My Life and Times

David Chelsea

May 22, 2005
Cubicle Cupid: Nothing Personal
By ALYSON M. GOMEAU

THERE'S someone out there for everyone. It makes a charming notion for love. It also happened to make an airtight refund policy for the online dating conglomerate I was working for in Los Angeles. Lovelorn hopefuls paid my employer for the opportunity to leap into a seemingly bottomless pit of potential mates, but if they hit bottom alone, it was their own fault, and they were not reimbursed.

A cold corporate approach? Perhaps. Whatever, it didn't apply to me. Fresh off a breakup and cross-country move, I'd reached the stage where I was mourning less the loss of my boyfriend than the Gore-Tex anorak he refused to return, and I wasn't yet in the market for a new one (boyfriend, not anorak). Besides, I wasn't allowed to look even if I'd wanted to; employees were required to check their hearts at the front desk.

I'd been working there for three months, ever since the tenacious rep at the temp agency, unfazed by my lackluster Excel scores and general apathy about cubicle jobs, called while I was organizing my Vogue magazines in reverse chronological order and said, "You can wear jeans."

It was data entry; the parking was convenient, the pay negligible. I was in my mid-20's, among the legion of aspiring screenwriters in need of some way to pay the bills. As such, I was forced to concede that this job was at least something.

Less than an hour later, ensconced at a cramped computer station in a windowless room that smelled of Cool Ranch Doritos, I wondered if I should have held out for more. The flourishing company maintained a half-dozen of the most popular dating Web sites, each merely a twist on the obsolete personal ad. The client - known flatteringly as the "single" - provided brief answers to mind-numbingly general questions like "Life Motto?," which, along with an optional photograph, served as his or her profile. Anyone could post or view a profile; paying members received photo space and expanded profile and, most important, could contact one another. The Internet dating scene had reached its post-9/11 apex of popularity, and the company was besieged with hundreds of thousands of profiles from men and women hot on the trail of their special someone.

My job was to preview each new profile for obscenities, objectionable references and prohibited contact information (phone numbers, addresses, instant message handles). And I was to do this task at a constant steady speed. You were not to read, needlessly edit or laugh. And certainly not look for your own match.

The profile-entry department was a stock crew of aspirants: the actor, the singer, the writer, the former assistant to a B-list celebrity, all of us frog marched to a bland building on Wilshire Boulevard by our lofty artistic goals and loftier Visa bills. We had drawn the dreaded 6 a.m. shift, and the combination of early morning proximity, professional frustration and poor ventilation had helped us forge a thin alliance.

We acted happy when the actor scored a commercial for a discount hair-cutting chain, laughed too hard when the singer regaled us with the tale of her gig as a dancing bear at a sub-par amusement park, rallied mildly around the agent trainee after he was terminated for filching the e-mail addresses of pretty single women. We acted as if we cared. But the job was short term, and so was our interest in one another.

Besides, the truly interesting people were the ones on our filmy computer screens. These singles were hardly wallflowers or workaholics; they were confident and unabashed, with evidently all the time in the world to compile rosters of astrological preferences, height requirements, and in one case, a 16-item list of music the future betrothed could never, ever, listen to.

At first I tried to help. True, there was no Vera Wang fitting in my immediate future, but I had done O.K. in the past - nobody had ended a long-term relationship with me via a voice-mail message - and my current singleness was voluntary, intended and celebrated: a new city, a new time zone, a whole new video store.

We were strictly monitored, so my assistance took a minimalist approach. A few snips and that rambling sentence about a single's "five-year social sabbatical" no longer seemed so intense. The removal of an errant adjective and voil?: the single's Yorkshire terrier was still a dog but no longer "transcendental." I may not have been an expert in all things love, life and grammar. But they just wanted to be happy. Couldn't I help them cut in line?

As the weeks dragged on, however, I lost enthusiasm for meddling. Time was passing. The old department was fading away, with the actor and singer moving on to bigger and brighter things while I remained rooted, half-asleep in the chair closest to the floor fan, now a mentor to the novices in the acclaimed "Control/Shift" shortcut key.

