, her using him as an intermediary (yet enjoyable, she had assured him) stepping stone.

Looking at the the options staring at him from his screen made him skeptical. His job as an actuary always made him cautious of such general number ranges. Were the choices averages or supposed to be taken as hard limits or maybe even minimums?

He strongly disliked making decisions whose correct answer couldn’t be determined by a calculator.

His actuarial brain also made him keenly aware of the risks that were involved in heading down this path. It was giving him a bit of a stomach ache but he continued on.

He agonized over his responses staring his generic work PC. The IT dorks were probably monitoring every web site that he visited. They must be getting a good laugh out of this one, he figured, but who cares, when was the last time any of them got laid?

Clicking the Submit button was an exhilarating and somewhat nauseating experience for Carter. He kept his mind off of the slight feeling that he may vomit by repeatedly clicking the Check Mail button in his email client waiting for the date or mate of his life to be electronically introduced to him.