And I began to resent the singles. I grew angry at their sloppy, impassive prose. If SanDiego44 really had "waited a lifetime for love," couldn't he have squeezed in another 10 seconds to check the spelling of his work? And could PwrBrkr36 spout off a few more clich?s about men and commitment? This was love they were looking for. It took time, effort, a thesaurus. Elusive, evasive, slippery love. What made them think they could catch it so easily? If they wanted happiness, they could get in line. Behind me.

Because even though I'd chosen this life, I was starting to get restless. The temp agency had called with other assignments, but the compensation - financial or intellectual - was no greater, and the rep had not been able to guarantee the free chai lattes I enjoyed now. This had become one priority I could not shift.

When my VCR began to rewind and fast-forward on its own in the dead of the night, I heaved it into the Dumpster and bid adieu to entertainment as I knew it. Careers, major appliances and love all seemed to require owner's manuals I could no longer locate.

And so it was that after spending most of the morning staring out the window at an unusually cloudy Southern California sky, I did the unthinkable: I began to search the profiles. I signed on as a guest member, entered an age and location, and read the results. I skimmed past the men who favored blondes, mountain biking and "Fear Factor." I scrolled 15 pages of potential. And then I stopped.

He was a newly certified architect. He declined to discuss Woody Allen unless the other party had seen both "Sleeper" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo." He was originally from the East Coast, enjoyed Thai food and didn't know what he was doing on this Web site because he wasn't sure what he was doing on this planet. His photo was unpretentious, his smile genuine, and, unlike a startling number of his peers, he had not cropped the shot from his wedding portrait.

I looked out the window again. I had not turned on my home computer in over five weeks. Opening my freezer required an alarming amount of manufactured enthusiasm. The recent Valentine's Day had passed unrecognized until the chatty drug store clerk pointed out her plastic heart earrings to me. "They're supposed to flash, but I couldn't be bothered to find the right batteries," she said with a smile, but her eyes were weary. "You know how it is."

I did know. But suddenly, alone in that cubicle, I fully understood how my months of immersion in the loneliness of others had seared and anesthetized me to the point where I'd forgotten how it felt to discover that you both liked Interpol before everyone else did.

NOW, reading - really reading - the architect's careful words, I felt the ether wearing off and the sensations rushing back. The singles on my screen no longer seemed picky, demanding or needy. They were vivacious, honest, funny and, most of all, brave. So what if they wrote lists defending the raw-food diet lifestyle and spoke of May-December like it was a real month? They hoped for the best. They actually believed there was someone out there for them.

Two clicks later and I had the architect's private e-mail address on my screen. I had my pen out and a Post-It ready. I probably also had a laminating kit nearby. For this could be it. It was all there in front of me in a respectable font without so much as a semicolon smiley face. This could be my someone.

But my hand stopped midletter.

What was I doing? How had I allowed myself to be seduced by this electronic candy machine of shrink-wrapped soul mates?

My old boyfriend, whom I loved, who was as close as I'd come so far, talked loudly during movie previews, used a duck-shaped lint remover on his sweaters, refused to run from the rain and had an uncontrollable, contagious laugh that was the best compliment you ever received. How does one capture that in a profile?

We'd met by chance, not keyword search. He was running late, I was leaving early. We were two people headed in opposite directions down a long hallway, blissfully unaware of each other's shared astrological signs or Life Mottoes. Two strangers who hadn't been reduced to clich?, category or classification. I knew absolutely nothing about him, and yet there was that instant, immediate, time-suspending connection. ...

Click.

I closed out of the screen, threw my cold latte into the trash. As I walked out onto the street, I remembered that I'd left my time sheet back in the cubicle, and I hesitated. It was already past due, and I would have to fax it by this afternoon if I wanted to get paid.

But the sun had just burst indignantly through the dispersing clouds, and there were actual people out here on the sidewalk, gloriously unclassified, without any preferences blaring from their foreheads in 16-point Helvetica Narrow.

I kept walking. Let them keep their money. I had smuggled out my heart. We could call it even.

Alyson M. Gomeau, who lives in Los Angeles, is a screenwriter.